The goal of Netflix’s Bright is clearly to slam together the tropes of the buddy cop movie with those of fantasy. So we’ve got a veteran cop in Will Smith’s Officer Ward and a newbie and first Orc officer in Joel Edgerton’s Jakoby. And then they stumble onto a magic wand that causes real problems.
Bright, as we’ve noted before, is clearly not shying away from using the Orcs/humans tension as an allegory for racism. Everything about the way Orcs are framed in this trailer makes that clear. But you’ve also got what appear to be elves running around, including Ward and Jakoby’s superior officer.
Smith’s very much in his wise-cracking element here, but everything else moves a bit fast for me to get a handle on whether this is going to be something I rush to watch when it hits Netflix on December 22.
