This assumes that most people seeing the movie are reading articles about it. Not sure that’s a safe assumption.
It’s not just that Johanssen can act as well as be beautiful, it’s that she’s willing to do a risky film if it intrigues her. “Under the Skin” is a risky film, it calls for nudity, it calls for sex, it has a very strange story to tell. Frankly, it had “small time indie success at best” written all over it, and “flop” a distinct possibility, but Johanssen went for it anyway. Compare that with fanboy darling Jessica Alba … she’s made some flops, but they weren’t RISKY flops, they were just failure.
I think a hot, talented actress who’s willing to take risks is worth keeping around.
I don’t know if the movie’s dumb, or just the premise, but I’m frankly happy that it’s another step towards dispelling the myth about action/adventure movies with female leads doing poorly.
I expected that it would be terrible. But I was dragged to go see it in the theatre.
Career-wise this will enhance her reputation as a lead. This movie is well on its way to a substantial profit.
Yep. Money talks.
Eh. The premise, while not ideal, isn’t really the problem. I was prepared to grit my teeth and just let it slide as the necessary excuse to get me my 90 minutes or so of fun sci-fi/fantasy action hijinks.
The trouble is that it took the premise absolutely seriously, and seemed to be trying to make some sort of Serious Statement about it. So by analogy, if Spider-Man played the radioactive spider thing straight as an arrow, and then tried to make some profound statements about human potential or something based on the spider thing.
Which probably suggests another reason we’re all reacting so badly to this particular bit of aggressive ignorance–the whole 10% myth is, I think, a fave for the new agey/woo/alternative medicine/etc. crowd to trot out now and then, so we’re all ill-disposed toward it to start with.
The movie has its fair share of more mundane sins, FWIW; stuff like the pointless scientists and why the Taiwanese gangsters lock her up in a cell with hilariously inappropriate Chinese on the wall instead of sending her to America to distribute the drugs and how the fuck is everybody just walking into everywhere open-carrying and… so on. I’m not the type of person who usually scruples at that kind of stuff; my ability to suspend disbelief is pretty good, so the fact that I noticed it does not speak well for the flick.
But that stuff would’ve just made it a mediocre action movie. It’s the 10% stupidity that’s got us ranting on about it for three pages and counting.
ETA: I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t entertained; the action was mostly slick and satisfying, though Lucy very quickly turned into a bit too much of an unstoppable badass to be ideal. But I expected that from the trailer, so I let it slide. Really, the aggressive ignorance wouldn’t have been as irritating if it hadn’t had the potential to be a decent flick.
I’m not sure I get all the hate about the 10% of the brain thing. I mean, aren’t seem people smarter and better at certain things (either by natural ability or training), including memory recall and stuff like that? Maybe it doesn’t necessarily mean they are using more percentage of their brain, but it certainly means there are more efficient connections or something developed in their brain, right? So what’s the problem in assuming that if someone were to get everything firing as efficiently as possible inside the brain, they would be able to do SO much more than any one single person? (I agree that telekinesis and changing molecular structures are a bit too much of a stretch, but still…)
That’s exactly the problem there. If you want to give someone mental superpowers, don’t say that they’re using a larger portion of their brain. Say that they’re using their whole brain, just like the rest of us, but they’re using it better than we do.
That’s the problem: it’s been so debunked, so utterly mocked as clichéd bad movie science that everyone with an internet connection must know by now that it’s as nonsensical as explosions making noise in space.
So whoever wrote the script couldn’t bother with a ten second google search checking out the whole basic premise behind their own work. Just ten seconds and Morgan Freeman would be saying something like “it increases the brain connections tenfold” or something.
I only use ten percent of my brain a lot of the time, just to show off, y’know. So there could be something to it!
(Yes, using just 10 percent to write this post, as a matter of fact.)
This is one of the most incoherent movies I’ve seen in a long time. There were a few really good action sequences in there and maybe even an interesting take on feminism or femininity, but the story and the blend of '50s sci-fi-style baloney-non-science-from-a-professor and the illogical use of her powers and and the painfully obvious use of animal footage at the beginning and the maybe racism in the depiction of Asians… and I’m probably forgetting some other stuff. It’s hard to describe the dumbness of this movie in words. When it was over my girlfriend and I looked at each other and said “What was… all of that?!?”
I was bothered by the scene where Lucy walked up to an Asian man, in Asia, and demanded if he spoke English. When he indicated that he did not, she shot him.
Can you imagine, say, a Russian walking up to an American, in America, and shooting him after he indicates he does not speak Russian?
I think the point was that she needed a ride, which meant she needed someone who spoke English, and couldn’t leave any witnesses. So she killed the drive who couldn’t help her and made the other give her a lift. But you’re right that it was an odd moment.
I think y’all missed the caption where the shot driver was heard to moan in chinese or korean or whatever they may have been speaking (“ow my knee!”). I believe she shot him to prevent being followed and to demonstrate her seriousness.
Cheers,
-DF
You’re right. She didn’t kill him but wounded him for the same basic reason I gave. It’s still not the kind of thing you expect a movie heroine to do, and I suspect that was intentional. But with this move it’s hard to tell what the point of anything is.
By the way, that USB drive at the end which supposedly contains the Mind of God?
AmigaOS only.
Everybody knows God’s computer is the Commodore 64.
Please. Anyone who looks around at the intelligence of God’s works knows that it comes from a Timex Sinclair 1000.
$459M of box office later I finally got around to seeing this on VOD, and I have to say that I went in with such low expectations that I enjoyed it. It’s clearly very very stupid, and sophomorically written, and also stupid, but watching ScarJo kick ass for an hour kept it watchable. Plus some good music.