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

It's a racist mess of shit editing, shit dialogue, and poorly written characters.

@storyyeller. Honestly I don’t know what answer you were expecting here.

I wouldn't go as far as saying shit. Junk is appropriate. It's a junk film.

Junk, shit, there's no difference. It's an awful film. Easily on par with Ayer's last film, if not worse because it amps up the racism of Suicide Squad while pretending to be a racial allegory.

It wasn't as bad as SS.Whoa, what unfortunate initials!

And junk food is not shit food. One is unhealthy, gross, and cheap. The other will either make you puke your guts or poison you and kill you.

Okay? This is all arbitrary, there's literally no need to make some kind of vague difference. Bright is an awful movie with blatant racism and worse editing than Suicide Squad.

I sincerely did not get that impression. I had no trouble at all following this movie.

Glad I'm not the only one who doesn't think it's the worst movie ever.

The editing didn't make this movie that incomprehensible but it did leave it with jagged cuts and skips in action and horrible and hard to follow fight sequences. That's not even going into the idiotic forced exposition that slows the plot down to a crawl. The elf girl, whatever her name is, her only purpose is as a plot device and as exposition.

Yes, that was very disappointing. Even Leelo had more agency.

Probably the movie I enjoyed most this year after Blade Runner 2049.

And none of that is Max Landis' fault! Not the hamfisted exposition, not the police brutality awkwardly shoved in to be "socially relevant", not the casual Fantastic Racism, and by far not the elf girl just being there for no good reason, then just disappearing into the crowd.

Seriously. In the script, the three chucklefucks messing with Ward in the locker room are explicitly described as racist, and Ward himself goes over the top confronting Nick about the escaped shooter to hammer that O.O.C. Is Serious Business... and failing as Reality Ensues and Nick, obviously confused why his partner suddenly goes all racist on him despite volunteering to be his partner and treating him with respect, then literally does a 180 and double-taps three cops including the sergeant, tackles and handcuffs him, then asks what caused him to snap.

Your narration got a bit confusing near the end. Ambiguous Pronouns. Could you rephrase?

Thank you. Or, as we know them here, Mediocre, Terrible, and Disastrous.

edited 8th Jan '18 2:10:31 PM by TheHandle

"It wasn't as bad as SS.Whoa, what unfortunate initials!"

Yep that is why I said the complete name everytime I discuss the movie, is really distracting.

And I get Handle point here Adric: there is a diference between Junk movie which is cheap and easy to see and a shit movie that is so awfull you just want to forget about it, Bright is the first and Suicide Squad is the second.

As far as I care they're both the same level of quality. I want to forget I saw both of them.

I'll admit that I'm biased by the idea of a Shadowrun Spiritual Licensee. While watching this film, I had this soundtrack playing in my head instead of what we got:

OK, Handles, here it goes:

Ward starts verbally whaling away on Nick, in order to make a scene and alert him that something's off, invoking O.O.C. Is Serious Business. This shouldn't surprise the viewers as some banter between the two, and Ward's lines to the locker room chucklefucks and the IA guys, paint Ward as pretty much the only cop in LA who volunteered to ride with an orc partner.

Nick is confused and angry by the sudden turn of events, while Ward, correctly deducing that all the racket he was making lured the corrupt chucklefucks out of the house, turns around and blasts the three.

Nick's even more confused, tackles Ward, handcuffs him and puts him in the backseat like any normal cop would.

Clearer?

Also, the promotional video Netflix posted on Twitter directly invokes Shadowrun, so apparently someone, certainly not David Ayer, is aware that the game exists.

That setting is so cool. It's like Repo The Genetic Opera meets Blade Runner in Middle Earth.

All of this just makes me wonder what the hell happened to Ayer. Wasn't he considered good until Suicide Squad?

He got dosed with Joker Venom, of course.

Someone threw an even earlier, exclusively Landis draft at me.

My point still stands, Landis wrote a decent urban fantasy buddy cop movie, with hints of Shadowrun in the form of three mercs (also, my bad, the merc leader was a woman, Vasquez type - Ayer cut the diegetics about her in the February script), and set up plot beats. Someone gives Ward and Jakoby shit for letting a perp escape, they respond to a call, find wand, three chucklefucks arrive, threaten Ward, get offed, the protagonists bail, crash their ride, enter the mercs, protagonists piss off orcs by crashing their party, break to the feds getting late to the scene and butting heads with the last chucklefuck trying to cover up what happened, protagonists call the sheriff, the mercs catch up, protagonists bail again, get caught and have shit beat out of them by the orcs, break to the feds getting pitted against rogue SWAT at the scene, protagonists get dumped in a back alley forcing Tikka to use the wand, enter the witch and Latinos catching up, the witch goes through the Latinos, the protagonists hold on to the wand for dear life until they taze the witch, Tikka launches a fireball at the witch just so Ward learns how to do it, the witch gets offed with a clever application of a tazer and commandeered firearms (or a rusty truck wheel rim), Tikka takes the wand and bails to the crime scene, the protagonists follow, find the last chucklefuck almost dead, mercs ambush them and wound Tikka, Ward casts a fireball to cover Nick rescuing Tikka, crime scene goes 'splode, Nick saves Ward, orcs show up to witness him, cut to white, Nick and Ward in hospital while the feds salvage the alibi for them from the surveillance van, cue credits.

However, most of the racial allegory is still Ayer. Landis plays it pretty safe, going with the more fantastical, ritualistic version of Fantastic Racism and classism based on the "clan blood" motif. Nick comes from an unblooded family and became a cop to prove himself (it's less of a "diversity" thing, he's merely the first orc cop in the precinct). Hell, Landis plays it so safe that the Latinos are absolute cardboard, without even a Motive Rant.

edited 8th Jan '18 4:15:31 PM by NotSoBadassLongcoat

Dont be silly, this ayer is clearly a doombot

A guy on twitter did a page-by-page comparison of Ayer's script, Landis' and the final movie. It's pretty long (91 and unfinished).

The guy's not reading into the script with enough attention, and/or commenting before he gets to the end. This is obvious when it comes to Leila/Gibson/the witch and wand backstory. Those things were changed the most heavily, and he seems to ignore it.

So I finally watched it.

It was... I'd say just below mediocre? The editing was astoundingly bad, the writing was weak, and the plot was terribly flimsy. The sheer level of unlikability of the cast was a huge problem, too. I think it was a side effect of trying to make Will Smith a jerkass but simultaneously giving him literally every single decent line in the movie.

I just didn't feel like there was any payoff in terms of character growth. Smith started the film as a guy who was a jackass, but knew deep down that orcs aren't necessarily bad, even if they may personally inconvenience him. By the end of the movie... exactly the same. His relationship with Jakoby didn't even feel any stronger for it.

For positives, I respect its attempts to world build while moving the plot forward versus blatant exposition dumps. It's a bit clumsy, but scenes were Jakoby weaves in the backstory as it pertains to the situation at hand were at least trying.

And I did legitimately like the hospital scene were Jakoby is explaining the events of the night to the elf Fed. And I liked the Co-Dragons, even if the Big Bad herself was lame as hell and their Power Levels were... awful. Entire squad of armed SWAT officers? No problem! Single injured guy? There is no way to possibly kill him! Yes, it's a conceit of the genre but it wasn't handled well.

And seriously. The editing was astoundingly horrible. Whoever did that deserves to give their paycheck back to the studio.

edited 16th Jan '18 7:48:41 AM by Larkmarn