Bright: The Apotheosis of Lazy Worldbuilding | Video Essay

Ward and Jakoby escape, talking about their feelings in a gas station bathroom while Leeloo moans in the corner. Ward calls Rodriguez, who demands to see the wand. He calls the magical feds, but the Inferni are tapping the phone lines and cutting the line with an axe. Rodríguez handcuffs them for his own safety and then the Inferni shoot him dead. Another fight scene. Ward, Jakoby and Tikka escape once again, only to be captured by a band of orcs. - Get your fat Shrek butt into your vehicle and drive home to Fiona! LINDSAY: The leader explains that he's angry because they brought weapons to the first club they escaped to. he demands the wand, beats them, and then stabs Jakoby.

He orders his son, Mikey... -Mikey. LINDSAY: *giggles and sighs* Mikey the Orc... to shoot Jakoby, but of course, he's the kid Jakoby let go and he can't kill him. Then his father shoots Jakoby. But Tikka rips the wand from her skin, revealing her glowing hood, and resurrects Jakoby as the orcs...leave her. The orcs kneel and are then allowed to leave without saying a word. Ward chastises Tikka for not letting them know that he is brilliant or that he knows how to speak English. -Now he also speaks English quite well. -Now I trust you. LINDSAY: She tells them that the Inferni planned to restore the Dark Lord's power.

Using her wand has paralyzed her. She is dying and Jakoby, grateful for saving her life, convinces Ward to take her back to the house where they found her. The Inferni are waiting for them, another fight scene, Jakoby shoots Leilah. Ward takes Tikka to the healing pool. Leilah somehow survives the shooting, hangs Jakoby, this happens: -It's time to go home. -*sniffling* LINDSAY: Jakoby shoots the wand out of Leilah's hand but runs out of ammo. Ward grabs the wand, surprise, surprise: it's brilliant. -You are a... you are brilliant! LINDSAY: Tikka tells him the magic word. -The word is (vai-quar-us?) LINDSAY: and she defeats Leilah.

Jakoby attempts to lead them out of the burning house, when he realizes that Ward did not follow him, he returns to the burning building and rescues him. The orcs who were going to kill them before respect him now. LINDSAY: After all Ward says this: WARD: Hi Nick. JAKOBY: Yeah. WARD: Fuck magic. LINDSAY: They explain their side of the story to the magical feds at the hospital. The magical feds take the wand. At the monument to Rodriguez and the four police officers Ward murdered, they see Tikka in the crowd, a fairy flies towards the camera, the end.

LINDSAY: So this isn't a "Book of Henry" situation. This isn't such a confusing concept that only a complete gender change would have saved it. Obviously there were big problems with the script, but nothing that a couple of rewrites couldn't fix. LINDSAY: Generally speaking, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the premise or the story itself: a fantasy setting that resembles our modern universe with the central characters as two fantasy cops of different races who don't like each other, but that they have to learn. work together when they come into possession of what is effectively a weapon of mass destruction.

You could easily imagine the two police officers as Legolas and Gimli, and that could make for a fun and unique game. And it's not that the elements were not in place for it to work, specifically with the two main ones. Smith and Edgerton really have great chemistry. WARD: No holes? JAKOBY: Only the ones I was born with... How are your holes? WARD: How the fuck can you make a shooting uncomfortable? LINDSAY: Ward is an ordinary idiot whohe disrespects Jakoby, who turns out to be an awkward idiot. JAKOBY: I have to be nice taking you... WARD: Shut up.

LINDSAY: But through shared hardships, they learned to value each other; a modern take on a traditional fantasy trope. GIMLI: I never thought I would die fighting alongside an elf. LEGOLAS: How about being next to a friend? LINDSAY: This dynamic doesn't live up to its potential due to poor plot and character development. Again, why didn't they hire a screenwriter? Is rare. --but you can see the intent there in many of their interactions. WARD: I used to be like you. I think you can save everyone and fix everything... Now I'm just pretending to be a good guy. LINDSAY: Too many action scenes is a problem because a lot of these fight scenes with the Inferni don't advance anything.

