When Scarlett Johansson’s hit movie Lucy first came out back in 2014, the star was already riding high atop the success of the first Avengers movie. Fans of Johansson had been treated to her butt-kicking turns as the Black Widow, so she was well established as a likable action star by then, and had already developed her critical bona fides with films like Lost in Translation and Ghost World. When the first trailers for Lucy hit, seeing her in the role of another feisty, powerful butt-kicker in an intelligent sci-fi film stirred up much excitement among her many fans.
That excitement seemed to have filtered into the success of the movie, and it was a big commercial hit. However, on closer inspection, the movie did also face some scathing assessments by critics and scientists over many glaring plot holes that led to it fading into obscurity a little ever since. For such a successful movie, it’s strange that Lucy has mostly been forgotten until now, with news of a spin-off.
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Lucy Was a Polarizing Movie
Universal Pictures
As an action movie, Lucy had all the elements necessary to do well. Between some epic fight scenes and the inventive ways the main character often mercilessly took out bad guys, it certainly made for a very entertaining watch. However, Lucy wasn’t just billed as an action movie.
Since the main plot delved into her being dosed with a highly experimental drug that causes her to unlock the full capacity of her brain, imbuing her with a host of powers, these elements put the film within the purview of a science-fiction flick as well. Unfortunately, that’s where things start to get a little problematic, and where opinions generally diverge.
Logic Misses the Point of Lucy
Early on, Lucy debuted to generally good reviews and ratings. However, when the science behind the movie was evaluated more critically, it soon became apparent that it paid no heed to realism in any way, and was roundly criticized for this. In one of the worst indictments of Lucy’s lack of logic, Christopher Orr wrote a piece for The Atlantic titled, “The Dumbest Movie Ever Made About Brain Capacity,” and had this to say about the movie, and it’s director, Luc Besson:
Once Orr goes on to elucidate some of the powers Johansson’s character acquires in the movie, the full extent of Lucy’s sillier aspects become painfully clear.
Because while Besson has made very, very bad films in the past—most recently, last year’s The Family—this is the first time he has made a film so idiotic that the only way to properly convey its flaws is to enumerate them.
Lucy Was Still a Hit at the Box Office
Despite many similar disparaging reviews, and the film’s plot even being subjected to reviews by neurologists, Lucy was still a box office success, making nearly 12 times its budget nine years ago ($460 million off $40 million). It was France’s biggest export hit in two decades at the time (and having a main English language certainly helped). Rumors of a sequel did the rounds very early on. Besson himself didn’t help matters by first publicly stating that he had no plans to write a sequel. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, he said:
A non-comprehensive list of the powers Lucy acquires over the course of the film: perfect marksmanship, extreme agility, and instantaneous reflexes; the ability to control TVs and cell phones from thousands of miles away; immunity to pain and fear; telepathy, telekinesis, and clairvoyance; expertise in driving a car really fast into oncoming traffic; teleportation across time and space; and the capacity to alter her existing body parts or grow new ones. The one power she doesn’t seem to have—oddly, given the initial levitation—is flight. This is presumably because if she did, Besson would have no excuse to have her exercise her aforementioned car-driving skills to create rampant vehicular mayhem in Paris. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Later on, he did an about-turn and confirmed that the script for Lucy 2 was completed. Later, it again emerged that Lucy 2 was not happening. Amid all this fluctuating news, it must be said that a lot of the hype around the franchise has since fizzled out, despite Scarlett Johansson completing more MCU movies in this time.
“I don’t see us doing a sequel, if I find an idea good enough, maybe I’ll do it, but right now I don’t even think about it
The movie remains a popular one and certainly was a commercial hit too. However, a lot of that may be down to the popularity of Johansson and her star-power after being one of the most popular Avengers. With so many conflicting reports over the future of the franchise, many fans are wondering what the future holds for it.
Lucy to Get a Spin-Off Show
By November 2022, reports began emerging that Lucy was set for a spin-off TV show. What added to the hype here was news that actor Morgan Freeman would reprise his role in it. Details have been sketchy ever since but with Morgan Freeman being the screen giant he is, and fans loving his role from the original movie, people are again renewing their excitement about Lucy.
It’s not entirely clear whether the show will become a hit and reach the same levels of success as the movie did. Given the up and down nature of the franchise since its inception, it remains to be seen if it will emulate the original success or just be ignored, both of which seem to have paradoxically become the fate of Lucy as a film.
