*Will Add This To The First Post*
So Bright isn't a good movie. But just like Hotel Artemis, its bad in some very interesting ways. UNLIKE Hotel Artemis, despite what even some of it's critics might say it's not a case of wasted potential, because it had very little potential to begin with.
The whole premise is a watercooler idea for a movie 'Training Day Meets Lord Of The Rings'. Despite it sounding like a wacky and fun thing you might come up with on a very under the influence 'deep' convo with the bros, it's a shit idea that was never going to work, and hamfisting overt racial commentary didn't do the film any fucking favors either. Let's start with the acting.
The Acting was passable for most of the characters, nothing too horrific apart from some of the hammy 'bigoted bad guy cop rants' that just felt forced. Smith and Edgerton for the most part achieved what they were going for, but then the roles weren't very demanding. The elf girl was fucking awful, and so were the FBI guys. Everyone else just kind of punched their work ticket and got it done.
The Characters is where the movie failed the hardest. You have a 'buddy cop' thing and neither of the characters are particularly likeable. This film fell victim to the 'Will Smith character' syndrome. We all have seen enough Will Smith films to see the 3 or 4 versions of his typecast personality role. And be clear, it's not that he can't act, he can actually act very well, he just doesn't play diverse roles, largely because he doens't need to. He can be one thing so well that it will still make a movie entertaining without sacrificing a good performance. But we always know what to expect, so sometimes character development comes across a little pointless.
This film seems to have fallen for that phenomena, its like David Ayer thought, "Hey, everyone knows and likes Will Smith, so his character will be likeable by default, no matter what he does in the film". So you have this barely developed, pissed-off, rude, violent, condescending ass of a cop, who's only redeeming feature is that the person playing him is named Will Smith. It's the laziest shortcut I've ever seen and it might be what pisses me off most considering the entire film falls apart when your main character isn't likeable.
Joel Edgerton did a very good job with what he was given, but what he was given was shit. He was supposed to be the sweet-hearted oppressed minority in the police force that you felt sorry for. And sometimes, you did. But his whole, overly nice, bumbling eccentric thing took away from him being a serious police partner. He was just like this big soft punching bag for Will Smith to be a dick to, it wasn't fun to watch and it didn't add to their mediocre chemistry. Also a lot of time fleshing him out was wasted on exposition for the fantasy and the world which brings us on to probably the criticism everyone wanted to hear...
The Worldbuilding and Setting couldn't have been done worse. The film was not anywhere near long enough to appropriately build a fantasy world on its own (look how long the LOTR films are), let alone a fantasy world ON TOP of an urban crime setting. Things are introduced and never explained, the 'origin story of the great war' is rushed in, and the supernatural elements feel cheap and under-utilised but then over utilised to patch up lazy story telling and crappy internal logic.
The obvious and most offensive is the 'racial aspect' of the fantasy races which was never going to work, because racial allegories, need to be subtle and well developed to create a believable metaphor to real life. Bright has Orcs in chains and gold teeth throwing up gang-signs and all but loudly tells you they are 'black or hispanics in the ghetto'. But it's stupid because there already are blacks and hispanics in the ghetto, and it's where the movie is set, it already has the racial observation of real life, so why do you need orcs as a metaphor? It's so LAZY they wanted to make a hard hitting point about race without even deciding what the point was going to be.
And then the Elves live in the elite and hipster part of L.A. all very afluent and cut off from the rest of the city. I couldn't decide if they were supposed to just represent 'rich people' or 'rich white people' or more worryingly 'jews', and I don't think the movie could decide either. It wanted to shoe-horn a well known fanatsy race to make a point about 'privileged groups' without doing any of the hard work. I could go on and on all day but the film only made a quasi effort with the setting because of..
The Plot isnt as awful as the world building but it's so fucking GENERIC it actually hurts the film more. You have a world with all these wacky elements and the film worries if you don't have the most cliche'd trope riddled, 'Chosen one' 'Buddy Cop' 'Magic Artifact' one dimensional adventure film then the audience might get confused. Well you can't save the film from being confusing so you can at least try and make the story interesting but they didn't there is nothing interesting to say about how the story is told, it just hits all the predictable beats and ends. Which wouldn't be a huge problem if the two leads were likable but they weren't.
This film was also wrapped in controversy for being hated by critics but loved by 'audiences'. I think people need to understand that you can like a bad film and no one can tell you otherwise, but bad is still bad and calling it 'fun' and 'enjoyable' is not a defense. Do you know what's a genuinely enjoyable film?
You Got Served
Go on watch it again, you'll love the time you have with it, but you'll never call it a good film, and you shouldn't.
What film should I do next?
PrinceAlexus
Bluetommy
Kaithe Dame
Dion
Sabotage
Blubaron45
Daxam