Several times they run into danger, escape, expose some while Leeloo cowers, more danger, escape, repeat. They win nothing, lose nothing, and learn nothing for the nearly hour-long duration of the movie, until Tikka saves Jacoby using the wand. This should have been the midpoint of the film, not the end of act 2, as it is in the final product. And the second half of Act 2 should have been built around these three, building a dynamic and learning to trust each other and care about each other, giving us, the audience, a chance to care about her before she starts dying. .

And about Jakoby and Ward's dynamic. If Tikka had started trusting Ward and Jakoby during the midpoint, they could have developed a good relationship and instead of her overextending herself with the wand, it was potentially fatal...a plot point that makes no sense because this doesn't happen to anyone. other wand users---maybe cause her to be fatally injured in some other way later. And then the audience, having built up some emotional investment in these characters, Ward and Jakoby spend the third act trying to save her, waiting for the climax, the end. LINDSAY: What I mean is, it wouldn't have been that hard to take this to the level of... okay.

LINDSAY: A lot of the world-building is clumsily explained by characters who have nothing to do with the narrative, like this guy. DIRTY GUY: Have you ever noticed that most of the shiny ones are elves... and elves rule the world? Coincidence? LINDSAY: Yes, we never see him again after this scene, and the organic world-building, which is an exposition of characters that are relevant to the plot, comes at the cost of unnecessarily long action scenes, which take up a lot part of the time. movie run time. But this movie is brave, see? It needs to... reflect hard truths about... racism in Los Angeles.

You know, like "Crash" did. Look at all that 'urban gangsta flava'... LINDSAY: A major symptom of these structural problems comes in the form of poor setup and payout execution. LINDSAY: The trip to Elf City at the beginning is a plan that never pays off. They go to Elf Town, Elf Town is established. It's a HUGE, pointy setup. WARD: There's nothing here but rich elves. Simply travel the world and shop. LINDSAY: Not only do they never return to Elf Town again, but Elf Town isn't even mentioned. Plus they couldn't find a better name than Elf Town? Beverly Hills is not called a "rich town." Also, where the fuck is this supposed to be?

It looks like downtown Los Angeles, but Beverly Hills is like 10 miles away... *smacks lips in disappointment* It doesn't matter. The fact that Ward has a loving family totally undermines the character they're going for. -You don't want me as a friend. LINDSAY: Yeah?...because other than eliminating the LAPD fairy style, you seem to be doing just fine. You have a loving family... you know, a daughter that you take care of... a wife that makes you coffee with napkins... and you know, that you joke with. -I'm being honest with you. Alright? -Please. I don't fuck with fairies. You have to fuck with that.

LINDSAY: This line is doubly confusing. -I think you lack love, Ward. -I'm what? -By love I mean... -like... physical love. LINDSAY: A relic from an earlier draft of the script where Ward was separated from his wife. But if they were going to give Ward a good wife and a happy relationship, then they probably should have cut this exchange off. And the organization of the family does not compensate at all. All it does is undermine the loner attitude they're trying to achieve with Ward. It's a weak incentive for him to betray Jakoby, perhaps for a while. But really, why does he have a wife and daughter?

They get the family out of danger immediately and then the family returns only at the end. If you want to play up this "I'm a bad guy with no friends" angle, don't give him a family. These are wasted story elements in a story that already has overly clunky and inorganic world-building. The Poison gang, for example. They are never mentioned again after the titty bar shooting. -We are going to die in a shootout in a boob bar. LINDSAY: Wouldn't it be so bad if there had been some growth or development during the previous... three shootouts with Poison's gang?

But there isn't. -What's that? A damn Labradoodle you dipped in ink? LINDSAY: All we understand is that *this* is what happens when a non-shiny touches a wand, which we already knew, and the orcs get angry at the trio as justification for capturing them and shooting Jakoby later, a point of The plot is really weak. These three spend a full half hour of the movie running from Poison's gang, which doesn't matter and has nothing to do with the plot. And besides, no one seems to care that even if they get this magic wand, they won't be able to use it.

