Bright (2017) - A.K.A. ORC COPS, ORC COPS!

[CharlesPhipps]

I'm with Geek Girl, this film felt a bit lazy with how little difference there was between our world and there's. Will Smith making a Shrek joke really took me out of the movie and reminded me that they weren't really going for a well thought out world.

Well, it's about the real world with magic not a fantasy world.

[FakeGeekGirl]

I'm with Geek Girl, this film felt a bit lazy with how little difference there was between our world and there's. Will Smith making a Shrek joke really took me out of the movie and reminded me that they weren't really going for a well thought out world.

Yeah like ... are there ogres in this universe? If so, is Shrek considered a really racist movie? Or at the very least an example of human washing since Mike Meyers and Cameron Diaz are presumably still human in this universe.

[cilantro]

I'm with Geek Girl, this film felt a bit lazy with how little difference there was between our world and there's. Will Smith making a Shrek joke really took me out of the movie and reminded me that they weren't really going for a well thought out world.

It was supposed to be a "our world but with fantasy races co-existing" type of thing. So modern day LA with Orcs, Elfs, Centaurs and a mention of Dwarfs living in Miami. So, everything is is supposed to be an alternate-present type of thing with an alternate-past. There was an event that happen roughly 2,000 years ago that lead to Elf and Humans hating Orcs. Now, magic does exist in this world and magic wands also exist as well. BUT magic is really rare but the US government has it's own special Magic Task Force design to protect everyone. Brights are people (they are mostly elves but there are rare humans who are Brights) that can safely wield magic wands. They are magical and can have massive powers. Inferi are basically evil elves that secretly want to bring about the return of the "Dark One" aka the being that started/caused the event 2,000 years ago and also the one that the Orcs sided with. Everything else seems to be like our world so even pop-cultural references like Sherk isn't out of place. It would be the same if Dr. Strange would reference Sherk in his movie (which he didn't. He did reference Beyonce).

Now, in the present day Orcs are hated on for a number of reason but the excuse has always been this 2,000 year old event. They are not supposed to be a representation of any one racial group from the real world- neither are the elves. Orcs have their own baggage but it seems that maybe there can be parallels drawn but the film doesn't want to explore it too deep. Instead it wants to be an action movie/buddy cop movie like Lethal Weapon, Bad Boys, The 5th Element, Shadowrun, Rush Hour, etc.... All of the background stuff is just background stuff but the one thing that did felt kind of weird was the idea that Nick and Daryl were part of some kind of prophecy. Everything else kinds of works.


Also, Sherk is an ogre not orc. Which the definition is just this:

Definition of ogre
1 : a hideous giant of fairy tales and folklore that feeds on human beings : monster
2 : a dreaded person or object
— ogreish play \ˈō-g(ə-)rish\ adjective

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ogre

[FakeGeekGirl]

I'm with Geek Girl, this film felt a bit lazy with how little difference there was between our world and there's. Will Smith making a Shrek joke really took me out of the movie and reminded me that they weren't really going for a well thought out world.

Well, it's about the real world with magic not a fantasy world.

But if the real world had magic and these different races it would be different. If you want to do "our world, plus this fantastical thing" then do something where the masquerade has recently ended or the fantastical element is new. It makes sense for Alien Nation to take place in a world that looks exactly like ours, but there are aliens, because the aliens are new arrivals. But if magic and things have always existed alongside humans, it would have changed how things progressed.

Like ... was magic used in the world wars? Is this apartheid like system LA has similar to elsewhere? Did America still have a Civil War? How did the industrial revolution progress while magic existed? Was it in part to democratize conveniences previously only available to magic users?

I'm not saying we needed answers for all of those in the film, and there's a reason to make it look mostly like ours for familiarity to not be overwhelming with the alternate history aspect. But maybe at least drop some hints, give some indication that this is a world with a vastly different history? I'm just saying the world building is pretty thin, which is a pretty glaring defect in a fantasy story. If it were a pilot to a TV show where we knew we might get these things all along the way in a later date I'd be more forgiving, and honestly it might work better as something like that considering that you only have so much runtime in a film and this is a premise that, I would think, needs a lot of world building, but clearly I'm in the minority.

