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

[Redd the Sock]

Strangely, I didn't care about the 10% thing until after I saw the movie. Anyone holding Hollywood accountable for this kind of stuff needs to visit Cracked.com more often for listings of things TV, movies, or even general knowledge get wrong.

On the other hand, while this movie had the prerequisite set of dumb stuff that happened because "movie" and even more to try and be deep and thought provoking, I kind of lost it over the line about knowledge not being the problem, but ignorance. Aside from this being the fortune cookie advice this film was made to promote, yet somehow, never gets elaborated upon (breaking show don't tell), by the time the credits rolled I was laughing at the idea of a movie professing the need for knowledge and wisdom made adhering to misinformation, thus perpetuating ignorance. It's like the movie missed its own point.

 

[Krantos]

My biggest issue wasn't the bad science. I went in expecting that and simply adjusted my expectations accordingly. Basically, I viewed it as another Super hero movie.

My issue, rather, was that there was very little story here. As soon as Lucy gets her "powers" (for lack of a better word), the antagonists fail to elicit any threat. Lucy herself, while relateable and likeable as a normal human, becomes exceedingly flat as a character once she powers up. The movie was basically get from point A to point B with no real danger or character development. Even the side characters we essentially pointless. There is a dashingly handsome cop that goes along for the ride, but that's pretty much all he does. We learn nothing about him, and the movie could easily have excluded him entirely and lost nothing.


That said, the movie was alright, just not as good as it could have been. The Visuals were fantastic, and the action scenes were well done. But between some bad dialog and poor writing in general, there was very little i can recommend about it.

 

[Krantos]

Also Black Widow simply isn't interesting enough to make a movie about. When you have people with superpowers someone who's good at martial arts will always have mediocre fight scenes by comparison.

Funnily enough, I think a Black Widow movie could be incredibly interesting, largely BECAUSE she has no superpowers. All the shit we know is in that world poses a much bigger threat to someone who isn't Thor or Iron Man.

Also, she has a LOT of emotional and psychological issues that could be explored pretty well. After all, the biggest difference, for me, between the DC and Marvel movies is how the good ones focus on the 'Human' side of the characters.

 

[Tormuse]

I saw the movie yesterday on MovieBob's recommendation. I wouldn't have seen it otherwise, but the idea of Scarlet Johansen kicking ass and hurling dudes around with telekinesis appealed to me enough to overcome any concerns about technical accuracy. (Telekinesis has always been my favourite superpower) And yeah, if you're at all troubled by pseudoscience being passed off as real science, I wouldn't recommend this movie, because this movie totally unapologetically revels in it. I've always believed that you can enjoy any movie if you go into it with the right expectations, and I think the best way to interpret this movie is to assume it takes place in an alternate universe with different laws of physics, because otherwise it doesn't make sense that Lucy can levitate herself the instant she takes the drug, just from extra brainpower, long before she can even reach the point of using 20% of her brain and it wouldn't make sense for Morgan Freeman's character to predict in advance what people would be able to do at each percentage level of brain power usage.

That being said, I still didn't especially enjoy the movie for a couple of reasons: 1) The movie isn't even internally consistent. (That's kind of a dealbreaker for me; I can forgive a movie for making up its own rules if it at least sticks to them) Lucy's development doesn't follow the pattern that Morgan Freeman sets out at the beginning and she conveniently gains and loses powers whenever it suits the plot. 2) All the best parts are in the trailer. If you're watching the movie for the spectacle, just watch the trailer; there isn't much else in terms of special effects in the rest of the movie.

Also, I have an alternative interpretation that could make all of this make sense: Maybe Lucy is just high for the whole movie and everything she does is just the result of a drug-induced hallucination. It would make a lot of things make sense, not the least of which is the fact that she talks like she's high a lot, going on about existential concepts and so on.

 

[Longhorn]

So is no else one bothered by the whole gross vibe this movie is sort of putting off?
Lucy asks a Taxi driver if he speaks English, and when he tells her no, she shoots him. Then she asks his friend, and he frantically says yes. She kills a Taiwanese cab driver, in Taiwan for not speaking ENGLISH. Now you could argue that the cab driver was trying to be a dick, because the fact that he knows "no" means he speaks English. But most people know one or two important words from different languages "no" being a very important one.

What that scene is conveying is that by not speaking English, that cab driver is useless, and shooting him was completely justified. And that's fucked up. Besides, if she's unlocking extra portions of her brain constantly, shouldn't she understand multiple languages?

Why was this movie done with a white lead character anyways? You know that if Taiwanese gangsters wanted to kidnap a young woman and use her as a drug mule, they probably would have gotten a homeless Taiwanese youth. I know, and everyone else on this planet knows in reality they'll look for a young pretty white woman before they look for an impoverished Taiwanese woman.

