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asterrocI saw Lucy yesterday afternoon, and I have lots of thoughts, muchly spoilerific.
10% of the brain myth (non-spoilery)
The whole "humans only use 10% of the brain" myth is so deeply ingrained a premise of the story, that there's really no way to get around it as a viewer. It's really quite a shame that they couldn't have just said it sped up the processing in her brain or something. Really a shame b/c how well-known it is that this isn't true - just look at any MRI or fMRI image and you'll see it.
Body horror
Despite the trailers indicating that the premise was that a bag of drugs was inserted into Lucy's body against her will, I wasn't expecting this film to fall into the category of body horror. But they do have a bunch of indications of the surgery of both herself and three other individuals, plus there's a scene with a bunch of needles being inserted into her body, and double-plus she learns how to transform her body at the end.
Imagery
This is a pretty film, and there's a gimmick that they include nature documentary -esque scenes throughout as an analogy for other things going on on-screen. For example, in the first scene there's a reference to Lucy's name being that given to the australopithecus first discovered, and there's a couple shots of a recreation of Lucy in a museum, and then of an actual real "live" australopithecus out in the wild drinking water from a stream. FWIW though, I don't think that alone makes this film a must-see-in-the-theater film.
Lucy is not a good person and racism
Going into this film I was a little wary of the racism that had been pointed out to me by others. In the trailer, Lucy shoots an Asian man simply because he does not speak English. It turns out that this is not specifically racist in the context of the film, but that Lucy is just not a very good person who doesn't really care about human life. She has various goals in the film (confusing as they are at times), and does not care about what she needs to do to meet those goals. There's a strange "chase" scene in a car where she's racing to get somewhere as fast as possible, no one's actually chasing her, and she causes dozens of car accidents in a European country without caring about the loss of life as a result. She mentions something in the process about death not being permanent, but still it's a callous thing to do. She was a selfish person before her transformation, and even when her mind is opened she's not much better. While the film does not explicitly discuss the fact that her actions are amoral, the implication is there.
Unsatisfying ending (really spoileriffic)
I found the ending to be quite unsatisfying. Throughout the film there's a "countdown clock" which is instead counting up to 100% brain capacity (see what I said about not being able to avoid the bad science premise?), and in the last scene she's going through the last bit of that mental transformation. Earlier in the film she decides (on the advice of Morgan Freeman's character) that her goal is to pass on as much information to normal humans as possible before she dies in just 24 hours or so, and the implication is that she will die when the countdown clock hits 100%. In the last scene, she has Freeman and the other scientists inject her with the remaining drug, and then she goes on a trippy trip through her own body, mind, and the past of the universe. She goes back in time and meets Lucy the australopithecus, and there's an analogy of Lucy (human) reaching her finger out to the other and that Sistine Chapel image where God supposedly gave Adam human intellect. At the same time, there's a firefight going on outside where the Big Bad is trying to get to Lucy to kill her, and her countdown clock is going, and there's this huge tension about whether Lucy will be able to finish her exploration and leave it in a usable form for the scientists before she dies or is killed.
I really thought they'd kill her after she got all the information and right before she was able to transform it for humanity, but she actually lived and put it on a cosmic thumb drive, and then her body disappeared (more body horror involved as she transformed into the computer which made the cosmic thumb drive). She then talks to one of the other characters via his phone, saying "I am everywhere". The people behind me in the theater took this to mean that she is God now, and I can see that, but it didn't jump out at me, and I dunno, I just found that whole last sequence bizarre and unsatisfying.
Stealth feminist film?
In most Hollywood films, the main character (which is usually also the viewpoint character and the sympathetic character) is a man. When it isn't, they have a damned good reason for it and there's no way the story could've been told if it had been a man instead of a woman. Lucy does not fit that mold. There's no strong reason that I can see why the character couldn't've been a man. Sure some parts of the story would've changed (she's depicted as a floozy pre-transformation, while a man character would've been depicted as a jock or a nerd instead), but nothing that breaks the story overall. The closest that comes to a reason for making her a female character is the mirroring of Michelangelo's "The Creation of Adam" on the Sistine Chapel, which has been interpreted as God (in the shape of a brain) infusing Adam with the intellect that allows mankind to rise above the animals. And this mirroring has the feature that it's the genders that gets mirrored, possibly lending credence to the feminist argument.
For part of the film Lucy has a sidekick, Pierre Del Rio, a Parisian police officer. She is depicted as vastly more powerful and competent than him, and at one point he asks her why she even wants him around. She kisses him softly on the lips, and says "to remind me", implied to remind her of her now-lost humanity. When Del Rio is added to the film, I expected him to take over as the viewpoint character as Lucy increasingly loses her connection to humanity, but this doesn't happen. The male secondary protagonist is only barely useful to the female main protagonist, but every action he takes is to further her cause.
Lucy / Scarlett Johansson is not overly sexualized, which I like. There are a couple references to her sexuality, in one case it is used as a kick the dog trope to show that her captors are evil, and in the case of her kissing Del Rio it is so desexualized that to me it just enhanced her own distance from normal humanity.
This film passes the Mako Mori test: "a) at least one female character; b) who gets her own narrative arc; c) that is not about supporting a man’s story."
Final verdict? Wait for Netflix unless you're really into transhumanist stuff.
