Escape to the Movies: Lucy - It's Almost a Black Widow Movie

[Grabehn]

Hey Bob? For all that talk about Knowledge being good and all, are you completely forgetting the fact that the further her powers get, the less empathetic Lucy gets and how little concern she has about randomly killing people?

She killed a taxi driver just cause he didn't speak English for fuck's sake!

Actually that's precisely what getting that mentally advance would provoke really, considering how "emotions" are usually something that gets in the way, and if she's thinking "rationally" and as it seems, she has limited time, getting things done quicker is kinda of what she'd go for.

 

[SeeDarkly_Xero]

And come on Marvel, give us a Black Widow movie.

Would a black widow movie even work?

-snip- Black Widow moves into position to replace Captain America as the leader of the (reformed) Avengers once Chris Evans retires.

I've said this other places... but where a Black Widow film is concerned... just... no.
Black Widow is an interesting character... but she's not a "leading character" IMO and honestly any attempt to make her one by centering an entire movie on her has to be utterly without fault or you risk diminishing her in the other movies where she's great.
Granted... her film would not likely be as Elektra was to Daredevil... but where she lacks something solo, she adds considerably to team & support dynamics.
And again, she is one of few Marvel female characters with a running title who have an original name and premise that is not the female-counterpart of a male character (She-Hulk, Capt. Marvel, Spiderwoman, etc...) so in that she has a unique appeal.
But on her own, even with Johansson as the actress, I would rather her continue being a substantial part of an ensemble than have Marvel take a swing with her as lead and miss.
With the slate of Marvel films already scheduled but not announced, I think we WILL see a female-led film among them... but I really hope it's not her. I'm personally very satisfied with the way they utilize her in the stories so far.

Though I would not say no to her in any of Marvel's blu-ray one-shots at all.
I would even rather see an entire TV series built around her... but I don't think she carries the iconic stature that these other solo heroes in film have. I think the same is true of Falcon, Hawkeye, and War Machine.
And iconic heroes need strong supporting characters... and those do really well for that specific role.
Give them ample screentime in films on that level and I think they will continue to excel.
To be fair, the right writer/director combination could potentially make it work. But finding that sweet spot is tricky to do and risky to attempt. (James Gunn for GOTG is an excellent example... for while I've always been confident he was the right guy for it, there is no doubt there was inherent risk in the entire enterprise.)
Say Marvel scalped someone like J. H. Williams or Gail Simone to write the film? Maybe...

But when it comes to Marvel putting a female lead up on the big screen, they, because of the nature of the industry and the overall climate of the fan base, can. not. screw. that. up. Not on the first swing.
So no... not on Black Widow. They need something more and I'm willing to wait for it to be done right... not right now.

Just an opinion. And I could be wrong.

 

[Fappy]

Speaking to the bit about Black Widow at the end there, I'd have to agree with you. I wasn't sure she was the right person for the role in Iron Man 2 (even though she wa barely a character then) and some aspects of her performance in the Avengers bothered me. But, Winter Soldier? She fucking nailed the role in that movie, so I really hope they give her her own film eventually. I want more of her!

 

[Steve the Pocket]

And finally there's the Chinese text on the walls, which is just made up of random words. That's a language that is used by a huge percentage of the population, reduced to meaningless set dressing. Imagine how jarring it would be to just see English words like 'apple' and 'box' written large on a wall in a film. There's pretty much zero difference here.

Yeah, there really is no excuse for that in this day and age, especially when major studios personally oversee the dubbing and/or subtitling of their movies into other languages, which includes Chinese in the vast majority of cases. I mean, we've got filmmakers bending over backwards to appease Chinese censors, but actually bothering to write their language correctly, something that doesn't affect the story in any way so you can farm out to the translators you're already paying? Pfft! I'm half-hoping China bans this movie for that, so the studio realizes the impact their decision had.

