Netflix Says “’Bright” Success Proves Film Critics Are “Disconnected from Mass Appeal”

I thought it was pretty typical Will Smith, the story was interesting, but his cliche "Will Smith" got in the way.

It was worth watching since I didn't have to leave home or pay anything extra to see it.

I will say that I wouldn't have gone out to the theatre to see it......but then again, I'm not a hard core movie goer.
 
I thought it was o.k. I'm pretty much going to check out anything that looks similar to shadowrun/cyberpunk. This obviously was quite there but still worth a watch.

When it comes to t.v./movies I pretty much check comments more than the reviews themselves. I find the forums to have much more relevant information. The only technical reviews I pay close attention to are real/fake 3d/4k stuff because it usually matters towards the tech side of things.
 
hurleybird said:
The average critic nowadays holds left wing progressive beliefs, often bordering on SJW, and has little ability or desire to view a film outside of a political lens. If a film virtue signals to critics, it will absolutely get a better rating. On the other hand, the simple failure to prostrate yourself to SJW demands will earn a beating. Just look at what happened to Iron Fist.
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Iron Fist was just bad. Not everything is about politics.
 
It was only a 26%? Well shoot, I quite liked the movie. But I went in with no real expectations.
 
Personally, I tend to view critical reviews as a filter. IF a movie interests me, I'll look at the reviews. Then unless the reviews are pretty bad, I'll give something a try. A few things I'll watch in spite of critics, but I generally like very few movies that are uniformly lambasted by critics.
 
I thought it was so so. Not great but I am not asking for my 2 hours back either. And it certainly picked up during the second half and was entertaining.
I only watched it because a friend told me that it seemed to draw a lot of elements of Shadowrun into it and I already have a Netflix sub.

I have not paid any mind to "pro" critics for a very long time. They seem to be at best 50/50 with agreeing with me on what I like. So their utility has always been pretty low for me.
 
kju1 said:
I am even willing to let the blatant SJW crap slide that they keep pushing. Star Trek was always a place where that was "fine" but it never had to be pushed and made to stand out. It just was there.
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Star Trek TOS I'd argue pushed progressive politics far more than any of the other series including Discovery.
 
critic are just plain jackasses they are just as human or less than we are..whether they like a film or not means nothing judge for yourself....
 
hurleybird said:
See, I don't buy the entire "critics are looking at films more critically" shtick because there are plenty of examples to the contrary where the unwashed movie-going masses were far more critical of a film than the critical consensus. For instance, take the aggregate scores of the last couple mainline Star Wars movies. The only way to think those movies are 90%+ is to turn off as many mental faculties as possible.

Critics are just ordinary people with ordinary opinions. They don't have any special skill or training that makes them more adept at ranking movies, but their writing skills are substantially above average. Besides that they're also fairly homogeneous and intellectually non-diverse. That's why they tend to voice similar opinions. The average critic nowadays holds left wing progressive beliefs, often bordering on SJW, and has little ability or desire to view a film outside of a political lens. If a film virtue signals to critics, it will absolutely get a better rating. On the other hand, the simple failure to prostrate yourself to SJW demands will earn a beating. Just look at what happened to Iron Fist.
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What are you talking about? Iron Fist was freaking terrible and whatever political mumbo jumbo you're talking about has nothing to do with it.
 
Very true. Iron Fist just sucked hard. One of the comic versions of Iron Fist was a white guy, so anyone tossing a fit and calling it a whitewash came off as stupid anyway. So the SJW influence likely had little to do with that one going away.
 
heatlesssun said:
Star Trek TOS I'd argue pushed progressive politics far more than any of the other series including Discovery.
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Yup but it was well done and not an "in your face if you dont like this theres something wrong with you" style like Discovery has. *shrug*

Anyway I thought Bright was good but a bit slow. But thats been most movies of the good movies lately: an hour of setup that is drawn out filler, and 30 minutes of action.

TMCM said:
What are you talking about? Iron Fist was freaking terrible and whatever political mumbo jumbo you're talking about has nothing to do with it.
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Out of all the netflix marvel tv shows only two were watchable IMO. DareDevil and IronFist. IronFist was kinda meh but at least it was somewhat interesting. The other two were just annoying...
 
