Bright was received so poorly by audiences and critics alike that Landis was unable to recover after an SA scandal like some other Hollywood directors and writers have been able to do so time and time again prior. The truth about cancelation is that you’re only as canceled as the next cool thing you do, since you can’t be canceled by people who never liked you in the first place. That can only be done by your audience. And despite Landis being abandoned by his audience because Bright supposedly sucked so much (I still have yet to see it) Netflix went ahead and greenlit this questionable anime film trying so hard to mimic the feel of something like Batman Ninja, with its cg animated style and crunchy action setpieces set to funky soundtracks. Truly, the end results simply feels like a film where Bright was only used to justify having the Tolkien-esque fantasy genre races in a feudal Japanese setting - a setting more usually coveted by white guys with delusions that it’s their hobbies that make them unattractive rather than the fact that they are repulsive otherwise.
While Landis himself did not have anything to do with this project, the taint of the film he created permeates throughout this film with confused and befuddled fantasy alt-histories being made for the new locale it takes place in. Oddly enough, this film feels less racist than the trailer for Bright even if it prescribes to certain kinds of fantasy racial essentialism that even Wizards of the Coast shy away from now. The film follows a bodyguard, Izou, who is hired by a young elf named Sonya to guide her to Hakodate, a land where only elves live. Accompanying them is the orc, Raiden, who had recently been freed from his shackles as a hired hand and can now choose for himself what he wishes to do. What plays out is a feudal Japan story that has too many moving parts while still having not a lot going on to the point where contrivance has to be the main method of getting from plot beat to plot beat. It doesn’t help that the film’s art style is genuinely a headache to look at. The cg characters would be passable if they didn’t stick to using cg modeled backgrounds for everything, a choice that seems to have only been made so they can move the camera every single shot, just to remind you that it’s there, really. It’s a style of animated filmmaking that feels like its trying too hard to feel like live action, something that in the era of Blue Eye Samurai few have been able to pull off well.
Bright was received so poorly by audiences and critics alike that Landis was unable to recover after an SA scandal like some other Hollywood directors and writers have been able to do so time and time again prior. The truth about cancelation is that you’re only as canceled as the next cool thing you do, since you can’t be canceled by people who never liked you in the first place. That can only be done by your audience. And despite Landis being abandoned by his audience because Bright supposedly sucked so much (I still have yet to see it) Netflix went ahead and greenlit this questionable anime film trying so hard to mimic the feel of something like Batman Ninja, with its cg animated style and crunchy action setpieces set to funky soundtracks. Truly, the end results simply feels like a film where Bright was only used to justify having the Tolkien-esque fantasy genre races in a feudal Japanese setting - a setting more usually coveted by white guys with delusions that it’s their hobbies that make them unattractive rather than the fact that they are repulsive otherwise.
While Landis himself did not have anything to do with this project, the taint of the film he created permeates throughout this film with confused and befuddled fantasy alt-histories being made for the new locale it takes place in. Oddly enough, this film feels less racist than the trailer for Bright even if it prescribes to certain kinds of fantasy racial essentialism that even Wizards of the Coast shy away from now. The film follows a bodyguard, Izou, who is hired by a young elf named Sonya to guide her to Hakodate, a land where only elves live. Accompanying them is the orc, Raiden, who had recently been freed from his shackles as a hired hand and can now choose for himself what he wishes to do. What plays out is a feudal Japan story that has too many moving parts while still having not a lot going on to the point where contrivance has to be the main method of getting from plot beat to plot beat. It doesn’t help that the film’s art style is genuinely a headache to look at. The cg characters would be passable if they didn’t stick to using cg modeled backgrounds for everything, a choice that seems to have only been made so they can move the camera every single shot, just to remind you that it’s there, really. It’s a style of animated filmmaking that feels like its trying too hard to feel like live action, something that in the era of Blue Eye Samurai few have been able to pull off well.
