My Problems with “Lucy” (2014)

 

(This is the poster for Lucy (2014).)

 

 

 

Before I start, I would like to give a not-so-quick update about my Cowboy Bebop (1998) review. I’m almost finished watching the show. I already finished watching the first two discs 💿 on the Blu-Ray 💿, and I already started watching the third. I’ve watched the first two episodes on the third disc 💿, Wild Horses 🐎 and Pierrot La Fou, and I fully intend on watching the others. I intend on seeing this review to the end. Once I finish watching the show, I will begin writing the review, at least the section about the series itself. And then when that part’s done, then I’ll watch the movie, and write the section on that. And then finally, I’ll write the section on the video game, Cowboy Bebop: Serenade of Reminiscence. Hopefully I’ll be done with the longplay at that point. I’m almost done with it, I’ve gotten pretty far in it. It’s only a 4 hour game max, and I’ve gotten to the 2 hour mark, so I’m more than halfway through the game. Not playing it of course, just watching it. There’s no way for me to actually play the game for real, so I must base my review of it on that longplay that I’m currently watching. 

 

I’m sorry it’s taking so long. I thought it was going to take me a week tops to watch the entire show from start to finish, it kind of took me awhile to get back in the groove of watching it because my hyperfixation on the franchise had dissipated a bit after our Internet 🛜 got fully restored and I stopped listening the show’s soundtrack. I got focused on other things, fixated on other things. Plus, all these other distractions keep coming up. I’m hardly ever home anymore due to us constantly going out to Albuquerque, or to Grants, or to various casinos 🎰 around our area pretty much every day. I go with my grandma to all of these places, since she’s the one that wants to go. I suppose that I could just stay home, but I like hanging out with my grandma. It’s fun. Plus, I pretty much get free food and drinks out of it since I don’t have to pay for any of the food when we go places, she’s usually the one that covers all the costs. Sure, she may have me pay the tip or split the tip, but that’s about it. Tonight (Friday June 26, 2026) was one of the few times where we both pitched in and split the ticket, so we both paid for the meal with our own money 💵. 

 

BTW, this is an aside, but tomorrow (or today whenever this ends up getting finished and posted)’s going to be June 27, the same date that Boy’s sister is named after in Boy Kills World. Okay, June 27 isn’t her real name, her real name is Mina Van Der Koy, since the big twist of the movie was that both Boy and his supposed dead sister Mina are both Van Der Koys, the family that he spent the entire movie trying to get revenge on, and Mina is actually June 27, the Van Der Koys’ top assassin/enforcer. But I still like calling her June 27. I think that’s a way cooler name than Mina. But her real name is Mina, and she is Boy’s sister. She’s that girl ♀︎ that Boy keeps hallucinating throughout the film and is pretty much his imaginary friend, she’s her all grown up. And after they defeat the real bad guy of the movie, the Shaman, they team up and become the brother and sister duo they were before they got separated. If I was stuck at home all the time, while my grandma was out and about, I’d have to make myself my own meals. And there are only a limited amount of dishes I know how to cook. I would like to learn how to cook more, and especially cook these more complex dishes, but it’s a lot of work, and I get lazy to do the work. I’d rather just wait for my grandma to come back, and either bring something back for us to eat, or take me somewhere to eat. And I’d less want to wait for her to bring it back, and actually was it there at the restaurant while it’s fresh. So that means I just choose to go with her anyways. Cut out the middleman. Plus, my grandma is pretty old now. 

 

She’s in her early 70s now, she turned 70 last year, and I really don’t want her to be by herself all the time. And she doesn’t want to be by herself either. She likes having someone else with her when she goes places, and since my dad (her son) never wants to go anywhere, and my aunt (her daughter) and the other grandmas are all busy with their own lives, I’m the one who has to be that person. Again, I don’t mind, I like hanging out with her and I like that I get to eat good food, and I like drinking fountain drinks with ice 🧊 and a straw. But, it does mean that I’m mostly hanging out with an old person, or mostly old people when we meet up with the other relatives who are also elderly. For me, they’d be the other grandmas and grandpas, but for her it would aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, and cousins. And I really don’t get the chance to hang out with anyone who’s closer to my age. I’m always the youngest person in every group I find myself in with my grandma, and I’m the youngest person in our household since my dad lives with us, and he’s now in his early 50s. Not exactly a young guy ♂︎ anymore. I don’t have any friends, and I don’t have a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend, depending on how deep my homosexual tendencies really go, depending on if I’m really full bisexual and not just heteroflexible or bi-curious. 

