Guess we should talk about Bright, now that it’s a freaking franchise - Sensationalist Headlines

[url]https://arstechnica.com/?p=1239801[/url]

Failure? Every single person I know who watched it liked it.

[QUOTE=_Maverick_;53030452]Failure? Every single person I know who watched it liked it.[/QUOTE] Viewers liked it. Reviewers hated it like it was literally the worst movie ever even though it came out in the same year as the Emoji movie. I'm not even sure why. Other than conspiracy theories like them all being paid off by Hollywood studios to hate on the potential Netflix competition I really can't think of a reason everyone would hate this movie so much.

Personally, I thought it was very badly written. A lot of wasted potential. I would go into detail but it was so forgettable that I've already forgotten why I hated it. The only thing I remember about it was thinking how big the makeup budget must've been for all the orcs.

[QUOTE=ScumBunny;53030501]Viewers liked it. Reviewers hated it like it was literally the worst movie ever even though it came out in the same year as the Emoji movie. I'm not even sure why. Other than conspiracy theories like them all being paid off by Hollywood studios to hate on the potential Netflix competition I really can't think of a reason everyone would hate this movie so much.[/QUOTE] There was a bit of a rumor about various reviewers shitting on the movie at a film festival before it had been shown to anyone which upset Smith a bit.

[QUOTE=Zethiwag;53030732]Personally, I thought it was very badly written. A lot of wasted potential. I would go into detail but it was so forgettable that I've already forgotten why I hated it. The only thing I remember about it was thinking how big the makeup budget must've been for all the orcs.[/QUOTE] That's why I'm excited it's getting a sequel. Once it ended my main thought was "Wow this had so much potential but it got wasted", maybe now they can build on that potential to make a great franchise. I have a feeling it would've been much better as a netflix series other than multiple movies, but I'm still excited to see how it turns out. Not enough in the way of original fantasy nowadays.

Honestly it was enjoyable to watch. It wasn't [I]good[/I], but it was a lot of fun and I'd definitely watch the sequel

[QUOTE=_Maverick_;53030452]Failure? Every single person I know who watched it liked it.[/QUOTE] I watched it and thought it was a rotting pile of shit. The story was a glaring mess, characters appear and stick to the plot but are only properly introduced thirty minutes after their initial appearance, the main character and focus of the film is a confused mess with constantly fluctuating motivations and personality. I've never noticed a film fail so repeatedly to introduce any sort of hook or basic reason to appreciate the characters. On top of this, the film is visually ugly as balls. The makeup art and whatnot can be of varying quality but what struck me is that the color correction, grading and overall choice of lighting and scenery is just, for lack of a better word, [I]ugly[/I]. It has this puke tint on everything and only rarely shines with interesting visuals. If more of the film used scenes like these I would have been more compelled to at least like it for its visuals, but instead it's 90% muted or saturated puke green and yellow colors. The second act lowest point which in most narratives out there (characters are at their lowest and resolve their personal grievances to move forward) literally happens in a dirty bathroom, that's how fucking bland this film decided to be. [t]https://i.imgur.com/o9u8lkI.jpg[/t] [t]https://i.imgur.com/WQUpv8e.jpg[/t] And, yes, like a lot of reviewers have pointed out, there's a problem with the social commentary the film is trying to pass as entertaining content. It insists with dropping these irrelevant, out of place, completely unnecessary little moments of commentary via dialogue and visual cues but not only are they pointless in terms of the narrative, they ultimately only serve to pad out the film to a 110 minute mark because it basically just stops altogether once the plot picks up some 20 to 30 minutes in, making all the more jarring. I'd even say the worldbuilding itself is fucking terrible despite what some people have claimed. It changes obvious things like dropping fantasy characters in the frame or some elvish/orcish writings to remind you it is in fact supposed to have those types of characters in it, but there's otherwise few changes to the world in more clever or subtle ways: kids still have the same plushies as everyone else, merchandise and pop culture has seemingly not been impacted whatsoever, and films like Shrek still exist despite their entire existence making no sense in-universe at this point in time. There's a distinct lack of interest in certain nuances that make a fantasy world believable, like why do the orcs still use Jesus as an expletive when their culture is so drastically different and employs its own mythological figures, some of which from the same era and seemingly even more important that old JC ? The lore itself devolves into even more problematic situations when you think about it for a while considering it fails to even establish the current state of the world: the tone of the film and a good chunk of the dialogue makes it sound like orcs are a new thing to humanity but they've seemingly been around for two thousand years. Then, in my opinion, the biggest flaw about the film in terms of its worldbuilding [I]and[/I] narrative, is how it fails to establish the main hook of the entire fucking story for nearly 40 fucking minutes, and even then, still fails to actually show it eloquently enough to make it compelling or understandable at first. The point of Bright as a story and as a universe is that magic is practically gone (for unexplained reasons) and that only a few select people can use magic wands - this is briefly explained in an opening text blurb and then never mentioned again for good portion of the story, and the exact power of magic is kept unclear for a long time. However once a magic wand is involved the narrative begins to shatter under its own weight and the entire lore just breaks apart. Not to mention that, once again visually, the magic itself is fucking bland and basically just a really shiny blue effect which looks exactly like the kind of lazy sci-fi energy you'd see in some MCU/DC films (big blue beam firing into the sky, etc). They constantly try to make a point that magic is some incredible eldritch force that can bend reality in insane ways yet all it does for most of the film is glow a lot and cause a couple of explosions. The first imagery of magic the viewer gets is that first snapshot I posted and that's by far the most interesting thing we get to see for the whole film, it's only downhill from there. Bright is not a good film.

I thought it was alright, not amazing but not as bad as the critics claim. [IMG]https://i.imgur.com/FBkxEfD.png[/IMG] No clue what would cause this big discrepancy.

I thought the world was cool but the actual film was trash

The first third was great, with the dystopian utopia feel between the humans, elves, orcs and a few other races involved. then the completely unexplained magic comes along and completely ruined it. Why is there magic, why can the elves kill like 30 mexican dudes and another 30 SWAT guys without them being able to fire a single shot yet struggle to kill Will Smith and the orc in close combat despite also ambushing them?