Lucy

So Lucy was the movie that a lot of people believed was going to be the vehicle that would take Scarlett Johansson to the top of a superhero like film and possible even point towards her getting her own standalone Marvel film as Blackwidow. I remember so many people believing this was her shot to finally break that glass ceiling.

And... well... its definitely something...

Lucy is the story of a woman with the title name (played by Johansson) who in the beginning gets caught up in a bad situation with a Chinese mafia and ends up being used as a mule to transport a new drug to the markets. When the drugs are introduced into her system, she suddenly opens up her brains capabilities and she has a plethora of abilities and powers.

And honestly, that's the majority of the plot of this film. And I wish I was joking. This movie feels more like an audition tape that Scarlett Johansson had for the newest psychic superhero in the the Marvel Cinematic Universe more than it felt like an actual movie.

And you'd think that this movie would be more interesting in the parts where Lucy is going around using her powers. And don't get me wrong, those parts are kind of cool, but in all reality, we're thrown so quickly into this new character who has no emotions or feelings and is just a brain capabilities robot that we don't really get to know the real Lucy. We get a glimpse of her in the beginning and honestly, that was the part that I liked the most.

Lucy is not a testament saying that Scarlett Johansson cannot act. She definitely can and you can see that in the beginning. She actually has a lot of genuine moments where she's scared. She's unsure. She's anxious. She actually seems like a human being in the beginning of this film.

But there is a distinctive part in the film where its like she was told not to act and just stare blankly into space.

Its not just that she doesn't give off any emotion and acts like a robot, any particle of any kind of character we understood out of Lucy goes away when she gets the drug in her system and starts unlocking parts of her brain. Instead of having human reactions to someone experiencing this new phenomena, Lucy just kind of goes through it and on top of all of that, just becomes a remorseless stone cold killer.

Like I said, we don't have much to go off of as far as any kind of character Lucy is supposed to be, but suddenly she's this mindless robot, just killing people because they're in her way. People give Man of Steel crap because Superman didn't save anybody during his fight with Zod and consequentially, a lot of people died. Now its definitely not on the scale of Man of Steel, but Lucy pulls the trigger on a lot of innocent people. She causes a lot of people, including police officers, to die in horrible automobile accidents, or at best be paralyzed for life. And for what? All to get to Paris and get studied by Morgan Freeman?

Now what I will say about this film is that it is visually appealing. There is a really cool scene where you see the construction and deconstruction of New York throughout time. The physical changes Lucy goes through are really interesting and creative. I'm sure the stunt work and visualization team had a lot of fun with this movie.

However, what I think this movie's biggest problem is, is that it tried too hard to be self important.

Suddenly everything is significant, Lucy goes from being a normal girl, to not just an emotionless robot, but finding the significance in every single little thing that exists.

I'm sure there was a point where she could have gotten to this point where she knows so much that she is pretty much a god-like character. But there was absolutely no transition. She goes from scared girl to emotionless demi-goddess in a quick seizure.

There is a little bit of an attempt to make this movie more focused on Lucy slowly losing her humanity. You can see it a little bit in the dialogue she says where she starts to see all the conventions and human constructions that she believe hold us back meaning nothing to her.

The only action that points towards her drifting away from humanity is the really forced romance between her and the police officer played by Amr Waked and she tells him that he is a reminder... of what? I would assume her humanity but still. Very weak, very forced, and it doesn't really make sense.

The sad part is, the action in the movie is really interesting. While its all based on bullshit theories about locking more than 10% of our brain (that saying is full of shit), the abilities and powers Lucy has in this film are really interesting and they make for a little bit of fun. However, it did create a little bit of confusion, especially in the end. If she's getting so powerful and she needs to focus and do this big science experiment for Morgan Freeman at the end, why wouldn't she go outside, kill all the bad guys going after her by just waving her hand, and then going through the experiment without any interruptions?

Overall, Lucy is a pretty harmless film. As long as you remember that all the theories in it are bullshit, its poorly executed, and Scarlett Johansson's talent is wasted in it, you can at least get some solace in the action, the visuals, and the very fact that this feels more like a short film than it does a feature length film. I don't think you need to go out of your way to see Lucy, but if you stumble upon it, it might be kind of fun to check out if you're just scanning channels.

But those are my thoughts on Lucy? What did you think? Do you think they should make a Black Widow movie? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts via Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me requests for movies I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you'll get updates on new movies and reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. There's a good Cracked video with a theory that Lucy is a prequel to the movie Her. However since I can't get that on here, here's the Behind the Scenes of this film and they explain how they do some of the interesting stunts they do in the film. Enjoy!