History Film / Lucy

* DeadlyUpgrade: The [=CPH4=] gives one to Lucy.

->''Life was given to us a billion years ago. [[TakeThatAudience What have we done with it?]]''

Lucy (Johansson) is a young woman who is forced into working as a drug mule for the Taiwanese mob. A bag of one particular drug is inserted into her abdomen, which suddenly ruptures when she is attacked, causing her own body to absorb the drug. This progressively causes her to access more and more of her brain's capabilities, granting several incredible abilities - and causing a remarkable metamorphosis...

** Director allusion - when Lucy is in Times Square, a poster for Luc Besson's ''Film/TheFamily'' can be seen.
** Another one. Luc Besson wrote the film ''Three Days To Kill'' - which featured an uncredited woman being tattooed. The same woman appears here as a tattoo artist, sporting a tattoo of the Mexican Lady of Guadalupe.

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: Liberties taken with brain usage, primarily. Drug-induced superpowers as well, technically, but that's a given.

* AsLongAsItSoundsForeign: The Chinese writing on the wall of a room Lucy is locked up in [[http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2014/07/lucy-chinese-writing-nonsense is "keep hygienic" and random names of food]].

* CharacterDevelopment: Lucy covers the whole spectrum, from DamselInDistress to ActionGirl to PhysicalGod.
** The same seems to be true about her morality -- after getting her powers she begins [[BewareTheSuperman treating normal humans as expendable]] (including the infamous scene where she shoots a Taiwanese for ''not speaking English''), but she becomes interested in [[ProHumanTranshuman helping humanity]] by the end of the movie.

** Thank you, Mook No. 7, for kicking Lucy in the stomach, opening the bag of FantasticDrug, and kicking off her transformation into a RealityWarper.
** Also Richard for suckering Lucy into the situation in the first place.

* WhamLine: What makes it so terrific is the casual and throw-away way she states it. Yep, just solved 3-4 millennia of religious study and strife. Nope, don't really care what that means for you.
-->'''Lucy''':[[spoiler: We never really die.]]

* AnAesop: Delivered by Lucy as her FinalWords: It took the universe over one billion years to give us life as we know it. Go do something useful with it.

* ArtisticLicensePaleontology: Among the less-discussed howling scientific errors in this film comes when Professor Norman states that Lucy is the name of "the first woman." This is presumably a reference to an Australopithecus fossil discovered in the 1970s, named "Lucy" by its discoverers after the [[{{Franchise/TheBeatles}} Beatles]] song. While it is one of the earliest known female hominids, calling it “the first woman” is a laughable misunderstanding that no scientist of Norman’s supposed caliber would ever make. For starters, fossils are nothing more than random snapshots in time (only a tiny percentage of earth's organisms are ever preserved as fossils), and paleontologists have no reason to assume that any particular fossil they happen to find is literally the first member of a species, even if it's the oldest one known. Indeed, the very concept of a "first" of any type of organism is almost meaningless, since evolution is a gradual process of continuous change, and there's never any specific point when one type of organism became something else. In other words, there never existed any individual creature that could be definitively called ''the'' first man or woman--especially if we're defining humans more broadly than ''Homo sapiens'' (a species the Austrolopithecines long predated). The movie's misconception gets even sillier at the end, when [[spoiler:in her time-travel journey to the distant past, she encounters an ape-like creature implied to be the original "Lucy," with a possible implication that the encounter, like the monolith from ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'', is a crucial event that [[StableTimeLoop pushes humans toward higher consciousness]]]].

* BlueAndOrangeMorality: From Lucy's perspective she's not killing anyone-since no one ever actually dies, it's all relative to her.

* BullyingADragon: When Lucy steals the remaining three packets from the gangsters, they witness her do such things as make an invisible wall, send all their guns fly up into the ceiling, then send ''the gangsters flying to the ceiling''. The gangsters just get pissed, get more guns, and wage an all-out assault on the university to get their drugs back! Mind you, one of the guys ''personally witnessed'' said acts and joins the assault anyway.