Perhaps the worst failure in preparation and reward is that Mikey the Orc, the boy who Jakoby helped escape earlier, who we met later at the orc hideout, at first you say, "Hey, a preparation that gave its fruits! Jakoby's mercy and good works save him." But Mikey's father shoots Jakoby anyway. And Tikka has to use the wand to resurrect him. So this setup, the fact that Jakoby showed mercy to Mikey, is of no consequence. There is no meaningful outcome for Jakoby to show mercy to this child. They shoot him anyway. Bad setup and reward. And once again, in the previous draft of the script, Mikey the Orc actually forgave Jakoby. but in David Ayer's rewrite, it was decided that apparently that wasn't dramatic enough.

And like in the estranged wife example, they kept the setup where the reward no longer makes sense. LINDSAY: I started by focusing on the structure because, although it is flawed, the story is there and this could have easily been fixed at the script stage. This could have worked. But really, the devil is in the details. LINDSAY: An important part of editing a film is both deciding what to cut and what to keep. The elements of a story need narrative utility. LINDSAY: Let's examine a scene: Ward kills the fairy. What narrative purpose does this serve? The fairies in this universe seem to be pests, which is fine.

But either way, Ward's solution is cruel and inhumane. So from a narrative utility point of view, you're either trying to demonstrate Ward's antipathy toward things fantasy, or you're presenting Ward as a bloodthirsty psychopath. Here's why none of these things work. One: in-universe magic is considered separate from all normal things. -That's magic right there. Do whatever you want. LINDSAY: The wand is magical, but that doesn't mean orcs, elves, humans, or fairies are. They simply exist in this universe and share it. Therefore, humans are not necessarily separate from it. They are just another race in this world. Like in "The Lord of the Rings." So using this as a setup like Ward hating magic doesn't work because the fairy is just another non-magical element in this universe;

Number two, is he turning Ward into a blood psychopath? Well, he's a bit of a jerk, but he's not exceptionally cruel after this scene. He leaves his four corrupt colleagues because he correctly assumes that they are about to kill them both. Either way, we never see him abuse his power relative to relative powerlessness, when it comes to killing what, in this universe, is effectively an animal. So he doesn't grow from this, nor learn to be kinder to the powerless, nor does this foreshadow any further cruelty. Imagine if this movie had started with Ward killing like a rat, or a raccoon, or a cat, or something in the same way. "Oh," we might say, "he's not a good guy.

This must be going somewhere," but it's not. -That's what I do! LINDSAY: And it's not about Will Smith being bad, it's about no one acting like a person... in this movie. The worst is the climactic scene in which Ward discovers that he is brilliant. They all get beaten up pretty bad and then Leilah starts with this: -WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY SISTER? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HIM? LINDSAY: Which establishes nothing or compensates for anything or relates to anything we've learned about the Inferni. And don't start with the "he's setting up an extended universe" nonsense.

Jakoby frees himself from being hanged, shoots the wand out of Leilah's hand, and then Ward starts insulting him. -Nick, if you aimed the wand, that was a very good shot. -But shoot him in the head! LINDSAY: And no one likes to move, hide, or try to defend themselves like they would in a tense gunfight. And Jakoby moves to shoot him again, but... -I can't, I'm out. LINDSAY: He says this like he has a headache and realizes he left his aspirin at home. And all of these characters are about 10 feet away from each other. Nothing stops Leilah from lunging for the wand with her other hand that didn't fly away, or Jakoby from rushing her.

And it takes Ward like a minute to pick up that wand and then he picks it up and says, "What do I do?" -Hey Nick, I have the wand... but hey, what now? LINDSAY: And still no one moves like they're still in their places like, well, they can't move or that would ruin the block. The immortal Leilah doesn't even get up when Leeloo tells Ward the magic word. -The word is (vai-quar-us?) -Dracarys! LINDSAY: And in the time it takes him to process this, Leilah still could have taken it away, but she doesn't...she stays there...But, you know, we couldn't establish the magic word before. this scene somehow?

This scene is just amazing and how much it doesn't work from every angle because no one acts like a person... who is in danger. -I'm out. LINDSAY: But it's Tikka who stands out as the biggest problem in terms of character development, as there's never any reason for Ward, Jakoby, or the audience to be emotionally invested in her. There is no reason for her not to say that she speaks English as long as she does. She now also speaks English quite well. -Now I trust you. LINDSAY: Either the brilliance of her, or follow them as long as she does if she hasn't built trust in the emotional bond with her.

