Bright from Netflix
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Bright is more then Alien Nation with Orcs: https://www.cbr.com/bright-alien-nation-comparison/
I quite liked this movie. Interesting concept and a good setting to explore it in.
However, the plot was kinda all over the place with too many subplots and elements - but that's just David Ayer cluttering and cramming too much in as usual. Otherwise the movie was very enjoyable, the performances were good - especially Joel Edgerton as Jakoby and Dorghu (boss of the Orc Fogteeth Clan) - and when you could see the fight scenes (i.e. when Ayer wasn't smothering them in darkness as he usually does) they were good.
However even though I liked most of it (as you can see below), I would rewrite the script to make it less cluttered:
Thoughts?
However, the plot was kinda all over the place with too many subplots and elements - but that's just David Ayer cluttering and cramming too much in as usual. Otherwise the movie was very enjoyable, the performances were good - especially Joel Edgerton as Jakoby and Dorghu (boss of the Orc Fogteeth Clan) - and when you could see the fight scenes (i.e. when Ayer wasn't smothering them in darkness as he usually does) they were good.
However even though I liked most of it (as you can see below), I would rewrite the script to make it less cluttered:
- Scrap the Dark Lord and Shield of Light stuff. Really don't need anymore evil overlord cliches. Instead the history of the world is that the three sentient races - humans, elves, and orcs - warred against each other for centuries, until the humans and elves formed an alliance (which was "naturally" led/dominated by the elves) and crushed the orcs. Jirak (from the revolutionary graffiti and Jakoby's stories) was a legendary orc leader during these wars.
- This leads us to the modern day, which is a stratified society wherein elves are the wealthy upper class, humans are in the middle, and orcs are the lower class. The three races live apart in segregated districts (though not with uber-militarised checkpoints and barriers like Ayers depicted for some baffling reason with no context).
- Reflecting this, learning the Elvish language is compulsory for anyone looking to get ahead in society. In contrast, elves and humans rarely bother to learn the Orcish tongue, so Ward definitely learned Elvish in school and because he's a street cop he also knows a minimal few words of Orcish, while Jakoby being an assimilationist knows all three languages fluently.
- Human, elves, and orcs are not interfertile (no "tragic mulatto" half-elven cliche characters or ancient races being "bred out/fading away" please), but they can (and often do) have sexual relations.
- There are other fantasy races, such as dragons, fairies, etc, but they are non-sapient fauna and flora (animals and plantlife), not sentient.
- "Brights" (magic users) are disproportionately elves, but there is the occasional human Bright. There has never been an orc Bright...
- The Inferni (though I would rename them) are a renegade terrorist group of elven supremacists - their extremist agenda is to impose a "golden age" of overt, totalitarian elven domination over society, with humans and orcs culled and enslaved beneath an aristocratic elven master class. They are led by a powerful and evil elf Bright named Leilah who possesses a magic wand.
- The primary foe of the Inferni is the federal Magical Enforcement Bureau (MEB), a U.S. Government security and law enforcement agency that polices magical crimes - the MEB is heavily staffed by elves, so ironically the main foes of the elven-supremacist Inferni are often other elves. Kandomere is an elf Bright and Special Agent in command of an MEB taskforce that has been doggedly hunting Leilah and the Inferni for many years.
- Yes magic wands are "like nuclear weapons that can grant wishes", and yes if a non-Bright touches one they will die horribly and cause a massive disaster in the vicinity. That is why magic wands are considered the most dangerous of contraband, but thankfully they are extremely rare.
- Ditch the whole subplot of Ward getting shot that starts the movie. Instead he is just a veteran human street cop whose family (nurse wife and young daughter) is under strain (financial difficulties, his wife and daughter want him to retire from policing due to the danger and societal dislike of cops, etc) and he has been partnered with rookie orc cop Jakoby. Ward is a good man (yet somewhat jaded, hardened and world-weary), but has speciesist attitudes against orcs (and thinks elves are snobby). He is not happy about being partnered with Jakoby, (and is lobbying his sergeant and captain behind-the-scenes to be reassigned a different partner).
- Jakoby is the first orc in the LAPD (not the entire country, which is ludicrous). He is disdained and distrusted by his fellow officers (all humans) due to both their anti-orc bias AND because of a previous gunfight during a robbery in which everyone thinks he let the orc suspect escape on purpose.