Originally posted on Dreamwidth.
comments there. Comment here or there.
10% of the brain myth (non-spoilery)
The whole "humans only use 10% of the brain" myth is so deeply ingrained a premise of the story, that there's really no way to get around it as a viewer. It's really quite a shame that they couldn't have just said it sped up the processing in her brain or something. Really a shame b/c how well-known it is that this isn't true - just look at any MRI or fMRI image and you'll see it.
Body horror
Despite the trailers indicating that the premise was that a bag of drugs was inserted into Lucy's body against her will, I wasn't expecting this film to fall into the category of body horror. But they do have a bunch of indications of the surgery of both herself and three other individuals, plus there's a scene with a bunch of needles being inserted into her body, and double-plus she learns how to transform her body at the end.
Imagery
This is a pretty film, and there's a gimmick that they include nature documentary -esque scenes throughout as an analogy for other things going on on-screen. For example, in the first scene there's a reference to Lucy's name being that given to the australopithecus first discovered, and there's a couple shots of a recreation of Lucy in a museum, and then of an actual real "live" australopithecus out in the wild drinking water from a stream. FWIW though, I don't think that alone makes this film a must-see-in-the-theater film.
Lucy is not a good person and racism
Going into this film I was a little wary of the racism that had been pointed out to me by others. In the trailer, Lucy shoots an Asian man simply because he does not speak English. It turns out that this is not specifically racist in the context of the film, but that Lucy is just not a very good person who doesn't really care about human life. She has various goals in the film (confusing as they are at times), and does not care about what she needs to do to meet those goals. There's a strange "chase" scene in a car where she's racing to get somewhere as fast as possible, no one's actually chasing her, and she causes dozens of car accidents in a European country without caring about the loss of life as a result. She mentions something in the process about death not being permanent, but still it's a callous thing to do. She was a selfish person before her transformation, and even when her mind is opened she's not much better. While the film does not explicitly discuss the fact that her actions are amoral, the implication is there.
Unsatisfying ending (really spoileriffic)
I found the ending to be quite unsatisfying. Throughout the film there's a "countdown clock" which is instead counting up to 100% brain capacity (see what I said about not being able to avoid the bad science premise?), and in the last scene she's going through the last bit of that mental transformation. Earlier in the film she decides (on the advice of Morgan Freeman's character) that her goal is to pass on as much information to normal humans as possible before she dies in just 24 hours or so, and the implication is that she will die when the countdown clock hits 100%. In the last scene, she has Freeman and the other scientists inject her with the remaining drug, and then she goes on a trippy trip through her own body, mind, and the past of the universe. She goes back in time and meets Lucy the australopithecus, and there's an analogy of Lucy (human) reaching her finger out to the other and that Sistine Chapel image where God supposedly gave Adam human intellect. At the same time, there's a firefight going on outside where the Big Bad is trying to get to Lucy to kill her, and her countdown clock is going, and there's this huge tension about whether Lucy will be able to finish her exploration and leave it in a usable form for the scientists before she dies or is killed.
I really thought they'd kill her after she got all the information and right before she was able to transform it for humanity, but she actually lived and put it on a cosmic thumb drive, and then her body disappeared (more body horror involved as she transformed into the computer which made the cosmic thumb drive). She then talks to one of the other characters via his phone, saying "I am everywhere". The people behind me in the theater took this to mean that she is God now, and I can see that, but it didn't jump out at me, and I dunno, I just found that whole last sequence bizarre and unsatisfying.
Stealth feminist film?
In most Hollywood films, the main character (which is usually also the viewpoint character and the sympathetic character) is a man. When it isn't, they have a damned good reason for it and there's no way the story could've been told if it had been a man instead of a woman. Lucy does not fit that mold. There's no strong reason that I can see why the character couldn't've been a man. Sure some parts of the story would've changed (she's depicted as a floozy pre-transformation, while a man character would've been depicted as a jock or a nerd instead), but nothing that breaks the story overall. The closest that comes to a reason for making her a female character is the mirroring of Michelangelo's "The Creation of Adam" on the Sistine Chapel, which has been interpreted as God (in the shape of a brain) infusing Adam with the intellect that allows mankind to rise above the animals. And this mirroring has the feature that it's the genders that gets mirrored, possibly lending credence to the feminist argument.
For part of the film Lucy has a sidekick, Pierre Del Rio, a Parisian police officer. She is depicted as vastly more powerful and competent than him, and at one point he asks her why she even wants him around. She kisses him softly on the lips, and says "to remind me", implied to remind her of her now-lost humanity. When Del Rio is added to the film, I expected him to take over as the viewpoint character as Lucy increasingly loses her connection to humanity, but this doesn't happen. The male secondary protagonist is only barely useful to the female main protagonist, but every action he takes is to further her cause.
Lucy / Scarlett Johansson is not overly sexualized, which I like. There are a couple references to her sexuality, in one case it is used as a kick the dog trope to show that her captors are evil, and in the case of her kissing Del Rio it is so desexualized that to me it just enhanced her own distance from normal humanity.
This film passes the Mako Mori test: "a) at least one female character; b) who gets her own narrative arc; c) that is not about supporting a man’s story."
Final verdict? Wait for Netflix unless you're really into transhumanist stuff.
Originally posted on Dreamwidth.
