Netflix's 'Bright' an Urban Tolkien Tale?

Bright answers the age-old question we've all been asking— what if Tolkien wrote Lord of The Rings today? Granted no one that I know asked, and I'm sure most of you didn't either, yet here we are.

Netflix's Bright brings us once again an all too familiar Will Smith vehicle, we've seen many times before. Smith plays the anti-hero who is a bit bigoted but is really a good guy at heart, and what the hell since he's not really a raging bigot or racist, he'll reluctantly work with his partner. And we're not supposed to be offended because Smith is not a white male.

So basically we get the same "Smith" formula as I, Robot, Men in Black, Enemy of the State, Wild Wild West, and Suicide Squad, albeit with a Tolkienesque twist. For in the world of Bright, orcs, elves, fairies, dwarfs, and trolls all exist in Los Angeles in the 21st century.

However unlike Lord of the Rings, which was Tolkien's way of bringing some rich mythology to Britain, while also being an allegory about war and how it strips away the innocence of the boys called away from their small little towns and villages to fight, and see their comrads and friends die, only to come home completely changed—their innocence and naivety stripped away by the horrors of war, Bright tries to be an allegory for American culture, providing social commentary about racism (the Orcs are the minorities), police brutality, the 1% and white privilege (represented by the Elves).

Woven into the social commentary is a typical buddy cop scenario set in an alternate reality where humans live in an uneasy truce with orcs, elves, and other fairytale creatures.

Smith's character, police officer Daryl Ward, has been reluctantly partnered with Nick Jakoby, the nation's first Ork police officer (guess the writer was a big fan of the movie Alien Nation). Jakoby is ostracized by humans and orcs alike—by humans for his race, and by orcs for his position (guess he's the "Uncle Tom" of Orcs).

Ward and Jakoby are ordered to the scene of a disturbance, where inside they find a number of corpses. They apprehend the lone survivor, a young elf named Tikka who is in possession of a magic wand. From this point, all hell breaks loose as humans, orcs and elves all want the magic wand of power (sort of like the one ring to bind them all). As the three fight for their lives, Ward learns that he's a Bright, a rare being that can wield a magic wand without dying.

Unfortunately Bright never really goes beyond the visual in its social commentary. The main character, Ward, never comes to terms with his racist attitudes. He doesn't really grow as a character to see things through the eyes of the "oppressed" or those he dislikes. The movie just paints with a broad brush the same old tired left-wing, socialist mantras— cops are inherently racists, and the privileged 1% live in opulence, at the cost of the rest of us, etc, etc.

Altogether Bright becomes old fast, bringing nothing new to the table, and cheapening the source material it heavily borrows from.

About 11 million American viewers streamed Bright within the first three days of its release, ensuring a sequel is in the works. To give this some perspective, according to the Nielsen Ratings for broadcast/cable shows NCIS draws in 14.6 million viewers on average. The Big Bang Theory draws in about 14 million, and The Voice about 10.5 million.