Lucy (2014)

[Cyre2067]

I thought it was pretty good for what it was. At it's core it's a sci-fi action flick, and at that it worked well. Some of the philosophical discussions seemed boiled down and oversimplified. It sounded good but lacked real substance. Then there's the bit with Scar-Jo and her support for Israel... the major reason I refused to see it in the theaters.

 

[Elohir]

Wow thanks elohir! very good responses! I watched a young lady on youtube by the name of makelsi who also gave a good explanation and had some other interesting videos.

I thank you very much for your words. I don't know if these responses are really good but at least I tried to think about it seriously.
As you can guess it took me a while to write all of that but it was a real pleasure too. That's why I thank you a lot for asking these questions !

I thought it was pretty good for what it was. At it's core it's a sci-fi action flick, and at that it worked well. Some of the philosophical discussions seemed boiled down and oversimplified. It sounded good but lacked real substance. Then there's the bit with Scar-Jo and her support for Israel... the major reason I refused to see it in the theaters.

In fact, it's definitely not an extraordinary movie but like I said in my 1rst post, at least it brings us to think a bit and we can't say that for most of current movies...
It only lasts for 90 minutes and you can't treat such a subject as quick as it actually does. But that's enough to start to think about various things.
Concerning Israel, a lot of people around the world, actors, writers, employees, politicians, musicians..... support this estate. Sometimes, it's a lie, an illusion provided to protect themselves against eventual threats towards their family, job. Let's say they feel hidden in the society. In another hand, some people can support Israel just by ignorance or a psychopathic tendency whereas others just don't care about this subject and live their live the way they want it to be.

This is why I didn't want to miss this movie because of a person who is said to support Israel... I'm not closing my eyes about it but I prefer to focus on a theme I find interesting to think and discuss about.

 

[Andrian]

I liked the main idea(about evolving and reaching an upper state of existence a la 4 density lvl ) presented in the the movie,but how it was delivered in the movie,don't know, to me it was delivered very,very, poorely(or better to say it wasn't delivered at all),it had no substance,it's a materialistic,mechanic and cheap entertainment piece of ... The producers of the movie followed loyally the official version of the evolutionism theory: that what evolves is the matter,the physical body no soul,no conscience,if it exists(a soul or conscience) then only as a byproduct thanks to the evolution of the materialistic body(spoiler: which it shows at the end of the movie).And the main character it was portrayed in the movie more like a robot/machine during the evolution process, in some fragments of the movie it was portrayed almost as a cold blooded psychopath.

 

[no-mans-land]

3/

why did she lose her emotions after gaining more access to her cerebral ..
she became so robotic...

Our brain uses to work this way :
A- all that we feel with our senses is treated at first through the lymbic system (emotions center)
B- Then comes the analysis phase through the neo-cortex (analysis center)

The idea is that the more you have knowledges, you are in control of yourself, then your environment, the more your brain passes over the lymbic system to use directly the neo-cortex.
Haven't you noticed that in all movies, books... most of the time high evolved species use to be robotic, emotionless ?
It seems sad to see evolution this way but we can't deny that emotions are often brakes and blockings on the road to improvement. I think that feeling is so good but we have to learn how to control it.
In Lucy, she feels she's losing her humanity (sense of feeling), this is why she wants the policeman to stay with her in order to "remember".

Well, I saw the movie too and that particular part seems to be a misconception at best or a deliberate lie at worst.

Through the studies we do here and throughout confirmed by the experience of many members, the exact opposite should, in fact, be the case here.

While a normal sleeping human being are mostly cut off from his true emotions, crippled and uncapable to feel and express them, a whole world of very powerfull and distinct emotional patterns exist behind the curtain of sleep. Most of them so strong that if someone start to feel a strong emotion evoked by whatever, he will be carried away, unable to control it. In this way, the emotion itself controls the mind. You can observe emotionally driven humans everywhere and if your biological system gets triggered by fear, the fight or flight mechanism, you will see that emotions rule, no matter what you neo cortex want.

