"Omnipotence?" Lucy (2014) Review

By Cliff Yung on July 31, 2014

On the idea of omnipotence, Lucy develops the idea as though an answer to the dismally written film, Transcendence, released earlier this year. Lucy’s interests do not fall on the idea of being a forewarning for reaching omnipotence, but is interested in the experience of those that might reach omnipotence. It’s a bit of a speckle that leaves a lot of the complex underlining philosophy out. The director grasps at the subject of ultimate understanding, however, he still falls short but much more spectacularly than Transcendence.

as found on wikimedia.org

The premise of the movie is one that relies on the viewer to believe in pseudo-psychology: “people only use 10 percent of their brains.” For me, and possibly many of the viewers who know a thing or two about psychology, this premise could be a bit tough to swallow. People do use more than 10 percent of their brains every day. Speech is contained in the Broca’s area, usually a small region on the left side of the brain, and motor functions such as walking, associated with a strip of brain between the two hemispheres, already consistently use a significant portion with conjunctions to communicate with other parts of the brain. If you cannot walk and talk at the same time now, you probably still use more than 10 percent to function (without going any deeper: the formation of memories).

Once you get into the rhythm of the movie, it becomes much more interesting. The idea of omnipotence, or of reaching omnipotence, and the experience are somewhat created. There are a lot of combinations of switching points of view; of these, this combination failed to properly represent a powerful imagination of what omnipotence could be or feel. The very end, especially, which coincidentally mirrored the beginning, developed a simple, too simple, and quick, too quick, view of omnipotence might actually be like. It was a bit rushed, making it appear simply like the aliens from Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5, but limited to only knowing of the past.

closest thing to an acid trip
as found on moviepilot.com

The filmography, however, is far from bad and Scarlett Johansson’s acting helped enunciate the purpose of the film. Scarlett Johansson was able to reflect against the ridiculousness of both the premise and the many scenes to develop her character from an emotional person to a numb omnipotent character, thus suggesting the idea that her character Lucy is able to transcend beyond society and possibly its ideals. The movie as I have said before is a spectacle within itself. But, this spectacle takes absolutely no risks in trying to develop the idea of omnipotence. It stays stationary in the aspect of only creating scenes based already within the known imaginations of the public. It avoids omnipotence possibilities that may seem like an acid trip.

Lucy falls short in the imaginative department but picks itself up with a decent amount of good filmography and excellent acting of Scarlett Johansson. I would say that it is a witty movie with creative moments of laughter that relies on or tries to use its own spectacle as a driving force for movie-goers. Its lack of imagination and lack of covering of the complex philosophy limits itself for the long term re-watching of this movie. though. Still, as a spectacle, it does succeed in its own ways.

Trailer: Lucy

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