Lucy 2014 Pretentious or Profound ?
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by Blender Dumbass
Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".
Information or opinions might not be up to date.
On the surface level 2014 Luc Besson film Lucy starring Scarlett Johansson is a scientific thesis that is trying to say some grand truth about the world, while pretending to be an action film, to make people go see it. On the other hand though, it is an action film that injects a lot of profound-sounding pretentious pseudo scientific bullshit, to make itself appear as something better than it is: a dumb action movie. Which one of them is it? Or did I miss something? ↩ Reply
Factually speaking a lot of the "science" in the film is straight up wrong. And I'm not talking about facts here. The film constantly shows scientists believing stuff out of the blue without any scientific procedure or rigor or anything of that nature. The idea of passing on the information which Morgan Freeman suggests to Lucy to do, while in the background Lio Tipton character ( you may know her from Riddle Of Fire and Crazy Stupid Love ) is trying to distract her with her bullshit, is based on a fallacy. All of the scientists in this movie are absolutely sure that whatever sensory capabilities her brain might have ( even when unlocking 100% of it's capacity, which is another bullshit this movie talks about ) is sufficient enough to know everything everywhere all at once. ↩ Reply
Humans sense through sensors. We have eyes that are limited. We have ears that are limited. We have touch and heat sensors in our skins. Those are enough to function. And maybe if you will be stupid smart you might be able to use those senses better. But you are still limited. With the stupid ass mega-smart brain that she could unlock somehow the best she could do is to be a Sherlock Holmes type detective character. And interpret her senses using her super-smart brain to reconstruct something that might possible maybe be true. But with the minute misunderstanding, minute error in the senses themselves, or in the brain, everything suddenly becomes very unreliable. She starts hallucinating detail. ↩ Reply
The best case scenario is that this "knowledge" she passes onto them is just a bunch of very deep speculations about the world. None of it is concrete. None of it is real. It could as well be something akin to a "book of everything" generated with ChatGPT. And yet the scientists in the film treat it as something sacred. ↩ Reply
But on the other hand maybe the film works more like Armageddon. Maybe Besson didn't actually care all that much about the science stuff. And just wanted to make something cool. Let's examine the film from this point of view. ↩ Reply
The first half of the film works as a revenge-flick. Lucy is being dropped into a situation where she is the victim. She gets betrayed by her boyfriend, abducted by the Mafia, gets a surgery done on her were something is implanted into her stomack, and almost gets raped by a goon. And then, when the drug is activated, and her brain becomes super sharp and stuff, she becomes this bad-ass assassin character. She kills the goons, removes the bag of drugs from her stomach and gets her revenge. Good stuff. Really fucking good stuff. ↩ Reply
In this case, whatever pseudo scientific science-fiction bullshit Besson would have written, would have mattered very little. We basically get a gritty superhero action film with an origin story. And superheroes rarely make a lot of sense when it comes to science. ↩ Reply
But then comes the second half of the film. ↩ Reply
That part is about Lucy gaining super-intelligence and passing her "knowledge" about everything and everywhere to the scientists. Where the Morgan Freeman character specifically have a conversation with her about "ignorance" and "knowledge". And the thesis of the film seems to be that "knowledge" is always good. And "ignorance" is what makes things bad. Yet in the same time we see Luc Besson's own ignorance on the screen. ↩ Reply
I caught onto something that I saw only this time I watched Lucy. There is a meta-joke from Besson. In the beginning of the film, as Lucy goes through her torture, we also get a lecture from Freeman's character about life and cells and human brain capacity. At one point Mogran Freeman tells the audience that the only creatures that have unlocked more brain-power than humans, are Dolphins. ↩ Reply
Before Luc Besson became a film-maker he wanted to be a Dolphinist. He is kind of obsessed with Dolphins. His 1988 film Le Grand Bleu is a perfect example of Besson's own obsession with Dolphins. It is literally Besson's Dolphin porn. ↩ Reply
