This morning, I received a Facebook message from a very tired Alan which confused and intrigued me:
“Oh, so the director of suicide squad has made a film for netflix which stars will smith as a new york cop who has an orc as a partner, who then stumble upon an elf who has a magic wand that everyone is trying to steal while the city complains about the lack of diversity between the different magical races.”
Followed by this:
“and it’s not a comedy”
Not entirely trusting Alan’s sleep deprived brain (he’s been working awfully hard, lately) I decided to give the trailer a watch. Now i’m confused, too.
It looks really good, right? That’s why i’m confused.
Alan’s description, though written by a man who has had about four hours sleep in the last forty eight, is pretty much on the money. On paper, Bright sounds interesting and kind of cool, but doesn’t exactly scream “WATCH ME!”. Not to me, anyway. Despite that, this trailer looks fantastic, thus proving the old adage “You can’t judge a film by a Facebook message describing it’s premise”.
Watching the trailer, I was reminded of a line from Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett:
“Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because—what with trolls and dwarfs and so on—speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.”
Smith’s orc partner is described as “the diversity hire”, we hear Smith’s jibe at “fairy lives” not mattering (that one might draw some ire, although unjustly as it’s a fair parallel to draw), it seems that director David Ayer and writer Max Landis are using Bright to hold a mirror up to our world, show some of the problems that plague it and then tilting that mirror slightly to give us a different slant.
Intellectual fodder aside, this trailer is absolutely a feast for the eyes. That’s not surprising, as this comes from David Ayer who gave us the visually breathtaking Suicide Squad. I will defend that film to my dying day, it deserves so much more love than it got, but love or loathe it most people will agree that it looked incredible and Bright definitely has that same luscious, comic book come to life look to it.
When Alan described Bright to me this morning, I was perplexed. I still am, but now because I don’t get how an idea so unusual can look so bloody good.
Bright is a Netflix original which releases on December 22nd. Merry Christmas to me!