Bright

I love modern fantasy, my favorite book series is the Dresden Files, I watched the shit out of American Gods, I am still sad that Constantine was canceled, so it should come as no surprise that I enjoyed Bright, despite critic reviews calling it the worst movie of 2017. However I don't think I liked the movie just because of the setting, it feels like the critics weren't watching the same film that I did.

Some background I guess, Bright is set in modern day LA in a world where the classic fairytale races live side by side with humans in more or less peace, fairies are annoying pests, elves not so secretly rule the world, and orcs exist to be shat on by all other races, see two thousand years ago the Dark One attempted to take over the world, and the orcs helped him(it? it is unclear) they have been paying for that mistake ever since. The story follows Will Smith as a beat cop forced to accept Joel Edgerton as his partner, the first orc to ever make police officer. They do policing, find a magic wand, and then it all goes to hell.

Smith and Edgerton do a good job selling the setting and have great chemistry together, with bickering that goes from truly hateful at the beginning to amicable by the end of the film, their arc is believable and that goes a long way. The supporting cast does fine although the villains are a bit melodramatic.

The film gets shat on for it's poorly handled racism message, as well as its portrayal of the police and honestly... I don't see it, I will admit the racism is uncomfortable, but I feel like that is kind of the point? Orcs are not a perfect allegory for any real life race and it is unclear if the racial history of America with regards to black people is present in the Bright world, but the racism as shown against orcs, by everyone else, in the film is just as awful and pervasive as you might expect. I don't see why this was a problem, did the critics want an extended lecture about racism from Will Smiths character at some point? Did they need it explicitly pointed out that racism is bad? It seemed pretty obvious to me but perhaps I was watching a different movie.

The first complaint ties into the second obviously, as policing and racism are inseparable. There are two scenes back to back at the beginning as our duo responds to a pair of calls, the first is an orc making a disturbance, it is never specified what he did and the protagonists arrive after it is mostly over and the police on the scene are just beating the shit out of him, they observe and Smith asks his partner if he is an orc, or a cop, they are then called to another incident, this time a crazy human swinging a broadsword around in the middle of the road, other officers are on the scene as well when our pair arrives, but this time they are just observing the crazy guy with smiles on their faces, there is a short chat and the man is arrested without incident.

Now perhaps that was too subtle for the critics, but I thought that was a pretty fucking damning look at the societal attitudes there, made more so by the suggestion that this is nothing special, just how you do the job.

There's a lot of that in the movie if you look for it. The cops aren't played as cartoonish villains, but they also aren't heroes either, Smith's character is a racist ass, but he isn't actively trying to be, he has just absorbed the culture of where he works and the country he lives in, he still works with Edgerton and in the end, defends him. The police force is rife with corruption and that is expected as a matter of course, not like they are all on the take, but it is expected that they will do what they feel necessary to protect their lives and enhance their livelihoods, and if the prize is big enough then there is nothing off the table, when Smith's character realizes that he might be in danger now there is no big moment of betrayal, it's just the way things are, obviously it will go down this way.

I don't want to give the impression that this is a phenomenal movie, at best it is average to decent with a cool setting and decent fight scenes, but there is something to think about there, and I don't think the critical reviews really tried to find it, my guess is for Netflix's first blockbuster budgeted film, nothing less than Lord of the Rings would have been acceptable, anything else and people will jump at a chance to say the studio missed.

Netflix, for their part, has already ordered a sequel, so someone out there agrees with me.