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Count-Hoenhiem [2018-11-21 04:36:51 +0000 UTC]

This is much better than the actual movie. It was a shame that it wasn't very good; it had such potential. We didn't get to see any Dwarves. I thought of a Dwarf character in the sequel to Bright. He would be a Dwarf Cowboy who works for that Bureau of Magical Affairs, complete with cowboy hot, a belt-buckle with Dwarven runes on it, Dragon-scale cowboy boots, and last but not least, a combination shotgun-battleaxe. By the way, I know who three of the Eight Races are, but who are the other five?

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MaddKossack115 [2018-11-16 03:35:27 +0000 UTC]

Ok, I haven't checked in for a while (let's just say I've been tuning out your takes on Journals for a while), and I admit I was a bit nervous about you doing this, since the issues of Bright in general are... let's just say touchy (totally unrelated video here /s: www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ML306… ).

I will start off by complimenting the parts that are DEFINITELY better than Bright.  First, having the S.O.L. take over the role of those random gangbangers that harass Ward and Jakoby in spite of having fuck-all to do with the film does render the subsequent action scenes therein non-pointless, and skipping over my personal issues with how they're depicted (to, y'know, not get "touchy" about it), I will admit that their depiction DOES give them a lot more character than the aforementioned random gangbangers.

Second, having Jakoby saving Mikey, and then that merciful good deed actually MEAN something that's lasting in the film (rather than be immediately undone due to an "edgy" re-write before Tikka Deus Ex Machina's away the problem immediately after THAT) is also better.  I do have some minor suggestions for how to re-frame the scene, but that'll come later (and don't worry, they won't be "touchy" at all).

Thirdly, the overall structure of the film, rather than have meaningless cul-de-sacs that only result in different shootout scenes (and ones that don't even keep the "handicaps" they set up, thus undermining the tension - remember when Ward and Jakoby got handcuffed, than initially got targeted by the Inferni while their hands were still bound, but then they break out of them in the span of five or ten seconds after the bullets start flying?), each story beat does contribute something new.

Now, to skip over the "touchy" stuff I don't quite agree with (I sure as hell don't want to spend the rest of the night arguing about THAT), I'll just stick to the stuff that is just a bit head-scratching in terms of plot.

First, that backstory... it IS probably better than Bright, but it runs face-first into a lot of the problems Bright itself had, namely how it tries squaring a fantasy past with a modern future (a section of a video breaking down how that how "9 Races v. Dark Lord War" would have led to a history SO alternate that Los Angeles existing the way it does in the modern day, if it even exists at all, is almost nigh-on impossible: youtu.be/gLOxQxMnEz8?t=2036 ). Your backstory REALLY doesn't help, starting with the opening line:

"- the eight races of one continent encountered the human race from the continent across the sea."

Wait, so with LA still around, we've established that this is, unequivocally, OUR Earth, not some fantasy planet with a vague-analogy/parody of L.A. Terry Pratchet/Fable-style.  So, which continent did the humans come from, and which continent did the other 8 races come from?  Did the races of men from Europe sail across the Atlantic ocean to find the Americas having the 8 races as Native American analogies?  Were the 8 races FROM Europe, to find mankind in the Western Hemisphere?  Was "the continent across the sea" just the Mediterranean separating southern Europe from northern Africa, or was one of the other continents Australia?  Is ATLANTIS still around, and did the 8 races come from there?!

You see how this MIGHT be a tad confusing (and if my initial assumption that one side or the other was the Europeans sailing to the Americas, also a little "touchy")?

I also think you saying the discovery of Brights, specifically the line "some of these newcomers", implying either the humans on 8 races are the only ones capable of making Brights, and also not specifying which group was the "newcomers" in that situation, which only further makes things confusing.

Thankfully, the Dark Lord's war is relatively ok compared to all of those logic bombs I listed...  Well, besides sowing the seed for one giant plothole on par with the bad guy from The Barbarians forgetting his trigger finger was already cut off when trying to use a crossbow (www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAob7L… ), but I'll get to that later.

