Have you read the Clay Shirky post on this? Highly, highly recommended. Definitive.
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/04/the-collapse-of-complex-business-models/
I am just a guy with some moxie and a loud voice. Clay is a bonafide genius.
That’s a good article. I don’t know if Netflix is falling into a complexity trap, though. You give Bright to a major studio and it goes from a $90 million film to a $200 million film pretty quickly. Though maybe that was your point.
Hoo boy was this movie hot garbage. It’s definitely my contender for worst movie of the year. Literally everything fell flat. Will Smith meandered through the movie as if he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be there. The script was so flat you could practically hear the clunks. The action was pedestrian. Literally the entire thing was utter drivel. It’s a real shame because I’m a big fan of the Shadowrun style setting but this was like Bad Boys 4 with elves. I can’t believe Netflix already green lit a sequel. What are the suits thinking?
Will Smith seriously needs some new advisors. He last 6 or 7 movies have all been terrible.
Bright - 6.6/10 (and dropping)
Suicide Squad - 6.1/10 (and one of last years worse movie contenders)
Focus - 6.6/10 (utterly forgettable)
After Earth - 4.9/10 (Close to Bright it utter awfulness)
I guess Concussion (7.1/10) was OK in a Saturday matinee, preachy important issue kinda way.
Ha ha. No one ever remembers Collateral Beauty or Seven Pounds.
I thought both were pretty terrible also ;)
This type of science fiction is has old history. You use imaginary races differences has a shield to talk about real world racism without scaring the people before you end any argument.
What I think the movie did was a argument about traditions vs progress. Living in a ghetto vs opening doors. Orcs, is your past the guide to your future?
By making the one orc that want to break from the ghetto a sympathetic character the movie make obvious his stance. Is pro-breaking from ghettos.
From my point of view, the movie lack ambition.
I think people have forgotten what actually terrible movies look like. Time for the ol’ Clockwork Orange treatment with a copy of Transformers 2.
I said it’s “underwhelming” not “the worst movie ever.”
They should have just filmed the robot cameras in action instead. More interesting than the fights.
I’d take Bright over any of the DC movies, with the exception of WW, and those cost A LOT more. I thought it was solidly entertaining and I’m very happy to see a movie in the Shadowrun-type setting.
Underwhelming is fair. I am seeing much more hyperbolic language around this movie than that, though.
We enjoyed it. It brought us a new world and the story was necessary tropes to see the world and the interplay of all the factions. I think if you try hard enough, you could draw enough parallelisms with almost anything - but as with most movies, I highly doubt the screen writer was thinking that hard. However, I might be convinced that putting white cops in a derogatory light could be intentional.
I do think Will Smith didn’t even try to dial this in. I think Edgerton did what he could do under all that makeup, but honestly seeing emotions in either orcs or elves was a stretch.
But again, I haven’t succumbed to watching suicide squad, so I can’t compare, but I can think of movies that didn’t leave me as entertained as Bright. Considering I just sat down on my couch & watched it on my HT and didn’t have to spend a dime (other than my netflix subscription which I’ve had for a decade), I’m happy.
I don’t think the elves had a lot of prosthetics getting in the way. Rather, they seemed to have been written as mostly cold and emotionless (e.g., Vulcan-like).
Same. I have a different standard for couch movies than I do for something I see in a theater. The theater is a bit of an event I pay for and plan my evening around, so I expect more. On-demand like Netflix just makes the whole experience easier.
The setting definitely added to my enjoyment. I didn’t really care too much about the orc’s issues about acceptance by society – I thought they banged on that a bit much – but otherwise it was fun. If it had just been a normal setting for a buddy cop movie, I wouldn’t have liked it much, though it’s the type of movie that I might sit through anyway to see how it turned out.
Yeah, I don’t think the buddy cop aspect went beyond formulaic. But in combination with the fantasy elements I was down.
It seemed to me that they were written the same way by Tolkein. Jackson’s movies livened them up a bit and gave them more emotions, but not my much.
Man, we enjoyed this immensely - Fun, great looking, and some rather great elves. Orks were good, in that semi-brutish understated way, and elves were awesome! I want to be an elf! The wand stuff was amazing as well, so well done- I want one! And a Naomi Rapache as well.
Great world building as well, actually - I had a lot of fun with the FBI guys, and all that the elf-district implied.
Honestly, I am looking very much forward to the sequel! Also - I was actively impressed by it because of how slammed the movie was here so that was a nice surprise that the movie actually DIDN*T suck, but was fun.
Loved the sword-swinging guy as well.
-Orcs are people too!
I’m surprised he didn’t make another scene. I wonder if something was left on the cutting room floor?
I liked this. I know that I shouldn’t but I did. Guilty pleasure I guess. Wish it was a netflix series instead of a movie. Maybe that’s what will happen but minus Will Smith. I like Will Smith (another Guilty Pleasure) because he always plays Will Smith like John Wayne was always John Wayne. But I doubt he would sign on for a series. Who knows maybe they will Alien Nation this.