* CelestialBody: The sum total of all of Lucy's knowledge regarding the entire universe [[spoiler: can be condensed to fit onto an elongated USB stick seemingly made of stars.[[note]]Which is a very oblique ShoutOut to the ''novel'' of ''2001''.[[/note]]]]

* CutLexLuthorACheck: The bad guys have invented a synthetic version of a compound that aids in fetal growth. The medical applications of such a drug are endless, and that's before it turns Lucy into a PhysicalGod. They plan to market it as super-crack.

* DrivesLikeCrazy: Lucy takes the wheel from her cop friend when the gangsters are trying to get the [=CPH4=]. She's never driven before, takes the absolute quickest route, and ''undoubtedly'' breaks every traffic law known to man in the process. Thanks to her super-powers, however, she doesn't even hit a single car while doing it! [[spoiler:Rather, ''her'' car doesn't hit another vehicle. Lucy smacks other cars around like crazy though.]] For some reason, almost the entire route requires her to drive the wrong way down one-way streets.

* FreudianTrio: Jang is the Id, he's a hedonist who loves getting his hands dirty in killing people and he's willing to gun down French gendarmes and take on a PhysicalGod because they screwed over his drug deal. Lucy is the Super Ego, her emotions have atrophied to the point where she doesn't feel fear or pain or even a sense of conscience beyond convenience and what she rationalizes. The Ego is Del Rio or Professor Norman, it's these two men that try to mitigate Lucy's actions by reasoning with her and appealing to what remains of her morality.

* GeniusSerum: The film runs with the premise that [[NinetyPercentOfYourBrain "unlocking" more percent of your brain]] will increase your cognitive skills to superhuman levels. This is achieved by ingesting [=CPH4=], a FantasticDrug which the main character was forced to smuggle by a Korean gangster. Lucy soon acquires CombatClairvoyance, perfect memory recall, takes stock of literally all human knowledge in the world, and ultimately [[spoiler:AscendsToAHigherPlaneOfExistence]].

* MoralityChain: Lucy keeps Del Rio around, even though he himself acknowledges his own uselessness, because it helps keep her focused on helping people.

* NoHuggingNoKissing: There's very little romance in the movie, and even when it is brought up it doesn't last long. The only times it's mentioned is Lucy's' boyfriend Richard who she's only been seeing for a week [[spoiler: and dies in the opening scene of the movie]] and Lucy giving Del Rio a kiss and telling him he's the MoralityPet. And even then, her lack of affect pretty much eliminates any kind of romantic angle - it's almost as if she's seeing if she ''can'' feel emotion.

* NoKillLikeOverkill: The Koreans actually bring a rocket launcher to assault... a Parisian university. The defending police forces are woefully outgunned as it is, but that thing is the final nail in their coffin.

* OmnidisciplinaryScientist: The surgeon whose operation Lucy interrupts plays MrExposition about the chemical Lucy has absorbed, which has little to do with his visible field of work aside being something humans produce.

* TheOmniscient: By the time she reaches the Taiwanese airport, Lucy is able to see Del Rio's office in perfect detail from ''halfway around the planet''.
* OnlyAFleshWound: During her breakout from the Triad prison, she got shot in one shoulder. Not only did this not slow her down, but she reaches into the wound and drops the bullet on the table where the thugs were eating.

* RubeGoldbergDevice: The computer's lengthy extension to simply hand over the USB key.
* ScienceIsBad: [[SubvertedTrope Nope]]. Lucy is terrifying, but the film also shows her developing the moral and mental maturity to use her power responsibly and actually becoming a more altruistic person (if rather more uncaring of individuals) as a result. The overall theme seems to be the idea that power is a mixed bag; there's wonder with the horror.

** Echoed at the end, when the supercomputer Lucy has become extends a projection to Morgan Freeman with the USB drive.

** {{Lampshaded}}. As Lucy acquires more and more powers, she feels less empathy and concern over killing others, beginning right when she first wakes up after she gets dosed with the drug. The key moment of this is when she [[KickTheDog kills a patient who she knew would die while in the middle of surgery and pushing him off the operating table so she could get treatment herself]]. She tells Del Rio that she's keeping him around just to keep herself grounded.

* StupidEvil: Mr. Jang and his gang. Starting with producing a cutting-edge drug that could revolutionize medical technology and only being able to think of using it as super-crack, and then following up with going on destructive rampages through two different continents [[CrooksAreBetterArmed with enough firepower to look like a literal act of war]]. Even if he wasn't having the bad luck of pissing off a PhysicalGod, how long would Jang's gang would actually be able to keep functioning, with his attempt to piss off ''governments''?

