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Bright


Iuz the Evil

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The core issue I have with the swordsman is he is a collection of unnecessary spoilers.

 

Yeah if anything the swordsman wasn't developed enough, rather than being superfluous.  He was a strange mix of random dude and oracular mystic.  What was he?  How did he know this stuff?  There was not enough information about the Shield of Light and it seemed like a lot got cut somewhere, leaving fragments of a story.

 

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 For all the superfluous scenes why not a scene of the elves warding/enchanting themselves before the hunt?

 

This would have been much better, and make more sense of the elves being so incredibly durable.  I'll buy that an orc can be rammed with a car and suffer minimal injuries but the elves seemed if anything tougher which is not really part of any fantasy setting or concept in any way.  Some magical enhancement and you can make sense of it.

 

The magic was so minimized and reduced that it barely felt like a fantasy story at all.  The fantasy races could have just as easily been a strange alien invasion, which seems like a missed opportunity, but I suspect it was more that a lot of key story elements ended up on the cutting room floor to make room for Will Smith scenes.

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3 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

The magic was so minimized and reduced that it barely felt like a fantasy story at all.  The fantasy races could have just as easily been a strange alien invasion, which seems like a missed opportunity, but I suspect it was more that a lot of key story elements ended up on the cutting room floor to make room for Will Smith scenes.

 

I didn't feel like the magic was minimized. Yes, there may be minor magics that were glossed over, but the whole story was a chase for a super-powerful magical maguffin. "It's like a nuclear weapon THAT GRANTS WISHES!" as Jakoby says at one point. Everybody wanted it, even if only to keep it out of the hands of everyone else. And even with the deadly cost of trying to wield it, there were plenty of people willing to take that risk.

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The only magic in the entire film was by the maguffin.  That's it.  There was no magic at all except that one item and mentions of other, duplicates of it.

 

And that seems like a case of stuff being trimmed for time, stuff that could come up later in other movies or a series.  There's suggestions that magic exists (particularly with the elves) but no demonstrations of it, which I think would have added a lot to the film.  I mean, a wizard cop would be handy, even if they were really weak.

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Personally, I think people are being too critical in an effort to be cranky.

 

It was a made for television TV pilot more than a made for TV movie.  And yet 90% of the negative commentary is of a type aimed at a 200 million dollar plus block buster. 

 

In short it was a good action flick that could be episode #1 of a series.  But a deep meaningful exposition of humanity it is not. 

 

And I for one am glad.  I was a fun romp without a massive thick extremely over saturated helping of whatever political opinion they had at the minute. 

 

Good show.

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I dislike Shadowrun for mixing dopey fantasy elements into a cyberpunk setting. My appetite for “urban fantasy” is pretty limited to begin with, but any story that tries to inject Tolkienian fantasy elements (orcs, elves, dragons) into an “edgy” near-future setting where the focus is on crime in a sprawling ubran milieu is going to rub me the wrong way just on the basis of its central conceit.

 

I strongly suspect, therefore, that Bright will not be my cup of tea.

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They did something similar in Cast a Deadly Spell with Fred Ward as Private Investigator H.P. Lovecraft in 1946 Los Angeles where magic exists.

 

That was pretty good, I thought.

 

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Are not elves "super beings" in the works of Tolkien? 

 

They are never depicted as being enormously durable and stronger than humans.  Their power was more in magic, long life, and superior senses etc.

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I don't thnk they did a poor job of setting up the Inferni as being way more powerful than your average person - elf or not:  Every time they were mentioned by anyone it was hyping them up.

 

They did what they did because they were a secret society of super elven ninja who wanted to bring about the resurrection of the Dark Lord.  Good enough for me.  I didn't confuse them for a second with any of the average joe elves wandering around in that scene from Elftown.

 

I would have liked to know more about the Brights in general - they seem to be rare but not unknown: there are more elves than the other races, but humans have Brights too.  Do they all have magic wands? if so, what makes this one special? If not what can they do without one?  When Ward was laid up in the hospital when the Feds came in they had 20 guys with body armor and rifles even though he didn't have the wand.  Why?

