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| If you don't respect Luc Besson, Liam Neeson will find you... |
Then I heard about his latest movie, Lucy. I really want to see it, but I'm honestly put off by something. Something like, maybe the entire premise of the movie.
I hate to make judgments before I see something, but I always do anyway. It's human nature to have a reaction to something, even based on limited data. I wrote a post (not a review) on the movie "God's not Dead" without having watched it, based completely on my feelings (and I'm still getting flack for that). I'm not the only one who does this: we come to everything with preconceptions. I think we need to be honest about these feelings, and be willing to change out mind when we review more information.
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| Couldn't have said it better myself. |
That being said, I just can't get past the premise of "Lucy" based on the advertisements. If you are unaware, the idea is that humans make use of only 10% of our brains - on the other hand, Lucy is able to use 100% of hers. Obviously this involves some new technology or an equivalent plot device (described by Morgan Freeman, no less) to "unlock" the additional 90%. This gives her supernatural powers like telekinesis and telepathy judging from the advertisement. Honestly I'm fine with all this. Fantasy is one of my favorite genres.
But why, oh why, must it rely on the old "humans only use 10% of their brains" myth? There are so many other ways to introduce super-powers: why did Besson have to go there?
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| Sorry, what were we talking about? |
I'm no neuroscientist - I don't even play one on TV. But I'm pretty sure that we don't have all this unused brain capacity. Evolution would make sure of that, let me tell you. After all, having a large brain is very costly, in the economics of evolution. Human need to prepare their food using tools or by cooking it to reduce the amount of chewing we must do because our jaws are so small: this is a tradeoff to make room for our big brains. Before modern methods of childbirth (including the C-section), having children was a very dangerous affair for the mother, since the size of a newborn's head often couldn't make it out the birth canal. In fact, the human skull starts out in several pieces so that it can partially collapse during childbirth. There is just no way I can imagine that we would have a noggin full of the ol' grey matter the size that it is if we weren't actually, you know, using it.
Of course I could be wrong. Some things just don't motivate me to run out and do the research because I think that I can extrapolate from my current knowledge. And I do see other people making the same objection, so I suspect I'm in the clear on this one. If I'm wrong, I'm sure someone will let me know.
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| Always with this guy... |
But this is really tangential to my objection, which is not that Luc Besson is not a brain surgeon - it's that my immediate reaction is one of dumb-found awe at the implausibility os the core premise of this movie. It ruins my joy. I did talk a bit about suspension of disbelief when I discussed the Life of Pi - I'm more than willing to give a story some leeway. But I'm not sure I can get my brain into the mode where I will be able to enjoy this movie. I dunno, maybe it's because I'm only using 10% of it.
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