- Jakoby is also a pariah among orcs, who view him as a collaborationist traitor for joining the police, and because he is "unblooded" and has no clan. It is a traditionalist tenet of orc culture that an orc must "hold clan law above all", and "blooding" is a coming-of-age ritual when an orc performs a feat of courage to earn respect and clan membership. Jakoby, being an assimilationist (files his fangs, learned Elvish), has not undergone these rites. Due to this discriminatory treatment from both orcs and human cops, Jakoby clings ever harder to his identity as a police officer and wants to prove himself as the best cop he can be. Jakoby takes inspiration from the historical example of Jirak, who was also an unblooded and clan-less orc.
- Scrap the unnecessary introduction and disappearance of Internal Affairs. They were pointless. Instead, it is the rest of Ward's fellow speciesist human officers in his squad (including his sergeant and captain) who want to get rid of Jakoby from the LAPD, and thus pressure Ward to obtain a recording of Jakoby confessing he let the orc suspect escape to use as an official excuse to throw him off the police force. Ward is torn between taking this opportunity to get rid of Jakoby, yet not wanting to "snitch him out" via becoming a treacherous informant.
- Ward and Jakoby are called out to a noise disturbance at an abandoned apartment complex deep in a barrio controlled by the human (Latino Sureno) Alta Mira gang, which is led by the wheelchair-bound human OG Poison. The Alta Mira are bitter enemies of the orc Fogteeth Clan, led by the imposing orc chieftain Dorghu, who control the neighbouring orc districts. The Alta Mira and the Fogteeth Clan have a deadly rivalry and been warring for years, but there is a tentative truce between them at the moment. A truce which Ward and Jakoby are about to inadvertently blow apart.
- Ward and Jakoby arrive at the complex to find a hit squad of elves unnaturally eviscerated by magic. They also discover and subdue the one who did the eviscerating, a young and frightened elf named Tica who has a magic wand.
- Ward calls his human squadmates, who arrive and corruptly want to steal the wand and murder Jakoby in a frame-up. Ward finally forces Jakoby to admit that during the earlier shootout he cornered the wrong orc suspect - a young teenager - by mistake, and knew the rapidly arriving "jacked up" human police would slaughter the kid even if he wasn't guilty due to their anti-orc bias, so he helped him escape instead. At this moment, Ward turns on his fellow human officers and guns them all down to save Jakoby. Ward calms Jakoby and Tica down in the aftermath, explaining the situation, and swiftly calls his wife and convinces her to flee LA with their daughter in all haste for their own safety.
- Afterwards, the Alta Mira gangsters arrive on the scene with Poison demanding they turn the wand over to him. Instead Ward, Jakoby, and Tica (who is not a complete quivering damsel in distress but a traumatised yet skilled fighter) fight their way through the Alta Mira gangsters and escape by car and foot. The Alta Mira are now hunting them through the barrio, but Tica warns that someone much worse than gangsters and corrupt cops is coming after the wand..
- Arriving on scene is Leilah and the Inferni - she wants her wand back. She sent the Inferni elf hit squad to get the wand back from Tica but they failed, so now she will find it herself. Kandomere and his MEB taskforce (his main partner is a human non-Bright Special Agent) are also tracking her.
- The Fogteeth Clan get involved in the clusterfuck once the Alta Mira chase the trio into orc territory, re-igniting the war between the two gangs. Fortunately, the shooting of Ward's squadmates has been immediately covered up by Kandomere and the MEB as the handiwork of the Alta Mira, as he deduces what happened and doesn't want the LAPD also hunting the trio - he wants to find and protect them to get the wand away from Leilah and the Inferni, but is having difficulty getting in contact with them. Being an officious federal agent, he also wants to suppress knowledge of the magic wand for the U.S. Government and essentially cover up the whole incident to avoid public panic and a deterioration in social cohesion/race relations.
- Now the trio are caught in a vicious and spectacular 4-way battle and chase through LA between the Alta Mira, Fogteeth Clan, Inferni, and Kandomere's MEB taskforce. There are many excellent fight scenes, chase scenes, and close-calls.
- Along the way, the trio have bonding moments and Tica reveals that she is Leilah's younger sister and a defector from the Inferni. She rejected their evil supremacist ways and escaped with the wand, and Leilah has been hunting her ever since.
