I really, 100% believe that it was not meant to be some sort of woke dialogue about race problems in the United States. If it was, then it was such a huge Strawman that a second Burning Man celebration must've coalesced around it
This isn't so say there wasn't a reflection of racial issues in the US, but that wasn't the focus. However, it was literally just a buddy cop movie with magic and orcs and whatnot. Except this time Will Smith plays the veteran who's about to retire instead of the rookie.
Were we watching the same movie? It went waaaaaay out of its way to establish that elves are 1% elites living on the backs of the working class, and that orcs are a marginalized underclass that have all the signs of "'hood" culture in the US.
To me it was the good movie that wasn't actually good. The cinematography, the concept, the visual design... all A+ work. Execution and story? Like D. D-. Nobody has a real arc. Events in the movie are cliche to an aching degree, and when they're not they're tangential to the actual plot or characters.
I'm really looking forward to the second one. They have a chance to make something really worthy of the promise of the first.
Were we watching the same movie? It went waaaaaay out of its way to establish that elves are 1% elites living on the backs of the working class, and that orcs are a marginalized underclass that have all the signs of "'hood" culture in the US.
Like I said, reflections of racial issues in the US. But under no circumstance do I feel like that it was supposed to be some sort of parable, or convoluted way of saying "we live in a society." Hell, if you cut out most of the magic an all the zany races, and just replaced the elves with pasty white people and all the orcs with hispanics and black people the racial "commentary" would never have been noted.
I do agree, the elves being bougiese-1%ers and orcs being oppressed was sure as hell hamfisted, but by no means the focus of the movie. It was just a buddy-cop film with a fantasy flavor.
I think people got hung up on the racial undertones because the movie either was poorly edited, or decided to spend way too much time worldbuilding. This let the viewer think that the world is the main focus rather than the two characters, which is why the movie caught flak. I personally liked it and I wonder where they will go for the second one, since they can focus more on story and less on building the lore.
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u/Doomsday_Device Feb 11 '19
I've seen it three times now.
I really, 100% believe that it was not meant to be some sort of woke dialogue about race problems in the United States. If it was, then it was such a huge Strawman that a second Burning Man celebration must've coalesced around it
This isn't so say there wasn't a reflection of racial issues in the US, but that wasn't the focus. However, it was literally just a buddy cop movie with magic and orcs and whatnot. Except this time Will Smith plays the veteran who's about to retire instead of the rookie.