Now, for the first major suggestion for the story itself (skipping over all the "touchy" stuff as best as I can, as long as they don't actually interrupt the flow of the story) the first action scene with Ward and Jakoby trying to arrest an orc for a "disturbance", only for Jakoby to let the orc go and thus Ward to trust him less, the later reveal that the orc was Jakoby's brother and he wasn't let go for family ties, but because "Mikey doesn't lie and he didn't cause the disturbance" doesn't really make sense when the orc SHOT at Ward and Jakoby, and there's no indication that Jakoby didn't lose the actual shooter in the crowd, which makes it look like Mikey the Orc shot at Ward and Jakoby, but somehow that's alright because he didn't cause the "disturbance" they were initially called in for.

As for how to re-write the scene (or at least make it much more clear the shooter and Mikey were NOT the same orc), I would have the orc shooter by an Inferni member in disguise (since you do reveal that the Inferni are a multi-racial group of wannabe Dark Edgelords instead of an Elves-only club), so have the shooter be wrapped in a clearly medieval cloak (possibly even a Payday-style mask for good measure), and that when he runs into an alley, he uses a spell to pull a literal vanishing act on Ward and Jakoby (only ditching his mask and/or cloak and tossing Mikey his gun so that he'll be arrested instead), with Mikey either being too terrified of getting guns pointed at him by two cops to talk straight, or managing to tell exactly what happend, but Ward not buying one word of it (only realizing Mikey's story was true when it's revealed the shooter is an Inferni later on in the movie).

Skipping ahead a bit, the part with the shootout with the cops being changed so that instead of all four cops trying to pressure Ward into executing Jakoby, but then planning to kill them both anyways, them wanting to use The Wand's power essentially to grant their own wishes (some sympathetic, others just greedy), and that it results in a Blast Out where Ward and Jakoby are the only two to make it out alive does make more sense, but there's some minor quibbles.  1) The Wand "corrupting the minds of the weak-minded" is a bit of a Deus Ex Machina, and frankly undermines the character motivations with "the magic made me act selfish!" - I think it's arguably more interesting if the sheer temptation of "That's magic... That's whatever you want it to be..." is enough to make some people desperate and violent to get it WITHOUT being brainwashed/Drunk On The Dark Side, even if they're law enforcement officers who're supposed to be above chasing their own self-gain (even when, without getting too "touchy", acts of flat-out corruption within real world police departments aren't all that far-fetched).  2) While the motivations for the cops wanting to kill Ward and Jakoby (and in your story's case, each other) make more sense, it also doesn't give the Ticking Clock their deaths causes in the movie (as even if shooting other cops is a bad look, Ward and Jakoby can explain it was legitimate self-defense due to the other cops wanting the Wand for their own gain, and, y'know, drawing their guns while wanting to kill everybody else in the room first).  I think changing it so that one of the four cops was an Inferni member (most likely the one wanting The Wand to become a Bright himself), and so Ward and Jakoby realize calling in for more backup is out of the question with the police force itself compromised by the Inferni.

(A quick additional side-note on the "The Wand doesn't brainwash 'the weak minded' into desiring it" is that the SOL shootout is NOT caused by The Wand corrupting some of their members and/or "making" Tikka shoot first, but the SOL escalating the confrontation due to being Knight Templars, who basically tell the heroes "We WILL take that Wand, and if we have to kill all three of you to get it, WE WILL!!!" - that, and possibly including some of the SOL thinking they should shoot Tikka dead to prevent her from being used as a sacrifice by the Inferni, and Tikka either way shooting first due to the sheer tension of the situation making her panic, possibly botching a spell only meant to scare the SOL off instead of killing one of them)

While there is a sense of destination as opposed to just running around town at random like in the movie, I'm not quite sure what to make of the whole "elven safehouse/spy ring" thing, especially since it's revealed later on that, surprise, they're the Inferni - considering Tikka already almost got killed by the Inferni, and that however she was kidnapped probably had some insider of the elf spy network/security team basically selling her out, so you'd THINK she'd realize something was up, and even if it's not enough to spell it all out, she'd be hesitant to just waltz right back to the elves (probably telling Ward and Jakoby they should try sneaking into the safe house to try finding wand defusal tools, since she can't be certain if one or more of her fellow elves wouldn't try stealing the wand and/or kidnapping her for the Inferni again), or would at least tell Lilieah "we have a mole, so we must change our operations" or something to that effect rather than completely let her guard down.  Oh, and I doubt the back-up sacrifice chamber would be RIGHT FUCKING NEXT DOOR TO THE ROOM ALL THE CHARACTERS ARE IN!!! (Seriously, you could have had Lilieah drive off Tikka in the limo she rode in on, and had Mikey come back (now re-paying Ward's decision not to blow him away in the other SOL shootout) to explain everything, and lead them to the new location that Lilieah and the Inferni are dragging Tikka off to.)

