Fans Liked Bright More Than Critics

Compiled by Carl Slaughter:

  • Wisecrack explains what went wrong with Bright

  • Honest Trailers does Bright

  • Den of Geek: Critics vs Fans

“Bright more for fans than critics, argues Joel Edgerton”

Netflix’s Christmas blockbuster movie was Bright, that starred Will Smith and Joel Edgerton, and was directed by Suicide Squad helmer David Ayer. The film cost the best part of $100m to make, and Netflix declared it a roaring success, revealing that some 11 million people watched it on the weekend it was first made available on the service. It quickly ordered Bright 2, although dropped Max Landis as the writer of the sequel.

It didn’t have as much luck with movie critics, though, who slammed the film. It earned quite savage reviews, but still seemed to find its audience.

7 thoughts on “Fans Liked Bright More Than Critics

  1. While CinemaSins movie reviews are intended to be ironic, they can (and do) make legitimate observations within their irony/sarcasm heavy format.

    To that end:

    I enjoyed Bright despite one or two cinematic issues.

    Edited because the embed didn’t work…erg. And spelling….erg.

    Regards,
    Dann
    You can take everything a man has as long as you leave him his dignity. – John Wayne

  2. My wife had us watch it, and she’s proudly not a fan. I thought it was utter crap, and because I have a remote too, we backed up a couple of scenes to watch again, so I could point out things. I hope the hell I don’t have to watch the next one they do. On the other hand, I watched and loved Altered Carbon and she hated the first episode of that.

  3. Not that this is a huge surprise. Critics and reviewers tend to have prejudices against genre and action movies, to the point where you generally have to add 15% or so to the Rotten Tomatoes reviews of such films to get a general idea of how good it actually is. (And this makes the 84% Rotten Tomatoes rating for Ready Player One especially noteworthy, given how much flak the book has taken in recent months.)

    And as an added benefit to being on Netflix, that means that audiences don’t have to risk paying anything extra to see it, so they’re apt to be kinder to it on the whole than someone who feels cheated out of the $15 they spent to see it in a theater. (If MoviePass can survive, perhaps theatrical films will start to see the same sort of benefit.)

  4. No love for Lindsay Ellis’s take on Bright? (Can’t figure out how to embed, sorry)

  5. @Chris —

    (If MoviePass can survive, perhaps theatrical films will start to see the same sort of benefit.)

    Speaking of MoviePass — I have a big beef with them.

    I love the idea, and I loved the implementation — at first. But their customer service is LOUSY. I lost my card when I lost my wallet — and despite several emails to them and a couple of responses from them, I STILL don’t have a replacement card more than a MONTH later. And I’m out in the sticks, so the theater I have easy access to requires the physical card (as opposed to an e-ticket) to actually gain entrance to the movie.

    Yes, I’m cancelling my membership this week.

  6. Which is why I’ll take a critics view over some general “fans” as Bright was garbage, the worst F&SF film of last year. Just on general filmmaking skills it was a mess (did anyone involved understand lighting? Color correction?). Now I don’t know who these “fans” are that liked it, but most people I’ve talked to hated it. If “fan” means a fan of Bright, then it makes sense, if meaningless. If “fan” means F&SF fan, then I don’t think that headline is true. If it just means “people who watched it” then perhaps, but then the general movie-going public is why we have 3 Fifty Shades films.

  7. @Matthew M. Foster

    I liked it enough to put it on my Hugo nomination list. I’m really pulling for Logan to win under that category. Bright had some problems in execution/editing, but there were elements of the story that I thoroughly enjoyed.

    And of course, I don’t spend as much time watching movies for a variety of reasons. So….FWIW.

    Regards,
    Dann
    Insert tag filled with wit, wisdom, and humour here…

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