- Eventually, the Alta Mira invade a Fogteeth-run strip club and corner the trio there, but are then destroyed by the Inferni. Following this escape, the trio are captured by the Fogteeth Clan and brought before their chief, Dorghu. He denigrates Jakoby and demands they give him the wand, and when they refuse he has both the officers brutally beaten, yet they still refuse to give it up. Having earned his grudging respect, Dorghu orders his young son to execute Jakoby for his "blooding", but the teenager reveals that he was the kid that Jakoby helped to escape from the police and so cannot kill him. Astounded by this turn of events, Dorghu gives his son leave and must now make a judgment of clan law - should he release the trio to repay his son's life debt to Jakoby or execute them to appease the honor of the clan (as they have trespassed into clan territory and caused all this havoc)? In the midst of Dorghu's deliberation, the Inferni launch a sudden devastating attack on the Fogteeth fortress, but the trio assist the Fogteeth to ferociously fight back. It's a phenomenal elf vs. orc battle here. The Inferni are forced to retreat, while Jakoby sacrifices his life to save Ward during the attack. Tica harnesses the power of the wand (which she had kept hidden) - and drains her life force in the process - to bring Jakoby back to life, mesmerizing the Fogteeth Clan into kneeling before him in awe. Dorghu declares that Jakoby is now definitely "blooded" and the Fogteeth Clan roars him respect, releasing them. The trio leaves in peace.
- However, Tica is now on the verge of death from expending her life energy through the wand to save Jakoby - to save her in turn they must return to her safehouse in the barrio and immerse her with the wand in the "sacred pool" of the apartment complex. But they also know that Leilah and the surviving Inferni have set a trap for them there, as it is the only pool of its kind in LA and Leilah can sense that Tica is dying. Nevertheless, Jakoby and Ward (with some persuasion from his partner) are resolved to save Tica and so "tool up" with a lot of weaponry and assault the complex. They manage to kill all the Inferni except Leilah, who is heavily wounded and presumed dead. They rush to save Tica by submerging her in the pool, but Leilah powers back up and tries to seduce Tica to return to the Inferni. When this fails, she is enraged and nearly kills the trio with her powers. At this crucial moment, Jakoby grabs the wand in a suicidal gesture to take out Leilah in a suicide bombing, but he is instead revealed to be the first orc Bright ever in history! He blasts Leilah dead with the wand and the trio escape the burning complex right into the open, where Kandomere's MEB taskforce, the fire department, and a large crowd of news cameras and the public have been drawn to the scene just in time to witness an orc, human, and elf helping each other escape the burning blaze. This scene is immortalized and publicized worldwide.
- In the aftermath, Kandomere seals the wand away at MEB headquarters and covers up the incident as Ward and Jakoby heroically taking down both the Inferni terrorist group and Alta Mira gang, with no mention of magic or wands to the public. Tica is recruited by Kandomere as an MEB agent, and they attend the medal ceremony with Ward's family where Ward and Jakoby are honoured by the LAPD and city of LA for their heroism, professionalism, etc.
END.
- This leads us to the modern day, which is a stratified society wherein elves are the wealthy upper class, humans are in the middle, and orcs are the lower class. The three races live apart in segregated districts (though not with uber-militarised checkpoints and barriers like Ayers depicted for some baffling reason with no context).
- Reflecting this, learning the Elvish language is compulsory for anyone looking to get ahead in society. In contrast, elves and humans rarely bother to learn the Orcish tongue, so Ward definitely learned Elvish in school and because he's a street cop he also knows a minimal few words of Orcish, while Jakoby being an assimilationist knows all three languages fluently.
- Human, elves, and orcs are not interfertile (no "tragic mulatto" half-elven cliche characters or ancient races being "bred out/fading away" please), but they can (and often do) have sexual relations.
- There are other fantasy races, such as dragons, fairies, etc, but they are non-sapient fauna and flora (animals and plantlife), not sentient.
- "Brights" (magic users) are disproportionately elves, but there is the occasional human Bright. There has never been an orc Bright...
- The Inferni (though I would rename them) are a renegade terrorist group of elven supremacists - their extremist agenda is to impose a "golden age" of overt, totalitarian elven domination over society, with humans and orcs culled and enslaved beneath an aristocratic elven master class. They are led by a powerful and evil elf Bright named Leilah who possesses a magic wand.
- The primary foe of the Inferni is the federal Magical Enforcement Bureau (MEB), a U.S. Government security and law enforcement agency that polices magical crimes - the MEB is heavily staffed by elves, so ironically the main foes of the elven-supremacist Inferni are often other elves. Kandomere is an elf Bright and Special Agent in command of an MEB taskforce that has been doggedly hunting Leilah and the Inferni for many years.
- Yes magic wands are "like nuclear weapons that can grant wishes", and yes if a non-Bright touches one they will die horribly and cause a massive disaster in the vicinity. That is why magic wands are considered the most dangerous of contraband, but thankfully they are extremely rare.