At the end of the film, when she is dying, neither Ward nor Jakoby nor the audience have any reason to care about her. Tikka acting like a strange alien girl is... yes, you guessed it, a relic from an earlier draft, where she was literally an elf girl and that's why she was carried around. So I guess when they added the titty bar shooting. -We are going to die in a shootout at the tits bar. LINDSAY: That means they couldn't let Tikka be a literal child anymore, so they aged her up to 25, but literally didn't change anything else.

But Tikka is emblematic of the film's biggest problem, as she relates to the theme and world-building. She is simply poorly thought out. She's as MacGuffin as the wand is. When she has crafted the most subtle of backstories, she is pure function. -You'll have to undo this. LINDSAY: No motivation, no emotional core, nothing. Her defection from the underworld is motivated by nothing more than... Is the Dark Lord evil? But we never have any idea who she is, so there's never any reason to care about her. The only character who consistently comes close to acting like a person with pathos and motivations is Jakoby. -Hey Sophia, what's up, rock star?

LINDSAY: So it seems like "Crash" was written by aliens trying to understand why humans are racist. YOU get on your knees and suck my fucking cock while you're down there. LINDSAY: –the same applies to "Bright." To paraphrase Ta-Nehsi Coates' comments on "Crash," I don't think there is a single human being in "Bright," except possibly the orc. Both "Crash" and "Bright" try to capture a truth, but they capture nothing. Because it completely fails to capture the way people talk, think and act, or how systems within a society work. -And you know what they say, once with the Dark Lord, always with the Dark Lord.

LINDSAY: Now, this wouldn't normally be so noteworthy. It would simply be a premise with a lot of potential that unfortunately led to a bad movie. But then "Bright" had to go and do "

bright

-self" about race. LINDSAY: The intellectual grandfather of the kind of fantasy on display in "Bright" is J.R.R. Tolkien, whose works directly influenced all contemporary fantasy, from "Dungeons and Dragons" to "Willow,""Skyrim" and "Bright". "The Lord of the Rings" is also a starting point for debate regarding allegory and racial coding applied to works of fantasy. Over the years, many have pointed to "The Lord of the Rings" as an obvious allegory for, say, World War II, a claim Tolkien virulently denied.

In a preface to a reprint of "The Fellowship of the Ring" it is stated: "I cordially dislike allegories in all their manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and tired enough to detect their presence." Tolkien's attitude was that if people are going to read an allegory in his work, fine, have a party, but don't assume he intended it to be there. He relied on history, yes, but he wasn't making an intentional statement about it. Now, the point is that Tolkien, of course, existed, absorbed and reproduced the colonialist worldview of his time. No, I don't think he did it on purpose, but I also don't think it occurred to him to question the implications of making the dark-skinned races of men side with Sauron.

I'm not saying Tolkien was a bad guy. I'm just saying that he was a man of his time and that critical race theory didn't exist yet. However, it is also important to differentiate between allegories, elements of the story that are intended to have a one-to-one correlation with something external to the story, for example Aslan in the book of Narnia as an allegory of Christ, or "Animal Farm" as an allegory. of totalitarian communism, and of course there is "Mother!" which is the rare modern film that is simply an allegory. -I GAVE YOU EVERYTHING! LINDSAY: Allegory is not the same as coding... -Why don't you cut your bitch ass hair?

LINDSAY: --which takes elements from the real world to provide an abbreviated message, based on the audience's supposed worldview, i.e. that the aliens in Avatar are coded as indigenous is shorthand for them being purer and in contact with the nature. LINDSAY: And again, coding is one of those terms that has become politicized and is often read as negative when it's actually a neutral term in academia, it describes a sociological phenomenon. Coding is a neutral term. LINDSAY: Allegory exists as a statement of authorial intent, the encoding may or may not even be a conscious choice. In stories made by and for humans, there is always coding.

