Max Landis Tackles Race Relations With Fantasy-Fueled Cop Drama 'Bright'

By Kristy Puchko | Videos | October 25, 2017 |

By Kristy Puchko | Videos | October 25, 2017 |

This Christmas, Netflix is teaming up with the forces behind Suicide Squad and Victor Frankenstein to bring us Bright, a cop drama set in a Los Angeles where elves, orcs, and humans live together, though not exactly peaceably.

Written by Max Landis and directed by David Ayer, Bright stars Will Smith and Joel Edgerton as a pair of cops trying to make sense of some mysterious carnage. Tweeting its new trailer, Netflix pitched the project as “It’s basically Bad Boys in Mordor.” Is that a good thing?

And you can learn more about officers Ward and Jakoby as well as the film’s socio-political themes with the special featurette:

What to make of this? Godtopus help me, I love a ridiculous genre mashup. So why not Zootopia but with an orc joining the force instead of a fluffy bunny! But there are red flags.

Around these parts, Landis is better known for his Twitter tantrums than great films. But hey, I liked Chronicle and found Victor Frankenstein to be bonkers fun. Yet, neither of those projects nor his persona give me much faith in his race relations metaphor being especially insightful. Then there’s Ayers, who seems a perfect fit for a gruff cop drama, as he wrote Training Day and broke out helming the sensational and grisly End of Watch. But then he made the manic mess that is Suicide Squad. However, this star-studded Netflix release also boasts appearances by we-deserve-to-see-more-of-them stars Noomi Rapace and Edgar Ramírez. So? I just don’t know, dude. My curiosity is piqued; I’ll give it go. But I tend to make bad decisions with how to spend my movie-watching time.

Does Bright look worth a watch? Sound off in comments.