The Shrek jokes are super ironic because in a lot of ways, Shrek is our world but with fairy tale aesthetics. But it's a comedy, logic doesn't have to apply. For a film that took itself as seriously as this one did, I would expect a lot more thought put into it.

[GloatingSwine]

I'm just saying the world building is pretty thin, which is a pretty glaring defect in a fantasy story.

It kind of isn't really.

A lot of modern fantasy tales get bogged down with worldbuilding because people think that explaining the world is the same as telling a story in it, but it ain't so.

"Worldbuilding" should be there to help the audience understand the stakes of the current drama, not just to fritter away their time.

Bright is about 50/50 on doing what it needs to. It has enough in it to let you understand the personal arc of Jakoby, his position in Orc culture and why he's a pariah even there, and how his actions in the film reverse that. Orc Jesus* was the first to step outside of his assigned cultural position and in doing so led an uprising that saved the world from the dark lord, so Jakoby doing the same in a modern context by stepping outside the position not only his own culture but the wider culture of orcs as second class beings has a chance to lead to the long delayed reconciliation for the species.

It doesn't, however, establish the Dark Lord himself sufficiently. The audience can intuit that if someone who everyone else** calls "Dark Lord" gets to come back it will probably be a bad time, but that's all we get. We don't really know enough about his previous reign to understand why the baddie in the film wants to bring him back. What does she get out of it?

That would more clearly establish the stakes over and above "everyone wants the macguffin" (especially since the macguffin is ludicrously difficult to actually get any useful work out of).

All the divergence points from "the real world" aren't important to the stakes of the narrative, so they shouldn't be in the film.

* I thought Thrall was Orc Jesus?

** If you only call yourself Dark Lord it doesn't count.

[FaxModem1]

Okay, that's nice and all. But if there was a huge war 2000 years ago, history would have been pretty different. So much so, that a city named Los Angeles, that's pretty much identical (except for a few additional towers) to our Los Angeles is stretching things beyond belief. History SHOULD have very different consequences. For instance, considering there is actual magic, why isn't there more magical weaponry? That's a whole line of history not pursued.

Also, after a devastating war with the 'Dark One', mankind(and elf, orc, dwarf, etc.), would have had very different history after it. The 20th century would have been vastly different if World War I hadn't happened, and that was only a century ago. Imagine all the ways things should have changed with Elf magic keeping the Roman Empire afloat, or all the knowledge kept from the Fall of the Roman Empire in Elf hands, so that by the time of the movie, they should be at least a couple centuries more advanced than us.

So many potential historical changes, and yet, there still seems to be a famous Battle of the Alamo. This requires that England exists, Spain exists, Mexico exists, US exists, Texas exists, and the events went just like clockwork like ours, when it should have gone differently because of all the X factors that these new races and magics present. But, it's there all so Rodriguez can make a comment about getting blamed for the Alamo. It's lazy writing, and a schizophrenic setting so that the world is still relate able to the Netflix audience without having to work too hard at establishing how these things happened.

Instead, if they had actually gone the Shadowrun route, and these races started appearing out of the woodworks in the past century or so, then it would be much more justifiable. Instead, history is the same because.....who cares, it just is.

[GloatingSwine]

Instead, history is the same because.....who cares, it just is.

Yes.

It just is.

That's how fiction works. The person who writes it gets to say what the setting is, and the audience doesn't.

[CharlesPhipps]

The Lord of the Rings was meant to be the past of Earth. The 2000 year ago war was meant to basically be the Lord of the Rings.

Dark Lords, orcs, and so on.

And one more war is not going to change history in any real way.

Technically, according to String Theory a world where humans evolved elves and orcs and STILL had a LA identical history is true.

[Karha of Honor]

Instead, history is the same because.....who cares, it just is.

We do not know. There could easily be divergence.

[GloatingSwine]

The Lord of the Rings was meant to be the past of Earth. The 2000 year ago war was meant to basically be the Lord of the Rings.

Well, it was an analogous event which the audience is presumed to understand because it is sufficiently generic.