When I sat down to watch Netflix's Bright, I knew that a David Ayer / Max Landis collaboration was going to be as subtle and tasteful as Ed-Hardy-flavored Mountain Dew. It delivered. The entire second half was such a gritty punch-a-thon that part of the script was probably nothing but onomatopoeia. What I wasn't prepared for was how terrible the racial allegory would be. This is something that popular sci-fi and fantasy stories do a lot, and they really don't seem to be getting better at it.

These genres have always been more willing to take on such issues, the theory being that audiences are more willing to hear about the plight of marginalized groups if you dress them up as cool aliens or something. But Bright doesn't make anyone uncomfortable with a discussion about race, because in Bright, the world is practically a racial utopia. Black, white, and Hispanic people are joined together in their hatred of orcs. Or maybe there's still racial tension between humans, but they definitely hate orcs more? And they like elves, I think? Also fairies exist, but they're more like birds than people, with no rights of their own ... it's best if you don't think about it too hard.

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One thing is certain, though. In this movie, we're supposed to imagine black people are orcs. They're segregated into ghettos, they're accused of being naturally violent, and the central plot is about the first orc cop facing discrimination from other cops who assume he has more in common with the scumbags he's supposed to be arresting.