 

I would like to have friends, so that I can someone to talk to about the things that actually interest me, and part of me does want a romantic partner ❤️ and everything comes with it (except maybe having kids), while another part of me doesn’t and still does enjoy the freedom of being single. I guess I would pursue hookups, but I don’t think I’m smooth enough for that. I’m not smooth enough to be a player. I’m not actively seeking anyone out, I’m not trying to date anyone. The approach I’ve been taking to dating and relationships is that if I meet someone in the wild, and we hit it off, sure, I might pursue it further. But I’m not actively looking for a relationship. I’m kind of just waiting for one to drop on my lap. Which probably isn’t the best way to guarantee that you find a girlfriend, but it is the approach that I’m still willing to take, giving my living conditions and my position in life right now. That may change in the future, and if it does, I’ll let you know. But just to let you know in case you didn’t read my post about heteroflexibility, I’m more attracted to women ♀︎ than I am to men ♂︎, as far as I know. My attraction to men ♂︎, thus far, is fairly minimal, and is mostly restricted to gay porn ⚣🔞 and penises. I like penises, and I like the thought of blowjobs. Blowjobs are pretty hot 😍. Handjobs are pretty hot too 😍, I like handjob videos. I even like male masturbation videos. 

 

But I have taken the time to write other posts in the meantime, while I’m still in the middle of watching the show, and I haven’t actually started writing the review. Because we have more money 💵 now, we’ve able to go see more movies more often. And when I do go see a new movie in theaters, I write a review of it. So far I’ve written reviews of Mortal Kombat II 🐉 (2026), The Furious (2025), and The Mandalorian and Grogu, and any other movie I see in theaters this year, you can be sure that I’ll probably write a review of it. Even if it wasn’t planned like the Mandalorian and Grogu review wasn’t. And the heteroflexible post was another post I wrote to make sure I kept the blog going and made sure there was new content on there consistently, while my Cowboy Bebop (1998) review still hasn’t been written yet. This post right here 👇 is also part of that. Meaning my continued viewing of the third disc 💿 of the Cowboy Bebop (1998) Blu-Ray 💿 may be delayed by another day. I’m sorry. This will also likely be my last post for June, because there's only three days left in June, and I know the Cowboy Bebop (1998) will not be out by then. But the review will happen. I made a promise that I would review Cowboy Bebop (1998) and that it would be after I did my 199th post and 200th post, and those posts are done now, I’m now on 217 posts, so it’s about time that I deliver. I’m sorry it’s been taking long, but I promise you that it will all be worth it. I will put my all into it, just like I did with my Riddick (2013) review and my 199th post and 200th post. 

 

I'm going to do something a bit different with this post. I'm going to explain the main reasons why I do not like Lucy (2014), and why I probably will never review it on this blog. I have reviewed it in the past, a long time back, back in 2014 when it actually came out. I was 15 years old then, and obviously a lot has changed. But my overall opinion on this movie has not changed. I still hate it, and unlike others movies I hated when I originally saw them, like say Oblivion (2013), I am not willing to give this another shot. And I'm going to explain it here, for those of you who read my reviews of other Luc Besson movies, and I wonder why I hate Lucy (2014) so much. For those of you who don't know, Lucy is a 2014 sci-fi action movie written and directed by Luc Besson, the same director as La Femme Nikita, Leon: The Professional, The Fifth Element, Arthur and the Invisibles, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, Anna (2019), and most recently, Dracula 🧛‍♂️ (2025) AKA Dracula: A Love Story 🧛‍♂️❤️. He's directed some lesser known movies, like The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, The Lady ♀︎ (2011), and Dogman 🐕 (2023), but those are the ones he's most known for. Especially Leon: The Professional and The Fifth Element. 