The 10% myth is annoying precisely because everyone with so much as a middle-school level grasp of science knows it's nonsense, but that still leaves a lot of incredibly annoying idiots who are always taking it completely seriously.

Really? I don't recall learning that in middle school. Maybe I was sick that day.

 

[daxterx2005]

I like how when you say "God" you show Shiggy.

 

[lastjustice]

My whole thing of disliking the stupid over used myth is like taking a bite of a sandwich and getting onions in my first bite, and having pick them off. I might be able to enjoy it from here on , but do I even want to keep going. May be the onions left a bit of their flavor and now I need pull off the lettuce. How much of it do I need pick apart before I just enjoy it...especially when it's my first experience with the sandwich. I don't like a jarringly stupid thing be my initial thing of when I start off a movie. (or just something I hate having right away.) If the movie recovers from the fumble I might forgive it, but they don't always.

Take Edge of Stupidity...I mean Edge of Tomorrow. The set up is completely stupid. No not the aliens crash landing in the middle of Europe...that isn't what I'm talking about, or even the sci fi elements. They screwed up basic real world stuff. As someone who's actually been in the military , I was just rolling my eyes at the first 20 mins of this movie. They would never in a million years force a guy who's made a career of doing PR work to go into combat. Only way that sort of thing would happen is if you had like a say a plane crash...and a limited number of bodies...but when they literally have millions of humans to recruit and send into battle after being properly trained they're going send those guys. That makes as much sense as taking someone and forcing them to perform brain surgery against their will with no experience. The armed forces do not stuff people into combat that have no training there if at all possible. Especially not a deserter, and then arm them with millions of dollars of hardware. This person might use it to try to escape or kill others when they freak the hell out. Having someone who's like that is worse than sending one less person. They are giving you less than nothing. Deserter are throw in the prison...they are done.

There's no way William Cage's CO would ever change orders and hand him over to the General of another country without telling him first.(aside from it was some sort of top secret mission being sprung on him at the last minute, which it wasn't. The armed force is all about long well prepared plans when at all possible. You practice doing something 100 times so one time you really need to do it, you do it right.) If William Cage really didn't want to go...he could resign right then and there. Unlike enlisted guys...commissioned officers can resign. Yet they just dump him on the base, and Bill Paxton talks about going into combat like just some sort of passage of manhood everyone needs to do...when not everyone is cut out for combat. (my roommate is someone I'd never want to go into combat with...the guy would freak out and get us killed.) They don't give someone a day to train and toss them into the meat grinder. You may die out there, but they will give you a fighting chance.

Obviously the movie got more interesting, but the beginning was terrible. I get they wanted come up with a reason a older person like Tom Cruise would be put in the position of a new recruit, as a younger actor could just been that with no one questioning it...but this angle was extremely stupid. I can think of simpler reasons, like he was just at the base filming an ad for the campaign.. (which Operation Downfall...was Operation Failure or backfire already taken?) He went along to show how confident the troops would win, and was just going wear the armor, and hang back as a morale thing not knowing that the critters knew he was coming. Nope they came up with full on stupid reasons.

Lucy looks alright, but I think I will wait till a second run theater gets it like I did with Edge of Tomorrow. I have only so many dollars I want to spend on movies that I see right away....and this been a busy year. Some are going be put in the secondary tier. I suppose if this summer had less going on like a few of the past I'd probably gone and seen Lucy right away, but I have plenty of other stuff to see. (like Guardians of the Galaxy..hell yes!)

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

Black Widow already had a movie of her own. It was called "Captain America: The Winter Soldier."

(Seriously, why was Cap even IN that movie? Black Widow gets to drive the plot, gets the most interesting moral dilemma, and has the most interesting character arc.)

Anyway, this at least sounds like an interesting action movie romp. I too am tired of the "don't mess with nature" narratives that Hollywood seems to keep pumping out.

