At first glance, Bright is another movie Netflix users simply brush off as an original movie the streaming service is trying to force into their recommendations. That is, until they notice Will Smith’s face on the preview screen and start to wonder what the film has to offer. After days of disinterest, I finally decided to dedicate time to the 117-minute movie, mainly because it holds a remarkable 27% on Rotten Tomatoes.
The movie starts off normal enough with a montage of crime and graffiti as Logic’s and Rag’n’Bone Man’s “Broken People” plays over the sequence, before cutting to Will Smith, who plays Daryl Ward, in a police uniform on a busy street. When his ogre-looking partner, Nick Jakoby, calls out to him, asking Ward if he wants red sauce or green sauce for the burrito he was buying, it’s obvious the scene is an attempt to make the odd character more loveable or funny.
It jumps to Ward in his home, and here’s where the racial undertones of the movie become obvious, and you can start connecting the dots between why Ward ignored his partner in the introduction scene and why there seems to be so much opposition to the police, much like what the United States is currently suffering. Actually, that is exactly what the writers apparently intended to do with the film, since Ward says, “Fairy lives don’t matter today,” within the first ten minutes, and brutally smashes a pesky Fairy to show off in front of his “gangsta” neighbors, causing the audience to cringe at the violence and language.
The discomfort continues as Ward attempts to dance around an awkward conversation about racism and stereotypes with his daughter, right before Jakoby pulls up on his lawn, in the cop car, for all of Ward’s neighbors and the viewers to see how uncomfortable Ward is around his partner despite the open-mindness he just attempted to instill in his daughter.
Momentarily getting over his own subtle racism for the sake of his job, Ward gets in the car with Jakoby, making the long drive to work. However, Ward does very little to defend his partner as the other human policemen drag him and his entire race through dirt because they “chose evil,” and “Once with the Dark Lord, always with the Dark Lord.”
At this point, viewers really start to wonder what in this normal world and the next magical world are they watching, because not a single bit of the 2,000-year-long interspecies war’s history is mentioned nor why Jakoby left “the Clan” to be a policeman with the humans. But, the movie somehow plot twists into its actual plot, and the arrested man—he later reveals to be part of the Shield of Light, an organization that is determined to stop the Dark Lord—begins to speak to Jakoby about a prophecy that will save him, and better yet, Ward is some sort of Chosen One.
When the movie finally begins to get into magic lore, the audience is still too distracted by Ward’s terrible personality to care. After requesting backup on a crime scene, which involved a magic wand, Ward is seen being pressured into killing Jakoby by his fellow officers. Of course, they tell him it’s for the good of his family, but the audience can see the officers are more than happy to get rid of the Orc, who they still don’t trust because of his race.
Every viewer knows there wouldn’t be a movie if Ward went through with it, and there’s a moment of mediocre redemption when he finally realized good-natured, innocent Jakoby isn’t the bad guy. Yet, good things aren’t meant to last, and the movie kicks into a high-energy action scene as the pair make a getaway with Tikka, an Inferni Elf, and the Wand she was hiding from a deadly Dark Lord fangirl. The movie becomes increasingly more graphic from here, with striking scenes of shootings, deaths, and burned and maimed bodies as well as the occasional nudity and frequent crude language.
One of the greatest scenes in the movie occurs in the most unexpected place: the dirty bathroom of a strip club. Jakoby confronts his situation, telling Ward he knows Orcs only see him as a wannabe human while humans only see him as an animal. He drives the point home by recalling how Ward, his own partner, looked at him with “pure hatred” that very morning when he showed up to take Ward to work.
Perhaps the most telling line, both for our own society and the society of the movie, is “Oh, so I’m supposed to trust you when you don’t trust me?” It calls out the hypocrisy in those who scream out for others to trust authority figures, who covertly abuse their power, but don’t expect the authority figures to show a mutual, basic trust.
One of the oddest things in the movie is how it entirely forgets what seems to be its original concept—tackling the issue of racism—and adopts the fulfilling-a-magic-prophecy cliche like no other. There’s some spells thrown around, some characters are resurrected, and the viewers are left feeling particularly unimpressed when Ward grabs the Wand, to shockingly reveal he is a—gasp!—Bright and can handle the Wand turning into a human paint splatter.
Then the movie, once again, magically forgets how much of a terrible person Ward was the entire movie when he is heartbroken over losing Tikka and willing to die to save her. However, Jakoby, who was totally team Tikka until apparently five seconds before Ward’s attempt at self-sacrifice, pulls him away. In a somewhat humorous buddy-cop-movie moment, Ward tells Jakoby they still aren’t friends, to which Jakoby replies by saying he never liked Ward anyway.
Fast forward through a hospital scene and Ward blatantly lying to the magical feds—they don’t seem to believe him, and they have every right to distrust his story—and the pair are receiving medals for their valiant work, but who cares because Tikka’s admittedly heartbreaking death is completely discredited with a passing appearance in the crowd, obviously for fan service and an all-around, cliche happy ending. The end (if you don’t count the almost seven-minute credit roll).
In truth, the movie relies heavily on shock value. It works well for its straightforward approach to racism, but for all else it tends to fall flat. One thing is certain: this is not a fantasy movie for children nor is it a light-hearted buddy cop. It’s dark, it’s dirty, and it’s uncomfortable to watch for the brazen screenwriting and graphic scenes.
One response to “Will Smith’s Netflix Original Bright Is Actually Pretty Dark”
Reblogged this on Be as free as your writing. and commented:
Admittedly, this article was difficult to write. There’s so much to say about this movie’s writing and direction, and it would’ve been at least 400 words longer if it wasn’t for the fact that I was entirely drained after watching the movie twice, to take notes and narrow down what I wanted to write about.