 

It stars Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman, it's basically about this woman ♀︎ named Lucy (played Scarlett Johansson), who's forced to transport drugs inside of her body by these gangsters. So they cut her open, insert one or two bags of these drugs into her body, and then stitch her back up again. However, before she's supposed to transport the drugs to whatever location she's supposed, one of the guards of the prison she's held by the gangsters kicks her in the stomach where the drugs are, and that causes one of the bags to burst open, and then drugs end up in her system. However, these are just any other ordinary illegal drugs, as they give her enhanced strength and intelligence, which she uses to escape her captors. And the rest of the movie is about her trying to acknowledge more knowledge as she tries to unlock the other 90% of her brain 🧠. She eventually meets up with this professor (played by Morgan Freeman) who's the one really pushing this 10% of your brain 🧠 nonsense, as she believes he's the only one who can help her unlock the full 100% of her brain 🧠. 

 

All the while, Lucy's still being pursued by the gangsters who did this to her in the first place, as they want their drugs back, or they just want to kill her? I'm not sure what the bad guys want, or why they keep pursing Lucy after she starts gains greater strength and intelligence, and tries to unlock the full 100% of her brain 🧠. The movie really has two main subplots that run parallel of each other. There's the main plot, which is Lucy trying to gain more knowledge and she unlocks more of her brain 🧠, and there's secondary plot which is just Morgan Freeman's character giving a lecture at a university, explaining the 10% of your brain 🧠 myth (and yes, it is a myth, I'll get into that later). These two plotlines converge when Lucy gets into contact with the professor played by Morgan Freeman, and they meet in person. And he's there to witness her reaching her brain 🧠's full 100% potential, and she travels back in time and meets the Australopithecus afarenis named Lucy, and then fully transcends her own humanity and becomes something else entirely. Something that mere humans with 10% of their brain 🧠 can't perceive or comprehend. 

 

Now, my biggest problem with Lucy (2014), and why I hate it so much and refuse to ever watch it again is the whole 10% of your brain 🧠 stuff. Okay, there's also the problem with the idea of a drug that makes you smarter (Limitless already did that), but the 10% of your brain 🧠 thing is the main problem. This movie pushes the thoroughly debunked myth that we humans only use 10% of our brains 🧠, and that if only we could unlock the other 99% of our brains 🧠, we can attain superpowers. Other sci-fi movies have pushed this myth too. Flight of the Navigator is one that comes to mind, but this movie made it the central focus of its plot. It uses it as an example of how Lucy becomes so strong and intelligent, and why she has all these powers, and why she basically becomes a different person after the drugs she carrying in her body for these gangsters enter her system. The reason why it bothers me so much is because it's a myth. It's not true at all that humans only use 10% of our brains 🧠. We in fact use 100% of our brains 🧠 all the time. If we did only use 10% of our brains 🧠, we'd all be brain dead 🧠. And we wouldn't develop superpowers either, like telekinesis or telepathy. Those powers are not real, they don't exist. 

 

This notion that large parts of our brains 🧠 remain unused originates from folklore, not actual science. The actual science disproves this myth completely, that there aren't parts of our brain 🧠 that remain unused, and that "unlocking" them would give us superpowers. We do in fact, use all of brains 🧠. Just not all at once. We use brains 🧠 for different tasks at different times, and our brains 🧠 prioritize certain things over others, so that they don't become overloaded and we end up having seizures. But all parts of the brain 🧠 do end up getting used. It is not as the myth says that just large chunks of our brain 🧠 go completely unused, and only through unlocking those parts through supernatural or even drug related means, will we achieve superpowers. Evolution completely disproves the myth because if there were large chunks of our brains 🧠 that we just did not use, then natural selection would've eliminated those irrelevant parts, and it's unlikely that brain 🧠 with so much redundant matter would've evolved in the first place. Though let's face it, most people who believe in the 10% myth probably don't believe in evolution. And even if they do, they only believe in it to a point, to where it would contradict their belief in this myth. Here, I'll link 🔗 the Wikipedia page talks about this, and you can read it for yourself, the science that disproves the myth. 

