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

[BanicRhys]

That's a real shame, this film sounds right up my alley, but unfortunately I can't stand Scarlet Johnhammerstien.

 

[Netrigan]

So in response to why people are dumping on this one for the 10% thing, I'll tell you why I was immediately turned off by it.

In a staggeringly awful summer movie season where I want to see precious little and have been disappointed by everything I did want to see, having the first thing a movie trailer tell me is "YOU ARE SMARTER THAN THIS MOVIE!!!" was an instant turn-off. My eyes were rolling when I should have been watching the pretty high-light reel that was the trailer, but they led with stupid.

And assuming MovieBob's review is on mark, they could have easily worded things a bit differently to avoid one of the most widely known bits of scientific misinformation.

 

[Slegiar Dryke]

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

Amen to that XP you go to movies to turn your brain off for an hour or several, splurge on popcorn, and watch an interesting or weird or neat or whatever story.........my case, unless I trip and go into a documentary movie, I'm not going to see "true facts".........I go for the disconnect XD

OT: definitly going to see this when I can. looked neat before, and still looks neat, with the added bonus of having a favorable review =)plus I liked Maleficent.

 

[80sboy]

Luc Beeson huh? I should have known seeing as we once again have another "I am woman hear me roar as I gauge out the eyes of ten dudes at once" leading famme fatales. That sometimes have godlike abilities to kick a whole lot of ass, that or save the world by screaming at giant planet size balls of flame that are on a collision course with earth. LoL.

Honestly, I'm a big geek for The Fifth Element so... Lulu > Lucy anyday! Multi-pass!


Also on a side note...

Instead of this, how about another Professional but now with Matilda as an adult hit woman? . Yeah... best Natalie Portman flick, and what was she 12 in that movie?

 

[WNxSajuukCor]

I just like to point out that while the trailers talked about brain usage in the movie they talked about "cerebral capacity," probably edited because of the 10% myth. Using that as a stepping stone made things make more sense in terms of sci fi. We can use our brain to control certain functions of our body, but other functions are locked away passively. I can't use my brain to tell my stomach how to digest food, or my heart to pump blood at a certain speed. That's the premise here, people.

Also, would also like to point out the guy she shot for not speaking english:

1) For all we know he was part of the gang that imprisoned and abused her, and 2) he didn't die, she shot him in the leg. He even says it.

 

[irishda]

It's not even the pseudoscience that turned it off for me. Watching all of the trailers led me to wonder where the tension would come from. It sure as hell wasn't going to be from the action scenes where Lucy can just handwave everyone into unconsciousness. It's like a Steven Segal movie x10. You know he's not going to get hurt or even come close to being beaten, so what's the point? We all know the good guy's going to win in the end, but it's nice to see them overcome some hurdles first.

 

[KazeAizen]

Yeah Mythbusters put a hole in the 10% theory long ago. Nice to hear that it's a good popcorn flick, but I'll wait till it out on DVD/Blu-Ray and give it a rental.

7 more days....and it's on!

Though if it frames it as 10% of our mental potential that actually is a nice spin on it. I mean think about it. We use 100% of our body but very few of us use 100% of our bodies potential or unlock it. So if the brain thing is portrayed as that then I find that awesome. Hell I know I'm smart, people tell me I'm smart, but I also know I'm not using all the potential I have in my head.

 

[AxelxGabriel]

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.

AGAIN.

There was another Taxi Driver right next to the one she killed. And HE could speak English. And if she wanted to do something quick, she could've just stolen the car.

There was literally no reason whatsoever for her to kill him. He was murdered in cold blood. Ergo, MovieBobs talk about the Movie propagating Knowledge = Good is bs.

 

[Eddie the head]

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.

AGAIN.

There was another Taxi Driver right next to the one she killed. And HE could speak English. And if she wanted to do something quick, she could've just stolen the car.

There was literally no reason whatsoever for her to kill him. He was murdered in cold blood. Ergo, MovieBobs talk about the Movie propagating Knowledge = Good is bs.

Yeah, I know the part you're talking about and she didn't kill anybody. As she is getting in the car you can see subtitles that say something like "My leg." Implying she shot him in the leg. I'm not saying you're wrong overall, but you did get that kind of wrong. Or maybe I'm misremembering. Whatever.

 

[Groverfield]

So. Anyone else think/understand that use "superhuman" amounts of your brain and it overheats, as in the more chemical energy being used by the machine means more heat produced like when exercising anything else, yes it's not a muscle, but it still burns energy, and is transforming chemical energy into other lower potential chemical energy when it works with less kinetic energy as a byproduct and more thermal energy. If we're talking about a, for a lack of a better term, overclocked brain, why is this never discussed? Or have I just been brainwashed by fake science articles? Also, does anyone else think this biological phenomenon gives credence to the trope of psychic nosebleeds?

 

[IceStar100]

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.

AGAIN.

There was another Taxi Driver right next to the one she killed. And HE could speak English. And if she wanted to do something quick, she could've just stolen the car.

There was literally no reason whatsoever for her to kill him. He was murdered in cold blood. Ergo, MovieBobs talk about the Movie propagating Knowledge = Good is bs.

Yeah, I know the part you're talking about and she didn't kill anybody. As she is getting in the car you can see subtitles that say something like "My leg." Implying she shot him in the leg. I'm not saying you're wrong overall, but you did get that kind of wrong. Or maybe I'm misremembering. Whatever.

