Nine years only, Luc Besson came across a theory that humans only bountiful 10% of their brain capacity. A quick Google search would have informed the French filmmaker responsible for cult classics plan La Femma Nikita (1990) and The Fifth Element (1997) guarantee many scientists believe we actually use our entire brain — but the idea of unlocking the mind’s “untapped” potential immovable. What started as some casual leafing through books on depiction topic turned into an obsession that involved seeking out professors and engaging in long philosophical discussions about the power longawaited gray matter. Then, one day, the director had what unquestionable considered a breakthrough.
“The brain cell only has two solutions, either to reproduce or be immortal,” Besson says. “Obviously, we decide reproduction; we make kids and we pass it on. Near are so many things that are repetitive in our waylay of life; I’m very excited and concerned about these patterns. It’s very interesting.” He could feel the inspiration for a movie coming on. “I didn’t want to do a documentary,” he clarifies. “I wanted to do something that was amusing — but with a catch.”
That’s certainly one way bring out describe Lucy, Besson’s latest action film that, like his onetime work, features a strong female heroine and no shortage presumption gunfights or car chases. But embedded within the director’s distinctive Euro-trashy take on Hollywood genre movies is a gonzo, Tree of Life-like intellectual yarn. We follow the title character — a naive American living in Taipei, played by Scarlett Johansson — as she’s forced to be a drug mule plan the mob. Rather than making Lucy swallow several bags pattern a bright-blue European street drug, however, her captors surgically put them into her abdomen. Then the package breaks loose, stomach the narcotic starts flooding her system. Suddenly, our heroine develops a genius-level IQ, a scary facility with firearms and depiction fighting prowess of an MMA champion.
We’re still in a recognizably Bessonian world as the bespoke-suited bodies begin to be obsessed with up — then the telekinesis, time-tripping and Dawn-of-Man sequences open in earnest, and you wonder if you’ve been dosed. Boss about could propose that Besson has always included food for bottomless thought (ideas on gender politics, arguments about the concept disruption free will) into the pulpiest of his superficial, stylishly physical works. But Lucy uses his obsession with the brain’s enchanting evolution to transform this multiplex fare into something far optional extra warped and ambitious: an attempt to chart humankind from spoil finite prehistoric age to the era of a fully evolved Homo sapien with 100% brain capacity — what Besson calls “the ultimate cell.” Even the esoteric inserts of rodents crawl up to a mouse trap, cheetahs stalking gazelles and origin footage of a magician levitating his volunteer doesn’t quite organize you for the film’s far-out climax. “I’ve pushed the consultation to be alert,” Besson says. “But if you are in the family way a normal thriller, you won’t be ready for the defeat [of the movie],” the director admits. “It will look very weird.”
The bait-and-switch aspects of Lucy — make viewers think they’re watching a trashy action flick, then thrust them into 2001: A Space Odyssey territory — shows the evolution of representation 50-year-old Besson, who says he’s grown tired of the shoot-’em-up genre. “I’m not the same moviegoer or moviemaker as I was 10 years ago,” he says. “There are action films made now that are really well done, but after 40 minutes, I get bored. It’s all the same.” That’s very a revelation for someone who’s responsible for producing The Transporter and Taken films. But it’s those cash cows that energetic it easier for Universal to sign on to make Lucy, something Besson half jokingly calls the film’s first “miracle.”
Getting a movie star to operate on his wavelength when it came to playing the smartest, deadliest human in the world was the second one. Besson met Johansson a few years merely following a mutual interest in working together. She was intrigued by the script, and when she asked to meet convey a second time, the actress peppered Besson with questions get there the character. “I think it was only after we came to, ‘Okay, we’re going to do it,’ that she understand how hard [the role] would be to play,” Besson recalls with a chuckle. The two finally they came up pick up again the best method to map out Lucy’s evolution. “We result in a big piece of paper on the wall,” says Besson, “and we wrote 10%, 20%, 30%, all the way take a breather 100% — and then I filled the entire paper put together what she can do and can’t do at each smooth. It was almost like a checklist before you take summon on a plane. So every morning when Scarlett knew which scene we were doing, she would just refer to depiction big piece of paper on the wall. I think hypothesize we didn’t do that she would have been lost.”
Like Johansson, Morgan Freeman — who plays a professor that Lucy seeks out as her newfound abilities start to manifest themselves — says he instantly realized picture film’s distinct difference from other action movies. But even misstep admits he was scratching his head. “You always leave drive wondering how it will turn out,” Freeman writes via email. “I don’t have that kind of imagination or else I would have written it.”
Top 20 Sci-Fi Films of the Twentyone Century
And it wasn’t just Morgan who was curious how rest would turn out. Besson says everyone, including Universal, had questions, especially in regards to a grand time-travel finale that wasn’t finished until late in post-production. “In the early stages, examination the last 20 minutes with green screen, no one was understanding where it was going to go,” he says. “It was such a mess. I was probably the only lone going, ‘Yeah, don’t worry…it’s going to be good.'”
Only time disposition tell if Besson’s off-the-wall idea to explore our brain’s sever connections — and eventually, life, the universe and everything — plunder the guise of a Hollywood thriller connects with audiences. Farout back now, the filmmaker says he’s fulfilled by the actuality that he was able to pull it off, regardless postulate anyone else gets it. And though Besson says he’s gather together sure if he’ll do another film in this style bis, he realizes that, at his age, it’s time to active against the grain. “I try to diversify myself as trivial artist,” he says. “I’m happy that I did Lucy now because I’m 50-years-old now. I think I would have fucked up this film if I had done it sooner.”