This movie is just another example of how Hollywood will force the story to be centered around white people in every location on the planet that is mostly populated by people of color, and they decided to hide it under the guise of feminism with lead female character getting back at her male antagonists without taking into regard white people beating up the foreign bad guys is tired as fuck.

 

[tyriless]

Things I knew about Lucy. 1. It was directed by Fifth Element director and scribe Luc Besson. 2. It was going to be really stupid. 3. It had Scarlett Johansson.

What I hoped Lucy was going to be:1. Action packed, eye-winking, but hopelessly silly fun film. 2. Sexy Scarlett Johansson hitting people really hard.

What I actually got. 1. uninspired action (except for one scene which I will get to later), 2. tons of pretension (seriously, this movie is so far up it's own ass it was like listening to some stoned guy rattling on about the interconnetivness of the "universe and stuff" and then to find out he wasn't be sarcastic but serious all along). 3. Scarlett Johansson with the emotive ability of a robot = dull protagonist.

This one scene illustrates most of my problems with the film: Lucy needs more drugs so she can have more time to be alive and super smart n'stuff. Thus, she gets into a car chase scene in Paris where she kidnaps a cop, drives into oncoming traffic, and get's chased by a ton of police, with the latter two getting into spectacular car wrecks all the while being thoroughly disinterested by all of it. Her actual and only response to the dozens of innocent people she has just murdered (and also to endangering the cops life): "You never truly die." That's it. It was as if Luc Besson sat down next to me and went "POW, I just blew your mind!". (He didn't)

So, 40 minutes in, Lucy was the first film I walked out of since Paycheck with Ben Affleck. For an indication of how enjoyable this film was here are some duds that I actually sat through in theaters: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Transformers 1 and 2, Van Helsing, and Paranormal Activity. Yes, these films were more entertaining and less annoying then Lucy.

 

[mrverbal]

This film is GOD AWFUL. I mean, seriously dull and wildly over pretentious.

Yes, it has a few quite funny moments. On one or two occasions the action is kind of cool. But the funny moments nearly all involve you laughing at the film, not with it - laughing at how moronic the characters and dialogue are, or the lack of internal consistency. Laughing at the just amazingly bad plot.

I mean, yes, I would describe it as hilariously bad rather than just bad, but the important part in that is still "bad".

DO NOT PAY MONEY TO SEE THIS FILM.

It was far from the worst thing I've ever seen, but seriously, unless you would go to see sharknado or snakes on a plane at the cinema, stay home.

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

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

I think the level to which people are willing to suspend their disbelief varies from person to person. I'm willing to enjoy almost anything mecha without complaining even though realistically they are wildly impractical; but if someone makes a movie propelling misinformation, like say intelligent design, then it will end up bugging me and affect my watching of the film.

Exactly this. I saw Lucy last night and I left more than a little disappointed. I just couldn't wrap my head around the idea that just because she's using more and more of her brain she can someone break physics and space and start controlling matter and time. I'm fine with special effects and some fantastical things, but when you use a fallacy to justify some truly miraculous stuff a movie just starts to look hoaky.

Also it was just really boring. There wasn't any satisfying action and the humor that was there wasn't all that funny, at least for me. I know the movie was more about the pursuit of knowledge and the gathering of information as salvation for the chaos that is humanity but it just came off as pretentious.

OH and one more thing. Everyone seems really upset about how Lucy kills that cab driver. She doesn't. She shoots him in the leg. He even has a line after she gets in the car with the other driver saying "my leg". So cool your jets people.

Captcha is "bait the line". I'm ready for the hate.

 

[zvate]

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.

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.

OK, I'm sold... Those both sound like movies I'd love to see

 

[hermes]

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.

Yeah, I think that is probably the main problem with the movie for me as well. The moment she gets its powers, all tension disappear because she becomes omni-powerful. By the time she reaches 30% or 40%, she can hypnotize every person into submission, see the layout of an office on the other side of the world, and put a group of people to sleep so, what is the point of the other half of the movie.

At some point in the middle of the movie, they make it look like the downside is that she will suffer a horrible death by eventually falling apart into nothingness; but they solve it relatively quickly and never ever comes back to bite her again, even when she gets twice as much power.

And, I think the problem most people have with the pseudoscience in this movie is not that its a refuted pseudoscience (and, by the way, Bob, you are seriously missing the point if you believe any of it is "harmless". If you want to take the message that "ignorance and superstition is the real root of chaos and wickedness in humanity", you should do better than calling pseudo scientific babble "harmless"); but that it is entirely earnest about it, and its central for the movie. In cases were thin arguments are used to justify science fiction movies, they are used as that a backdrop to create the analogy, but soon left behind to engage on the analogy itself. This movie does not use it as backdrop, it makes it the main point. Every few minutes, a black screen appears to remind us that she still gets to get more "brain power", and the entire second half of the movie is her quest to find people that believe her to reveal "the truth" about the universe to humankind.