BEFORE: Well, after the two Jesus-based films, I seem to have settled on a very violent theme, a lot of guns this week, from the CIA agents and British gangsters in "Moonwalkers" to the Western shootouts in "Jane Got a Gun", and surprisingly there was violence in "T2 Trainspotting", but no guns. So I don't know, maybe this is "guns and drugs" week or something - people smoked a lot of pot in "Moonwalkers" and then there were all kinds of drugs in "T2". With a cop film on the docket tonight, it's probably more guns, guns, guns.
Joel Edgerton carries over from "Jane Got a Gun" to play an orc tonight. Yep, that's right.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Warcraft" (Movie #2,812)
THE PLOT: Set in a world where fantasy creatures live side-by-side with humans. A human cop is forced to work with an Orc to find a weapon everyone is prepared to kill for.
AFTER: First off tonight, a word about mash-ups, since this film is essentially a mash-up of a cop film and a fantasy film. The last Hobbit film came out what, four years ago? Yeah, that's about the right amount of lead time. Four years later, and I've seen TWO films about orcs that were released in 2017. A couple weeks ago, we started seeing ads for a show called "Rocktopia" that's playing here in New York. The ads make it seem very exciting, like an incredible mix of classical music and rock and roll, a concert event that shouldn't be missed. But then, that's what ads are for, right?
I sort of half-suggested to my wife that we should consider going, because we've tried over the past two decades to see some of those acts that we might have missed when we were younger, because those aging rockers sure aren't getting any younger, and so once or twice a year we'll hit the concert circuit and see a nostalgic act, like Meat Loaf, Air Supply, Chicago, Styx, or REO Speedwagon - our list is now quite extensive, and we've got very few "bucket list" acts that we haven't seen. Just in time, too, I'm glad I saw Bowie once back in like 1984, my only real regret now is never seeing Tom Petty live. So on first glance, this Rocktopia thing seemed right up our alley.
But then I thought, before dropping $150 for a couple of mezzanine seats, I should check out the music, to make sure that the mash-ups worked, and I realize this might be a little subjective. Hey, there's the CD on iTunes, maybe spending $8 on the album before locking ourselves in to this show might be a solid investment. Then I thought, wait, there are videos of Rocktopia concerts from Budapest on YouTube, let me check them out for free. Wow, I'm glad I did that first, because the mash-ups range from barely acceptable down to flat-out horrible. One's basically a cover of Styx's "Come Sail Away" proceeded by a couple minutes of Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik", with a transition that was just OK. Same thing with "Also Sprach Zarathustra" leading into The Who's "Baba O'Riley", it's just one before the other, which shouldn't count as a mash-up.
The worst, musically speaking, is the orchestra playing part of "Rhapsody in Blue" and then awkwardly following that with Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody". I suspect these two pieces of music were paired more because they share a word in the title - but if that's the case, why not call the resulting pairing "Bohemian Rhapsody in Blue"? The general rule on music mash-ups is that the title should also be a mash-up, or involve wordplay in some manner. Therefore the other pieces should have names like "Eine Kleine StyxMusik" or "Also Sprach Baba O'Riley". And the mix of Beethoven's 9th Symphony paired with "Don't Stop Believin'" should therefore be called "Ode to Journey". But that's just one man's opinion.
This brings me to "Bright", which really should have a better name, also. I would have called it something that referenced "Lord of the Rings", like maybe "CrimeLord of the Rings", but then I suppose that would be too much on the nose. Anything would be better than "Bright", though.
This is one of those films on Netflix I'm now rushing to, because I'm not sure when they're going to disappear, like "Jane Got a Gun" did. Maybe Netflix originals like this one, "Sandy Wexler" and "Pee-Wee's Big Holiday" are likely to stick around longer than other studios' films that Netflix licenses, I have no idea.
I also have no idea HOW the humans ended up sharing their world with fantasy creatures like elves, fairies and orcs. Was Earth always this way in this timeline? Or was there a magic spell or dimensional doorway that allowed these beings to cross over from another world? That seems to be the case, because this story shows the first orc to serve as an L.A. cop, so why didn't that ever happen before? Oh, yeah, because orcs don't tend to be heroic, they're "chaotic evil", as we used to say when we played D&D.
But the orc here is serving as a "diversity hire", and that's when this film's story shines the brightest, when they end up poking fun at our current PC culture, and the orc becomes sort of shorthand for a certain minority when the department gets "integrated". (Hint: orc lives matter...). Hey, it wasn't that long ago in U.S. history when certain people thought that African-Americans couldn't or shouldn't be policemen, or astronauts or major league baseball players. I wish I could say that some larger point was made here about race relations by showing an orc trying to succeed in a mostly-human world, but there's just no attempt made at allegory here, I don't think. Or is there?
The story gets so bogged down in this "Shield of Light" organization, which never fully gets explained (add it to the list...) and then it just turns into one big chase scene once the main characters find this magic wand that everyone seems to want for some reason. (Yet another thing that doesn't get properly explained...).
Similar to last night's back-and-forth over how well Jane can shoot a gun, here there are inconsistencies over who can wield a magic wand - first we're told that ONLY the fantasy creatures can use them, and even then, only with an intense amount of training. Then there's a reversal, we find out that some humans can use the magic wands, like maybe one person out of a million has some innate ability to control the wand without dying. But for the other 999,999 people, holding the wand means instant death, not only to them but to everyone around them. Who would be willing to take those odds? Yet everyone seems eager to get their hands on the wand, because then all of their wishes will come true, or something? It's very unclear what even the luckiest person can accomplish with a wand - but why is everyone so eager to play these terrible odds, do they all have a wish to die?
Also starring Will Smith (last seen in "Concussion"), Noomi Rapace (last seen in "Prometheus"), Edgar Ramirez (last seen in "Vantage Point"), Lucy Fry, Happy Anderson (last seen in "The Comedian"), Veronica Ngo (last seen in "Star Wars: The Last Jedi"), Ike Barinholtz (last seen in "Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising"), Margaret Cho, Brad William Henke (last seen in "Split"), Jay Hernandez (last seen in "Suicide Squad"), Kenneth Choi (last seen in "Spider-Man: Homecoming"), Dawn Olivieri (last seen in "American Hustle"), Matt Gerald (last seen in "XXX: State of the Union"), Alex Meraz, Enrique Murciano, Scarlet Spencer, Andrea Navedo, Bobby Naderi, Chris Browning, and a cameo from Joe Rogan.
RATING: 5 out of 10 angry fairies
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