On the other side, if your knowledge increase, you also start to know yourself better and better. You start to see what crippled your system, made it working wrong. You then start to fix it bit by bit until you become whole again. In such a state, emotions are there, more defined and way more intense than before, but they do not rule you anymore. They fuel your life and become the source of your creativity.

I guess a truly awakened being is so far away from this robot that was depicted in the movie like a computer from the archetype of an angel (in lack of a better comparison).

 

[Elohir]

3/

why did she lose her emotions after gaining more access to her cerebral ..
she became so robotic...

Our brain uses to work this way :
A- all that we feel with our senses is treated at first through the lymbic system (emotions center)
B- Then comes the analysis phase through the neo-cortex (analysis center)

The idea is that the more you have knowledges, you are in control of yourself, then your environment, the more your brain passes over the lymbic system to use directly the neo-cortex.
Haven't you noticed that in all movies, books... most of the time high evolved species use to be robotic, emotionless ?
It seems sad to see evolution this way but we can't deny that emotions are often brakes and blockings on the road to improvement. I think that feeling is so good but we have to learn how to control it.
In Lucy, she feels she's losing her humanity (sense of feeling), this is why she wants the policeman to stay with her in order to "remember".

Well, I saw the movie too and that particular part seems to be a misconception at best or a deliberate lie at worst.

Through the studies we do here and throughout confirmed by the experience of many members, the exact opposite should, in fact, be the case here.

While a normal sleeping human being are mostly cut off from his true emotions, crippled and uncapable to feel and express them, a whole world of very powerfull and distinct emotional patterns exist behind the curtain of sleep. Most of them so strong that if someone start to feel a strong emotion evoked by whatever, he will be carried away, unable to control it. In this way, the emotion itself controls the mind. You can observe emotionally driven humans everywhere and if your biological system gets triggered by fear, the fight or flight mechanism, you will see that emotions rule, no matter what you neo cortex want.

On the other side, if your knowledge increase, you also start to know yourself better and better. You start to see what crippled your system, made it working wrong. You then start to fix it bit by bit until you become whole again. In such a state, emotions are there, more defined and way more intense than before, but they do not rule you anymore. They fuel your life and become the source of your creativity.

I guess a truly awakened being is so far away from this robot that was depicted in the movie like a computer from the archetype of an angel (in lack of a better comparison).

Totally agreed ! I also think that an evolved person, a awakened one is not an emotionless people. At the opposite, I see this kind of person as someone able to control it with a better understanding of what he is and how things work.
I haven't been specific about what I think about it. I just tried to describe the manner these kinds of beings were generally represented in movies or anywhere else. But when I said that "feeling is so good but we have to learn how to control it." I meant that the "work" is the path we have to walk on in order to succeed in doing it.

 

[Lamadu]

Hi, find this in Lucy.

 

[SMM]

I've seen this film - I thought the ending was a little exagerated. It focused a lot on the material manifestation of 'time' and space i.e. time travel and electromagnetism. They didn't really explore mind and the psychic side, while still implicating that evolution through knowledge is possible.

With Lucy's abilities to transcend time and space, it seemed sort of cliche that she was everywhere at the end of the film. Osit.

 

[gdpetti]

Not having seen the film, the description of the ending sounds like the end of Ghost in the Shell anime... one of the films, where the 'ghost in the machine' her team is tracking asks to merge her what's left of her 'self', as she is a 'ghost in her own machine' so to say(like Robocop)... and like in the film Matrix, 'Where we go from here.... '

 

[luke wilson]

Just saw this movie....

I thought it was rushed and the ideas weren't properly fleshed out. I thought it oversimplified the universe and the role of life. I mean, she was even struggling to exactly figure out what she was meant to do with all that infinite power... There were probably some subtle messages in the movie that I missed but overall, I thought it was a somewhat rushed, oversimplified Hollywood blockbuster. 6/10

Added: I interpreted the end as she had become God. Achieved 100% of her Brain usage and became God.. Omnipresent, omnipotentl and Omniscient.

