The Director Of "Suicide Squad" Will Tackle Social Issues In His Next Film

"This isn't some bullshit PG-13 standard issue studio movie," director David Ayer said at San Diego Comic-Con.

On Thursday, Netflix presented the first full trailer for its forthcoming film, Bright, at San Diego Comic-Con.

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Director David Ayer, leads Will Smith and Joel Edgerton, and costars Noomi Rapace, Edgar Ramírez, and Lucy Fry were all in attendance.

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The fantasy film — which was written by Max Landis and will launch on Dec. 22 — is set in modern-day Los Angeles. Smith, who plays an LAPD officer named Scott Ward, described it as a mashup between Training Day and The Lord of the Rings.

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Ayer said one of the things he enjoyed about making Bright was that he got "to explore some social issues ... This isn't some bullshit PG-13 standard issue studio movie," Ayer said. "You haven't seen this before. This is a new kind of thing we're doing."

Edgerton plays one of the first orcs to get to join the police force. "It felt really great to be an African-American police officer that just found somebody else to be racist against," Smith jokingly said.

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"You never get to be on that side of racism when you're black," Smith joked. Later on in the panel, Smith added: "Without hammering on it too much, you just see all of the different layers and the people and all of the different issues. At the end of the day, everybody is just trying to have a good life."

When an audience member asked Ayer if working on a film that dabbles in social commentary was more challenging or liberating, he talked about the unique world Bright creates.

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"What's different about this movie is it takes itself seriously," Ayer responded. "You know the characters in the movie are elves and orcs and all that, but they still have to pay their bills, they still want to be happy, they still get married, they still have kids. Everybody's still leading their lives but there are the social issues, there is the stratification, there is limited mobility."

"It's a fantastic way to look at those issues today without beating people over the head with it," Ayer added. "The sad thing is people just don't want to hear it. They don't want to know what's going out there in the real world."

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