Bright: The Will Smith fantasy movie that nobody knows how they feel about it.

Netflix released this trailer this month and I have no idea how I should feel. I've shown it to my boss, co-workers, boyfriend, and friends and they all say the same thing.
"I have no idea how to feel, it might be good or stupid."
Never has a trailer made literally everyone I've talked to have no definate reaction.
Let's break down some pros and cons:

Pros:

• The movie is written by Max Landis. Max wrote Chronicle, a movie that blended two very different genres (found footage and superhero) that worked really well, despite that it shouldn't. Bright is going to mush together very different genres as well, modern-day cop drama and fantasy.
• The director is the same director for Fury, a movie with sweet action tank battles but also had reasonably solid characters.
• Will Smith has made some stinker films, but in the right role he shines bright (lol get it.) The ass-kicking cop with a heart for the people and his family peppered with wit is perfect for him.

Cons:

• The movie is written by Max Landis. Though Max has proven he can write a genre mash-up, he might go a little too political with the whole "diversity" aspect of the movie, which may turn people off. The film also appears to have a prominent black and Latino cast, with their characters risking coming off as inorganic or forced, considering Max was born into a wealthy white Hollywood family.
• The director is the same director for Suicide Squad, this alone might turn people away since it was a disappointment.
• The mash-up of two very different genres might come off to some as a cheap way to be original, "Hey let's modernize fantasy." might dismiss fantasy fans and putting fantasy elements in a cop drama might dismiss those fans.

The only thing people seem to know for sure is, "Well it's on Netflix, so I don't have to leave my house and shell out 14$ to see it, and if it's stupid I'll just go back to watching Stranger Things."

 

Will Smith hasn't shown emotion on screen in a while so I wouldn't get your hopes up.

Edit: A good rule of thumb is that if you have mixed feelings about a trailer, you probably shouldn't get your hopes up. Think of how many awful movies had kick ass trailers. If the trailer can't give you the gut impression that "man this is going to rock" then chances are the source material isn't all that great.

 

I hate things (on like, a visceral level) that scream "IT'S A METAPHOR, GET IT?!" in your face every two seconds. This is going to be complete shit from a writing perspective.

"Fairy lives don't matter."

FUCK OFF, MAX. GODDAMN.

 

Definitely a concern, it's why I can't stand Elysium.
Hopefully the magic wand story overpowers that.

 

I can almost guarantee it won't. The type of writer that falls into the "AUDIENCE, IT'S A METAPHOR" abyss is either young and just learning how to insert overarching messages into their stories or has their head so far up their own ass that they literally cannot keep their metaphor boner under control and insert it into every goddamn aspect of whatever they're writing.

Take N. K. Jemisin, for example. I have a love/hate relationship with her because she has good ideas and solid world building skills, but no understanding of subtlety. In her latest series (the one that won the fucking Hugo, probably because of that Puppies drama) is all about the mistreatment and discrimination of the LGBT community portrayed via a fantasy setting where magic users are feared and hated. The metaphor would have worked, and worked well, if only she didn't proceed to make this fantasy society so overtly hateful of the magic users that it crosses into unbelievable territory. The book literally opens on a mother kneeling over the body of her toddler son whose father beat him to death after learning that he was a magic user. And the entire town's reaction is, "oh, good thing he did it, magic users are not people". Apparently this is the norm for this fantasy society. A community will lynch a child they've known since birth and helped raise just because magic is bad. And no one questions it or feels remorse.

But that's the problem, in trying to drive home the metaphor as much as possible, Jemisin had to sacrifice a key element of humanity. There's no movement to treat the magic users better. There's no hesitation on the part of the murderers. No one treats them as people, but that flies in the face of human nature. We have progressed because we possess empathy and there have always been and always will be a large number of people who are disgusted by the mistreatment and discrimination of others. In Jemisin's world, however, that doesn't exist, so the inhabitants might as well not be human. Less than halfway through the book I stopped being surprised or angry about any bad shit that happened because I expected no less. The metaphor ended up killing the story.

That seems like a tangent, but I can tell the same thing is going to happen with this movie. I don't know much about Landis, but he seems like a pretentious asshole, and that does not a good writer make. I like genre mixing. I like new takes on well tread stories, but the constant declaration of the metaphor is going to kill it. A metaphor works when the audience has to figure it out themselves. A writer should lead them in the right direction, but that's it. A lesson sticks with us when we have a personal realization. You can't have that kind of enlightenment when you start your film with shit like "fairy lives don't matter" because, oh yeah, that's the message, you just told us in the worst way possible, I don't give a shit anymore.

Like I said, I hate this shit on a visceral level.

 

I watched it because I didn’t have to pay for it.
It’s entertaining. The action scenes were exciting enough and made up for Will Smith’s (and basically everyone else’s) hammy performance.
The “IT’S A METAPHOR DO YOU GET IT” that me and @Attachments-senpai dispise is sparse. It’s almost as if Max Landis just did it because he thought he had to and got it out of the way early. “Ok so people are racists against orcs and that’s very bad ON TO SEXY ELF KUNG FU KNIFE FIGHTS NOW.”
Make no mistake, this movie is schlock and fails at its social message but fuck it it’s free and it’ll make you laugh, weither it intended to or not.
There’s talk of a sequel and hopefully Will Smith’s career can recover enough to be too good for the next movie. It’s not that I didn’t like the character Officer Ward, it’s that I’m interested in this world they’ve built and want to see other places in the country. Do humanoid dragons hoard gold at Wall St.? (Hey look, another metaphor I just came up with.) Did Dwarves revitalize Detroit’s auto businesses? Do Centaurs race in Kentucky while goblins run the betting booth? Wouldn’t any of that be more interesting than Will Smith? I’ll let you decide.

 

One thing I've always disliked about certain films which tackle issues like violence against minorities by the police is that there's a little bit of confusion as to what the message the filmmakers want to convey actually is. For instance, portraying a young black kid committing a crime (like, say, selling drugs on the playground or taking part in a bank robbery) then having the black kid running away from the cops and getting tasered or something once they catch him. Yeah, it kind of sucks that the cops tasered the kid, but he was committing a crime. You can't show both sides of the issue (the white cops doing their jobs, the black criminals doing crimes) being dicks to equal lengths then take the stance that any side is wrong.

I have no idea what to make of this film to be honest. It's obviously trying to make a statement about racism, but I'm not sure what that statement is. It seems like it wants to be a mix of social commentary and campy humor, which has worked well in the past (The original Star Trek for instance), but I don't think it works too well here. I think the reason people are confused about the movie is that it not only tried to combine two different genres of film (Buddy cop, Tolkien fantasy) into one, but it also tried to combine two opposing tones (Grim and campy) which didn't work out too well. As far as I can tell, the film seems to be at war with itself, which prevents people from enjoying it.

WIll Smith has a history of doing films like this, and they rarely seem to work out. It might be because of him to be honest. He's too middle-of-the-road, and a film like this demands extremes. It either needs a lead who acts every scene completely straight-faced (saying lines like "It's like an atomic bomb that grants wishes," completely seriously without a hint of irony), or a lead who hams everything up to the degree of guys like Sylvester Stallone in the Dredd movie. Anything in between for movies like this just doesn't work.

Here's the bottom line though. I haven't seen the movie, and I don't want to see it. The film looks boring despite it's weird premise (or maybe, because of it, like everyone involved thought the premise alone could carry it) and everyone I've talked to seems to dislike it. I don't feel like wasting an hour or so of my life watching it just so that I can be part of the discussion involving it. I don't care if I can watch it for free, because I can (and will) watch Life Of Brian for free as well and have a better experience.