While the Christmas classics remain the best, these Christmas movies just deserve some coal!! 2014 actually brought us not only the worst holiday movie ever, but the worst movie ever- period!
IF you had high hopes for Netflix‘s first real blockbuster, prepare to be disappointed. Reviews of Bright, the Will Smith-led sci-fi/fantasy film, came out last night, and it’s safe to say that the streaming platform can’t be happy. Critics were rough on the movie, insisting that it’s a total “disaster,” an “embarrassing” attempt at film making, and “profoundly awful.” IndieWire‘s David Ehrlich even went so far as to call Bright “the worst movie of 2017,” which is a bold statement to make in the year of The Emoji Movie.
News.com.au’s own Wenlei Ma called it a “stinker to avoid”, giving it a paltry one star out of five.
Much of the criticism was directed towards the film’s director David Ayer, the man behind another critical flop, Suicide Squad. Critics couldn’t help comparing the two, and many felt that if Ayer had learned from his mistakes, Bright wouldn’t be nearly as bad. The Wrap‘s Todd Gilchrist wrote, “Bright shares in common several of the shortcomings of Ayer’s previous film, including conspicuous evidence of desperate efforts to cobble its under-explained and yet somehow overcomplicated mythology into something coherent.” Ouch.
Ayer, to his credit, didn’t remain quiet in the face of the film’s bad PR. In response to Ehrlich’s claim that Bright is “so profoundly awful that Republicans will probably try to pass it into law over Christmas break,” Ayer tweeted that the critic’s sentiment is the highest compliment. It’s a classy move from a director who is being dragged so publicly for his work.
This is going on my fridge. Highest compliment is a strong reaction either way. This is a f*cking epic review. It’s a big fun movie. You can sure string words together Mr. Erlich. I’d love to read any script you’ve written. — David Ayer (@DavidAyerMovies) December 21, 2017
A few highlights from other negative reviews include:
“Stars Will Smith and Joel Edgerton play it mostly straight here, doing their part to sell the dopey premise, but the screenplay offers viewers little reward for our own suspension of disbelief … Its potential as a franchise-starter is laughably small.” — John DeFore, The Hollywood Reporter.
“It’s hard to imagine Bright inspiring anyone to want to see or make a full-blown series of films. Aside from a few nifty ideas and the occasional amusing or exciting scene, this film is a chore.” — Noel Murray, The LA Times.
“Bright is a movie that spends far too much time explaining itself — and, often, re-explaining itself — that the actual story, when we finally get to it, is not much more than empty gunshots and blood splatter with a faerie tale twist.” — Vinnie Mancuso, Collider.
Peter Debruge at Variety was nicer than his colleagues, calling Bright an “ambitious, yet astonishingly well-executed Netflix tentpole [that] directly benefits from the way Ayers’ gritty, streetwise sensibility grounds [writer Max] Landis’ gift for creating an elaborate comic-book mythology.” While Debruge did take issue with certain elements of the film, it’s good to see that there’s a little variation in the critical consensus.
As it stands, Bright has the potential to be a film that greatly divides critics and audiences, as Star Wars: The Last Jedi did just last week. On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has a 32% fresh rating from critics but a 96% “Want to See” rating from regular viewers. The jury is still out on what the audience rating will look like after Bright’s premiere tomorrow, but there’s no denying that this numeric discrepancy is huge. Like most things in 2017, movie opinions have become very polarising, and critics and audiences often find themselves on opposite ends of the spectrum.
If the execs over at Netflix are hoping for anything, it’s likely that viewers will turn out in droves to stream Bright despite the overwhelmingly negative critical opinion. Otherwise, they’re looking at a $100 million bust.
This story originally appeared on Decider and is republished with permission.
Netflix trying to make an epic blockbuster movie was inevitable, the last step for a streaming empire that’s seeking to become a hub for all of your entertainment needs. But — and I’m no expert here — I think it was unwise to fork over $90 million to the director of Suicide Squad (David Ayer) and the screenwriter behind Victor Frankenstein and American Ultra (Max Landis). That’s exactly what happened though, and what Netflix got was Bright, a Will Smith–starring, buddy-cop movie that takes place in a fantasy world filled with orcs, fairies, and elves. Imagine J.R.R. Tolkien fanfic from a 12-year-old obsessed with Training Day, only everything is shrouded in darkness, the action is incomprehensible, and the racial allegories are about as subtle as a Wahlberg family Super Bowl viewing.
Just how bad is Bright? I set out to ruin two hours of my Friday morning to find out, risking both my own sanity and my laptop, which I nearly threw across the room at least four separate times. Thankfully, I restrained, and now I can share with you my 30 most pressing questions about Bright.
