LUCY - Grading & Discussion

[Agent Richard07]

[highlight]***SPOILERS AHEAD***[/highlight]

The Friday release stars Scarlett Johansson as a mob mule who inadvertently ingests a drug she was carrying in her stomach, which allows her to use more of her brain power than any other human in this futuristic world. She gains special abilities: eyes that change color, the sudden ability to write Chinese, superhuman strength and unlimited intelligence.

Fox & Friends host Elisabeth Hasselbeck said that according to a study, 65 percent of Americans believe the brain-use statistic quoted in Lucy is true, and the program sought to debunk the belief in a recent segment. "Of course it's a myth," Dr. David Samadi told Hasselbeck. "I think they're using this as a sound bite to get a lot of viewers. And it's an exciting movie, I would watch it." - Elisabeth Hasselbeck sat down with Dr. David Samadi to debunk the premise of Luc Besson's sci-fi thriller that humans use only 10 percent of their brains.

Official Website | IMDb Page | Wikipedia Entry
Box Office Mojo Page | Rotten Tomatoes Page | Metacritic Page

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVt32qoyhi0[/yt]​

 

[Trekker4747]

Hearing that "10% of the brain" line in the trailer, from Morgan Freeman no less, makes me want to throw things at my TV/wherever I'm seeing the trailer.

Now, I could get behind the idea that we only use 10% of our brain's capabilty because we as humans have a lot more potential but we do use 100% of our brain.

Anyway, ScarJo is a big part of me wanting to see this movie, but other than that it just looks interesting no matter what.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Hearing that "10% of the brain" line in the trailer, from Morgan Freeman no less, makes me want to throw things at my TV/wherever I'm seeing the trailer.

You know it's bad when even Fox News is correcting it.

 

[Trekker4747]

Hearing that "10% of the brain" line in the trailer, from Morgan Freeman no less, makes me want to throw things at my TV/wherever I'm seeing the trailer.

You know it's bad when even Fox News is correcting it.

Yeah, there must be a glitch in the Matrix.

 

[sojourner]

I'm only going to use 10% of my brain to enjoy the movie.

 

[Mr Light]

The trailer actually looks pretty good. I'll catch it this weekend. And hey this is the first proper adult Luc Besson action movie since The Messenger waaaaaay back in 1999!

 

[Agent Richard07]

Now, I could get behind the idea that we only use 10% of our brain's capabilty because we as humans have a lot more potential but we do use 100% of our brain.

Yeah, I'm more behind the untapped potential part. I look forward to seeing how this plays out.

 

[Admiral2]

I'm gonna go with: "At least it was better than Limitless."

Of course, that's a given that since it's a combo of Limitless, Fifth Element and 2001, it would have to be better than Limitless by itself.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

At 10% trailer exposure I was mildly dubious.

At 25% trailer exposure I was turned off completely by the stupidity.

At 50% trailer exposure I was throwing things at my TV in disgust.

Who knows what I'll do at 100%?

 

[Warped9]

I just got back from seeing this and I quite enjoyed it. Yeah, the 10% bit was silly, but skipping that the rest of the film was interesting.

I like how they took an idea to explore and wrapped it in a shoot-em-up flick. The pacing is good and never feels slow. The visuals are very nice.

It certainly didn't drag and you can give them points for brevity. Indeed I think they could have put more into it with the pace things moved at.

I think I'd like to have seen a bit more and the ending seemed a bit abrupt to me. But I did quite enjoy it.

 

[Skywalker]

At 10% trailer exposure I was mildly dubious.

At 25% trailer exposure I was turned off completely by the stupidity.

At 50% trailer exposure I was throwing things at my TV in disgust.

Who knows what I'll do at 100%?

I have no idea.

 

[Agent Richard07]

I just saw the movie.

I don't know where Luc Besson got his inspiration but a lot of the movie seemed rooted in the buddhist concept of mindfulness (see jhana and arupajhana). Lucy starts off becoming keenly aware of her body and surroundings, is able to parse the world around her for progressively more detail, and in the end…

Spoiler: the ending.

…she sees through the veil of reality itself and becomes unified with everything.

Mixed in of course is a lot of pseudoscience and dramatic license. Then there's the counting up to 100% that has a lot of people up in arms. I didn't mind it though (no pun intended). It served it's purpose as a measure of progress and Lucy even tried to debunk it a little. The debunking was poorly done, but at least they tried.

In the end, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. It was great summer fun and you can't go wrong with Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman. I think I prefer Limitless though. At least there, the main character got to have some fun with his newfound intelligence.

 

[Trekker4747]

Lucy

My Grade: C+

To quote "The Cinema Snob"/Brad Jones, "I'm not sure how much I liked this."

This is an odd little film, Lucy is a largely average woman who is trapped by a friend of hers to drop off a suitcase to a drug kingpin where she's captured, has drugs surgically inserted into her abdomen, and intended to be used as a drug mule. Something goes wrong when Lucy is attacked by man who kicks her in stomach, breaking open the drug packet and flooding her body with the drug.

