BRIGHT Stills Gives Us a Good Look at Joel Edgerton's Orc Cop; New Details Released
Netflix enters the blockbuster arena this year with
Bright, a film that pairs eternally beloved star Will Smith with his
Suicide Squad director David Ayer. The first trailer for
Brightdebuted during the Oscars, giving viewers a peek at the film’s unique blend of modern-day reality and high fantasy.
“I love how bizarre it is,” Smith tells EW. “I’ve been saying it’s
Training Day — a gritty LA cop drama, the darkness and handheld grittiness — meets
Lord of the Rings. There’s orcs and fairies and elves, mean-ass elves.”
Joel Edgerton plays an orc named Jakoby, the partner to Will Smith’s character. “I am the first orc, under a diversity program, to be allowed into the police force,” Edgerton explains. His fellow officers do not welcome him with open arms. “I’m under investigation already for an incident that involved an orc who should have been apprehended but managed to escape. The feeling is that I looked after my own kind first and neglected to do my job as a result.”
“He’s like the Jackie Robinson of orcs,” Smith says. “He has to make it go right, or other orcs won’t have a shot. So he’s taking on the social responsibility of being a good cop, with the weight of his people on his shoulders.”
Getting into character is an intriguing challenge for Edgerton, who spends up to three hours in the makeup chair becoming an orc. “Orcs are very lumber-y and slow,” he explains, “but they’re also incredibly strong.”
Ayer wrote the script for
Training Day and directed the neo-classic LAPD thriller
End of Watch. To a certain extent,
Bright follows that storytelling tradition, as Ward and Jakoby find themselves on a call that spirals out of control. “The use of magic in this world is illegal, like a high-tech weapon
should be,” Smith explains. The officers receive a call to what appears to be a simple disturbance in a house near downtown Los Angeles. It leads them, Smith explains, to “a discovery of a magical relic, an artifact of the Dark Lord’s war against humanity.”
What ensues pushes the officers to their limit, but Edgerton stresses that it’s an emotional journey. “It’s the forming of a trust relationship between us,” says Edgerton. “I think we are hopefully on our way to becoming friends.”
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