- Ditch the whole subplot of Ward getting shot that starts the movie. Instead he is just a veteran human street cop whose family (nurse wife and young daughter) is under strain (financial difficulties, his wife and daughter want him to retire from policing due to the danger and societal dislike of cops, etc) and he has been partnered with rookie orc cop Jakoby. Ward is a good man (yet somewhat jaded, hardened and world-weary), but has speciesist attitudes against orcs (and thinks elves are snobby). He is not happy about being partnered with Jakoby, (and is lobbying his sergeant and captain behind-the-scenes to be reassigned a different partner).
- Jakoby is the first orc in the LAPD (not the entire country, which is ludicrous). He is disdained and distrusted by his fellow officers (all humans) due to both their anti-orc bias AND because of a previous gunfight during a robbery in which everyone thinks he let the orc suspect escape on purpose.
- Jakoby is also a pariah among orcs, who view him as a collaborationist traitor for joining the police, and because he is "unblooded" and has no clan. It is a traditionalist tenet of orc culture that an orc must "hold clan law above all", and "blooding" is a coming-of-age ritual when an orc performs a feat of courage to earn respect and clan membership. Jakoby, being an assimilationist (files his fangs, learned Elvish), has not undergone these rites. Due to this discriminatory treatment from both orcs and human cops, Jakoby clings ever harder to his identity as a police officer and wants to prove himself as the best cop he can be. Jakoby takes inspiration from the historical example of Jirak, who was also an unblooded and clan-less orc.
- Scrap the unnecessary introduction and disappearance of Internal Affairs. They were pointless. Instead, it is the rest of Ward's fellow speciesist human officers in his squad (including his sergeant and captain) who want to get rid of Jakoby from the LAPD, and thus pressure Ward to obtain a recording of Jakoby confessing he let the orc suspect escape to use as an official excuse to throw him off the police force. Ward is torn between taking this opportunity to get rid of Jakoby, yet not wanting to "snitch him out" via becoming a treacherous informant.
- Ward and Jakoby are called out to a noise disturbance at an abandoned apartment complex deep in a barrio controlled by the human (Latino Sureno) Alta Mira gang, which is led by the wheelchair-bound human OG Poison. The Alta Mira are bitter enemies of the orc Fogteeth Clan, led by the imposing orc chieftain Dorghu, who control the neighbouring orc districts. The Alta Mira and the Fogteeth Clan have a deadly rivalry and been warring for years, but there is a tentative truce between them at the moment. A truce which Ward and Jakoby are about to inadvertently blow apart.
- Ward and Jakoby arrive at the complex to find a hit squad of elves unnaturally eviscerated by magic. They also discover and subdue the one who did the eviscerating, a young and frightened elf named Tica who has a magic wand.
- Ward calls his human squadmates, who arrive and corruptly want to steal the wand and murder Jakoby in a frame-up. Ward finally forces Jakoby to admit that during the earlier shootout he cornered the wrong orc suspect - a young teenager - by mistake, and knew the rapidly arriving "jacked up" human police would slaughter the kid even if he wasn't guilty due to their anti-orc bias, so he helped him escape instead. At this moment, Ward turns on his fellow human officers and guns them all down to save Jakoby. Ward calms Jakoby and Tica down in the aftermath, explaining the situation, and swiftly calls his wife and convinces her to flee LA with their daughter in all haste for their own safety.
- Afterwards, the Alta Mira gangsters arrive on the scene with Poison demanding they turn the wand over to him. Instead Ward, Jakoby, and Tica (who is not a complete quivering damsel in distress but a traumatised yet skilled fighter) fight their way through the Alta Mira gangsters and escape by car and foot. The Alta Mira are now hunting them through the barrio, but Tica warns that someone much worse than gangsters and corrupt cops is coming after the wand..
- Arriving on scene is Leilah and the Inferni - she wants her wand back. She sent the Inferni elf hit squad to get the wand back from Tica but they failed, so now she will find it herself. Kandomere and his MEB taskforce (his main partner is a human non-Bright Special Agent) are also tracking her.
- The Fogteeth Clan get involved in the clusterfuck once the Alta Mira chase the trio into orc territory, re-igniting the war between the two gangs. Fortunately, the shooting of Ward's squadmates has been immediately covered up by Kandomere and the MEB as the handiwork of the Alta Mira, as he deduces what happened and doesn't want the LAPD also hunting the trio - he wants to find and protect them to get the wand away from Leilah and the Inferni, but is having difficulty getting in contact with them. Being an officious federal agent, he also wants to suppress knowledge of the magic wand for the U.S. Government and essentially cover up the whole incident to avoid public panic and a deterioration in social cohesion/race relations.