 

The point is that if you were to ask any real scientist 👨‍🔬👩‍🔬, any real neurologist, or biologist if the 10% of your brain myth 🧠 was true and if they believed in, they'd probably laugh 😆 in your face. Maybe they wouldn't laugh 😆 in your face, they would may be try to humor you, or they try to subtly tell you the truth and the real science behind the matter, but they wouldn't say it's true or take it even remotely seriously. Unfortunately, this myth is pretty widespread and a lot of people believe in it, including my own family. My grandma and my dad both believe in this myth, and whenever they start talking about it, I just tone it out and try to listen to music or watch YouTube videos on my phone 📱, especially if I'm in the Jeep with them, and they're talking about it while we're on the road driving. I don't feel trying to argue with them about it and trying to debunk it because I feel like they probably wouldn't listen to me, or they wouldn't believe it, and they'd just continue believing the myth as they had before. People become dead set in their ways or their beliefs at a certain point, no amount of arguing or data will make them change their minds. 

 

But, for the people who haven't made up their minds about this issue yet, they are susceptible to falling for this myth and believing in it if they don't have anyone in their lives to tell or show them otherwise. This movie helped push this myth into the mainstream, and helped popularize it. This movie unfortunately was a massive box office success, making over $469 million 💵 against a $40 million budget 💵, so a lot of people saw it. Meaning that they were exposed to this myth. For those who already believed in it, this movie reaffirmed it. Just like how religious people get their beliefs reaffirmed when they watch faith-based movies or how conspiracy theorists got their beliefs reaffirmed when they watched Disclosure Day, the new Steven Spielberg sci-fi thriller movie that it felt like no one gave a fuck about. I certainly didn't give a fuck about it. I avoided it and watched The Furious (2025) instead, which is what I recommend. 

 

If you go see any new movie in theaters this June, in the last four days, make it The Furious (2025), or really any other movie that's currently played. The two movies that you should avoid in the remaining days of June are Disclosure Day and Supergirl (2026). Don't go see Supergirl (2026), it really doesn't look that good. The reviews that have come out so far haven't been very good. And while I don't put much stake in review anymore, even I don't think Supergirl (2026) looks any good. And it's not simply because I don't like superhero movies anymore and I've completely sworn them off. The movie just looks like a pale imitation of Guardians of the Galaxy, specifically Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. And that's because James Gunn doesn't know how to make any other type of movie except Guardians of the Galaxy type movies. Same type of humor, same type of characters, same type of music, and same type of setting or setup. 

 

Every comic book property he touches, he just turns it into Guardians of the Galaxy. Every comic book movie project he's been involved in with DC has just been variation on the same Guardians of the Galaxy formula. Even The Suicide Squad (2021), which I liked, was just Guardians of the Galaxy but on Earth 🌎 with DC characters. You can describe the Peacemaker 🕊️ series in largely the same way. I mean, I like the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, but that doesn't mean I want everything to be like it. I want variety, I want different things. Not the same thing repacked in a slightly different way. Even the last Guardians of the Galaxy movie, Vol. 3 didn't age well and had some glaring flaws, as I said in the foreword of my review of that film. Watching the movie a second time the cracks definitely started to show, and it definitely wasn't the perfect movie it was made out to be in the initial reviews when it came out. 

 

At this point, James Gunn has pretty much become a one trick pony. Hiring him to be the head of DC, and making him the main architect of the new DC cinematic universe was a mistake, and we're seeing that since hardly anyone's liking the new Supergirl movie, while the 2025 Superman movie was glazed as fuck, a lot of people are starting to see cracks in it, they're starting to see the flaws and are realizing that it was not at all worth the hype. Supergirl (2026) had no hype around it, no one was talking about, in either a positive or negative way, except for some trolls on X formally known as Twitter 🐦 talking about the main actress, Milly Alcock, saying that she looks ugly, which she does not. And all of this was due to some comments said about people hating on the movie. She said that people who are hating the movie are only trolls or bigots (you know, misogynists, they hate women ♀︎). But that's how the Internet 🛜 often is. It has every bit the energy of a movie that will just come and go, with hardly anyone caring or noticing. Sure, The Furious (2025) wasn't the biggest movie in the world, sure it hasn't made huge numbers, but I still felt like it had way more hype surrounding it than Supergirl (2026). The hype for The Furious (2025) was palpable, while the hype for Supergirl (2026) was nonexistent. 