 

 

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My take on the Elves and the Inferni was pretty much the same as yours.

 

1 hour ago, DasBroot said:

I would have liked to know more about the Brights in general - they seem to be rare but not unknown: there are more elves than the other races, but humans have Brights too.  Do they all have magic wands? if so, what makes this one special? If not what can they do without one?  When Ward was laid up in the hospital when the Feds came in they had 20 guys with body armor and rifles even though he didn't have the wand.  Why?

 

 

 

About Brights.  The gist I took from the movie about Brights, is they were Magic Users.  Or people able to wield magical items or cast. 

 

They all seemed to be lumped together and categorized as dangerous. 

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Yeah I thin "bright" is just an attempt to 'update' words like Wizard (wise one) Mage (learned one) and so on.  Personally I don't like the term, but that's a minor quibble.  I think they're just the equivalent of whatever it is magic works like in this setting.  They're working on a sequel so hopefully more will be explained and they'll actually have some magic used in it rather than just strange looking people and a glowstick.

 

I don't mean this stuff as complaint so much as analysis: here's how they did it, this is what they put together and the way it seems to come across.  I personally like the basic concept of the story with a buddy cop movie in a weird world.  It worked well with Alien Nation as well (which is pretty much what this movie was to me).  I know budget restrained some of the ideas they may have had, like the very few images of anything really different.  One dwarf, a couple glimpses of a centaur standing around.  One dragon flying over Los Angeles (??? is it tame or something?).

 

I think having more of Teeka and her using magic in the sequel would be nice.  Maybe her as a rookie cop with both of the cops in the first film being her mentors.

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5 hours ago, DasBroot said:

I would have liked to know more about the Brights in general - they seem to be rare but not unknown: there are more elves than the other races, but humans have Brights too.  Do they all have magic wands? if so, what makes this one special? If not what can they do without one?  When Ward was laid up in the hospital when the Feds came in they had 20 guys with body armor and rifles even though he didn't have the wand.  Why?

 

That's a good question. I noticed that as well. The movie doesn't tell us, but if I were to guess, I'd say that just as the only way to know if you're a Bright is to touch a magic wand--and not explode--that's also the only way to activate whatever magical potential you have. So, having handled a wand without dying, and discovered that he's a Bright, Ward now has the *potential* to be extremely powerful and dangerous, even if he doesn't know it. (Maybe, being a Bright, he could *create* a magic wand for himself...if he knew how.)

 

That would keep the Magic Cops up at night, I think.

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Yeah, I liked the undefined elements they threw in. Lots to speculate about, dragons, faeries, dwarves and centaurs confirmed. Magic is a thing, but rare and lots still not known about it. 

 

The Dark Lord corresponded chronologically to Jesus, approximately. 2000 years ago. Makes me wonder about a bunch of stuff. 

 

They already green lit a sequel, so we will find out more eventually. 

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I don't see Will Smith in the sequel but who knows?  If this does as well as it seems to be, they might be doing pretty well for budget.  Plus, a guy like him does the projects he wants to, not because he needs the work or exposure.  So he probably signed on for the fun and the interest in the project, and that might carry over.  He does seem careful about scripts, too so that would be a good sign.

 

I got the impression there are only 4 wands, period.  And they seem to be something primordial, not created by anyone like a magic item.

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About the same, I would think - where Jakoby bought up str, con, stun, and tracking or discriminatory (or maybe just a few levels of perception) on his sense of smell Ward took CSL in firearms, contacts, and  had a point sink in an unused framework of some flavour that he wasn't allowed to access for most of the session.

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12 hours ago, Certified said:

 

Clearly they were built with the same points Ward putting his A into having magic and Jakoby putting his A into being Metahuman.  

Agreed.  The real differences are skills, attributes and resources (Ward being higher skills vs attributes and Jakoby having higher attributes vs skills - probably B-C/C-B). Resources are pretty low for both, although Ward spent the crappy 40k nuyen for a lower class (gangster neighbors, faerie infestation) mid size residence so maybe not? 

 

Edit: unless Ward is an Adept, in which case all bets are off...

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