* UhOhEyes: One time Lucy wakes up has her eyes flashing through [[EyeColourChange different sets]] of {{animal eyes}}; she also gets [[GlowingEyesOfDoom glowing]] (or just really intense) {{creepy blue eyes}} during and shortly after [=CPH4=] doses.
* UnmovingPlaid:[[spoiler: The flash drive that Lucy's computer gives Professor Norman in the end might have familiar USB connector, but the drive's shell is this trope. The outer space shown on the shell follows this trope.]]

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: [[spoiler: The drug lord is shown working closely with a British man, when Lucy and the other men receive their "assignment". He appears to be the "brains" behind the drug. He also states that if the mules are caught or go to the police, their families will be killed. After his one scene, this character is never heard of nor referenced again. Also, no reference is made to any of the mules' families actually being in danger after they are caught and Lucy speaks to her mom, who appears to be safe, after she goes off the grid. Apparently it was an empty threat.]]

* {{Fanservice}}: Nothing says "superhuman with a computer brain" like a [[LittleBlackDress miniskirt]] and [[ShesGotLegs Louboutin heels]]. (Of course, this is Scarlett Johansson we're talking about.)

* EverythingsBetterWithDinosaurs: [[spoiler: A flesh-eating dinosaur is shown during Lucy's trip through time. She time jumps as it lunges at her (one of the only times post-drug that she displays actual emotion; see DullSurprise.]]

* ArtisticLicensePaleontology: Among the less-discussed howling scientific errors in this film comes when Professor Norman states that Lucy is the name of "the first woman." This is presumably a reference to an Australopithecus fossil discovered in the 1970s, named "Lucy" by its discoverers after the [[{{Franchise/TheBeatles}} Beatles]] song. While it is one of the earliest known female hominids, calling it “the first woman” is a laughable misunderstanding that no scientist of Norman’s supposed caliber would ever make. For starters, fossils are nothing more than random snapshots in time (only a tiny percentage of earth's organisms are ever preserved as fossils), and paleontologists have no reason to assume that any particular fossil they happen to find is literally the first member of a species, even if it's the oldest one known. Indeed, the very concept of a "first" of any type of organism is almost meaningless, since evolution is a gradual process of continuous change, and there's never any specific point when one type of organism became something else. In other words, there never existed any individual creature that could be definitively called ''the'' first man or woman--especially if we're defining humans more broadly than ''Homo sapiens'' (a species the Austrolopithecines long predated). The movie's misconception gets especially silly at the end, when [[spoiler:in her time-travel journey to the distant past, she encounters an ape-like creature implied to be the original "Lucy," with a possible implication that the encounter, like the monolith from ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'', is a crucial event that [[StableTimeLoop pushes humans toward higher consciousness]]]].

* ArtisticLicensePaleontology: Among the less-discussed howling scientific errors in this film comes when Professor Norman states that Lucy is the name of "the first woman." This is presumably a reference to an Australopithecus fossil discovered in the 1970s, named "Lucy" by its discoverers after the [[{{Franchise/TheBeatles}} Beatles]] song. While it is one of the earliest known female hominids, calling it “the first woman” is a laughable misunderstanding that no scientist of Norman’s supposed caliber would ever make. For starters, fossils are nothing more than random snapshots in time (only a tiny percentage of earth's organisms are ever preserved as fossils), and paleontologists have no reason to assume that any particular fossil they happen to find is literally the first member of a species, even if it's the oldest one known. Indeed, the very concept of a "first" of any type of organism is almost meaningless, since evolution is a gradual process of continuous change, and there's never any specific point when one type of organism became something else. In other words, there never existed any individual creature that could be definitively called ''the'' first man or woman--especially if we're defining humans more broadly than ''Homo sapiens'' (a species the Austrolopithecines long predated).

* NoHuggingNoKissing: There's very little romance in the movie, and even when it is brought up it doesn't last long. The only times it's mentioned is Lucy's' BastardBoyfriend Richard who she's only been seeing for a week [[spoiler: and dies in the opening scene of the movie]] and Lucy giving Del Rio a kiss and telling him he's the MoralityPet. And even then, her lack of affect pretty much eliminates any kind of romantic angle - it's almost as if she's seeing if she ''can'' feel emotion.

