#slight complaining

So they went with a direction on the orcs that I don’t normally see (I think the World of Warcraft movie did this too but other than that I haven’t seen this) and that’s make the orcs somewhat nurturing.  Don’t get me wrong the orcs are still badass and all but they also have a nurturing side that comes out in the movie.

Take Nick Jakoby for instance (the orcish cop that is Will Smith’s - Daryl Ward’s - partner in the movie) the second scene we really see him in he tries so, so hard to bond with Ward by saying “You smell like you haven’t slept” and offers Ward the melatonin in his war bag, tells him to take one before bed, and turn off the laptop.  He then goes into an awkward conversation that basically boiled down to ‘you need to get laid more and I’m concerned for you’.

The other instance that you kinda see this nurturing side is when (BIG spoiler) Jakoby is about to be executed by the orc gang who I keep wanting to call Fogblood but I think I have that wrong.  The head of this gang is going to have his son kill Jakoby and the kid hesitates and says that he [Jakoby] is the one that let him go when the cops were after the orc that shot Ward in the beginning of the movie.  No one makes fun of him for hesitating.  His father nods, takes the gun and says: You don’t need to be here.  And it wasn’t in a dismissing kind of tone but a genuinely ‘hey I get it’ and they hugged (put foreheads together) and the kid left and no one gave him shit about it.  I liked that.

Jakoby is also just a genuinely nice orc guy throughout the entire damn movie.  Everyone wants to shit on his character.  Everyone.  Even his partner Ward.  Even his partner Ward when Jakoby is actively saving his ass.  I think the only one who does not shit on him is Ward’s daughter who tells her dad “Nick’s a person to, you can’t tell him to shut up”

Side note here: I like Will Smith, he is a great actor - I did not like his character all that much in this movie.  Like, I did at the beginning but he just kinda...grinded at my nerves later on.  And it wasn’t the acting because Will Smith did a great job at portraying how the character was I think it was just because I don’t like the person his character was.  In short, he was a dick.  Few redeeming features, but mostly a dick.  He also goes to town on a fairy in his bird feeder and makes the quip: “Fairy lives don’t matter today” and honestly?  That line made me uncomfortable.  I don’t know if it was supposed to be an uncomfortable line or if I’ve just seen enough Black Lives Matter stuff on my dashboard (and the horrendous responses that some people have to it) that any version of ‘--- lives matter’ makes me associate that phrase with them.  Couple that with the fact he beats the fairy to death with a broom and....yeah.

Also, this movie really touches HARD on racism.  There is a scene where two orcs are getting arrested (poor Jakoby is in the police car) and four or five cops are just beating the ever-loving shit out of these orcs.  They’re not resisting, they’re covering tender areas, but they’re not resisting.  You can see how uncomfortable Jakoby is and Ward turns and makes him say that he is a cop first and an orc second while these cops are going to town on these orcs outside the car.  The next person they show getting arrested is a white guy actively brandishing a sword and is treated so much better.

All throughout the movie it is shoved back in the audience’s face that Jakoby is an orc, orcs chose the Dark Lord over everyone else 2,000 years ago, and no one likes them.  Internal Affairs tell Ward that he needs to get Jakoby to confess that he let the orc go that shot him or he’s fired so they have a reason to fire Jakoby (Orc Diversity won’t get up their ass as they put it), when some of the cops turn rotten they tell Ward that he needs to kill Jakoby or they both die.  Another scene a sheriff shows up and once they aren’t all pointing guns at each other Rodriguez (The Sheriff) says he needs to at least put Jakoby in handcuffs because cops are dead and people are going to want it to be the orc.

Needless to say that there were some really uncomfortable scenes in this movie.

Moving on from that.  Bright does pass the Beshdel test, barely.  There are only two scenes that women are actually talking to each other that I am remembering now (take note, I have slept since I’ve seen the movie).  Mind you that when I say ‘scenes’ I’m not talking about the background characters, I’m talking about the primary and secondary characters that have actual lines that the camera is focusing on in that moment.  The first one is when the evil baddie (an elf woman who has gorgeous cheekbones) talks to another Inferni (secret society to bring back Dark Lord) who is her soon to be dead assassin she hired for Tikka.  And then at the end of the movie when Tikka and Leila (I really want to say it’s Leila that’s the big baddie) talk.  That’s it.  Ward has a wife and daughter and the ONLY time you see them even in the same scene is at the end of the movie (They talk, the daughter says ‘well mom said Nick’s gonna get you killed’) but they’re never shown talking.  At any point.

And there’s not a huge lack of women in the movie so this is actually really bugging me now that I’ve realized it (there could have been more easily).  We have Ward’s wife and daughter who never are shown interacting, we have Sergeant Ching (swear to god that is her actual name in this movie and who is not in any other scene with another woman), Leila (big baddie) and her two she-elves (only talks with one when she’s about to die), A black cop lady whose name I don’t recall who introduces IA to Ward and who shows a sex offender to Jakoby and asks if it’s his cousin, there’s Tikka (elf girl with the wand who is entirely useless through 80% of her screen time), and that’s only counting the ones I can recall right now that were named and given actual lines. 

On the one hand - I never see urban fantasy in movies so that makes me happy (Centaur in Riot gear, there is a centaur in riot gear) because I love urban fantasy.  Most of the actors that got a decent amount of screen time seemed like a good amount of effort was put in to make their character believable and rounded.  I’m not fond of Tikka as a character though.  I’m really not.  She helped here and there (brought Jakoby back from the dead) but she didn’t really do anything else besides be small, scared, and cute through 80% of her interactions.  You could almost replace her character with a dog with most of her interactions and nothing in the movie would really change.  And I’m kinda sad about that because her actress was good and I really wish her character was written to be more important (she was being groomed by an evil society to wield a magic wand for crying out loud).

I think I've had a collective 5 hours sleep in the past three days due to the heat, and I had to work 14 hours straight today