Azphira said:
Don't forget these:
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/orville/s01
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/justice_league_2017/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hillarys_america_the_secret_history_of_the_democratic_party/
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Wow The Orville got 20% on RT? It's a really fantastic show, not perfect but really great. However I do shit on Justice League. Rotten Tomatoes isn't always right I guess.

PS way to be dramatic with the Hillary fauxumentary. No kidding that the kind of person to see it would be polarizingly overwhelmingly likely to give it a 5 star rating.
 
DukenukemX said:
Bright wasn't the first to be effected by this disconnecting between the audience. Look at Warcraft the movie, where it too got like a 28% from the critics but the people gave it a 77%. And yet we've condemned the movie because the critics said so. Even before the movie was released it was told to everyone it was a bad movie, and it looks like a lot of people believed them.
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Come on.. The Warcraft movie was terrible and definitely the worst movie I watched that year. The only reason people gave it 77% is because people love WoW and are blind fanboys.
 
kju1 said:
Out of all the netflix marvel tv shows only two were watchable IMO. DareDevil and IronFist. IronFist was kinda meh but at least it was somewhat interesting. The other two were just annoying...
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Um... have to disagree there.... watching Danny Rand spend %80 of the shows run time whining, and the remaining %20 watching him get his ass beat got very old VERY fast... I didn't need 4 episodes of him trying to figure out how to make his fist glow again.... Jessica Jones and Daredevil have me coming back when its being produced.. but the cherry on the top will be Joanne Whalley joining the cast of Daredevil.. had SUCH a thing for her forever & ever :)
 
kju1 said:
Yup but it was well done and not an "in your face if you dont like this theres something wrong with you" style like Discovery has. *shrug*
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I rarely agree with Heatlesun... but in this case he is right. TOR was the by far the most preachy of all the treks... it pushed things harder then everything that came after.

People seem to remember it different perhaps because they where children at the time. TOS was pretty upfront with some attitude with its messages. If anyone here is actually old enough to have watched that show when it first aired they where young, anti Vietnam war messages and messages of inclusion are extremely easy to support today. At the time though they took a far bigger risk pushing a progressive agenda then any of the shows that followed. Now that every other Trek hasn't had a handful of very preachy episodes, sure perhaps TOR had the advantage of some of the great 60-70s Sci Fi writers doing some of the best writing... still the messages where never subtle.
 
bugleyman said:
Iron Fist was just bad. Not everything is about politics.
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TMCM said:
What are you talking about? Iron Fist was freaking terrible and whatever political mumbo jumbo you're talking about has nothing to do with it.
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It was solidly.... average to somewhat below average. Certainly not a 19%, which was the critical consensus, but I'd also say the audience score (76%) is a bit on the high side and possibly is a response to the low critic score. I think anything between 55-70% would be more or less reasonable.

As for not being about politics, multiple reviewers, and as far as I can tell a majority of the negative reviews on Tomatoes, talked about how it was a mistake for not casting the character, who is White in the comics, as an Asian actor instead.

"An Asian American Danny Rand would have been a far more interesting story to tell"

"I can think of no reason Iron Fist would have been worse off for giving the part to an Asian actor"

"Which may in fact be the best argument for re-imagining Danny Rand as an Asian character, instead of the comics-canonical white guy trained in the mystic East"

"And the issues of cultural malfeasance need to be addressed in how this show uses Asian cultures"

"I’m not saying that every TV showrunner should look to Tumblr feeds and tweets to get intel on how to develop a show, but what I am saying is that this story had the potential to be so much greater with casting an Asian American actor"

"Iron First isn't just racially uncomfortable, it's also a boring show"

And it goes on like that. You'd be hard pressed to find a more obvious example of critics judging a film through a political lens.
 
ChadD said:
I rarely agree with Heatlesun... but in this case he is right. TOR was the by far the most preachy of all the treks... it pushed things harder then everything that came after.

People seem to remember it different perhaps because they where children at the time. TOS was pretty upfront with some attitude with its messages. If anyone here is actually old enough to have watched that show when it first aired they where young, anti Vietnam war messages and messages of inclusion are extremely easy to support today. At the time though they took a far bigger risk pushing a progressive agenda then any of the shows that followed. Now that every other Trek hasn't had a handful of very preachy episodes, sure perhaps TOR had the advantage of some of the great 60-70s Sci Fi writers doing some of the best writing... still the messages where never subtle.
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The difference is they abstracted the issues and didn't cudgel you with "XYZ is Trump & his supporters". Most importantly they didn't compromise story telling to send a message.
 
jpm100 said:
The difference is they abstracted the issues and didn't cudgel you with "XYZ is Trump & his supporters". Most importantly they didn't compromise story telling to send a message.
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I'm not sure who is supposed to be Trump or his supporters on Discovery so OK.

