Further Thoughts on "Lucy"

Earlier this week, I released a movie review for Lucy.

I expect to often release two reviews of the movies I watch.

I’ll release the first review right after I watch a movie so as to give my readers a snapshot of how I felt immediately after the experience.

I will occasionally release a second review after I’ve spent some time to reflect on what I witnessed. My second review of Lucy follows.

I won’t bother here to reiterate the movie’s plot. If you’re unfamiliar with Lucy, feel free to read my first review that regards it. You’ll discover that review on this same blog.

I would like, for this second review, to discuss the biblical points of view that Lucy offered.

In this movie, our protagonist, Lucy, discovers that the drugs she absorbed will eventually kill her. She’s destined to die.

If she can endure her situation long enough, she can give humanity a gift (in this case, scientific knowledge, rather than spiritual salvation) that will improve its existence.

Morgan Freeman’s character refers to Lucy’s quest as “her sacrifice,” lest the audience not make the biblical connection.

The audience even watches Lucy travel back in time and perform a parody of Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” when she touches fingers with one of humanity’s primitive ancestors.

Luc Besson, writer and director of Lucy, drives home the correlation with the final scene, where Lucy announces, via another character’s cell phone screen, that she is, despite her apparent death, “everywhere.”

The warning against humanity seeking “forbidden knowledge” or “playing God” does not make its presence in this movie, much to my approval. While Besson could’ve easily traveled that route, he instead braved the shakier path.

Lucy tells her audience that knowledge cannot stand as evil. However, people possess the capacity to use knowledge for dark purposes.

As the late George Carlin pointed out in his standup, “There are no bad words, only people who use them for bad purposes.”

We might even apply this to porn (yes, I’m going there). Nudity and sex cannot exist as sexist or objectifying (porn, like words, like knowledge, remain nonliving and unaware of themselves, and therefore pursue no objectives). However, people in the porn business can choose to run it in shady fashion. People can choose to use porn to justify sexist beliefs and/or objectifying behaviors.

People choose how they wield knowledge. Knowledge does not wield us. This might serve as the most supreme, spiritual message, universal to all beliefs.

While that might not have served as the main moral premise of Lucy, I consider it one of its most profound messages, intended or not.

(You can catch my short stories at martinwolt.blogspot.com for free! And check out my novels on Kindle! See you next week!)