Quote:
Originally Posted by NewChief
Social and political commentary is pretty much the raison d’etre for sci-fi and fantasy. If you don’t like the message, that’s fine... but it’s not like this is some new over the top leftist movie. Similarly, the latest Star Wars is getting this “rightwashing” treatment. It looks like the right wing is trying to more fully engage in the culture wars.
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Though sci fi did dabble in social commentary sometimes the good stuff was always done in such a way that it was an organic thread in the story, often not readily apparent, and always as one piece of a stand alone story.
This is no Stranger in a Strange Land. This is a ham-handed effort that is laughable in it's efforts to push an agenda.
This critic nailed it pretty well:
..."It’s rare to see a movie so toxic that it manages to raise multiple red flags before the very first shot, but “Bright” is a special piece of work. As if the goofy crackle of blue magic that runs through the Netflix logo isn’t enough of a warning sign, that gag is followed by a card for a production company called “Trigger Warning Entertainment.” Just gonna go out on a limb and suggest that these might not be the best people to make a thinly veiled metaphor for America’s racial violence that starts with Will Smith swatting a rodent-like garden sprite and declaring that “Fairy lives don’t matter!” Lock and load, snowflakes!
Smith, in a hangdog performance so dispiriting that it might genuinely make you pity one of the world’s most successful people, stars as Daryl Ward, a second lieutenant who was just shot in the line of duty. Daryl had the bad luck of being partnered with Nick Jakoby, the first Orc on the force, and he paid a stiff price for his involuntary role in social progress. Nick (played by Joel Edgerton, mercifully unrecognizable underneath a splotchy latex mask that makes him look like a syphilitic Navy Seal), is just a nice guy who happens to be making history.
Nick never wanted to be the Jackie Robinson of of the LAPD, he just dreamed of having a badge. Unfortunately, orcs see him as a traitor, and humans see him as a monster, so Daryl is his only genuine shot at acceptance. (Spoiler alert: It turns out that who you are on the inside is all that really matters.) The two of them are going to have to forge some kind of mutual trust if they hope to survive the long night to come, which starts when a routine house call spirals out of control and leaves them fending off racist cops, protecting a mute elf (Lucy Fry), and trying to stop her sister (Noomi Rapace) from summoning “the dark lord” or whatever.
Oh yeah, “Bright” leans way too hard hard on “whatever.” As if the film’s racial dynamics aren’t flimsy enough — don’t ask how black people fit into a story that problematically recodes them as a violent breed of orcs who are responsible for their own subjugation, because screenwriter Max Landis never did — its fantasy mythology is even less coherent. Guillermo del Toro puts more thought into a single one of his creatures than Landis and Ayer manage to spread across the entirety of this interminable “Funny or Die” sketch, as every attempt at world-building is so feeble that it feels like the film is making fun of its own thoughtlessness."...
http://www.indiewire.com/2017/12/bri...17-1201909960/