Go watch some older Trek... (not trying to look like a massive nerd but I guess I am :) )
TOS - “A Private Little War” - which couldn't be any more anti Vietnam and US politics of the day if it tried.
TOS - “A Taste of Armageddon”
Voyager - “Workforce"
DS9 - "Past Tense"
Enterprise “Terra Prime/Demons” - Anti Trump before Trump. (really if the Terra Prime Terrorists slogan would have been "Make Earth Great again" it would have fit perfectly lol)
DS9 - "The Maquis" - tons of epsoides of DS9 smacking people over the head here with the issues of political policy and their fallout... it perhaps seems more subtle to some, but it really wasn't the message was much the same as the one in A private little war they just hashed it out over an entire season or two.
TNG - "Chain of Command"
TNG - “The Drumhead”

Claiming Discovery is more political then ANY of the previous trek shows is just silly... its about = and perhaps even less so. Really to me Discoverys political allegories have less power not because they are heavy handed... but because they feel like a retread(reboot) of stuff ALL the previous shows already did better. There is nothing new in terms of messages in discovery.
 
I'd say that 19% is a pretty generous score... If they cast Jet Li is Danny Rand it still would have been terrible. The fight scenes were no where near as good as DD, the character was no where near as solidly developed as Luke Cage or Jessica Jones, and the villain was no where near as deep as King Pin or Killgrave. Don't need to read a RT critic review to confirm this, because it was just a terrible show and again politics has nothing to do with it being terrible. By the 4 or 5th episode in I only continued to watch it in the hopes that it tied in DD, LC, and JJ for the Defenders... and that was a whole n'other let down that I don't want to get into

hurleybird said:
It was solidly.... average to somewhat below average. Certainly not a 19%, which was the critical consensus, but I'd also say the audience score (76%) is a bit on the high side and possibly is a response to the low critic score. I think anything between 55-70% would be more or less reasonable.

As for not being about politics, multiple reviewers, and as far as I can tell a majority of the negative reviews on Tomatoes, talked about how it was a mistake for not casting the character, who is White in the comics, as an Asian actor instead.

"An Asian American Danny Rand would have been a far more interesting story to tell"

"I can think of no reason Iron Fist would have been worse off for giving the part to an Asian actor"

"Which may in fact be the best argument for re-imagining Danny Rand as an Asian character, instead of the comics-canonical white guy trained in the mystic East"

"And the issues of cultural malfeasance need to be addressed in how this show uses Asian cultures"

"I’m not saying that every TV showrunner should look to Tumblr feeds and tweets to get intel on how to develop a show, but what I am saying is that this story had the potential to be so much greater with casting an Asian American actor"

"Iron First isn't just racially uncomfortable, it's also a boring show"

And it goes on like that. You'd be hard pressed to find a more obvious example of critics judging a film through a political lens.
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Iron fist was ok not the worst SuperHero show around far from the best.

IMO the main issue with the casting wasn't that Rand was white... it was simply that it the skinny kid the picked was very hard to double. lol

Charlie Cox as Dare Devil was FAR easier to double as he has a more average frame and look. I'm sure there are 1001 stunt doubles that could play Charlie Cox from the side/back and no one is the wiser. I watched IF with my teenage daughter and she had me rolling everytime a fight scene was about to get going... she would say ok Kung Fu time Stunt Double tagin everytime he pulled the hood up.

Not sure why IF is really coming up anyway... think that is one Critics and Fans mostly agreed on. Think meh was the reaction of both groups. :)
 
I would agree, every review i read on say IMDB is some tool thinking they are some professional review board..
 
ChadD said:
Iron fist was ok not the worst SuperHero show around far from the best.

