God I love this forum.
Yes, appearently.
Thats exactly what expected. Elves having long lives but low birth rate. Humans kinda the opposite. Orcs somewhat in the middle, but losing many lives to violence.
I liked this thing, it was solid popcorn stuff, don’t get the hate.
I’ve been thinking about centaurs… how do they cope with the modern world? What kind of car do they drive? Where do they crap?
I hope the next movies expand on this.
I think the real question is: what the fuck is a panahu?
The icon looks like a children in a dress, so maybe some sort of forest spirit. It can be anything.
Got around to watching it this weekend and found it ok. I was actually enjoying the first half; it was the final act that dragged it down because it wasn’t really going nowhere ultimately.
On the plus side, I liked the initial world building and scenes like the gas station fight. It had some well-directed bits, and I don’t mind the one-bad-night premise. I thought Joel Edgerton was doing fine. I also liked that Jakoby still gets shot nevertheless after the insane coincidence of the orc kid in the end being the same kid that he saved earlier.
Quite a few of Will Smith’s lines were grating,e.g. “Drive it like you stole it!” or him constantly commenting on things during action scenes like the car chase. I found the dialogs to be quite predictable, too Also, after the initial 10 minutes I was wondering if they actually had the balls to make the Smith character a bit of an asshole, but, surely enough, they hadn’t. He’s only willing to snitch on Jakoby after everyone uses his family and debt as leverage, and obviously is über-smart to realize that the other cops want to kill both of them later on.
After Christmas I had asked some friend who had already watched it then why the movie was called “Bright”, and even before he ended his answer I was like “Oh, Will Smith’s totally one of them, right?” So, I was prepared for things to get stupid at the end, and yet it still managed to annoy me as I was watching it. Knowing what was coming, I expected the plot to drop some hints at the character being somehow special, but nope, it’s just him grabbing the wand because it’s all there’s left. It’s the decisive moment of the movie, and it’s completely unearned.
Ultimately, I thought the movie didn’t employ its setting well enough. There are interesting world building bit and pieces (elf town, glimpse at a centaur, etc.), but the plot doesn’t follow through on any of them. The differences between the races is something mentioned here and there, but hardly used. There’s exactly one scene in which Jakoby gets to use his sense of smell, and exactly one fight where you can see that he’s physically way stronger. None of these elements come into play later in the movie, and Jakoby and Ward become pretty interchangable.
District 9 certainly is the movie this needs to be compared to, and it IMO did a far better job at a far smaller budget. Admittedly, the racism/discrimination-is-bad message is very on the nose in both movies–Neill Blomkamp couldn’t do subtle even if his life depended on it–, but then again D9 was always built as a metaphor.
Still, hoping that Bright 2 gets to do something more interesting than the first one.
Dude, they all but came out and said they were going to murder both of them. Didn’t need much interpreting.
I dunno, he was kind of an asshole through the whole thing. He wasn’t willing to murder Jakoby in cold blood, but short of that he was pretty consistently an asshole to him and nearly everyone else he interacted with.
The Shield of Light homeless guy they picked up talks to Will Smith’s partner and tells him his partner is special, and he was chosen to protect him. Or something like that.
Yeah, it came pretty early in the flick and was pretty blatant. That, plus the reminders of how rare human brights are (as noted above) made it pretty obvious.
Ok, I missed the remark early on. (Of course, this begs the question: how do the SoL people know this?)
It being obvious doesn’t mean the plot earned it. Again, I guessed it instantly ahead of watching the movie after a friend explained the meaning of the title to me. Doesn’t absolve the script from its flaws. As someone already mentioned above, it’s being said, shown or otherwise pointed out that normal people can’t pick a wand just to be sure that even the dumbest person in the audience gets it by the end. Goes so far that even the villain warns Ward not to pick it up. Why the fuck would she not let him pick it up and see him obliterated? She’s not any closer to him than Ward and Jakoby were to the guys who picked it up earlier, so she would just have been fine. And her reaction makes it pretty clear that she didn’t know he was a Bright.
