Bright, or The Movie Sadly Not Titled "Orc Cops"

You read my mind. Though, I suppose it could have been that as well as a few other things. I just can't think of what those would be right now, as the timing on the removal of the star system and the release of "that" series just coincides too perfectly to be coincidence.

edited 23rd Dec '17 4:58:44 PM by Eldritcho

The point of their "Chance you would like" system is that they want to use algorithms to find the tv you, specifically, would like, and from that point of view, general audience reaction potentially prevents customers with off-beat tastes from watching things that is right up their alley. .. But even from that perspective, the star system was still better because it gave them more detailed user feedback. Just because you watched something to the end does not mean you loved it.

Actually it was after Amy Schumer’s comedy special was given a royal thrashing for not being the least bit funny.

Saw it with a friend of mine, we both more or less enjoyed it for the premise and the satire, but recognized some significant issues with the plotting and world building. A major issue is that we often jump to scenes of police brutality on orcs, because without context it feels empty. I was thinking about Ayer's own End of Watch and how it showed the police interacting with the residents, forging a complex relationship (in particular, how Pena's character earned the respect of a guy they had to arrest by getting into a fair fist fight). Bright needed more interesting human/orc/elf interaction before the main plot got going, as once it does the story goes from passable to really clumsy.

The big problem story-wise is that the movie makes it clear what the goal of the characters have to be ( getting the wand to the FBI, as that exonerates Ward for gunning down fellow cops to keep it safe), but the climax of the movie has nothing to do with achieving that goal and it ends up happening incidentally. The middle part of the movie especially is just a series of action sequences that could almost be switched around in order without missing anything.

I demand Netflix make Will Smith record this song for real.

So is there a trope for modernized fantasy settings.Like where is was Tolkien in the past but it's at a modern point in time.FF 15, Arcanum and shadowrun did something similar.

Urban Fantasy.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Do Leilah's crew fit the Implacable Man trope? Serafin got Impaled with Extreme Prejudice, survived that and had to be blasted with a shotgun, Tien got vaporized with a bomb, and Leilah herself survived getting blasted with a shotgun, then had to be vaporized by the wand. There had to be some magic involved in that.

"what the complete, unabridged, 4k ultra HD fuck with bonus features" - Mark Von Lewis

Maybe elves are just hard to kill.

I just watched the film this evening (Merry Christmas btw)

I thought it was fine. Nothing special, but definitely has good ideas to it.

I liked the concept alot, and the idea of creatures & humans interacting in 2017 Earth. A bit like District 9.

Will Smith & Joel Edgerton were great. The villains were a little disappointing. They're built to be almost unstoppable, and then get pretty beat up in the end.

I mean, its decent and I'd recommend it to kill time.

Where's my yummy yummy Porgs.

Alright. 20 minutes in:

• "Fairy lives don't matter today." -snicker-
• Ward's flip-flopping morality on "I don't mess with fairies," to, "I will kill them on my front lawn," to, "I don't mind orcs if they do their job," to, "I don't want to work with this orc."
• Pretty diverse casting for the extras. I'm seeing women and people of color all throughout this police department
• Angry white cop yelling at Ward about how he doesn't want orcs in the department.
  • dude is angry about some Lord of the Rings-shit that went on 2,000 years ago
• Scenes of police brutality against orcs meant to emulate real-life scenes against blacks
  • Jakoby is constantly questioned about being a cop first and an orc second.
• I haven't heard this many "fucks" from Will Smith in quite awhile.

I don't quite know what this film is trying to say. This isn't the first time Will Smith played a racist cop, but in I-Robot the allusion and the irony behind it seemed clearer. Then again, I'm only twenty minutes in so the Heel Face Turn in Ward's personality is probably oncoming.

I had to pause once I saw that centaur cop. I am digging this Urban-Fantasy Kitchen Sink. I wish there were more works that combine high fantasy and modern day society like this. Guess I have to give Garrett Pi a watch.

edited 25th Dec '17 9:19:32 AM by Soble

I'M MR. MEESEEKS, LOOK AT ME!

If you gave me Landis' script with lore notes, I'd turn it inside out and make it watchable, really. Now I do realize that I'd put weird emphasis on the orcs and the split between "we want to get along" and "we have our own traditions we have to maintain". But then, I'm not American, so it could turn out as disastrous as that beat cop video game that came out this year and got panned like a stack of flapjacks.