There is especially coding in fantasy worlds, derived from Tolkien's worlds. Some that were in the books: his sense of duty was no less than yours. LINDSAY: Some that weren't. And on some levels this is inescapable because it's basically impossible to create fantasy races that don't derive at least a little from the author's perception of human cultures. LINDSAY: Humans have a natural in-group and out-group mentality. And we have divided ourselves into many groups, so cultural and racial coding sneaks into the stories, intentional or not. LINDSAY: If we look at "Skyrim," for example, we have the Norse, who are a coded Scandinavian hodgepodge. -Gormlaith the fearless, joyful in battle.

LINDSAY: We also have the Khajiit race. Here we have a breed of nomadic cats with... these accents: -A lot of snow in Skyrim. Enough snow. M'aiq doesn't want more. LINDSAY: They're also very good thieves. They like their skooma. Yes, yes... they are Roma. They're just... they're Romani, they're Romani cats, we get it. -Are you with one of the trade caravans, Khajiit? Your kind always seem to find trouble. LINDSAY: And then, of course, there are the orcs. Written variations on orcs have existed in English folklore since Beowulf. But it was Tolkien who compared the modern idea of ​​the orc.

Tolkien described the orcs of him as corruptions of the human form. "Stout, broad, snub-nosed, sallow-skinned, wide-mouthed, and slanted-eyed, in reality degraded and repulsive versions of the Mongolian types, which Europeans find less charming..." Good. Tolkien's works influenced "Dungeons & Dragons," which influenced "Warhammer," which influenced "World of Warcraft," which influenced the "Elder Scrolls" games, which influenced "Bright." The orcs in all of these absorbed coding from ethnic groups around the world, from the ancient Celts to the Scots, the Zulus and, of course, the less charming Mongol types. So while some fantasy fans want to suggest that fantasy races emerged fully formed from the brow of Zeus without real-world influences, "Bright" isn't completely off base in applying a racial code to its orcs.

And in a perverse way there's something compelling about "Bright" putting his orcs in chains, sports jerseys and durags. And wearing baseball caps with their gang's name lovingly embroidered on the front. Like real gangs do. According to Tolkien: "I think many confuse applicability with allegory. But one lies in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the proposed domain of the author." LINDSAY: In other words, for something to be considered allegorical, there has to be an author's intention, and authors can't really prevent people from reading into their work something that was not their intention. LINDSAY: But encryption doesn't require authorial intent.

Codification is often sloppy or unintentional, born from the reappropriation of tropes without delving into the history of why they are there in the first place. -Meesa called Jar Jar Binks. Meesa your humble servant! LINDSAY: Coding in "Bright" is too direct to be ignorant. But it certainly raises questions. LINDSAY: Can the racial coding used in science fiction and fantasy to make some one-on-one allegory about interracial relationships ever work? LINDSAY: One observation that goes unnoticed is the comparison of "Bright" to the almost identical 1988 film "Alien Nation." Which has a very similar premise right down to the LAPD's first alien cop played by Mandy Patinkin.

And the aliens as thinly veiled allegories for the black and Hispanic communities in Los Angeles. -Why do we have to take them? Why can't they go to Russia or somewhere like that? -The list of newly arrived informants is as long as the list of Mexican war heroes. -Hey! Hey come on! -Down there nobody talks to anyone. -And half of them don't even speak English. LINDSAY: That movie sucks too, but "Alien Nation" has one crucial difference, as does "District 9." The aliens are relative newcomers to this universe and therefore do not conflict with the rest of the story as we, the audience, know it.

Now, "District 9" is controversial because it does some of the same things that "Bright" does, namely using aliens as an allegory for racial injustice. It's also received a lot of pushback for its portrayal of Nigerian gangsters, and I'm not going to disagree with that, but while "District 9" is far from perfect, I'm going to quickly point out where I think it succeeds in its allegory. where "Brilliant" fails. One: aliens are aliens and, with the exception of Christopher Johnson, largely incomprehensible. Yes, there is a racial code woven in because there always is, but they don't wear durags, chains, or sports jerseys...