1. I’m not even through the opening credits and, seriously, this is the name of a production company?
I, a snowflake, am clearly not prepared for what’s about to go down.
2. I love it when a fantasy movie has a super vaguely described prophecy that the movie eventually returns to, and “Only a Bright can control the Power of the Wand” is an all-timer. Apparently, this line is from Chapter 7, Verse 15 of the so-called book The Great Prophecy. That’s quite a lengthy tome! What’s covered in chapters 1 through 6? Does the wand have a name, or does just everyone call it “Wand”? Is there more than one wand in this universe?
3. Wait, what is a Bright? Actually, nevermind.
4. The opening credits are supposed to function as world-building, to ease the audience into a present-day Los Angeles where humans live alongside orcs, elves, and fairies. Much of this is established through unsubtle graffiti.
Is this the worst graffiti artist in L.A.? Elf Banksy needs to step it up.
5. Are we going to give Max Landis a free pass for life since he wrote Chronicle?
6. Oh my god, is that Joel Edgerton under all that Orc makeup? Joel, how much did they pay you for this?
Green sauce, obviously.
7. Actually, no burrito sauce for anyone. As we find out, Edgerton is Nick Jakoby, the first orc cop in the LAPD, and he’s been partnered with human cop Daryl Ward (Will Smith). Unfortunately for Daryl, teaming up with the first orc cop means he’s a huge target for orc gangsters, one of whom shoots Daryl in the chest while Nick is buying a burrito. Daryl survives thanks to his bulletproof vest, but he never did get to enjoy that sauce. By the way, is Daryl close to retirement, like every other cop in every cop movie ever made?
Of course.
8. Are Daryl’s neighbors characterized with any nuance whatsoever?
9. It can’t get worse than that, right?
[Narrator voice] “Thirty seconds later, Miles was wrong.”
10. Can’t we find better work for Will Smith? The fact that he’s done two movies with David Ayer now — Suicide Squad and Bright — is just depressing. Between those movies and Collateral Beauty, is Will Smith having the worst period of his career?
11. Would all be forgiven if we got a Fresh Prince reboot?
12. Hold on, is it too late to enter Will Smith in the best sweaters of 2017 contest? I might not be enjoying Bright, but I can’t deny this is a very good, “I just bought all the kombucha at the bodega”–type hoodie.
If Daryl wore a stoner hoodie instead of a police uniform for the whole movie, Bright would be a hundred times better.
13. As Daryl and Nick head to the precinct (where Daryl, sadly, removes that dank sweater), we’re given some much-needed context for why humans hate orcs so much. You see, 2,000 years ago, the orcs followed the “Dark Lord” and tried to wipe out humanity, and humans have hated them ever since. (Elves are cool, though.) Again, does the “Dark Lord” have a name, or when you say “Dark Lord” does everyone just know who you’re talking about?
14. Between “Wand,” the “Great Prophecy,” and “Dark Lord,” is this the laziest world-building ever? Imagine if Game of Thrones took place in the “World,” and everyone was fighting for the “Chair” before the “Bad Guys” showed up.
15. Are the other cops mean to Nick?
SO mean.
16. Whoa, is that a CENTAUR COP?
17. I’m sorry, can this movie be about that dude instead?
18. Do humans like centaurs? Are centaur cops more common than orc cops? Do centaurs have specialized urinals? Are there Foot Lockers for centaurs, or do regular Foot Lockers have a centaur section? Would they be the worst upstairs neighbors in an apartment complex? I need answers!
19.
It’s a great question, to be honest. (But they don’t.)
20. Is this my saddest tweet?
I've been watching BRIGHT since 7. Please, call an ambulance — Miles Surrey (@HKSurrey) December 22, 2017
21. Did the U.S. government create a department that handles investigations dealing with the supernatural elements of these mythical creatures inhabiting the world, and if it did, would that department get a really dope name and not something super generic?
22. HOW IS THIS MOVIE SO LAZY WITH NAMING THINGS?!
23. So what are the elves’ lives like in this universe?
They just really like Versace?
24. Later in Bright, Nick and Daryl investigate a crime scene where it seems like some magic went down with a wand. Here’s the thing about wands: They can only be used by elves who are “Brights,” and a human “Bright” is supposed to be super rare, like one in a million. Despite this, there are many people — including an entire gang and its wheelchair-bound leader — who want to take the wand. So, is everyone risking their lives because of lazy plotting, or is this a sobering commentary on the societal plight facing most people in the city, that they’d rather risk their lives for the infinitesimal chance of wielding a wand than continue their meandering existence? Based on everything else I’ve seen, I’m going with the former.
25. Are elves kinda like dogs?
Yes.