* NoInfantileAmnesia: Taken UpToEleven after Lucy is exposed to the [=CPH4=]. Lucy can not only flawlessly remember every detail of her life all the way to the womb, but can remember details she couldn't possibly have been consciously aware of, such as the sound of her own bones growing.

* StupidEvil: Mr. Jang and his gang. Starting with producing a cutting-edge drug that could revolutionize medical technology and only being able to think of using it as super-crack, and then following up with going on KillThemAll-happy rampages through two different continents [[CrooksAreBetterArmed with enough firepower to look like a literal act of war]]. Even if he wasn't having the bad luck of pissing off a PhysicalGod, how long would Jang's gang would actually be able to keep functioning, with his attempt to piss off ''governments''?

* MoralDissonance: Once Lucy gets uplifted, she has no problems with gunning down innocent people but oddly she later spares the lives of Triad members who are trying to kill her. In fact, she doesn't even bother knocking them out.

* ArtisticLicensePaleontology: * Among the less-discussed howling scientific errors in this film comes when Professor Norman states that Lucy is the name of "the first woman." This is presumably a reference to an Australopithecus fossil discovered in the 1970s, named "Lucy" by its discoverers after the [[{{Franchise/TheBeatles}} Beatles]] song. While it is one of the earliest known female hominids, calling it “the first woman” is a laughable misunderstanding that no scientist of Norman’s supposed caliber would ever make. For starters, fossils are nothing more than random snapshots in time (only a tiny percentage of earth's organisms are ever preserved as fossils), and paleontologists have no reason to assume that any particular fossil they happen to find is literally the first member of a species, even if it's the oldest one known. Indeed, the very concept of a "first" of any type of organism is almost meaningless, since evolution is a gradual process of continuous change, and there's never any specific point when one type of organism became something else. In other words, there never existed any individual creature that could be definitively called ''the'' first man or woman--especially if we're defining humans more broadly than ''Homo sapiens'' (a species the Austrolopithecines long predated).

* ArtisticLicensePaleontology: Among the less-discussed howling scientific errors in this film comes when Professor Norman states that Lucy is the name of "the first woman." This is presumably a reference to an Australopithecus fossil discovered in the 1970s, named "Lucy" by its discoverers after the [[{{Franchise/TheBeatles}} Beatles]] song. While it is one of the earliest known female hominids, calling it “the first woman” is a laughable misunderstanding that no scientist of Norman’s supposed caliber would ever make. For starters, fossils are nothing more than random snapshots in time (only a tiny percentage of earth's organisms are ever preserved as fossils), and paleontologists have no reason to assume that any particular fossil they happen to find is literally the first member of a species, even if they ''could'' state with certainty that it's the oldest fossil from that species to have been preserved--which they can't. Indeed, the very concept of a "first" of any type of organism is almost meaningless, since evolution is a very gradual process where there's never any true boundary where one type of organism becomes something else. In other words, there's no such thing as an individual creature that could be definitively called ''the'' first man or woman--especially if we're defining humans more broadly than ''Homo sapiens'' (a species the Austrolopithecines long predated).

* ArtisticLicensePaleontology: Professor Norman states that Lucy is the name of "the first woman." This is apparently a reference to an Australopithecus fossil discovered in the 1970s, named "Lucy" by paleontologists after the Beatles song. While it is one of the earliest known female hominids, calling it “the first woman” is a laughable misunderstanding that no scientist of Norman’s supposed caliber would ever make. To begin with, the phrase itself is scientifically almost meaningless, since the evolution of humans was very gradual, and there simply never was any individual creature that could be definitively called ''the'' first human (male or female). But putting that aside for the moment, fossils are nothing more than random snapshots in time (only a tiny percentage of earth's organisms are ever preserved as fossils), and today’s scientists have no way of knowing that any particular fossil they happen to find is literally the first member of a species, even if they ''could'' state with certainty that it's the oldest fossil from that species in existence today.

* HighConcept: Woman gets superpowers by accessing the unused 90% of her brain. A cinematic masterpiece this ain't, but it's a fun watch.

