Lucy is a 2014 English-language French science fiction action film written and directed by Luc Besson for his company EuropaCorp, and produced by his wife, Virginie Besson-Silla. It was shot in Taipei, Paris, and New York City. It stars Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, Choi Min-sik, and Amr Waked. Johansson portrays Lucy, a woman who gains psychokinetic abilities when a nootropic, psychedelic drug is absorbed into her bloodstream.
The film was released on 25 July 2014 and became a massive box office success, grossing over $469 million worldwide, more than eleven times the budget of $40 million. It received generally positive, but also polarized, critical reviews. Although praise was given for its themes, visuals, and Johansson's performance, many critics found the plot nonsensical, especially its focus on the ten-percent-of-the-brain myth and resulting abilities.
Plot Lucy is an American studying in Taipei. Her new boyfriend Richard coerces her into delivering a briefcase containing four bags of the highly valuable synthetic drug CPH4 to Mr. Jang, a South Korean drug lord, at the Regent Taipei.
After witnessing Richard being shot dead, she is captured and forced to become a drug mule. One bag of the drug is sewn into her abdomen for transport to Europe. She is kicked in the belly, breaking the bag and releasing a large quantity of the drug into her system. She acquires enhanced physical and mental capabilities, such as telepathy, telekinesis, mental time travel, and negated emotions; she also ceases to feel pain. Using her new abilities, she kills her captors and escapes.
Lucy travels to the nearby Tri-Service General Hospital to get the bag of drugs removed. She is told by the operating doctor that natural CPH4 is produced in tiny quantities by pregnant women during their sixth week of pregnancy to provide fetuses with the energy to develop. As her abilities continue to develop, Lucy returns to Mr. Jang's hotel, kills his bodyguards, assaults him, and telepathically extracts the locations of the drug mules who are carrying the three other bags of CPH4.
Lucy contacts scientist Samuel Norman, whose research about the brain's capacity helps her understand her condition. Lucy demonstrates proof of her abilities to an amazed Norman and tells him she will die in 24 hours. When she asks what she should do with her newfound knowledge, Norman suggests she pass it on. Lucy agrees and flies to Paris to meet with him. She contacts local police captain Pierre Del Rio to help her find the other three drug mules. During the flight, she has a sip of champagne, which initiates a drug interaction that causes her cells to become unstable. To stave off this process, Lucy ingests more of the drug.
With the help of Del Rio, Lucy is able to recover the rest of the drugs. Meeting Norman and his colleagues, she agrees to share with them everything she knows. In the professor's lab, Lucy discusses the nature of time and life and how people's humanity distorts their perceptions. At her urging, she is intravenously injected with the contents of all three remaining bags of CPH4.
As Lucy's brain capacity begins to rapidly increase, her body changes into a black substance that begins spreading over computers and other electronic devices in the laboratory, combining with them and transforming into a single supercomputer. She mentally begins a journey through spacetime into the past, eventually reaching the oldest discovered ancestor of mankind, Lucy. She shares a quiet moment with Lucy and the two touch fingertips, before she goes all the way to the beginning of time and witnesses the Big Bang. Meanwhile, Jang enters the laboratory and points a gun at Lucy, whose body has reformed. He shoots at her head, but by that point Lucy has reached 100% of her brain capacity and promptly vanishes, moving into the space-time continuum. Only her clothes and the black supercomputer are left behind.
Del Rio enters and fatally shoots Jang. Norman takes a black flash drive offered by the supercomputer, after which it, too, disintegrates. Del Rio asks Norman where Lucy is, immediately after which Del Rio's cell phone sounds and he sees a text message: "I am everywhere." Lucy's voice is heard stating "Life was given to us a billion years ago. Now you know what to do with it."
Cast Scarlett Johansson as Lucy Miller: The role of Lucy called for "an actress who could be believable as extremely vulnerable, as well as superpowered, when her exposure to an illicit substance inadvertently makes her acquire incredible skills." Impressed by Johansson's discipline, Besson considered her for the role, stating that she was immediately precise and professional, and he "enjoyed the way she talked about the film." He said, "She was excited for the right reason, which was the story. At that moment, it was a done deal for me. She was definitely the one." Angelina Jolie is widely reported to have been originally cast as Lucy, and as having dropped out of the role prior to filming. Although Jolie was in "serious talks" with Besson since 2011 to star in his next directorial effort, then untitled, he stated that she was not his first choice for the role of Lucy. Morgan Freeman as Professor Samuel Norman: A scientist and a professor at the University of Paris who has knowledge of different human capabilities. Producer Virginie Silla stated that given Freeman's experience portraying a character of wisdom, "it was pretty obvious that he was the perfect actor" for the role of Professor Norman. Choi Min-sik as Mr. Jang: A South Korean drug lord. Besson said that Mr. Jang is the "best villain" he scripted since Gary Oldman's character Norman Stansfield, adding that "Whereas Lucy is the ultimate intelligence, Mr. Jang is the ultimate devil." Besson and his film team "had to go and meet [Choi] in Korea, talk with him and discuss the story. And it was only at the very end that he said, 'Okay, I'm interested, I want to be in.'" Amr Waked as Pierre Del Rio: A French police officer. Besson stated that "Del Rio represents the audience; he's basically you and me," and added that when Lucy has "lost all her emotions by being exposed to the drug," there exists "a tiny spark of emotion that's still there" when she is with Del Rio. Waked also said that Besson having written the script was enough for him to want to star in the film. Julian Rhind-Tutt as the polite British antagonist who sews drug packs into the mules Pilou Asbæk as Richard, Lucy's delinquent boyfriend in Taipei Lio Tipton as Caroline, Lucy's roommate in Taipei Nicolas Phongpheth as Jii, Jang's top henchman
Speaking of Besson's "interest in making the film one about the way we interact with our environment, and socially as well," Silla said that one of the goals was to bring together a diverse cast to show the planet's diversity and a mixture of the different cultures. She stated, "So we have Scarlett Johansson, who is Caucasian, Morgan Freeman, who is African-American, Min-Sik Choi, who is from Korea, and Amr Waked, who hails from Egypt."