26. The rest of Bright is, as follows: Nick and Daryl try to get an elf named Tikka (Lucy Fry) to safety while being pursued by an evil elf, Leilah (Noomi Rapace), who wants to resurrect the Dark Lord, while other people try to grab the wand ad nauseam in chaotic, incoherently dark gunfire. Is it possible to describe how this movie treats the audience in one screenshot?
Thanks, Tikka.
27A. Where did the $90 million budget go in this movie? I ask this in good faith, because I feel like I’m watching a CW show except with more famous actors.
27B. Did they spend all the money on this glowing tree pool?
27C. Or maybe the entire budget was spent on Joel Edgerton’s orc payoff?
28. A real question I wrote down in my notes at the start of the movie: “There’s a 99 percent chance Will Smith is a human Bright, right?”
Shocking.
29. Daryl kills Leilah before she resurrects the Dark Lord, saving Los Angeles and (presumably) the rest of the world. I’m really glad this is over. There’s no need for a sequel, right?
WHATTHEOHMYGODWHATHAVEIDONETODESERVETHISSSSSS?
30. How did Bright film my reaction to Bright?
Photo by Matt Kennedy - © 2017 - Netflix
Pitch Perfect 3 opens in theaters today, and if you read my review then you know that you should not see Universal/Comcast Corp.'s Pitch Perfect 3 anytime soon. Because the Anna Kendrick/Rebel Wilson threequel is playing in theaters, making the choice to see it requires a token amount of effort. You have to scout for show times, drive to the theater, block out around two hours and (possibly) make arrangements with friends. But if Pitch Perfect 3 were merely playing on Netflix, all you’d have to do is turn on your Netflix account and select Pitch Perfect 3 from the homepage. And that’s exactly what Netflix is counting on today. Choosing to not see a movie in theaters is easy. Choosing not to sample a movie on Netflix is hard.
One of the other movies opening today won’t be playing in theaters, but will instead be available as of last night at midnight on your Netflix account. The movie is Bright, and it is possibly the worst movie of the year. Now, as a general rule, most studios don’t greenlight a sequel to a film before it comes out and specifically just hours before the review embargo drops on what they surely know will be a series of brutal critical pans. Even with a critical thrashing, even with a critical thrashing in an era when folks seem to be looking to critical consensus when choosing a movie, Netflix has reason to believe that Bright will suck up its fair share of eyeballs.
Bright is a $90 million fantasy cop actioner featuring (among others) Will Smith, Joel Edgerton and Noomi Rapace. It is written by Max Landis and directed by David Ayer, the man whose Suicide Squad (Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc.) earned terrible reviews last year but still made it to $745 million worldwide. It is very much Netflix’s attempt to offer something approximating a big-budget Hollywood spectacle, sans any IP and sans much in the way of explicit executive micromanaging. Even with the terrible reviews and poor buzz, Netflix is banking on you being curious enough to check it out anyway. Don’t. Don’t give in, at least not for a week or two. For all the talk of Netflix being a Hollywood disruptor, this is a classically cynical Hollywood play.
In this specific case, Netflix is offering up a bad movie that is nonetheless filled with movie stars, apparent production values and action movie moments in the hopes that the casually curious will take their minimal chances on the enterprise. After all, maybe you like Will Smith, you didn’t hate Suicide Squad (or maybe you liked End of Watch or Fury) and the idea of a police actioner in a world where mythical creatures exist alongside humans is an interesting one. So what’s the harm in giving it a casual watch while you fold laundry or do the dishes? Well, here’s the problem, we don’t want to teach Netflix that they can get away with this specific kind of bad movie.
Bright isn’t just a bad movie. There are plenty of bad movies that play at a theater near you or via VOD or various streaming services like Netflix, Hulu or Amazon. Bright is a dangerously bad movie for one very big reason. It is visually muddy, incoherently constructed and structured in a way that rewards audiences for watching the movie not with their full attention but rather while they play on their phone or attend to a secondary task. The dialogue goes on for ages, the exposition is repeated several times at length throughout and the film ends with a dialogue sequence that recaps much of the movie in detail as if it were a Wikipedia summary.
It’s not crazy for a Netflix original to be paced for the benefit of those who watch the movie on their phones while on a train or for those who watch the film on their HDTV while playing Candy Crush on their portable devices, as it’s not unreasonable to assume that folks consume online streaming content in such a fashion. And if it’s the kind of entertainment option that can be safely consumed while doing something else, then it is that much more likely that Netflix subscribers will choose to give it a whirl critical word-of-mouth be damned. And that’s a win for Netflix either way. They don’t need us to like Bright, they just need us to watch it. So don’t.
