Bright is an inconsistent mishap with a handful of bright spots amongst a slew of issues that stem from the director and writer.
When Max Landis, the screenwriter of Bright, subtely condemned the film on Twitter you could tell that something was going to go wrong with the film. It seemed as if Landis was saying that other people are to blame for Bright’s issues, but a lot of the writing in this film is confusing. Anyone that knows Landis as a personality recognizes he’s a man with very ambitious, colorful, and intriguing concepts. And that’s just it, Landis is a concepts man. He struggles with threading those concepts together and it makes his work frustrating to get a grip on. Where he excels is his firm understanding of character arcs. Of which is the best thing to come out of the film.
Will Smith and Joel Edgerton slip into their roles in seamless fashion. You’ll expect nothing short of spectacular out of these two seasoned actors. Their chemistry and performances make Daryl Ward (Smith) and the LAPD’s first Orcish officer Nick Jakoby (Edgerton) feel fully realized. The writing here makes their journey feel earned and honest. A surprising amount of sympathy is felt towards Jakoby as he faces a tremendous amount of obstacles. The seriousness of Smith contrasts wonderfully with Edgerton’s shy likability. The story these characters are apart of though make them stand out more than they should.
The world of Bright is simply fascinating. The film’s opening moments establish a lived in world with a storied history through the graffiti that covers the city of Los Angeles. The opening will hook you and have you leaning forward in your seat to see what comes next, but what follows will have you losing your interest. Bright almost suffers the same issue that Ayer’s Suicide Squad does, and that’s very poor editing. Editing together scenes that don’t flow the way they should is something Bright and Squad have in common. Another major issue within Bright is how quickly it wants to dive into the mystical elements of a futuristic Los Angeles. Again, much like Squad, Bright suffers from telling the wrong story. Fully understanding it’s a world fully of fairys, orcs, and elves living amongst humans, why does this story have to include the supernatural? This is the route taken instead of telling a more grounded story where we witness the universe grow without having to suspend our disbelief. Taking the sequel into a more supernatural direction would be far more plausible and make more sense. Planting the seeds of whats to come, or what awaits beyond Los Angeles would have been a fascinating angle, but Ayer and Landis wanted to grow a tree without planting a seed, and that’s just now how it works.
Performances, characters, makeup, production design, and soundtrack aside, Bright isn’t a good film. It’s an over-produced Netflix flick that wants to show audiences that Netflix can stand amongst WB, Disney, and Fox (also Disney) as a big time production company, but they can’t because they continuously produce bad films. Netflix can be a game changer, but you can’t change the game if the content you’re producing is less than average. The ratio of the one, MAYBE two good films they have to the amount they’ve released is appalling. How they’ve yet to strike a chord and show they mean business with riveting film-making showcases Netflix’s weakness. Ayer and Landis don’t help any though. Ayer once again manages to beautifully capture the relationship with the characters, but doesn’t understand how to realize a story as well as he did with Fury and End of Watch. The aesthetic, tone, and direction of Bright almost passes as a spiritual successor to Suicide Squad. If Ayer tackled more personal products like he did with Fury and Watch, he would have one of the niftiest filmographies out there, but he continuously chooses to direct films like this. Films with mediocre writing and edited to the ground with no sense of direction. Bright isn’t a “worst of the year type of film” but it definitely isn’t a good film either. You can skip this over-produced Netflix flick.
Bright gets a 37/100