Luc Besson’s Lucy is one of those films that manages to be both intriguing and frustrating at the same time. With Scarlett Johansson in the lead and a pseudo-scientific premise about unlocking the full capacity of the human brain, the movie promises transcendence but ultimately dissolves into abstraction. Watching it unfold feels like witnessing a brilliant idea slipping through the cracks of its own ambition. It’s not that the film lacks vision—it’s that it forgets to ground its cosmic ponderings in something profoundly human.
There’s undeniable excitement in the movie’s early moments. The pacing is energetic, the stakes feel real, and Johansson commands attention as Lucy—a woman thrown into a nightmare who gains terrifying and exhilarating powers. And then, as her brain capacity increases, the film swerves from thrilling sci-fi into increasingly strange territory. She becomes omniscient, then omnipotent, and finally… omnipresent? The climax is a confusing soup of visuals and voiceovers, capped off with her consciousness vanishing into a thumb drive. It’s not bad in the “terrible movie” sense, but more in the “almost brilliant but lost its way” sense.
The Pitfall: Intelligence Without Emotion
The central issue isn’t the science-fiction concept—no one watches a movie like Lucy expecting rigorous accuracy. The problem lies in how the film treats its protagonist’s emotional arc. As Lucy evolves, she detaches. She becomes less human, less relatable, and eventually, barely recognizable. The deeper she goes into unlocking the mysteries of the universe, the less we feel connected to her. And that’s the great paradox: a film about expanding consciousness becomes emotionally hollow.
The movie flirts with philosophical themes—evolution, knowledge, time, existence—but never marries them to anything personal or meaningful. Morgan Freeman’s character delivers a TED Talk on brain usage percentages, but there’s no true counterpoint or evolution in thought. Lucy, who begins as a frightened, vulnerable woman, is robbed of her emotions before she can process or question what she’s becoming.
A New Outline: What If Lucy Was Searching for Love?
Imagine a version of Lucy where the central mystery isn’t the nature of time or space—but the mystery of love.
The film could open with a different kind of fight between Lucy and Richard. Perhaps something raw, something honest. Lucy, frustrated by a shallow relationship, yells:
“You don’t even know what love is. You’re not even using half your brain.”
To which Richard responds:
“Nobody does. We only use 15%. Look it up.”
And with a final jab:
“You don’t need to be smart to know love. You just have to feel it.”
This emotionally charged exchange could plant the seed for Lucy’s true journey. As she begins to unlock her brain, gaining control over matter, memory, time—she becomes obsessed not with power, but with understanding what love really is. She studies, observes, and even accesses the neural signatures of lovers across time. But the more she learns, the more she realizes love is not something that can be dissected, digitized, or decoded. It can only be experienced.
This arc gives weight to her transformation. Her detachment would be challenged by longing, by memory, by glimpses of what she missed or dismissed. And in the climax, as the universe seemingly invites her to ascend—become everything, transcend time—she makes a different choice.
Lucy chooses to stay.
She chooses to remain in a body, to remain human, to continue learning not with her brain, but with her heart. Not because it’s rational, but because it’s real.
In this reimagining, the movie doesn’t end with a godlike being dispersing into the cosmos, but with a woman—no longer just powerful, but profoundly present—deciding that the greatest mystery isn’t the universe… it’s love.
Thanks,
Ira