No, they just march down into the water apparently entranced by Scar Jo’s backside. No whys or wherefores. One is seen floating about under the water and another under there with him just sort of disappears from inside his skin. That is all the explanation received.
I don’t think they are ever shown together, or have any communication, in the film. He’s just some bloke on a bike with no connection to anything happening.
Getting a shoeing is actually how she gets her powers.
I kept wondering – what can you do if you have complete control of a skin cell? I mean, I got plenty of skin cells, leukocytes, dendrites, etc., and although I don’t consciously control them, I’m not sure there’s a lot I could or SHOULD do with them if I could consciously control them.
Frankly, the movie does sound like a hoot, perhaps BECAUSE of its silly, comic-book premise … but not enough of a hoot that I am going to pay for theater tickets. I’ll catch it when it gets to Netflix or something.
The way the opening part cuts between a wildlife documentary, Morgan Freeman speechifying and Lucy’s extreme stupidity was annoying. It still got stupider thereafter, though.
No, a lot of the stuff that’s in the book is left ambiguous in the film—I thought it was a strong point, because it breaks the ‘aliens are just people with bumpy foreheads’ mold by showing us aliens looking exactly like us, but being different in just about every other way, to the point of being incomprehensible. I’m not sure in what way you think it’s failed, by the way—it’s currently at 86% at Rotten Tomatoes.
That’s the way things are according to the book, but in the film, it’s just one interpretation (and one I found disappointingly mundane upon reading the synopsis of the book).
They’re shown together a couple of times—right at the beginning in the white void, for example. Although motorcycle man never speaks, they clearly do have some interaction, for instance in that scene where he seems to examine her from all four sides.
I saw this last night, having read lots of negatives and spoilery reviews…
But I actually think it’s not being given enough credit.
For example, the mobsters:
Never explain any of their motivations. Their behavior is best explained by assuming that every single thing they tell Lucy is a lie.
In particular, interpret their actions in light of this scenario: There’s a war between crime families. Richard works for a defeated family and is required to make a delivery. He’s pretty sure they’re going to whack him, so he decides to pawn the delivery off on his girlfriend. He gets killed anyway. The boss is killing other enemies as Lucy comes in.
The boss doesn’t even know what’s in the case - they expect a bomb because it came from the rival family, but it’s just a drug. They test it out on a rival junkie who they were going to kill anyway as part of their purge. Now they need to get the drugs out - not just for sale, but because they’re in the middle of a crime war.
But they never get Lucy out. There’s no “coincidence” about her winding up in the same town as Prof Norman - she chooses to go there. I think the gang forgot what to do with her and locked her up as just one more enemy gang member to beat up. (This explanation also helps explain their stash of guns as she breaks out).
And Prof Norman:
Look, basically what we have here is a remake/reboot of the Japanese animation film Akira, right?
So, everything Prof Norman says that sounds stupid… well, partly it’s in-genre pseudo-science, but partly it’s just a bad translation from the original Japanese. He’s not really talking about “brain capacity” - what he really means is the same source of power as in Akira. It’s a difference percentage of connectivity to the central well-spring of power. At 100%, you’re God and you can create a new universe if you want.
Then we just need to change the final phone message to “I am… Tetsuo” and the Akira analogy would be perfect.
So… anyway… as an homage to Akira, I can appreciate it in that light. However, it’s a movie where the viewer is going to have to put in all the effort to force it to make sense. I’m not sure it’s quite as bad as many of the critics are making it out to be, though.
Thank you, that was hilarious. I find it striking that I’ve read several reviews now, and none of them yet have an overlapping set of complaints. There’s just so much stupidity to choose from! This review is more serious and not nearly as entertaining - I get the impression she’s genuinely disappointed at how dumb/offensive it was - but she points out yet another truly laughable error: The cell where Lucy is held has Chinese writing on the walls. I guess this is supposed to add to the ambiance of “foreign = incomprehensible = threatening”. Apparently, it didn’t occur to anyone involved in the production of the film that it would matter what the writing said because some of their audience members just might be able to, y’know, read it. A blogger writes: “I just asked a family member to translate this. They came back with ‘Keep Clean. Apple, scallop & ginger, orange, tomato, grape’.” And I was able to verify this using one of the bajillion free translators available on the internets. So it’s not like it would have been at all difficult for them to have it say whatever the hell they wanted it to say. They just couldn’t be buggered.
In the commercial, she’s shown insta-changing her hair in concert with that line, implying she’s now the bestest quick-change artist/master of disguise evah. I’d of course figure she can also will a tumor away or mend a broken bone by just thinking at it and so on, but, yeah: appearance is, uh, apparently on the table.
I don’t know if this movie is good or bad, but everyone shitting on it because of the 10% brain thing is bewildering. Do you have telekinesis? No? Then it must be true, huh? Man, what would happen if people applied even a modicum of real world logic to sci-fi/fantasy movies like they do this one. The entire genre would collapse under the too cool for school mocking.
I hardly saw anyone shitting on, say, Looper because there was a mutation that gave some people telekinetic powers. OMG! GENETICS DOESN’T WORK THAT WAY YOU GUYS! FAIL MOVIE IS FAIL! 0/10! And that’s probably more deserved since Looper could’ve worked just fine without it and they already expected us to swallow time travel whereas here it’s the central conceit of the whole movie.
EDIT: Also, isn’t the “unlocked potential” sometimes true? e.g. acquired savant system, where people get hit on the head and it unlocks math/art abilities that person never knew they had. Not telekinetics, but meh.
“Leave Britney ALONE!!!”
::clears throat::
Okay, then. How about: “it was a cheap trope used to explain whatever-the-heck Besson wanted, whereas a movie like Looper creates a more interesting, consistent world.” how’s that?
To be clear: I was championing Buckaroo Banzai upthread. Featuring the evil Dr. Emilio Lizardo, Lectroids, and a henchman named John Big Bootie (Boo-TAY!!!) - inconceivability is not the limiting factor.
I’m almost starting to want to see this movie now, and I didn’t before this thread.
Then my work here is…wait, what?
I was thinking of it as more of a mental palate cleanser, if you will. I would put Young Einstein in with BB as a way of not getting too engrossed in the details.
Can we at least agree the other three were execrable?
That’s the point. You can do “unlocked potential” which could be anything, without ever mentioning 10% of the brain, which is ludicrous. It’s like basing a moving on Creationism being true. You can hand wave that away but why alienate the vast majority of your audience before they even sit down?
I guess. Haven’t even seen the movie, but it seems like it could be fun.
I think people think the 10% brain thing being false is some secret that only hip science savvy people know. But pretty much everyone knows it’s not true, which is why everyone is breaking their arms patting themselves on the back for knowing about a common woo myth. But they wouldn’t do it for, say, a ghost story (and a lot of people actually believes in ghosts).
So I guess this is not a sequel to Wendy and Lucy?
I’m going to pretend she is Lucy Pevensie from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe who has been driven insane by a lifetime of ruling over talking animals.
Even if the filmmakers had that in mind that just makes their failure as filmmakers even worse, because they were not merely over their heads but actively sabotaged it by trying too hard to look smart to be smart. As I said in a recent thread, good literature is not about hidden meanings, because good literature is about communicating the important parts to the audience.
I view it more like a premise where someone is sailing over the edge of the flat earth. It’s just too far into stupid territory to recover.
These are not bad points. It makes me wonder how many people in this thread saw Pacific Rim last year? I say with confidence that I have never experienced a worse well-reviewed movie – 72% on Rotten Tomatoes, but contained not an iota of intelligent dialogue or a comprehensible premise or motivation.