entertainment10 • 3 • 2014

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Point-counterpoint:

I’m not generally one for summer blockbusters, but I was really excited for Lucy. A superhuman female protago-nist played by Scarlett Johansson? And she doesn’t have a love interest? Hell. Yes. Those promises were kept. But Lucy broke the most important promise, an unspoken promise: the promise to be an intelligent film. Lucy is not an intel-ligent film, but director Luc Besson wants you to think it is. He might even succeed if the special effects and Scarlett Johansson’s physical perfection are enough of a distraction from the film’s superficiality. Lucy is studying in Taiwan. Like many college stu-dents, she likes to party and have flings. One fling tricks her into becoming a drug mule for a powerful drug lord (Oldboy’s Choi Min-sik). Lucy is kidnapped and a bag of drugs is put in her abdomen. The completely fabricated drug, called CPH4, is a pretty blue powder derived from a chemical women produce during pregnancy. After Lucy is beaten by a drug lord crony, the bag breaks. Naturally, she becomes a superhero. After an emotional phone call to her mother that weakly establishes emotional attachment, and inexplicably killing a couple of innocent people, she seeks out neuroscientist Professor Norman (Morgan Freeman). Norman is both a world-renowned neuroscientist and the movie’s leading scientific authority. That’s unfortunate, because he doesn’t seem to actually know anything about science: after the CPH4 gets into Lucy’s system, she is able to use all 100% of her brain. Norman claims that normal humans can only use 10% of their brain. That’s incorrect enough to be painful. Humans can, and do, use all 100% of their brain- just Google it. With her new CPH4-powered head, Lucy has powers of mind control and telekinesis, and she can emotion-ally connect with trees or something. Most impressively, she can time travel. But that’s not in-troduced until the last bit of the film, ensuring that it makes the least amount of sense possible. With her new super-brain, she seeks out the remaining bags of the drug. If she doesn’t con-tinue to ingest the drug, she’ll disintegrate. Seriously. With the help of Morgan Freeman and a police officer named Pierre Del Rio (Amr Waked), she tries to recover the rest of the CPH4. Along the way, she has a couple of existential crises, continues to kill innocent people, and says some lines about the importance of knowledge and the value of our time on Earth. Lucy’s redeeming qualities come close to making it a watchable film. Scarlett Johansson gives a great performance despite the terrible screenplay, and the special effects are some of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. Neither excuses the fact that Lucy is dangerous: its pseudo-science is presented realistically enough to make those without a basic knowledge of neurosci-ence think it’s factual, and it includes just enough vaguely poetic dialogue and stock footage of predatory cats to make a naïve audience member think that this film is actually art.

I was totally amped to see Lucy, a Luc Besson film starring Scarlett Johansson (swoons) as the titular character. Three big things that got me excited: no love interest, Luc Besson doing his wacky French magic, and ScarJo kick-ing people in the face. I freaking loved it. I’m an action movie buff, so I didn’t re-ally go into it expecting to have my mind blown. Action films generally are comprised of explo-sions, gun fights, the aforementioned kicks to the face, and a fast-paced plot. The camera work in all of the action sequences wasn’t full of head-ache-inducing jump-cuts. Suspension of disbelief was required for most of the action. Scratch that: most of the movie. Let me just preface this by saying that Luc Besson’s La Femme Nikita, the Fifth Element,

and Léon: the Professional are classics. All have a certain amount of disconnect from reality, something that I expected from Lucy as well. While the notion that we only use 10% of our brains is hogwash and the existentialism that Lucy spouts near the end could easily have been written for a CW show, the CGI anti-physics destruction is art in and of itself. Visually, the film is stunning. The melding of practical and computer-generated effects (not to mention the ever-beautiful Scarlett Johansson) ends up as symphonic vessel that carries the admittedly messy plot to fruition. Some would say that the ambiguous ending was stupid and unsatisfy-ing end to a wacky and scientifically-inaccurate movie. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Courtney Bierman Editor-in-Chief

Courtney Bierman Editor-in-Chief

Helen Winston Opinion Editor

A mess of pseudoscience

Art makes up for faults

is Lucy worth watching?

Imagine opening your eyes to only see darkness, the feeling of being pulled up in a small cage is the only thing you know to be happening. You have no memory of who you are, where you are or why you are in this cage. It comes to an abrupt stop, and it opens, the blinding sunlight rushing at you, and the first thing you see is a group of young men staring back at you. This is how Thomas, played by Dylan O’Brien, wakes up to see. These boys have been stuck in a small enclosure for years, only getting supplies once a month, being forced to live on their own with a small group of other boys, with no memory of their lives but their name. Not only do they have no memories of themselves, they have no memories of how they go to be in the Glade, a quarantined place that is sur-rounded by a dangerous maze, filled with terrors that you thought only existed in your nightmares. The Maze Runner is a book that has recently been turned into movie, and is about a group of young teenage boys, ranging from ages 15-21, that have been

plucked from their normal lives and been brought into the Glade, expected to live on their own. They’re trapped on a little acre of farmland, surrounded by an endless maze filled with creatures that you didn’t think are real. Thomas is only there for three days before things start to change, and the other boys are not happy. Not only are they dying left and right, the maze is changing. Literally. The rules that the young boys have thought to be true are broken, and everything is chaos. Grievers, creatures that live in the Maze that will tear you apart if you get trapped, break loose, and everybody blames Thomas for all the deaths. After he learns of his past, which is quite a plot twist, he wants to help the other boys, and not all is happy with his plan. This movie is filled with twists and turns that left the audience with tears in their eyes, the cliffhanger making them beg for more. This is one movie that everybody will enjoy, and this reporter is just anxiously waiting for the sequel. Just remember one thing: “W.C.K.D is good.”

Lorren RahnPhoto Chief

Maze Runner full of twists and turns

Nearly 1000 people lined up outside of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s student union late last month to glimpse actress Laverne Cox. Cox, who is currently traveling across the country for her lecture series “Ain’t I a Woman” is part of the main cast of the popular Netflix series “Orange is the New Black”. Like her character Sophia Burset, Cox is a transgender woman who was assigned the male gender at birth. She was nominated for the Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series Emmy for her work on “Orange”, making her the first openly transgender person to receive a nomina-tion for the award in an acting category. The show serves as a platform which Cox uses to discuss issues faced by transgender people and people of color. In addition to her lecture series, she has appeared on numerous talk shows since the show’s premiere to speak about her activism

and acting career. Cox grabbed headlines in early 2014 after appearing on Katie Couric’s syndicated talk show “Katie” and criticizing the journalist’s line of questioning on Cox’s physical transition from male to female on air, saying the fascination with the physical aspect of transgen-der identity “objectifies trans* people”. Although the event was mainly marketed to University students, many students from Omaha high schools attended as well, incluing students

from millard South. Junior London Adams was one such student. “It felt really awesome to have one of my all-time favorite characters come [to Nebraska],” Adams said “She’s really inspiring and her voice needs to be heard all over the world. What she is saying is important because a lot of people don’t understand what it means to be transgender. She’s

educating people through her own story.”

Laverne Cox speaks at UNL on September 19th. 950 people crowded into the Centennial Room for the event, ensuring every seat was filled. Photo courtesy of the Daily Nebraskan

Laverne Cox

“Orange is the New Black” actress visits UNL