Plus, that whole "FIDO: Fuck It, Drive On" reveal is a bit, er... confusing, since it references the incident when Ward and Jakoby have to let off Lilieah's parking ticket because she has (www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOBXH-… ), and Mikey would not have SEEN that incident, and I doubt the Inferni would joke about them almost getting a parking ticket before the cops decided they weren't worth the hassle, let alone at a time when Mikey would have been able to spy on it.  Plus, the idea "Fido" would confuse Jakoby, when the acronym FIDO was probably set-up during the parking ticket dispute scene to avoid later confusing the audience (with Ward grumbling about it "FNG/SSDD" style), is also a bit of a stretch.

And as for the final scene... I guess the SOL bursting in (likely summoned as The Calvary by Mikey, seeing as he was involved in the other SOL shootout) would be a better explanation for how Ward and Jakoby can manage to outfight the other Inferni, and Tikka being Demonically Possessed by the Dark Lord in the climax does raise the stakes quite a bit, but the way the Dark Lord is beaten...

Hey, remember when I referenced how the origin story for the Dark Lord has sown a plot hole on par with THIS (www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAob7L… )? Yeah, it's been established in the historical legend that the Dark Lord wasn't a Bright... don't you think the DARK LORD would remember that shit?!  I mean, there's presumably some way of testing to see if you're a Bright other than "grab a Wand, and hope you don't spontaneously combust", and even if there isn't, I'd assume that the reason the Dark Lord is revealed to be a non-Bright himself was that his first downfall involved exactly what happens here, i.e. he tried grabbing a wand out of desperation against the Army of 9 Races, and then blew himself to bits doing so.

So, if the Dark Lord either found a way to realize he himself wasn't a Bright (instead relying on sheer charisma to rally a cadre of Brights to his cause of conquest), or is the only one to get a "second chance" after blowing himself up with a Wand the first time he tried it...  WOULDN'T HE REMEMBER NOT TO GRAB THE GODDAMN WAND HE KNOWS HE CAN'T USE WITHOUT BLOWING HIMSELF UP?!?!?!

So, instead of doing that, I would like to tweak Ward's backstory just a bit, and that the incident that killed his partner not only had an orc, but an orc Bright, and that his spell wasn't just the "zap to mush" version in the movie/your Re-Imagining, but a long and torturous way to kill somebody (i.e. flaying the skin, having a magic fire burn you literally from the inside-out, having the body ripped apart by monstrous insects, etc.).  This event not only gives Ward a distrust of other orcs, but also a serious grudge against magic, to the point he flat-out declined what amounts to a "Bright test" offered by the police department since he never wanted to go on any case involving magic.  This results in him ultimately overcoming his grudges not just against orcs, but also against magic, and that (even when he knows he's risking his life trying to learn if he's a Bright "the hard way") he's the one to grab The Wand during the final battle, and the one to save the day.  I would also change it so that instead of just blasting apart the Dark Lord (since that ALSO kills Tikka, which if meant to be tragic, is glossed over to point out the Dark Lord's own stupidity at grabbing a Wand that he forgot would blow himself up AGAIN) I would have it so that Ward "wishes" the Dark Lord to get out of Tikka's body, to not just save someone who was essentially the victim of a magical human shield, but also showing Ward wanted to use magic to save lives, not reduce them to puddles of glowing mulch.

Ok, that took WAAAAY to long to write up.  I'll be heading off to bed soon, so if you do read this, I probably won't be able to get back until much later tomorrow (as I don't think my iPhone at work will be a good way to write an extensive reply to you).

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TheAuthverlord [2018-11-12 05:40:36 +0000 UTC]

Agree with everything that happened though I am a little confused on how Tikka was used in the climax. But then again, not a lot of this was centered around character relationships so all worked out then.

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