 

[TheRundownRabbit]

I always thought the "you only use 10% of your brain" thing worked liked this. It's not that you don't use the other 90%, its that you use it passively. The 90% governs things our body does automatically, regulate heart and lungs, digest food, perform maintenance, etc etc. If we did have manual 'control' of 100% of our brain, than we'd probably die because there would be so many things we'd have to do simultaneously to stay alive ont op of firing off every little neuron for every little muscle contraction. The closest we'd get to super powers is probably Luffy's Gear Second...but we'd still die because we're not rubber.

Any-who, this is something I pieced together in my mind when I was younger and I never bothered fact-checking. Is this correct or at least close?

 

[tzimize]

are you joking? The Rock would be PERFECT as Shazam. He has the muscle bound super hero look down but can also bring a naive child like wonder to the part. The only other actor that could do it would be Chris Pratt

as for Black Widow... ehhh her own movie wouldn't be that interesting, I mean she's an assasin ok neat. I would rather have Ms Marvel as the first Marvel Female Superhero to get her own movie.

I'm 100% on board with the Shazam idea. I used to not like The Rock, then I saw Pain and Gain.

 

[Falterfire]

Found the review intersting as always but Bob's last screen has me thinking... Would a black widow movie even work? I know a good movie can be made out of anything but for all her nuance the character is allowed very little range and as one of those connecting elements allowed within multiple different mini-franchises her growth and development would be seriously limited. I know that's a problem for all the characters but they aren't all used as universal multi-verse paste to nearly the same degree...

She's basically a superspy. Spy movies can work. I'm not a great writer, so I'm not going to pretend I have the script, but I can't imagine that it's anywhere close to unworkable as a concept. Plus, we already know she has a lot of history with SHIELD and possibly other agencies - If nothing else they could do a prequel movie focusing on the various Super Spy Stuff that qualified her to be an Avenger in the first place.

 

[otakon17]

Hey Bob? For all that talk about Knowledge being good and all, are you completely forgetting the fact that the further her powers get, the less empathetic Lucy gets and how little concern she has about randomly killing people?

She killed a taxi driver just cause he didn't speak English for fuck's sake!

Actually that's precisely what getting that mentally advance would provoke really, considering how "emotions" are usually something that gets in the way, and if she's thinking "rationally" and as it seems, she has limited time, getting things done quicker is kinda of what she'd go for.

But if her brain is already that advanced shouldn't she be able to instantly analyze and replicate the guy's language he was speaking? I haven't seen the movie, but if you've got ultimate knowledge and KNOW what he's saying and have the capacity to completely understand something within moments of exposure, I'm pretty sure SPEAKING the language would not be beyond you.

 

[MaddKossack115]

I'll be honest - when I saw the trailers for Lucy, I was absolutely DREADING its release - not only did they play up the whole "only use 10% of the Brain" bogus like it was going to take it seriously, but also only shot Lucy as a villain protagonist who showed no emotion, and only used her powers to kill and maim everything in her path - one "joke" involved her shooting a taxi driver for "not speaking English", and having the other drive to the hospital by threatening to kill him too. It didn't help that the other pop culture "Lucy" to have "telekinetic powers of the mind" as her gimick was A) also a villain protagonist (albeit with a far more believable and sympathetic backstory than "forced to be drug mule and 'accidentally' get injected with superpower drugs"), and B) had her name used as a deliberate pun on "Luc-ifer", i.e. the goddamn devil.

But now that MovieBob pointed out how Lucy actually uses her freshly opened mind to do "help everyone for the greater good" good rather than "screw everyone in my way because I have the power" evil, it honestly changes my mind on the movie somewhat. Don't get me wrong, I'm still not sure how the hell a Triad/Yakuza could get their hands on drugs that could give somebody superpowers instead of, say, a high or overdose, how the drugs gave Lucy superpowers instead of outright killing her on the spot, or why ANYBODY would be stupid or desperate enough to keep going after Lucy by the time she begins displaying demigod-like powers (especially if it's still just the criminal gang chasing after her and not, say, an actual army with a potential "nuke 'em as the only way to be sure" back-up plan), but this sounds like an interesting subversion of most "with absolute power comes absolute corruption" storylines, and the parts where Lucy does use her knowledge for mankind's benefit (which ISN'T shown in the actual trailers for some confounded reason) do sound like they would make a nice contrast to the rote-"wronged hero kills the wrongdoers in the most cartoonishly violent fashion possible" setpieces the film otherwise has.

