So I
finally watched the movie Bright. I
read about this film before they released it on Netflix and immediately felt
frustration. I’ve written the first two chapters to a novel with a very similar
premise. In case those reading don’t know the idea behind the movie, it’s set in
modern day, but in this world, mythical creatures live among us. It’s about two
cops, one human, one orc, who have to work together. My book idea, which I
started on years ago, was very similar, except the cop was an elf not an orc.
But when I saw the movie story idea, I thought “I can’t write that book now!
They’ll think I ripped it off.”
So yeah, I
didn’t like when the movie came out, but I had to eventually watch it. After
all, it’s a movie based on my general book idea, so I needed to see what they
decided to do with it.
So…
spoilers. I like to think of this thing as a sort of modern day Lord of the
Rings story. We got the three main races – elves, humans, and orcs (they also
have fairies, and I think I saw a centaur at one point). The orcs are
considered villainous; the elves, superior beings; and the humans, we’re just
the ones caught in the middle. I suppose having dwarves might have been in bad
taste, seeing how this is modern day New York, and dwarfism is a real thing in
the modern day world.
The main
characters have to protect a magical item that can be used to resurrect an
ancient dark lord (like I said, it’s similar to Lord of the Rings). The “Brights”
are people that can hold and use a magic wand, a very rare object in this
movie. Most Brights are elves, but in rare cases, a human is a bright. So, yada
yada yada, they stop the evil, save the world, etc.
This movie
is obviously about racism, and yet they miss a golden opportunity that I was
hoping and expecting them to take advantage of. Brights are unusual, almost
always an elf. Humans have been known to be one from time to time, but it seems
that they don’t know a whole lot about how a person or creature can become a Bright.
Throughout
the whole movie, they are showing the racist persecution of the orc cop, all
the hatred he has to endure on a daily basis. He is genuinely a good
person/orc, and has a pure heart. Will Smith’s character, on the other hand, is
kind of an asshole. He is like somebody who makes offhand remarks that are racist,
but not blatantly racist… more like “diet racism”.
As I
watched the movie, I thought to myself, it would be great if in the end, the orc ends up being a Bright. The first,
the only, orc Bright. But, alas, this
was not the case. Will Smith, the asshole who had a change of heart throughout
the film, ended up being a Bright, mainly because he’s Will Smith. What about
the orc? He didn’t need a change of heart. He was pure of heart since the
beginning. If anybody should be a Bright, it should be him. A huge basis behind
racism is the thoughts that one race is superior to another. In the movie, the
orcs are clearly portrayed as the inferior race. If an orc could end up being a
Bright, this would prove that no race was above another. But instead, the
message of the story ends up being this: You can be a wonderful person, you can
do everything right, be the one who stands up for what’s right, but if you are
the wrong race, you still won’t measure up to others, and there’s nothing you
can do about it.
What a
pile of horseshit. This reminds me of Beauty
and the Beast versus Shrek.
In BB, the point of the story is supposed
to be that it matters whats on the inside, not what you look like – but then
the Beast turns into a handsome prince, so this defeats the purpose of the
story. In Shrek, however, Fiona turns
into an orc. They are teaching the same principle, but they stick to it in the
end, and tell a much better story with a much more uplifting message.
So, long
story short, if a story is trying to teach a valuable moral, the way this story
ends is critical, because if the ending negates the lesson being taught, then
it has an opposite effect.