 

[Woodsman]

A few points struck me:

1. Luc Besson openly tells us (through Lucy's super-intelligent voice) that Math is meaningless, Information is everything, Matter is nothing and Time is the only constant. All of which struck me as confusing and contradictory. He seems to be caught in some sort of mid-point, trying to reconcile his understandings of Materialism and Spiritualism.

2. His ideas seemed very dated. The lynch pin around which the whole film orbits was pulled from the pop-sci lore of a couple of decades ago, when the old chestnut of measuring brain usage in terms of percentages held popular force. "We only use 10% of our brain's capacity!" -Starting from this base assumption, (which from what I gather, is completely erroneous), the director waggles his eyebrows and asks, "Now, consider if you will... What if we were to access 20%? Or 50% of our brains? Or even, dare I suggest it, 100%??? Wooooooo. Doesn't that just blow your MIND!"

No. No it doesn't. Stop that!

While that may be a nifty idea if you happen to be 10 years old and still doggedly pursuing homemade perpetual motion with fridge magnets, Luc Besson is supposed to be an adult. Maybe he's one of those who grew to a certain point and then just stopped? Gurdjieff tells us that this is the common state of most people. (Hm. Does that mean that "most people" get to make 100 million dollar movies?)

3. Again, as with that that other well-made but subjectively horrifying film, "Limitless", I see a deep fascination with drugs. "Transcendence achieved with zero work through the gift of science! Hooray!" -Or put more accurately, "Transcendence achieved through the work of other people; diligent scientists and lab techs laboring off camera. Hooray!"

And what a disaster! Lucy was rocketed up into something like 6th density without having finished her basic soul work. She had the ability to affect matter like a god while retaining barely a monkey’s understanding of social dynamics. Yikes. She clearly had no second thoughts at all while killing and maiming any number of innocent people who had the poor luck to be sharing the motorway with her.

4. And what are we to take from that exactly? Are we to understand that compassion is a purely biological relic, something to be evolved out of and left behind? I see. And where have I heard that one before..? Heck, Lucy tells us herself: "You feel pain. That's all you feel. Pain. It's blocking you."

So.., feel no pain and your super-powers are unlocked? Yes, let's give her the god chair.

In light of this, I suppose it's not very surprising to learn that Scarlett Johansson is a Zionist.

Side note:

Luc Besson also made the 5th Element, which was similarly beautiful to look at. I confess that I enjoyed Lucy much more, in spite of its sore lack of insight. At least it made an effort to ponder interesting subjects where 5th Element was just pointless and weird.

But creative types tend to have recurring visuals/themes running through their works. For instance, in the 5th Element, I seem to recall an alien singer having a/some magic stones hidden inside her stomach which they needed to cut out. Lucy had a bag of blue power-drug in hers.

I’m not going to hazard a guess as to what this might mean in a psychological sense.

 

[Woodsman]

Luc Besson also made the 5th Element, which was similarly beautiful to look at. I confess that I enjoyed Lucy much more, in spite of its sore lack of insight. At least it made an effort to ponder interesting subjects where 5th Element was just pointless and weird.

But creative types tend to have recurring visuals/themes running through their works. For instance, in the 5th Element, I seem to recall an alien singer having a/some magic stones hidden inside her stomach which they needed to cut out. Lucy had a bag of blue power-drug in hers.

I’m not going to hazard a guess as to what this might mean in a psychological sense.

Ooops. I accidentally hazarded a guess as to that last point...

And it's pretty screwed up! -The blue singer in 5th Element was a powerful Mother Archetype, beautiful, perfect and collectively loved by the entire universe. And Lucy was the "First Woman". (And the stuff surgically inserted into her belly was a synthetically mass-produced substance only pregnant women make).