But yeah, I had "I Origins" pegged as a stinker the instant I watched it's teaser trailer online. At first, I thought it was a semi-interesting premise (or at least a fairly harmless one), with the relatively friendly banter between "Hipster Scientist" and "New Age Chick" about science versus spiritualism, but the second they spoiled the twist of the movie ("New Age Chick" dies, but "Hipster Scientist" later learns she's reincarnated as a woman in India... zuh?), and on top of that tried to justify it with "eyes are the windows to the soul" line (since when was THAT ever a pseudo-science theory, and not just a metaphor?! JEEZ!!!), I had it condemned to either be never mentioned by anybody after its initial release, or ripped apart on a "The Lone Ranger"-level by MovieBob. Glad to see how he used it as a perspective flip to point out how Lucy was more palatable than how its dumb trailers tried to make it out to be.

P.S.: Anybody else make jokes about how "I Origins" sounds like it's trying to pass itself off as a prequel to "I Robot"? 'Cause if not, I call dibs!

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

I am very displeased with all the people in this topic failing to grasp the importance of suspension of disbelief in fiction.

 

[Darth_Payn]

Found the review intersting as always but Bob's last screen has me thinking... Would a black widow movie even work? I know a good movie can be made out of anything but for all her nuance the character is allowed very little range and as one of those connecting elements allowed within multiple different mini-franchises her growth and development would be seriously limited. I know that's a problem for all the characters but they aren't all used as universal multi-verse paste to nearly the same degree...

Spoiler: Spoilers for Winter Soldier

I think it could be a good spy movie set before and after the fall of SHIELD. Black Widow (as portrayed in the films) is first and foremost committed to her mission, using any and all means to get to her goal.

You could write a movie with a nice contrast, cutting from pre-Winter Soldier morally dubious missions she did for unclear goals (she was 'just following orders') and her life now, on the run from the governments of the world and left to determine her own goals. It would give her more prominence to rise as an undeground leader, one who works to find and organize a bunch of superheroes for the greater good (possibly encouraging vigilante status to ensure they don't become tools as she did). That way, they get a few goals accomplished:

1) She becomes a glue that extends beyond the Avengers into the Heroes for Hire series they are setting up, along with other franchises.

2) It sets the stage for a Civil War movie, which I really hope will be made.

3) Black Widow moves into position to replace Captain America as the leader of the (reformed) Avengers once Chris Evans retires.

Good ideas here. Maybe in the MCU, Black Widow has some "history" (wink, wink) with Matt Murdoch/Daredevil, like in the main comics universe. You know who's such a huge BW fan, he just sat down one day and hammered out a script for a movie about her, as well as name his daughter Natasha? David Hayter, screenwriter and former voice of Solid Snake. I'm not sure what he's doing nowadays, so Marvel should use his script and bring him aboard to direct as well.

 

[lord.jeff]

Can't say this review really on the movie, all I know about the movie is it's morality. How are the action scenes? How does it handle making tension for a character that can do anything? Does Lucy become a more likable character after shooting an innocent cab driver?

 

[Darth Sea Bass]

I would go see the shit out a Black Widow movie! Also I'd pretty much decided I was gonna go see Lucy when the trailer for it showed before Dawn of the Planet of the Apes earlier this afternoon.

 

[DrOswald]

My problem with the 10% brain thing is not necessarily that it is wrong. It is that it is wrong in a very specific way.