The Flop House just did this movie.
Watched it last night. As others have said, it was a fun popcorn flick, and well worth to be included in my monthly Netflix subscription. Loved the world building, especially the use of graffiti at the beginning.
I am LTTP on this one as well. I thought this was ok, but I seriously think could have been much better if Will Smith was not in it, as it was all Will all the time, and we have seen that too many times. The other characters in the story were relatively very unimportant, which was a shame as there were some interesting concepts that could have been explored.
I think a well written miniseries centered on any of the other characters would be something I would watch. It would be fun to see the Fed-duo investigate cases, or Jakoby (sp?) on special assignments.
Going back to the Shirky thing, it seems Amazon is focusing on big, commercial movies. Which is a shame, as we already have movie studios to do that.
You’ve described every single Will Smith movie.
Netflix seems happy with Bright.
Generally, they seem to have had a very strong quarter, with their biggest subscriber gain yet despite the price increases.
On the downside, a $39m Spacey hit.
Well this movie was a lot better than critical reception led me to believe. It does have a couple things that don’t work as well for me as they could have, but this is a well executed movie overall.
Except for seeing occasional headlines and review scores, I mostly went in blind. I actually expected a movie closer to Alien Nation, insofar as I expected this is be a movie about aliens and pretty much be a redo of that movie. But I am glad this wasn’t the case. If there’s any good in the world, they’ll turn this movie into a TV series, much like Alien Nation did. I would love to see more Orc & Human buddy cop shenanigans. i assume they wouldn’t be able to afford Will Smith for any of that, which is fine. Just recast him.
I enjoyed Jakoby quite a bit, and I want more of him. I also thought Noomi Rapaace just looked fucking awesome. She makes a great evil elf. Sure, her character was a total moron because of a couple of the mindblowingly stupid decisions the writers decided she should make, but I enjoyed her performance nonetheless.
Everybody else was forgettable. Well, I don’t mean to imply Will Smith is forgettable, but he’s actually the weakest link among the primary players, if only because it turns out that, hey, you can never go home again. Much like Jim Carrey, I periodically wish Will Smith would go back to his 90’s shtick once in a while… but this movie is proof that doing so won’t actually be such a good thing. Every single time Will Smith had a throwback reaction or one liner, I was pulled out of the movie and dropped into one of his older movies. He’s just too old for that now, his delivery just a beat too slow. At times it felt like his heart just wasn’t in it, which isn’t to say he was phoning this in, just that he isn’t that guy anymore. The attitude and the dialogue just doesn’t feel right spilling out of his mouth. I think I would have enjoyed it more if the movie hadn’t cast him. I don’t have a good suggestion for a replacement, but basically anybody that wasn’t trying to be Will Smith of the 90s.
I like the movie’s take on the Orcs. I don’t really know how I feel about the movie’s take on the Elves, billionaire elites living it up in a walled off section of town. I just hope that setup isn’t used as fuel for some sequel that wants to deal with class based resentment and retaliation or something.
The movie wasn’t perfect, a lot of Smith’s trademark mannerisms being a part of that, but other little things sorta nagged at me but didn’t ruin the experience. I could have done without the fairies and the dragon flying over LA. I didn’t enjoy how so many situations seemed cribbed almost shot for shot from other movies, like Training Day (“He’s the one that saved me”), Men in Black, Bad Boys, Every MacGuffin movie ever, and Guardians of the Galaxy. I say this mostly because I never really enjoy that stuff in any film because it always pulls me out of the film I’m in, and I end up spending the next fifteen minutes comparing dialogue, story and scene structure of that moment to memories of older films in my mind. I guess I’m easily distracted.
Anyway, good film. I want a series or sequel, preferably a series. Some major characters do some horribly idiotic crap, but overall I liked it. It’s the best of the made-for-Netflix films I’ve seen. (Note: I haven’t watch The Irishmen yet)