Unless you want the future of the big-scale genre film to be Netflix or Hulu originals constructed to be tolerated while you fold laundry or surf Facebook, merely watching and panning Bright isn’t enough. All due respect to its star (Collateral Beauty is an underrated quirk), its writer (Chronicle is still excellent) and director (Harsh Times deserves to be rediscovered), but Bright needs to be ignored by the general audiences whom Netflix is counting on to press that button out of vague curiosity. Otherwise, we risk a flood of mockbusters designed to be best appreciated sans your full attention. It takes an effort to not watch a movie that's already available on your paid-for streaming service, but Netflix is counting on you to be lazy.
Netflix is counting on your casual curiosity and ease of access to circumvent poor reviews and horrible buzz and still turn their big-budget wipeout into a "hit." Bright cannot be the way of the future, and Netflix needs to be reminded that it can’t challenge Hollywood by doing a shoddier version of what Hollywood does.
Bright isn’t your typical blockbuster.
The $90 million movie with action star Will Smith is the kind of tentpole project major studios rely on to bring in big box-office dollars. You’d expect to see it in theaters during the winter holidays, and promoted heavily with trailers and marketing materials. In typical Hollywood fashion, there’s already a sequel in the works. But you won’t find this movie in most cinemas. It’s on Netflix starting today.
The streaming-video service riffed on that with its campaign for the film, which revived the old movie hotline. You can dial 1-844-SEE-BRIGHT to be pumped up or insulted by Smith and hear showtimes, which include “anytime” and “after your eighth Christmas cookie.” (The movie will play in a few theaters in the US.)
Bright is too offbeat to land at a major studio. It stars Smith as a Los Angeles Police Department officer who is partnered with an orc and discovers a magic wand that can destroy the world. Yes, you read that right. Directed by David Ayer and written by Max Landis, there are also racial tensions rolled into the story in which orcs, fairies, elves, and humans co-exist. It’s basically Bad Boys meets Lord of the Rings, Chronicle, and End of the Watch.
It sounds like it was made by an algorithm. It checks off so many boxes it could land in anyone’s “Because you watched” recommendations:
Buddy cop films ✅
Fantasy epics ✅
Crime thrillers ✅
Sci-fi thrillers ✅
Gritty dramas ✅
Action and adventure ✅
Will Smith ✅
That’s all Netflix needs, after all. Bright doesn’t need (or want) to compete with Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the movie that drove other potential blockbusters (except Jumanji) from theaters this December. Audiences can watch both. The barrier to getting someone to click on a movie that’s already included in their subscription service and looks mildly interesting—if not a tad absurd—with a big action star and notable director is much lower than convincing someone to go the theater, shell out $9 on average, and commit the next two hours of their lives to it. On Netflix, you can stop the movie midway through if it’s that bad and have no buyer’s remorse.
Initial reviews are not good. The Wrap said it was “astoundingly bad in virtually every way.” But shows and movies on Netflix are recommended to members based on how likely they are to enjoy them, not how good they are. That’s why Adam Sandler’s awful comedies are the most watched originals on the platform. If the movie is fun to watch, that may be enough during a holiday weekend when folks have time to kill while traveling or visiting family. It has a 31% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, (higher than most of Netflix’s Sandler movies) as of this writing, and 88% of audiences liked it.
If it bombs, no one will know. We’re dependent on Netflix for viewership numbers and it’s yet to reveal a flop. Third parties, like Nielsen, have attempted to quantify subscription-video viewership, too, but only release numbers for TV shows. Netflix has at least offered some signal that it’s pleased with the product: Smith is already signed on for sequel.
Buzzy films like Bright are important to Netflix. The platform, which says one-third of its viewing is consistently movies, is ramping up production on films to make itself less dependent on other studios. It plans to release 80 movies in 2018, up from 60 this year.
Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos said on a conference call back in April that Bright would set the bar for the kinds of movies audiences can expect from the service. “We think it will kind of give consumers and everyone who watches this space a better idea of the kind of things we’re up to in the movie space, which is those movies that you would see in the theaters, but they’re available to you day-in, day-out on Netflix, and that they look and feel like movies of that scale,” he said.
As it’s done in TV, Netflix is setting itself up to be a place where talent can take risks and move beyond their comfort zones—even if the movies themselves are not successful. Brad Pitt’s War Machine was too satirical of a war movie to hit big in theaters, but it brought a higher caliber of film to the streaming service this year. Martin Scorsese’s upcoming movie for Netflix isn’t like his other mobster movies—it’s about aging gangsters—but the director united the old guard for it and is attracting a lot of attention.
“The question is, can you shake up the market enough to come to expect big event movies to be only on Netflix—not on DVD, not on VOD, not in select theaters,” Sarandos said at a UBS investor even in December, “because we do want the consumer choice and that is a different experience.”
Read next: The Netflix algorithm’s perfect movie is an arthouse comedy starring Adam Sandler