And... (Jeezuz, Luc..!) director Besson saw fit in both films, to bypass the natural process of life and literally have men CUT THE MAGIC OUT OF/INTO HER BELLY for their own purposes. -Either to "Save the Galaxy!" or "Transcend Space and Time!" Why? Because Bruce Willis and Science know best! Yeesh. -Guys like Luc Besson are why there are feminists, and frankly I don't blame them.

I wonder if Luc sees what he did there, or if he is just some kind of tormented soul whose dreaming mind is trying to tell him something?

 

[Divide by Zero]

Hey lamadu, can you please give more details? Not everyone sees what you find- I see the circle 1 heart 2, but it doesn't mean anything to me.

Oh and I agree with most of the rest of the posts. Lucy was not mind blowing... maybe only to the transhumanists LOL

Hi, find this in Lucy.

 

[Andrian]

Luc Besson also made the 5th Element, which was similarly beautiful to look at. I confess that I enjoyed Lucy much more, in spite of its sore lack of insight. At least it made an effort to ponder interesting subjects where 5th Element was just pointless and weird.

But creative types tend to have recurring visuals/themes running through their works. For instance, in the 5th Element, I seem to recall an alien singer having a/some magic stones hidden inside her stomach which they needed to cut out. Lucy had a bag of blue power-drug in hers.

I’m not going to hazard a guess as to what this might mean in a psychological sense.

Ooops. I accidentally hazarded a guess as to that last point...

And it's pretty screwed up! -The blue singer in 5th Element was a powerful Mother Archetype, beautiful, perfect and collectively loved by the entire universe. And Lucy was the "First Woman". (And the stuff surgically inserted into her belly was a synthetically mass-produced substance only pregnant women make).

And... (Jeezuz, Luc..!) director Besson saw fit in both films, to bypass the natural process of life and literally have men CUT THE MAGIC OUT OF/INTO HER BELLY for their own purposes. -Either to "Save the Galaxy!" or "Transcend Space and Time!" Why? Because Bruce Willis and Science know best! Yeesh. -Guys like Luc Besson are why there are feminists, and frankly I don't blame them.

I wonder if Luc sees what he did there, or if he is just some kind of tormented soul whose dreaming mind is trying to tell him something?

You've made very good points Woodsman,i'm agree with you.

 

[bianca etezete]

I watched the movie yesterday, and much of what I would comment is already written.

At one point in the film I remembered a wonderful book I once read: "Flowers for Algernon", Daniel Keyes. It's about a guy named Charlie, who is mentally deficient due to an illness called Phenylketonuria. He somehow gets into a scientific program which is designed to not only cure his disease but alter his brain capacity as well. The book brilliantly is written from Charlies point of view, as he is advised by the scientists to keep a journal and write down more or less everything he is thinking of. [that makes the book a wonderful "english reader beginner book", at least for german readers, because you (as the reader) can grow from simple sentences to not only beautifully written paragraphs but philosophical thinking as well]

Flowers for Algernon is a small book (only in size, but who judges a book by the number of words it takes to tell the story?), so I recommend it as a "bonbon"... but why I tell you this... I think that Keyes did a really good job in describing the altering of Charlies brain and capacity to be aware and think and combine information because he didn't take away any of Charlies human/emotional traits. All the process is accompanied by Charlies emotions, that form his decisions. In comparison to that, Lucy does indeed seem very robotic and detached.

 

[A Jay]

Hey lamadu, can you please give more details? Not everyone sees what you find- I see the circle 1 heart 2, but it doesn't mean anything to me.

Hi, find this in Lucy.

I'm not sure what was meant by, find this in Lucy, either. A little clarification would be helpful.

Haven't seen this yet, but I did enjoy 'Limitless' and substituting any chemicals involved in the plot with tobacco, ketones, and cold showers may lead to some interesting postulations (as was the case with 'Limitless').