The drug is a synthetic version of a compound the body uses during development to build neural connections and as a result she begins, almost exponentially, becoming a smarter and smarter as she begins to "use more of her brain."

Yes, the movie relies on the ages old idea that "we only use 10% of our brain" when, really, here in the 21st century we should all know better.

A lot of things go wrong, or right, for Lucy as she becomes more and more able to use more of her brain and she develops telekentic, telepathic, and other mutant-powers.

I dunno, it's a very, very, odd film and a lot of nonsense happens in it, particularly near the end as she reaches 100%. But the character makes some odd, and rather dumb, decisions during the course of the movie.

It's enjoyable enough, I suppose. Scarlett Johannson does a good enough job it's a Luc Besson movie so some oddities are probably expected but, in the end it's hard to really tell what the movie has to say. But after one viewing in the theater I think I'm good. Not likely one I'll watch again unless on TV or something.

I think the point in the movie where I was starting to lose it was in airplane lavatory where things went off the rails and then I'm not sure what it was going for.

AND WE USE 100% OF OUR BRAINS DAMMMIT!!!

I'm gonna go with: "At least it was better than Limitless."

I actually liked Limitless, and liked it more than this. But, like in this movie, a large number of the problems stems from the supposedly brilliant character making one big really bad decision causing all of the problems in the movie.

 

[Christopher]

I don't know where Luc Besson got his inspiration but a lot of the movie seemed rooted in the buddhist concept of mindfulness (see jhana and arupajhana). Lucy starts off becoming keenly aware of her body and surroundings, is able to parse the world around her for progressively more detail, and in the end…

Spoiler: the ending.

…she sees through the veil of reality itself and becomes unified with everything.

Now, that might've actually been interesting if they'd left out the percentage nonsense. If they'd approached it more as a Buddhist fantasy/allegory than a pseudoscience fiction film.

Mixed in of course is a lot of pseudoscience and dramatic license. Then there's the counting up to 100% that has a lot of people up in arms. I didn't mind it though (no pun intended). It served it's purpose as a measure of progress and Lucy even tried to debunk it a little. The debunking was poorly done, but at least they tried.

How was it debunked?

This is an odd little film, Lucy is a largely average woman...

They've got to stop hiring actresses who look like Scarlett Johannson to play "average" women.

Something goes wrong when Lucy is attacked by man who kicks her in stomach, breaking open the drug packet and flooding her body with the drug.

The drug is a synthetic version of a compound the body uses during development to build neural connections and as a result she begins, almost exponentially, becoming a smarter and smarter as she begins to "use more of her brain."

This is one of the many things I don't get. Is this some brand-new drug that's never been used before? If not, how come all its users aren't developing super brain powers?

Anyway, I don't know if building more neural connections would increase intelligence. We actually start out with more neural connections in infancy and the number gets trimmed down as we grow, as the neural network of the brain develops the most efficient pathways through trial and error and discards the extras.

 

[Agent Richard07]

Mixed in of course is a lot of pseudoscience and dramatic license. Then there's the counting up to 100% that has a lot of people up in arms. I didn't mind it though (no pun intended). It served it's purpose as a measure of progress and Lucy even tried to debunk it a little. The debunking was poorly done, but at least they tried.

How was it debunked?

With an explanation that I didn't totally catch because it had some fast-talk and a lack of detail. She started off explaining to Morgan Freeman's character that we focus too much on numbers. This came off as the beginning of a slight dig at the whole 10% issue but then she continued on about how everything is relative and exists in the context of time. There was something there but it wasn't addressed to my satisfaction.

 

[Trekker4747]

They've got to stop hiring actresses who look like Scarlett Johannson to play "average" women.

Average in terms of who she is as a person and her intelligence, certainly not in the looks department.

 

[Agent Richard07]

Scarlett Johansson has a certain charm about her. That's what gets people's attention.

 

[Trekker4747]

Scarlett Johansson has a certain charm about her. That's what gets people's attention.

Indeed. Really, were it not for her I don't think I could have stood this movie. My buddy thought she was a little bland in this movie, granting that that was what her character had become as she got smarter, and that made it hard to connect to her character.

Compare this to, again, "Limitless" where as Bradley Cooper gets smarter he also gets more charming and likable as a character.

 

[Agent Richard07]

^ Yeah, I was thinking about that. As much as I liked Johansson, I wasn't too keen on the clichéd stoicism that often accompanies mental advancement in movies and shows.

 

[Mr Light]

Saw it today. It was pretty good but I was hoping there going to be more super-action in it. Also, when your heroine has god-like super powers and the bad guys are some drug dealers with guns... there's not a lot of drama or tension... I was hoping one of the bad guys would take the drugs to get powers too.