Damn, "Bright"! Two: our story in the movie story diverged like 20 years earlier. The newly divergent stories mean that interhuman racism was allowed to develop and thrive and doesn't feel out of place in this universe like it does in "Bright." Three: You spend a lot of time with Christopher Johnson and you see the real shit he and his family live in, and it's not just stupid words like a "kick me" sign at work. Four: "District 9" doesn't mess around. around what he thinks is a nice metaphor. He blames racism not on flawed individuals, but on vast systems in which individuals are willingly complicit because they benefit from those systems.

But perhaps the most applicable comparison to "Bright" is. "Who cheated on roger rabbit?" -What could have happened to you to turn you into such a bitter guy? -Do you want to know? : First of all, sometimes it's better to just not explain how we got here. "Roger Rabbit" never explains the story of how cartoons came to be, and to be clear, that's a good thing because we don't need it. This story is also an intelligent reflection on how black artists were valued as commodities in the 1940s. In many cases they were not even allowed to be customers in some establishments where they themselves were headliners -A toon review.

Strictly humans only, okay? LINDSAY: But the most important facet of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" is that the plot of the corporate plan to raze Toontown is perfectly interwoven both with the toons' themes of an exploited underclass and with the internal conflict itself and the nascent fight against the protagonists? -cartoon racism. So when you look at the examples above, especially "Roger Rabbit", the laziness of the world-building and allegory in "Bright" stands out. Racism is bad, orcs are oppressed, now here's a movie about some cops playing keep-away with a magic wand for 90 minutes. Really, many of these problems could have been avoided if they hadn't taken an alternate reality from our own world based on a poorly thought-out fantasy and used it to make a commentary on the tragedy of modern race relations.

And the real irony is, if you look at earlier drafts of the script, they're not actually there! The hackey phrases about the Alamo, words like gangbanger and friends. Those appear to be Ayer's additions. And highlighting those elements only makes the movie make less sense. The master race of elves here means nothing because the bad guys are outliers. He leaves this very juicy idea that this is a very vertical society, and then he doesn't do anything with it, and it ends up not meaning anything to the world. More to the point, the plot itself (keep the wand away from Leilah) has a lot to do with oppression by orcs, Mexicans, or whoever.

The entire first act establishes this world of oppression, but once the magic wand appears, the "racism is bad" theme is just a facade. Yes, the movie still would have been racially coded because every fantasy is, but did orcs really need to wear sports jerseys? Did we need *this*? LINDSAY: I'm not sure that accepting all that 'urban gangsta flava' and leaning very, very hard into that racial code and at the same time keeping the racism that we have in the real world, among humans, was the right way to go. . LINDSAY: As you can see from the examples that work, like "District 9" and "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," the actual plots of these films are not only about the exploitation of this lower class and the direct effects of systemic oppression, They're really smart about how oppression manifests itself in this alternate universe.

They have their own prejudices and stereotypes in the universe. -Toons... -Jirak had no blood like me, an orc that no one cared about. -He united the Nine Armies and they defeated the Dark Lord. LINDSAY: Wow. That sounds like something important. Like the kind of big thing that, I don't know, could lead to totally different intervening 2,000 years of history. -He was a farmer who changed the world. LINDSAY: According to the world of "Bright", there was a war of nine races 2000 years ago, where a Dark Lord was evil, and the orcs supported the Dark Lord, but then there was a bloodless orc named Jirak who defected from the Dark Lord, It united the nine races and led to their defeat.

Regardless of the fact that Jirak was the hero, everyone points to this bit of ancient history as the reason why orcs are discriminated against today. -You know what they say, once with the Dark Lord, always with the Dark Lord. LINDSAY: Let's take a quick look at some other fantasy stories that take place in the present day. LINDSAY: "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" "Harry Potter" "Underworld" "American Gods" "Gargoyles" These all have a secret underworld that exists alongside the world we know and therefore does not contradict it. This makes "Bright" unique, but to its detriment. He never thinks about the implications of constructing an alternative history.

