Netflix’s Bright Gets an Honest Trailer

Netflix’s first major production, Bright, may have been a huge commercial success for the streaming platform, but it didn’t exactly win over critics and it’s that divide that the folks over at Screen Junkies capitalize on in their Honest Trailers take on the film.

You can check out the whole four-minute video above.

“From the director of Suicide Squad, the writer of Victor Frankenstein, and Trigger Warning Entertainment comes allegory about race relations,” the opening voiceover starts before offering a second take. “From the director of Suicide Squad, the writer of Victor Frankenstein, and Trigger Warning entertainment … this is gonna be a bumpy ride, huh?”

And that dual opening voiceover pretty much echoes how fans perceived the Will Smith-starrer. Depending on which critical review you read, the film was either too heavy-handed with its social message about race relations or not overt enough, something that the Honest Trailer points out, but the video also asks some of the hard questions that go beyond Bright‘s fantasy world where magical beings are discriminated against. It wants to know, specifically, if magic has always been a part of our world then is Shrek a documentary? Well, that is a fair question.

If by some chance you’re not quite sure what Bright is about — or just happen to be one of the people Screen Junkies notes might have fallen asleep watching Mindhunter only to wake up and find yourself smack in the middle of Bright — the film is set in a fictional version of our world where pretty much every fantasy creature and story ever lives right alongside human beings. Smith plays a jaded LAPD officer paired with the city’s first Orc officer (Joel Edgerton) and the pair discover a dangerous magic wand with even more dangerous implications for reality. As the Honest Trailer suggests, Orcs are stand-ins for African Americans in this allegory, though the trailer takes the approach that the potential of the premise is wasted. They even go so far as to suggest their own sequels for the film — reporters and balrogs anyone?

But speaking of sequels, Netflix has already announced a real Bright 2, though when that movie makes its way to the streaming giant it will have a slightly different lineup, creatively. Screenwriter Max Landis will not be returning for Bright 2 with scripting duties instead being handled by director David Ayer.

Bright is currently streaming on Netflix.

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