IMO the main issue with the casting wasn't that Rand was white... it was simply that it the skinny kid the picked was very hard to double. lol

Charlie Cox as Dare Devil was FAR easier to double as he has a more average frame and look. I'm sure there are 1001 stunt doubles that could play Charlie Cox from the side/back and no one is the wiser. I watched IF with my teenage daughter and she had me rolling everytime a fight scene was about to get going... she would say ok Kung Fu time Stunt Double tagin everytime he pulled the hood up.

Not sure why IF is really coming up anyway... think that is one Critics and Fans mostly agreed on. Think meh was the reaction of both groups. :)
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The main issue with IF isn't the casting but the story and writing. The hand is a shitty villian so that doesn't help either, wish they would have dropped them for the defenders.

It wouldn't matter who was cast as the IF, there was no saving that mess from the writer.
 
pendragon1 said:
they loved last jedi….
I didn't like it that much. rewatched force awakens and was like wtf happened to last jedi?!

OT, I like Bright. thought it was like a fantasy take on that 80s movie Alien Nation, minus the milk. I thought it tackled the racial tensions well without the whole SJW bs angle.
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Critics are afraid to say anything bad about The Last Jedi because it’s Star Wars and hugely popular. Ironically, most fans seem to think it sucked.
 
movie sucked. Sorry, I wanted to like it so much, it was juts horrifically made for tv.
 
if there isnt a reimagined reincarnation redesigned recreated form of the past "holocaust" in any movie, they wont like it.
the movie has to throw in a "certain reminder" of a "certain demographic" before it gets a pass by hollywood.
 
ChadD said:
Claiming Discovery is more political then ANY of the previous trek shows is just silly... its about = and perhaps even less so. Really to me Discoverys political allegories have less power not because they are heavy handed... but because they feel like a retread(reboot) of stuff ALL the previous shows already did better. There is nothing new in terms of messages in discovery.
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There is something new in it, it is pretentious in your face and over the top, and doesn't even try to be subtle. And it sends messages that serve the exact opposite of their intention. All the old episodes you listed I can remember usually showed political commentary trough a 3rd party, and not trough the main characters themselves. Or when it did it had meaning beyond that as well. It wasn't a political show made out to look like a scifi. It was a scifi that had progressive values integrated seamlessly. It all felt natural. Nothing about discovery feels natural, it's all built from the top down to infiltrate the scifi community with their "values". As political correctness and social justice does with everything. They enter, run it to the ground, then leave a dying carcass behind when they move on to the next thing.

I just couldn't stomach the petty bickering, open insubordination, and general lack of spine shown by the supposed main characters in the very first episode. They preferred to polish their own egos instead of rationally dealing with situations. And they often disregarded the safety of the ship and crew for petty selfish reasons. With these values you shouldn't have made it out of starfleet academy in the first place.

The value it conveyed to me is that "this character achieved this status because she's a woman" instead of "this character achieved this status because of her abilities" The first one is all wrong, and that's all what modern feminism is about. And you can easily substitute the same thing for racism. In the old star treks no female character felt shoehorned in like this, they all seemed to be there because of their professionalism and abilities. The main character in discovery showed no ability and even less professionalism, but a ton of arrogance, and contempt for the male sex, for the sole reason of sex. The show sends the message that as a woman you must hate your superior if he's male. And must support any women regardless of value, just for the sake of being a woman in a leading position.

So basically all the core "values" of social justice is in there.
 
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I wasn't pushed on Bright, but i did think it was panned a little too much by the critics
Same as JL
I liked it
 
This was a pretty good movie... if you just let it play and not think too much.. try to be entertained and you will be. What made that easier for me was no connection to the story or lore if you will. I could not reflect or relate much to the story so its easier to let the movie unfold and enjoy if your not familiar with it. If i had to pick something negative... how easily the elves take out a swat team.. but then have trouble with a couple of regular cops... sure one was a bright, but its a little over the top for me. Over all i did enjoy the movie.
 
The movie was okay. Wasn't blown away, but didn't stop watching half way through. Would love to see how much money this movie actually 'made' (based on whatever metric Netflix uses), but Netflix typically doesn't share that info.
 
M76 said:
The main character in discovery showed no ability and even less professionalism, but a ton of arrogance, and contempt for the male sex, for the sole reason of sex. The show sends the message that as a woman you must hate your superior if he's male. And must support any women regardless of value, just for the sake of being a woman in a leading position.
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Not sure how you're reading all of this into Discovery. The main character betrayed her captain who was also a woman and was extremely loyal and grateful to her male captain for giving her a second chance even though, but the Lorca plot was certainly a twist.
 