Alternate reality stories are relatively rare compared to secret underworld stories, but they are not impossible to find. "BioShock Infinite" and "Watchmen" are popular alternate reality stories, but both have relatively recent diverging points in history and wildly different outcomes. My point is that the 2000 years of backstory that all the characters make such a big deal about would have led to a vastly different universe than... Los Angeles with Orc Friends. And when people talk about the wasted potential of "Bright", to me this is the worst part. There's no imagination put into the world's story beyond the central conceit of a modern setting with orcs and elves.

And then when Ayer rewrote the project, instead of developing a fully realized world, he had to go ahead and finish with a gritty edginess and add all that 'urban gangsta flava'. Then you end up with this: -Fairy lives don't matter today LINDSAY: So I'm going toIgnore how tone-deaf that reference is and I'll stick with the line's inherent implication: either "black lives matter" exist in-universe and Ward is referencing it, or this is for the audience's benefit and means telegraphing that This is a movie about race. Or it's just bad improvisation and Ayer didn't think through the implications of keeping it there.

Ahem. LINDSAY: Here's a list of things that exist in the "Bright" universe: LINDSAY: The Crips - Just walk your butts back to the barbecue. LINDSAY: Shrek -To take your fat Shrek ass away-- LINDSAY: The Alamo -Hey, don't look at me, man, Mexicans still get shit for the fucking Alamo. LINDSAY: Los Angeles, dragons over Los Angeles. Fairy Lives Don't Matter Today LINDSAY: Well, let's go over that point by point. Sorry, I had to do it, "Bright" made me do it, this damn movie... LINDSAY: Number 1, the Crips - Just walk your butts back to the barbecue. LINDSAY: The history of the Crips arises from a variety of factors, namely the segregationist housing policies that led to World War II and the FBI's systemic eradication of the original Black Panther Party in the late 1960s, which left a power vacuum in South Central Los Angeles and much more. of 17-year-olds with firearms.

These segregationist housing policies arose shortly after Jim Crow forced many black Southerners to immigrate to the West Coast in the early 20th century, directly resulting from the diaspora after the Civil War, which was fought over slavery. Ergo it follows that the Atlantic slave trade existed in the "Bright" universe. Number 2, Shrek exists. - To get your fat Shrek ass into your vehicle and drive home to Fiona! LINDSAY: Does that mean that Jeffrey Katzenberg exists and that the Disney Company exists and that he makes a living off of fairy tales, which are just normal stories in this universe?

But that's okay, which means Jeffrey Katzenberg was fired from the Disney Company after 15 years and a multimillion-dollar settlement in several lawsuits and after several failed lawsuits. DreamWorks' attempts at 2D animation broke through with its pastiche reversal of tropes. from fairy tales Shrek? Does the Alamo exist?! -Hey, don't look at me, man. Mexicans still get shit for the fucking Alamo. LINDSAY: Were there orcs there too? If there are so many things in conflict between non-human races, why is there racism between humans? Was there slavery of orcs as well as blacks? And is that why all orcs seem to have white European surnames?

Was The Alamo something more important in this universe? Because Mexican-Americans get shit on a lot of things. -I thought you were going to have your, like, millionth baby. LINDSAY: The Alamo is not one of those things. What were the nine races? Were Mexicans one of the nine races? LINDSAY: I see you, I see you writing those comments about how I'm overthinking this... and you know, yeah, it's true, but why are you watching this channel anyway? --but you know, I can't... I can't help it. And people say they're interested in the world-building of "Bright." And I say, it is... but there isn't one!

It's just our world, with some fantasy stuff thrown in. LINDSAY: Los Angeles exists, which means a Franciscan mission was built in the 18th century, which means the Catholic Church maintained its rule over Spain, which means the War of the Nine Races, something so important that two thousand years Later, the fact that it justified graffiti was not so important that Emperor Constantine could not make Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire in the 4th century AD. LINDSAY: You can't include elements of our real world no matter the story that goes with it. I mean, you can, it's just, you know, it's

lazy

and it sucks.

LINDSAY: This is why modern science fiction and fantasy with alternate stories is so rare, and the ones you see like "The Man in the High Castle" and "BioShock Infinite" have relatively recent diverging points in the story. Sure, you could give us an alternate fantasy past that resulted in a similar present with cars and stuff, but the stories can't be the same. Los Angeles would not exist, Shrek would not exist, the Crips would not exist, doesn't it make sense that there is racism against Mexicans or blacks if, if we are so intolerant against orcs? -Wherever I go, wherever I have worked, the orcs always have to be the bad guys.