And yet here, in the supposedly profound scientific lecture, we hear something factually dubious about Dolphins, which in the same time makes Dolphins rather cool. Maybe Besson is doing a meta-chess move here. ↩ Reply
You know how a lot of the world today is going to shit because people in charge of stuff don't know stuff. For example, take encryption and the "Chat Control" laws. The whole thing happened because the European parliament doesn't know nothing about encryption. This is an example of actual "ignorance" that the movie is addressing here. ↩ Reply
Maybe Besson is trying to make us understand that what we are watching is bullshit. As in, he knows that he can't make the revenge / superhero stuff ( that he really wants to do ) work, without the pseudo-scientific bullshit. And so he pretends for a bit that it isn't bullshit. But hints here and there on the fact that it is in fact bullshit. As if he is saying: if you liked the movie enough that you agree with the thesis on ignorance, and can go through your love for the movie, to see how bullshit it is, you really get the thesis on ignorance. And if you agree with the movie without asking any questions. If you swallow everything the movie throws at you. Then you really didn't get it. ↩ Reply
If Besson is not a dumbass and really made this super-calculated move. Damn! ( I doubt it though. I think Besson just wanted to do shit that sort of sounds cool ). ↩ Reply
Speaking of cool. The direction of Besson in this film is fucking cool. The opening shot of the cell. The slight giggle it has, as if it is dancing to the Éric Serra score. The editing. The tension building of the first sequence. The inserts of animals, to signal what happens in the film, without telling us anything with words. Brilliant stuff. Really fucking cool stuff. ↩ Reply
Then towards the end, the film goes into a car chase? It evolves into a car chase, but starts more as just reckless driving. So that scene is fucking beautiful. This is Besson just showing off. Yes, a lot of the cars in that scene are CGI. I mean, come on, this is not something you can just shoot. But the flow and the energy of the shots. Oh my fucking god. This is mother-fucking great shit. I was watching a lot of Michael Bay movies lately. And Michael Bay would never do a car chase scene like this. It is not raw enough for Bay. It is not in a style of Bay. Yes it has a lot of destruction. A lot of cars on the street get wrecked in a spectacular fashion. But here you don't want to feel the Adrenalin, which is what Bay usually goes for. Here you want to feel the under-control nature of Lucy's brain. Therefor, while the scene has a lot of energy, everything is clean. The flow is phenomenal. Did I say that already? I just really love this scene. ↩ Reply
The visual effects in this scene ( or any other scene ) could look a bit dated today. But everything looks top-notch amazing. From the CGI cars in the chase scene, to the CGI proto-human Lucy which meets Lucy. To everything else in between. The scene in the airport toilet makes me die inside, just from the amount of work that is needed to make it. It is good stuff. ↩ Reply
I kind of feel the ending is a bit weak in this movie. It is poetic, but not satisfying. Unless you really want to think about the whole thesis I wrote about it in the very beginning of this review. In which case the ending works. But not cinematically. ↩ Reply
I don't know. This movie is weird. It is both stupidly good and kind of shitty in the same time. I both really fucking love it and kind of finding it hard to vibe with. It is a very strange film. But it is pretty. I mean Cinéma du look is still kicking. And Besson is still at it. ↩ Reply
Wait... I just figured it out. Besson is delusional. He is Luc and her name is Lucy? Does he mean... ? Oh... shit... ↩ Reply
Happy Hacking!!! ↩ Reply
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Troler
c:0That's kids why taking psychedelics is not going to lead you to profound realizations.
Social field scientists tend to suffer from delusions. Since they tend to first construct concepts and then apply them to the world. Symptoms include: pathological need to classify everything, creation of various vocabulary, shift from "cause and effect" to "and type" thinking, closemindedness. The fact they believed everything Lucy said is not too surprising. Note, I have not watched the film. I am also not a scientists. This is just my outlook as a bystander.
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