While my excitement for the new big-budget Netflix film BRIGHT, starring Will Smith as a human cop who partners up with Joel Edgerton as an Orc cop in a modern-fantasy action film, has been well-documented, I still have my concerns. Will the genre elements of a gritty cop drama work well within a high-fantasy framework? Will it be muddled in pointless mythology? Will Max Landis's script squander the film's potential?
But most worryingly: how will Edgerton's Orc cop, Nick Jakoby, actually look like? Because making him work is the key to making the whole film work. If you can't empathize with Jakoby, or if he just looks goofy within the gritty urban setting, the film doesn't work, no matter how great the performances, effects, or anything else around him is.
Well luckily we now have set photos of Edgerton as the Orc cop to see for ourselves:
And here's another one, this one alongside co-star Will Smith:
You know what? I really like his look. While initially disappointed that he wasn't more green, the fact that they're going for a more muted blue/grey look (which evokes some of the Orcs from the LORD OF THE RINGS films, an obvious inspiration) might work better for the gritty "END OF WATCH" tone the film is going for, rather than the bright green that we're used to in things like WARCRAFT and the ELDER SCROLLS games and such.
Furthermore, what's interesting is that the cop car says "City of Los Angeles" on it, meaning this is probably some sort of alternate history (or, if it's anything like the similar SHADOWRUN, it's a world where a certain portion of the population gets "Goblinized" by a catastrophic event). In either case, the film gets me that much more pumped. Yes, Landis involvement be damned.
BRIGHT, directed by David Ayer (END OF WATCH, SUICIDE SQUAD) will magically stream on Netflix 2017.