LINDSAY: And, and elves... it's just EHHH. So instead of an organic world where the story is woven together, it's just our world with fantasy elements placed on top, like magnets on a refrigerator. I know, building an alternate history and weaving. It would have been difficult, so they just didn't bother, and it's just

lazy

and it sucks. -We will not listen to orc music. LINDSAY: This whole monstrosity of a

video

where I complain about "Bright" for 45 minutes, which you've already seen (good for you, thanks for that) is because I couldn't stop thinking about this one. Deputy Sheriff Rodriguez's line. -Hey, don't look at me, man.

Mexicans still get shit for the fucking Alamo. LINDSAY: No, Rodriguez, they don't. And it's played as a joke like we, the audience, are supposed to understand it and get it, like, yeah, ha ha ha, we give Mexicans shit for the Alamo. I personally told my neighbor Jorge to remember it the other day. But it reveals both the ignorance and the curiosity of the filmmakers. He understands that movies about racism win awards. -...and the troops come, armed with humans with guns, looking for an orc who had shot a policeman! -Do you think that child had a chance? -Wow, wow! -They would have dropped him on the spot!

LINDSAY: But you're not curious about their causes or their roots, so by reducing intolerance to single, definable, justifiable historical events, as much of the fantasy genre does with its world-building, you're reducing intolerance to single, justifiable conflicts. and even understandable makes racism I feel like that's a lot more reasonable. Even logical. Mexicans shit because of the Alamo. The orcs are shitting themselves because of the Dark Lord. Racism is bad, but you know, people have legitimate reasons to be racist. Like black men consciously playing with stereotypes and the Alamo. This is a major shortcoming of films like "Crash" and "Bright." They seek to understand the logic behind racism, but racism is not logical and you cannot get people out of a mindset that was not logical.

Chance the Rapper commented in a tweet after watching "Bright": "I always feel a little cheated when I see allegorical racism in movies because that racism usually arises from emotion or human tolerance, but not from the law or systems like It happens in real life." The world of this film seeks the avant-garde and the current, but it is simply lazy and sloppy. All he wants to do is import the façade of 'urban gangsta flava', and the language of intolerance in these films is so cartoonish that no one would see it in themselves. -Dwarves have crazy jumps.

LINDSAY: This is a popular device when trying to capture the language of casual racism in film: the focus on historical events. The army of nine races fought shoulder to shoulder to bring you the world you neglected! LINDSAY: the focus on affirmative action -And what happens if they hire more? -I can't look at you without thinking about the five or six more qualified white men who didn't get your job. -What the hell is it about my behavior that gives you the impression that I want to be a target on the department's workforce diversity radar? LINDSAY: Yes, white bitterness over affirmative action in corporate diversity initiatives certainly exists, but this miscaptures that bitterness because if you use the actual language of casual racism, you risk offending casual racists, which is a huge demographic. -Hey, isn't she your cousin?

No... LINDSAY: So you use the language of casual cartoon racism and never have to run the risk of making the audience wonder if they're seeing themselves in the bad guys. -How many orcs play professional basketball? -None. They are slow, they are heavy. -That's why half of the defensive lines in the NFL are orcas. It's not racism, it's physics. LINDSAY: Reducing the result of racism to a "kick me" sign and justifying racism and bigotry by pointing to historical events in which entire ethnic groups did an "oopsie-daisy." -Hey, don't look at me, man. Mexicans still get shit for the fucking Alamo.

LINDSAY: Fantasy world-building will always be a reflection of the author's experiences, and there will be blind spots or biases that will show up in the work. The problem is not only that this world is too close to ours, so we inevitably cannot avoid imposing our world logic on it. It's not just that being on the nose with your racial allegory may seem tone-deaf, "Fairy Lives Don't Matter Today LINDSAY: and it's not just that fairy lives don't matter. Actually, it's just that it's uncurious and lazy, but he doesn't want to be. And *that* is what makes him disappointing.