Joel Edgerton on why Bright fared well with audiences but not critics.
David Ayer’s Bright was a bold move on behalf of Netflix with the streaming platform investing a reported $90 million dollars in the Will Smith and Joel Edgerton starring fantasy-action film.
Whilst Bright fared well with audiences, it failed to do so with the critics with many of them condemning the movie for faults with both it’s pacing and premise. This was the exact opposite of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, where the critical response was almost overwhelmingly positive in comparison to a lot of negative fan reaction.
Speaking to Collider at the premiere of his most recent release Red Sparrow, Edgerton was quick to point out why he felt this was the case;
“All I know is what was reported, which was something like – whatever number was reported – something like 11 million that first weekend. Whatever it was, it amounted to a $100 million-plus opening weekend. But, I have to be honest, that’s considering that people don’t have to get in their car, go buy a ticket, go buy the popcorn. There’s a certain age where you can roll over and press play on the remote control. But, according to them, the numbers were there. And I think that would be supported by the wild discrepancy between the audience score and the Rotten Tomatoes aggregate score, it’s almost the inverse of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. You’ve got critics at 93 or 92%, and the audience gave it a 50-something, and you get to Bright, which is sort of slammed by critics, but it has a 90% audience score. I think there was a little bit of extra critical hate towards it because it’s changing the landscape of the movie business, but I think Bright is maybe a movie that needs to be reviewed by public opinion rather than viewed through the highbrow prism of film criticism.”
Netflix have already green-lit a sequel and have stated that it is one of their most popular movie downloads. Ayer is currently developing the sequel and Smith and Edgerton are expected to reprise their roles as L.A. cops Daryl Ward and Nick Jakoby and Edgerton definitely seemed interested in the idea of a sequel;
“The world is very interesting, and I think there’s a certain depth and detail to that world that’s really wonderful. I think on the one hand it’s interesting that some of the criticisms of the film is that some of the analogies about race didn’t go deep enough, and other people said it was obvious and didn’t need to go too far with it because it was there on the surface. I think there’s a lot of fun to be had, there’s more to discover with the characters. I don’t know exactly where they’re going to take it. I got the sense from David that he might take it to a new setting, which I think would be cool to see. I personally was most curious of what was happening outside of Los Angeles, and obviously the world at large is populated by similar characters and how does that affect other cities? I think it’d be awesome to have a look at that. It’s interesting where do Daryl and Nick go now that they’ve had that experience. Is Jacoby now suddenly more accepted because he went through that experience, or is he going to go back to work on Monday and have people mistreat him?
Bright is available now on Netflix (regional variances may apply) and you can read our review by clicking on the link below.