 

For those who didn't already believe in it, this movie may have convinced them. And for that reason, I feel like this movie did a disservice to the world, in spreading a dangerous myth and misinformation about the human brain 🧠 and how it works, and it never should've been made. Okay, maybe that's a little bit harsh, maybe it still could've been made, but just leave out all that 10% of your brain 🧠 nonsense. Like, if this had just been a movie about a woman ♀︎ who develops super intelligence and even maybe even superpowers, and becomes a badass, it might've worked. The 10% of your brain 🧠 stuff was unneeded. You didn't need that to give it scientific plausibility or a sense of credibility. In fact, by including it at all, you gave your story less scientific plausibility and less credibility because it's a myth. It isn't real, and any self-respecting scientist 👨‍🔬👩‍🔬 who knows what they're talking will able to spot the bullshit from a mile away, and will be able to debunk. Which I'm sure a lot of neurologists have over the years. Like, Lucy (2014) probably is to neurologists what Armageddon ☄️ (1998) or Moonfall 🌕 (2022) are to astrophysicists. 

 

But clearly, Luc Besson believes in the myth too. If you watch any of the behind-the-scenes stuff about this movie, you'll realize that Luc Besson believes in this, and he made it solely so that he could express that belief and spread to other people who didn't already share it. That puts him in contrast in Roland Emmerich, who doesn't actually believe in any of the conspiracy theories he uses as the basis for his movies, and just uses them because he thinks that would make for cool ideas for movies. Like, even back in 1996, when he was on the press tour promoting Independence Day, and in even in the years since then, he was asked if he himself believed in aliens 👽 and every time he said "no." He doesn't believe in aliens 👽, and just sees them as a made-up fantasy creatures. No different from dragons 🐉, unicorns 🦄, and mermaids 🧜‍♀️. And to be fair, the existence of aliens 👽 hasn't been confirmed one way or another. 

 

Conspiracy theorists can believe all they want that the government is hiding the existence of aliens 👽, but there has been no actual scientific proof yet of their existence. The existence of aliens 👽 right now is just a matter of belief. Do you believe in aliens 👽 or not? Roland Emmerich clearly does not. Neither BTW does the actor who played Obasanjo, the Nigerian crime boss 🇳🇬 in District 9. But he still made a movie about them anyway because he thought it would make for a cool movie. Which it did, Independence Day is awesome. If Luc Besson didn't believe in the 10% myth himself and took a similar approach as Roland Emmerich and had a similar mindset, this movie could've been good. It could've been genuinely fun. 

 

But because Luc Besson did genuinely believe in the myth and went into this project with the intent of expressing this belief and spreading it to other people, it wasn't, and it just comes across as if it's trying to push a narrative rather than tell a good story or just be pure spectacle. It's like a faith-based movie for those who believe in the 10% myth. Just as Disclosure Day was a faith-based movie for those who believe in the conspiracy theories that the US government 🇺🇸 is intentionally hiding proof of aliens' existence 👽. Also it is pretty pretentious for Luc Besson to include the Australopithecus named Lucy in this movie and then have the character Lucy meet her by traveling through time to the past. Treating the two as if they're equivalent, or even that the human Lucy is the next step in human evolution 🙄. It's just one of those things that makes the movie feel as if it thinks it's a lot smarter than it actually is and is trying to be profound and failing miserably. 

 

But, even if this movie didn't have the 10% of your brain myth 🧠 and didn't use it as its base, it still would have problems. The biggest one of which are the characters. The characters in this movie are not very interested, and lack anything for you to really latch onto. It has good actors in it, and they're doing the best with what they were given, but honestly, the material they were given didn't give them much to work with. These characters are flat and forgettable. I don't even remember most of their names, and I don't care to look them up either because I refuse to put it in the extra work for this movie. This movie that I do not intend on writing a full review of. This is not a review, don't get it twisted. This is why it's not called "My Thoughts on Lucy (2014)," and why it will not be placed in that category. It will categorized as Status Update and nothing else. I mean, the post will have other tags on it, but Status Update will be the main one as opposed to My Thoughts on. The other character's name I know and remember is Lucy's, and that's only because her name is the title. She's the title character. 