DejaWiz said:
Movie critics: doing the thinking for the population by presenting their subjective opinions as gospel.

It's always amazed me how popular some movie critics have become, despite being blatantly biased towards/against certain genres, production companies, directors, actors, and actresses.
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It has always been strange to me why people put so much stock into reviews and reviewers. At the end of the day they are just people like us, but they happen to make a living out of sharing their opinion. There are plenty of things that even I like that my wife doesn't so reviews don't mean shit to me.
 
What makes me smile.. is MOST of these so called 'reviewers', are just some guy or gal with a freaking blog..... congrats.... Jenna Marbles showed you how to be brainless and make money while doing it.. your 'reviews' aren't worth the time it takes to sit through.. bye-bye..
 
heatlesssun said:
Not sure how you're reading all of this into Discovery. The main character betrayed her captain who was also a woman and was extremely loyal and grateful to her male captain for giving her a second chance even though, but the Lorca plot was certainly a twist.
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A twist? I was expecting it since about the second or third time he was on screen...
 
kju1 said:
A twist? I was expecting it since about the second or third time he was on screen...
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The signs were there that something was very wrong with him, especially after that bad hook up with the admiral but he supposedly was the only survivor from the Buran so that was a plausible way to explain the behavior. As far as pushing an in your face political agenda, I'd say the Terran Empire vs. The Federation goes there more than anything else in Discovery to date.
 
heatlesssun said:
The signs were there that something was very wrong with him, especially after that bad hook up with the admiral but he supposedly was the only survivor from the Buran so that was a plausible way to explain the behavior. As far as pushing an in your face political agenda, I'd say the Terran Empire vs. The Federation goes there more than anything else in Discovery to date.
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I hated the guy from the moment he abandoned his ship with crew still on board and thought his excuse was thin at best.
 
ChadD said:
I'm not sure who is supposed to be Trump or his supporters on Discovery so OK.

Go watch some older Trek... (not trying to look like a massive nerd but I guess I am :) )
TOS - “A Private Little War” - which couldn't be any more anti Vietnam and US politics of the day if it tried.
TOS - “A Taste of Armageddon”
Voyager - “Workforce"
DS9 - "Past Tense"
Enterprise “Terra Prime/Demons” - Anti Trump before Trump. (really if the Terra Prime Terrorists slogan would have been "Make Earth Great again" it would have fit perfectly lol)
DS9 - "The Maquis" - tons of epsoides of DS9 smacking people over the head here with the issues of political policy and their fallout... it perhaps seems more subtle to some, but it really wasn't the message was much the same as the one in A private little war they just hashed it out over an entire season or two.
TNG - "Chain of Command"
TNG - “The Drumhead”

Claiming Discovery is more political then ANY of the previous trek shows is just silly... its about = and perhaps even less so. Really to me Discoverys political allegories have less power not because they are heavy handed... but because they feel like a retread(reboot) of stuff ALL the previous shows already did better. There is nothing new in terms of messages in discovery.
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Dude, the showrunner for Discovery literally said that is what the show was about: http://ew.com/tv/2017/09/07/star-trek-discovery-trump-political-divide/

“The allegory is that we really started working on the show in earnest around the time the election was happening,” showrunner Aaron Harberts says. “The Klingons are going to help us really look at certain sides of ourselves and our country. Isolationism is a big theme. Racial purity is a big theme. The Klingons are not the enemy, but they do have a different view on things. It raises big questions: Should we let people in? Do we want to change? There’s also the question of just because you reach your hand out to someone, do they have to take it? Sometimes, they don’t want to take it. It’s been interesting to see how the times have become more of a mirror than we even thought they were going to be.” “North Korea is in our thoughts as we finish the series,” he says. “What began as a commentary on our own divided nation — in terms of Trump supporters and non-Trump supporters — has blown out to North Korea and how we’re right on the brink. [The U.S. is] actually right at the place where Starfleet finds itself in episode one and we couldn’t have anticipated that happening. But how do you end conflict when both sides have such strong opinions?”
 
"It's like a nuclear weapon that grants wishes"

Magic and fantasy are not my thing, but found the movie watchable. Agree that so called critics are too critical, especially of this genre.
 
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