"what the complete, unabridged, 4k ultra HD fuck with bonus features" - Mark Von Lewis

Making the story less American might have actually helped. Part of the movie's problems is that the Orcs aren't just allegories for black people, they're black people under a different name to the point it gets offensive. Making the allegory broader and less US-specific could have actually helped.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."

I agree, I personally would have liked to see the Orcs and Elves having a more distinctive culture than just stands-ins for poor people/rich people respectively. Orcs are basically African Americans with make-up for all purposes, there are lots of interesting stuffs that could be done with their culture.

If anyone has ever seen Ugly Americans, it has a similar concept with humans, demons and monsters living together, but goes into great lengths to show the demons' culture to be particularly unique and alien. That's what I would've like to see here.

That said, the movie wasn't bad, I don't get all the critics' hatred. I normally side with critics on movies but I think this movie was very good, it has its flaws but is far, and I mean far from being "worst of 2017" as someone calls it.

I also found interesting that this is how the world of Tolkien would be in its 20th century (and yes I know the world of Tolkien was supposed to be our world's prehistory but you know what I mean).

edited 25th Dec '17 3:01:19 PM by Luppercus

The movie is bad because it pretty much fails to explore its setting. Explanation why orcs are perceived as evil slash inferior is limited to "shit that happened 2000 years ago", and it's not even made clear on what scale Jakoby is the first orc cop - first in LA, first in California, first in the US? That, and him being the first ever is pointless in the grand scheme of things, beside his drive to prove himself that could be as well explained by the orc character trait of having to prove their courage and endurance that comes up in the Fogteeth temple scene anyway.

Now, if we had a minor Info Dump how they "tried" to make orc cops and "failed" because they wound up killed in the line of duty, officially by orc criminals (actual culprits in one of the cases would be revealed to be the four dirty cops turning up to secure the wand), or kicked out because of the conflict between the law and the orc blood code, it would make infinitely more sense.

Also, there are a couple of What Happened to the Mouse? situations: what happened to the crazy hobo with the sword? What did Leilah and her goons do to that baby exactly? What was even the deal with all the ritual shit in the Fogteeth temple?

"what the complete, unabridged, 4k ultra HD fuck with bonus features" - Mark Von Lewis

What beat cop video game?

Serious question.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

It doesn't help that they seem to indicate that human on human prejudice is largely gone now that they have Orcs to kick around. And when you're trying to explore such obvious current real-life parallels that deal with race/ethnic tensions, that's a problem. Also large chunks of this feel poorly-explained/fleshed out. And there's some truly unintentionally funny moments.

Saaaay, you guys want Police Procedural stories in a fantasy setting that explore social justice issues in a competent manners?

Terry Pratchett's Discworld got it covered! Specifically, the City Watch sub-series.

I fink dey's a good books. One. Two. Many. Er... lots...

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

They didn't, though, did they?

I thought they made it clear human on human prejudice was no different with orcs.

The Sheriff even confirms it.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

x3 Yeah but those are books, not movies. As awesome as Discworld in general are, we want a movie that does that (and to my knowledge Discworld does not have a lot of adaptions that actually cover said sub series).

edited 26th Dec '17 1:43:10 AM by BigK1337

And the humor doesn't translate well to the screen

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Human discrimination still seems to be a thing. Hence Will Smith's neighbors who notably still use that one word and the Hispanic sheriff who sympathizes with Jakoby.

Human on human prejudice probably did not went away in a similar way how Orcs have prejudice over unblooded. This is Truth in Television we know of lots of marginalized groups that have further prejudices among themselves like in the US Irish and Italians during the 30s, later Irish and Italians vs Blacks, later Blacks vs Hispanics, and so on, and other examples exist in other countries. Which make you wonder why discriminated populations does not join forces together against their common opressors always (it does happens, of course, the Civil Rights movement had support from Jews and Hispanics who were technically not affected by the Jim Crow Laws, although they did suffer from non-official segregation, but it should be more common).

Anyway. Wasn't clear to me if Elves were supposed to be the WASP version of this universe, and humans were other minority just not as discriminated as the Orcs (I guess something in the line of non-WASP Caucasians) or if the Elves were some sort of ruling minority like Whites in South Africa and Bolivia or Alawites in Syria, etc.

edited 26th Dec '17 5:25:00 AM by Luppercus

Serious answer: this game. It's even titled "Beat Cop".

It was made in my country, but as you would expect from a third-world Iron Curtain nation drunk on Hollywood, it's a load of racist GOPlin drivel.

"what the complete, unabridged, 4k ultra HD fuck with bonus features" - Mark Von Lewis