Lets put it this way: Star Gate uses worm holes. Now, all us nerds know that worm holes don't work like that at all. However, one could argue that it is an entry level introduction to the idea of a worm hole. To paraphrase Terry Pratchett, it is an analogy which aids understanding wonderfully while being, strictly speaking, wrong in every possible way.

Science fiction pseudo-science doesn't have to be right. In fact, it can be ridiculously and horribly wrong and still be just fine. But it should lead the viewer to the right questions if they delve deeper. This is how dumb science can still make smart science fiction. It opens the mind to new possibilities.

The 10% brain usage trope does not do that at all. It doesn't raise any interesting questions. If you do go look it up all you find is that it is completely wrong in all the most uninteresting ways. There are no further questions to ask, no more knowledge to seek.

In any case, it wont ruin the movie for me. I just really hate the trope. Looking forward to seeing the movie.

The only thing I wanted to address is the wormhole "science". The fact of the matter is, no one really knows how they work, as we've never been able to create one or actually observe one. They are theoretical and only been discovered via equations in General Relativity studies.

I think the real damage here is that people think they know everything, while science itself is the constant quest for knowledge and change. If new evidence comes along, you retest your theories or laws, even if they are considered "proven facts". However, there are many in the scientific community that use the term "settled science", and have almost a religious like zeal for their theories and that's super dangerous thinking...

The fact is, we don't know. We never fully know. There could be a device that manipulates/controls wormholes (or something similar) for travel. There could be non carbon based life. There could be devices that break the speed of light, cancel gravity, terraform planets. The point of sci-fi, and even science itself, is to imagine what can exist.

The argument about the 10% is another case of pretentiousness by the nerd/geek community. The nicest way I can say it to those who are mad about it is, get the f*ck over it.

But just because we don't know somethings doesn't mean we don't know anything. And we do know this one. We do not use only 10% of our brain. The fact is we do know.

I don't believe that it is pretentious to point out bad writing when criticizing a work. Using the 10% brain excuse in Lucy is bad and lazy science fiction writing. It undermines the central premise of knowledge is power by basing the entire thing on something that is both provably false and perpetuating a basic ignorance of society. It doesn't make the entire movie bad but it is not a good part of the work.

 

[DrOswald]

Hey Bob? For all that talk about Knowledge being good and all, are you completely forgetting the fact that the further her powers get, the less empathetic Lucy gets and how little concern she has about randomly killing people?

She killed a taxi driver just cause he didn't speak English for fuck's sake!

Actually that's precisely what getting that mentally advance would provoke really, considering how "emotions" are usually something that gets in the way, and if she's thinking "rationally" and as it seems, she has limited time, getting things done quicker is kinda of what she'd go for.

But if her brain is already that advanced shouldn't she be able to instantly analyze and replicate the guy's language he was speaking? I haven't seen the movie, but if you've got ultimate knowledge and KNOW what he's saying and have the capacity to completely understand something within moments of exposure, I'm pretty sure SPEAKING the language would not be beyond you.

Well, no. The problem is inputs. She may be able to instantly analyse the language and learn it but she needs enough inputs to establish patterns.

Plus, that happens very early on in the process from what I can see. Almost immediately after the process starts, so all she might be aware of is that she is being hopped up on super smart drugs and needs to get to a hospital right now or she may die. All she shows at that point is that she suddenly learned how to punch a guy good and she can shoot well enough to kill 5 or 6 guys that she got the drop on. Not exactly on the level of instant translation of any language.

edit: Plus, I think the cab drivers are supposed to be part of the group of people who kidnapped her.

 

[Ashley Blalock]

Maybe Hollywood writers only use 10% of their brain and that's why they are so stuck on the myth. Honestly it's not that hard to just say humans have not tapped the full potential of their brains to take off with a cool science fiction story.

What sounds nice to me and may make it too tempting to pass up is the run time. Kind of tired of overly long bloated films so a film that gets there and gets the fun done might be what I'm looking for right now.