"Bright" is a Netflix original movie starring Will Smith and Joel Edgerton. It takes place in an alternate universe (or something) where there are nine races, but we only see four: humans, orcs, fairies, and humans. It interestingly and not-so-subtly talk about racial issues including police brutality and interracial violence.
I know, it sounds great! A mix of social justice and sci-fi! And made by Netflix?! Everything made by Netflix is great, right? Well, this movie is really good on the social commentary but as a sci-fi movie, the plot was super under-developed. *** Spoiler alert ***
So the plot is as follows: Two cops: Will Smith who plays a human named Scott Ward, and Joel Edgerton, who plays an orc named Nick Jakoby, find a magic wand, experience racial discrimination against Jakoby for being an orc, and battle evil elves who are trying to bring rise to the Dark Lord. These two guys begin living out a prophecy within which Will Smith is a "Bright" or a rare magical being capable of wielding a magic wand. It sounds like a more socially relevant Lord of the Rings!!
But after all of this hype around raising and praising the Dark Lord and Will Smith protecting the world from the evil forces of magic elves trying to raise the Dark Lord from his nefarious slumber, when it ends, there's nothing really wrapped up... or maybe everything was too wrapped up.
They killed, like, one elf and then it was implied that the world was saved from evil forces. There was a medal of honor given and then the only one, good elf, who everyone thought was dead, was seen in the crowd at the medal ceremony honoring the two cops. There was no cliff hanger, no other mention of the Dark Lord, there was a whole movement called the Shield of Light trying to raise the Dark Lord from the dead and all the sudden after one elf, who may or may not have been the movement's leader, died, there was no mention of any possibility of the Dark Lord ever being risen.
It was all too good to be true, which made the movie kind of lame, honestly. As a social commentary, the movie gets an A, but as far as sci-fi movies go, I'd give it a D-. It wrapped up too clean.