- Now the trio are caught in a vicious and spectacular 4-way battle and chase through LA between the Alta Mira, Fogteeth Clan, Inferni, and Kandomere's MEB taskforce. There are many excellent fight scenes, chase scenes, and close-calls.
- Along the way, the trio have bonding moments and Tica reveals that she is Leilah's younger sister and a defector from the Inferni. She rejected their evil supremacist ways and escaped with the wand, and Leilah has been hunting her ever since.
- Eventually, the Alta Mira invade a Fogteeth-run strip club and corner the trio there, but are then destroyed by the Inferni. Following this escape, the trio are captured by the Fogteeth Clan and brought before their chief, Dorghu. He denigrates Jakoby and demands they give him the wand, and when they refuse he has both the officers brutally beaten, yet they still refuse to give it up. Having earned his grudging respect, Dorghu orders his young son to execute Jakoby for his "blooding", but the teenager reveals that he was the kid that Jakoby helped to escape from the police and so cannot kill him. Astounded by this turn of events, Dorghu gives his son leave and must now make a judgment of clan law - should he release the trio to repay his son's life debt to Jakoby or execute them to appease the honor of the clan (as they have trespassed into clan territory and caused all this havoc)? In the midst of Dorghu's deliberation, the Inferni launch a sudden devastating attack on the Fogteeth fortress, but the trio assist the Fogteeth to ferociously fight back. It's a phenomenal elf vs. orc battle here. The Inferni are forced to retreat, while Jakoby sacrifices his life to save Ward during the attack. Tica harnesses the power of the wand (which she had kept hidden) - and drains her life force in the process - to bring Jakoby back to life, mesmerizing the Fogteeth Clan into kneeling before him in awe. Dorghu declares that Jakoby is now definitely "blooded" and the Fogteeth Clan roars him respect, releasing them. The trio leaves in peace.
- However, Tica is now on the verge of death from expending her life energy through the wand to save Jakoby - to save her in turn they must return to her safehouse in the barrio and immerse her with the wand in the "sacred pool" of the apartment complex. But they also know that Leilah and the surviving Inferni have set a trap for them there, as it is the only pool of its kind in LA and Leilah can sense that Tica is dying. Nevertheless, Jakoby and Ward (with some persuasion from his partner) are resolved to save Tica and so "tool up" with a lot of weaponry and assault the complex. They manage to kill all the Inferni except Leilah, who is heavily wounded and presumed dead. They rush to save Tica by submerging her in the pool, but Leilah powers back up and tries to seduce Tica to return to the Inferni. When this fails, she is enraged and nearly kills the trio with her powers. At this crucial moment, Jakoby grabs the wand in a suicidal gesture to take out Leilah in a suicide bombing, but he is instead revealed to be the first orc Bright ever in history! He blasts Leilah dead with the wand and the trio escape the burning complex right into the open, where Kandomere's MEB taskforce, the fire department, and a large crowd of news cameras and the public have been drawn to the scene just in time to witness an orc, human, and elf helping each other escape the burning blaze. This scene is immortalized and publicized worldwide.
- In the aftermath, Kandomere seals the wand away at MEB headquarters and covers up the incident as Ward and Jakoby heroically taking down both the Inferni terrorist group and Alta Mira gang, with no mention of magic or wands to the public. Tica is recruited by Kandomere as an MEB agent, and they attend the medal ceremony with Ward's family where Ward and Jakoby are honoured by the LAPD and city of LA for their heroism, professionalism, etc.
END.
Thoughts?
Last edited:
Deleted member 82792
The Mythology of Netflix's Urban Fantasy Explained https://screenrant.com/bright-netfl...ined/amp/?p=1144303&__twitter_impression=true
Because even the 1% need the help of the inmediate 4% to do something, to make less obvious how disproportionate the power and money they have accumulate
Willmatron
Banned
I thought the movie was pretty good. The plot seemed simple enough and was entertaining. I think too many people were expecting a social commentary or epic movie instead it was cop drama.
Deleted member 82792
Can you please find more of these photos? And maybe a better graph for the centaurs.
I looked and that’s all Landis posted, however they clearly exist as props, so maybe they will turn up eventually.
Hoping the Bright people release more world data as we go, and they have a decent Alt History staffer on board.
I'm rather disturbed there's a Max Landis fan sub.
There are fans of everything.
And besides, its not like there aren't fanatical followers of far, far worse SF writers. Scientology is a cult devoted to one of the worst SF writers of the 20th century. Or ever really.