 

But, she's the character in the movie that I have the biggest problem with, and why this movie doesn't work for me outside of the inclusion of the 10% myth. Once she gets kicked in the stomach, and the bag of drugs bursts open, and the drugs enter her system, and she develops super intelligence and he starts developing all these powers, she becomes a completely different person. Like, whatever her personality was before those drugs entered her system is completely gone by the time they do enter her system, and she starts unlocking parts of her brain 🧠. It would've been one thing if she became more intelligent and she got all these powers, but still had her same personality, but she doesn't. Or if the new personality she gets was actually interesting or engaging, but it's not. She becomes extremely emotionless and cold. It's not even that they gave her a different personality, it's as if she lacks personality. And that was by design, that was the way Luc Besson wrote her. 

 

He wrote it so that she becomes less and less human the more parts of her brain 🧠 she unlocks and the more powers she develops. But, that doesn't make for a very engaging character. It does make for a protagonist that you want to root her. We become less engaged in her story, and just become passive observers just watching an emotionless robot (might as well be a robot) becoming more powerful and then shedding the last bit of humanity she has at the very end. Losing her human form, and becoming something else entirely. Like, Scarlett Johansson played a cyborg in Ghost in the Shell (2017), and she had way more personality in that as Mira/Motoko than she does in this movie as Lucy post-drug intake. I haven't seen Under the Skin (2013), but I'm sure she has more personality in that as an alien 👽 who preys on human men ♂︎ and lures them in with sex than she does in Lucy (2014), as a human who becomes more intelligent and becomes superhuman after accidentally taking a drug she wasn't supposed to.

 

The drugs are the other thing. We're never given an explanation of these drugs and why they do what they do to Lucy, and why they were created in the first place and for what purpose. We also don't know if the gangsters are aware of its brain-altering properties 🧠. Like, do they know that it will unlock parts of your brain 🧠 and give your superpowers, and is that why they want it so bad, and why they want to kill Lucy so bad, despite the fact that she's all powerful and can't actually be stopped? We're never told or shown. The villains are the other big problem with this movie. It's been said that a hero is only as good as their villain, and the villains in this movie are generic as fuck. Them being gangsters isn't the problems. There are plenty of awesome bad guys in movies that are gangsters, and these could've been awesome bad guys too, but they aren't. 

 

Luc Besson didn't even try to make them interesting or cool, or make them seem like a legitimate threat. They're not intimidating in the slightest, you never fear for Lucy because they can't actually kill her. She becomes so powerful, pretty much a godlike being by the end, that she cannot be stopped and no one can actually kill her. That's another reason why Lucy isn't a compelling character either. She's too overpowered and has no real weaknesses. She would've either had to faced a villain who was actually at her level or greater, or they would've had to have nerfed her, and they chose neither. And what you have is a boring plot with no stakes whatsoever. Might as well not even had villains at all. Just use them as the setup for why Lucy ends up the way she does, how she gets her powers, and then never bring them again. Having them continue to be apart of the story is just a waste, and amounts to absolutely nothing. 

 

This movie could've elevated if they not only provided a more clear explanation for the drugs, but had one of the villains take them, or hire someone and have them take them, and then become a super-powered being too. That way you could have someone who could've provided a real challenge to Lucy. But no, Luc Besson went with the boring route, and this made one of the least engaging action movies I've ever seen 😒. This is one of my most hated movies of all time 😠. There are few movies I dislike more than this one 👎. And I just have no desire to return to it. I don't want to put myself through that again. I know too much, and I've matured so much since then that I probably couldn't enjoy this movie if I tried to. No matter how much I tried to force myself to like it, I still wouldn't like it. It is that bad, and I hate it that much. And I hope this post helped you understand why that is.