* OnlyOneName: Lucy never states her full name. [[http://i.imgur.com/FhPAtCs.jpg Though a shot of her passport]] suggests her surname to be Miller.

* FreudianTrio: Jang is the ID, he's a hedonist who loves getting his hands dirty in killing people and he's willing to gun down French gendarmes and take on a PhysicalGod because they screwed over his drug deal. Lucy is the Super Ego, her emotions have atrophied to the point where she doesn't feel fear or pain or even a sense of conscience beyond convenience and what she rationalizes. The Ego is Del Rio or Professor Norman, it's these two men that try to mitigate Lucy's actions by reasoning with her and appealing to what remains of her morality.

* TreasureChestCavity: Lucy is operated on and has the wonder drug sealed in her stomach. RealityEnsues when it breaks because of one of her captors stupidly kicking her in the stomach, exposing her to the drug and kicking off the plot. [[spoiler: Lucy then goes after the other three mules to get the drugs they carry.]]

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: Liberties taken with brain usage, primarily. Drug induced superpowers as well, technically, but that's a given.

* AttackAttackAttack: Jang and his men don't care in the slighest if they're going up against a PhysicalGod and the entire Parisian police.
* AttemptedRape: When she was chained up in the holding cell, one of the Triad thugs did get around to copping some feels on her and was getting ready to escalate things. The attempt stopped when Lucy resisted which pissed off the thug and led to her getting pummeled.

* BlackAndGreyMorality: Although Luc Besson declared he aimed for GreyAndGrayMorality, the drug dealers are too vile to fit that. That being said, the rest are cops\security officers just doing their job, and Lucy's got BlueAndOrangeMorality (with moments of SociopathicHero).

* CrooksAreBetterArmed: The final battle of the film involves the Paris police (armed only with pistols) trying to stop a rampaging Triad kill-team armed with assault rifles, sub-machine guns, a rocket launcher, suicidal fanaticism and a complete disregard for collateral damage. Even if by the end the only bad guy still standing was Mr. Jang, the cops still technically lost ''big time''.

** Lucy uses [[GunsAkimbo two silenced handguns]] at one point, shooting mooks through closed doorways with accuracy. In a non-weapon example she uses two laptops at once, [[RapidFireTyping typing at lightning speed]]. Both examples are justified given her abilities.

* FoeTossingCharge: Lucy getting the last packets of [=CPH4=] from the gangsters at the hospital (except it's not actually a charge, more of a Foe Tossing Stroll).
* FreudianTrio: Jang is the ID, he's a hedonist who loves getting his hands dirty in killing people and he's willing to gun down French gendarmes and take on a PhysicalGod because they screwed over his drug deal. Lucy is the Super Ego, her emotions have atrophied to the point where she doesn't feel fear or pain or even a sense of conscience beyond convenience and what she rationalizes. The Ego is Del Rio or Professor Norman, it's these two men that try to mitigate Lucy's action by reasoning with her and appealing to what remains of her morality.

* KarmaHoudini: The man in charge of the drug smuggling disappears after his one scene explaining the job to Lucy. Though by the end of the film his operation is in ruins, the cops are likely on his tail, and [[spoiler: Lucy, who has become God in all but name, could more than likely blink him out of his existence with a snap of her (nonexistent) fingers (assuming she still ''cared'' to)]].

* MeaningfulName: It is lampshaded early on that "Lucy" is, besides the name of the protagonist, the name of the Australopithecus considered to be the first human [[spoiler: which she mentally visits at the end]].

* MoralityChain: Lucy keeps Del Rio around, even though he himself acknowledges his own uselessness because it helps keep her focused on helping people.

** Thank you Mook No. 7 for kicking Lucy in the stomach, opening the bag of FantasticDrug, and kicking off her transformation into a RealityWarper.

''Lucy'' is a 2014 superhero/action/gangster film directed by Creator/LucBesson, starring Creator/ScarlettJohansson and Creator/MorganFreeman.

* ProgressiveEraMontage: It happens while Lucy [[TimeTravel time travels, all the way to the Big Bang]].

* ProgressiveEraMontage: It happens while Lucy [[TimeTravel travels through the space-time continuum, all the way to the Big Bang]].

* SignatureLine: "What if we used 100% of the brain?" said by an exta during Norman's lecture is the most well-remembered quote from the movie.