How about the scene where she walks into an OR and shoots a man on the table. The reason she gives is his cancer to far gone and he die anyway. So she decide to play executioner. Taking what time he did have away from him. To me the movie became more or less bioshock 1 part two that science with out morals is bad. Here is logic with out compassion is evil. She a ***** and from that point on with the taxi thing she became something like Kratos good movie but not a protagonist you can get behind. Any other movie she'd be the villain.

 

[maxben]

The other big problem with the film is the weird almost racist and sexist vibes I got from the trailer. Yeah, it's exciting to see a female led pseudo-superhero movie. But her origin story is that something was done to her against her will, and she had to survive the trauma in order to obtain her powers. It's practically the same as the overused strong rape survivor cliche.

To be fair, you could say the same about Wolverine or even Batman. I get why we consider it a sexist trope, but I think trauma and violence to character x leading character x to redefine themselves as something stronger is actually quite common for male characters as well as female. The main problem is that the opposite isn't true, there aren't as many female characters who are inherently strong.

 

[gorfias]

Funny, Rotten Tomatoes is giving Hercules a higher grade than Lucy. I think they can both wait for Bluray but I actually want to see Herc more myself.

 

[Mastemat]

First time I saw the preview... all I could think of was Cars...
What with his Perfect Being being able to access all Life's forms due to all forms of life being stored in our DNA...
Horrible psuedoscience based on a small Truth about the world we live in. (In Cars' case it's that human... or in his case Super-Vampire, DNA has the DNA of all "lesser" life that this planet has produced. It stems from those genetic tests on chickens to make them have raptor tails and teeth via activating latent DNA in the egg... It works for them because they evolved out of dinosaurs... Our DNA can't contain wings and feathers... or shells lol)

But if it makes a good sci-fi/fantasy story...
Who cares? Especially if the story isn't some of that antiScience BS like Transcendence... uhg.
It's nice to hear Lucy is proScience... cause we don't need MORE Transcendences.

 

[Coruptin]

MAN LUCY WAS AWESOME YEAH AMAZING
we're doing this because defending lucy scores us some points at getting with scarlett johansson right?
SCREW THE HATERS MAN IF THEY DONT LIKE LUCY OBVIOUSLY THEY DONT LIKE OTHER SCIFI MOVIES AND ARE CHRISTIAN ZEALOTS AMIRITE

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

It's the old "the audience will accept the impossible, but not the improbable" principle again, where there's an uncanny valley between accepting something as a conscious break from reality that's reasonable to give the story somewhere new to go and accepting something because it actually seems legit. This is neither a speculative leap or fantasy element, nor an attempt to grasp and expand upon a real scientific principle (i.e. a hard science fiction element). And unfortunately for this movie and hopefully its profitability, that valley between the two is what's commonly known as "offensively intense stupidity insulting everyone's intelligence".

I think this is probably my big problem with it, I know it would be a little niggle at the back of my head throughout. That said, I'm pretty sure most people involved with the film know it's bollocks (especially given the apparently weighty themes) and I definitely wouldn't let it stop me from appreciating the rest of it.

 

[Eddie the head]

How about the scene where she walks into an OR and shoots a man on the table. The reason she gives is his cancer to far gone and he die anyway. So she decide to play executioner. Taking what time he did have away from him. To me the movie became more or less bioshock 1 part two that science with out morals is bad. Here is logic with out compassion is evil. She a ***** and from that point on with the taxi thing she became something like Kratos good movie but not a protagonist you can get behind. Any other movie she'd be the villain.

I don't know and I don't really care. I wasn't talking about that. I specifically said "I'm not saying you're wrong overall, but you did get that kind of wrong." Also this is kind of a case of "Moving the goalposts." But whatever I'm not trying to argue with you. I was just pointing out a flaw.

 

[sagitel]

If you remove any one of those slices, the line you drew is is no longer connected from beginning to the end. This explains why you cannot just remove parts of the brain and still function normally. You need all of it.

well no. there have been many many cases of people loosing parts of their brain and nothing happening. even now IF you loose some parts of your brain the other parts will grow and do that function for you and nothing will change.

OP: putting the 10% thing away i want this movie soooo bad!

 

[walrusaurus]

So it's Maleficent in a different genre? Cool, this is almost a guaranteed view from me, then.

Lucy, in my opinion, is a far cry from Maleficent. I can see why people would draw the comparison between the two, but they differ in two big ways. The first is scope. Lucy's driving conflict (the chinese gangsters) is neither proportional to its protagonist nor really in any way related to her personal story arc. I do want to spoil anything, so i'll keep it vague, but it becomes clear about halfway through the film that the only reason that the chinese gangsters are still around is so that the movie can stage a big shootout at the end. To say nothing of the fact that an act three shootout between a few dozen people when there's a woman who is essentially God(ess) Almighty within shouting distance is pretty stupid. Compared to Maleficent where the character had an established weakness which was exploited to provide a credible threat in act 3, with a backdrop of a full scale war.

Second, Scarlet Johannsen is no Angelina Jolie. Maleficent succeeded through Angelina Jolie's sheer force of will. She worked the living s--- out of that role. Scarlet's deadpan soulless delivery, while it makes sense in context, is hardly memorable.

 

[MrBaskerville]

I'm seeing this because it's Besson, i don't care that the 10% thing is false, it's a movie, in this universe it's true and that's all that matters. The real question is whether the movie is good or not.