Production
Writing Besson stated that he intended for the first part of Lucy to be like Léon: The Professional (which he also wrote and directed), the second part to be like Inception and the third part to be like 2001: A Space Odyssey.
He was intrigued by the brain capacity of Lucy, a female Australopithecus afarensis, stating that her brain weight was only 400g, and modern human brains weigh in around 1.4 kg. "I was very interested with all the science," he said. "When I learned one cell can send 1000 messages per cell per second and we have 100 billion cells in our body, for me, it's gigantic." He did not want to make "a documentary about the brain," and so he focused on making an entertaining film with scientific and ethical aspects, which he cited as "quite rare today." He said, "That was my goal: an action film with a purpose. When I was younger, the purpose I had was smaller. Basically, this is about us, our legacy and what we learn."' An animated version of Australopithecus being in the film, "modeled on the dawn of Man sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey", is one of several of Lucy's homages.
"I live in a country of food, and you can't have a third star in a restaurant (the top Michelin rating) without risk, invention or creativity", Besson said. "I'd rather take some risks, and maybe some people will say, 'What the fuck is this film?' But some others will embrace it. I totally understand that we can't take this kind of risk on every movie, but at the same time, you can't progress if there is not risk and novelty." He added, "I guess the film has the possibility to be a hit with the American audience. Of course, I would rather that it perform and the people are happy with it."
Budget and filming With an estimated budget of 48 million euros, Lucy was the second-largest French film production in 2013, and the biggest ever for EuropaCorp, the company founded by Besson in 2000.
Principal photography started in September 2013 at the Cité du Cinéma, a then-new megastudio on the outskirts of Paris. On 5 September, scenes were shot at the cliffs of Étretat in northern France. Eleven days of filming began in Taipei, Taiwan, on 21 October; locations included Taipei 101, one of the world's tallest skyscrapers. Some footage was filmed with IMAX cameras.
On 23 October, The Hollywood Reporter said Besson had become enraged by all the media attention the shoot was getting that day. Meeting reporters in Taipei a day after he finished shooting the Taiwan part of the film, he said, "We don't want pictures with new dresses of Scarlett. Sometime I lost a bit of my concentration because I'm bothered by that," adding that paparazzi intrusions meant "shooting at night time was a nightmare". Besson said two unnamed agencies from Hong Kong were especially disruptive.
Visual effects Lucy has the most visual effects in a film directed by Besson, with over 1,000 effects shots under senior visual effects supervisor Nicholas Brooks. Most visual effects were done by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), with a team headed by supervisor Richard Bluff. Bluff described Lucy as "really fun because it wasn't a thousand shots of robots or things we typically do," instead relying on short sequences "that required a lot of new ways to problem-solve and to visualize them." ILM began work on the project in July 2013, based on concept art provided by Besson's Europacorp, such as Lucy disintegrating and sprouting black tendrils. Among the material ILM studied as reference for the effects were chemical reactions, laser lighting displays seen at raves, and the work of artist Perry Hall, who had worked with Brooks in What Dreams May Come. Rodeo FX handled the Paris chase scene, Taipei matte paintings, and the visual representation of cell phones' radio waves seen by Lucy's enhanced vision. Music and soundtrack
The film's score was composed by Éric Serra, who has scored all of Besson's films except Angel-A and The Family. British musician Damon Albarn contributed the song "Sister Rust". The soundtrack was released on 22 July 2014 by Back Lot Music.
The Introitus of Mozart's Requiem features in the score at the moment of Lucy's awakening.
Marketing Distributor Universal Pictures issued several print and digital posters for Lucy. The theatrical release poster had this tagline: "The average person uses 10% of their brain capacity. Imagine what she could do with 100%." On 15 August 2014, Universal Pictures released two advance posters for the upcoming comedy film Dumb and Dumber To that spoofed the theatrical release poster for Lucy.