Give It Your All – Then Give Some More

Lucy seems to be operating on Comic Book Science. That’s just an artistic decision, and I’m fine with it. The Fifth Element and The Avengers are scientifically ridiculous too but that shouldn’t keep you from enjoying them on their own terms. Are reviewers confused/angered because the Comic Book Science of this movie didn’t actually appear in print first?

Reality-warping brain powers aren’t exactly unprecedented in science fiction. The Lathe of Heaven and Flow my Tears, the Policeman Said immediately come to mind. And in Policeman the reality warping powers actually came from drug use, like in Lucy. I’m sure others can name additional stories.

I don’t know about Lucy, but Ted Chiang is a superhero who uses 100 percent of his brain.

stacking raisins.

There were some Morlochs who had powers like this- to become as thin as paper, or to turn into any flavor of ice cream (and then melt, slide under a door, and reform! Maybe this one was in a parody version. I can’t remember for sure.) Still, who knows what you could do with raisins stacked in the right way. Maybe something like The Interior League from The Enigma comic series. (I’ll admit that, while almost no one knows of them, I find The Interior League to be the most frightening comic book bad guys of all time. No joke.)

the other Matt said,
The Fifth Element … [was]scientifically ridiculous
If that had been the only way that movie was ridiculous, it would have been fine. Sadly, that was the least of it.

Lance Armstrong figured out how to give more than 110%. Literally:

“Where riders such as Greg LeMond measured outputs of 400w … many former drug cheats such as Lance Armstrong, Marco Pantani and Alberto Contador regularly averaged power outputs of 430-450 watts.

“…data from the sports most prestigious climb, Alpe d’Huez….:

1995 -Marco Pantani – time 36’50”- 468 watts (‘mutant’ threshold’)
2011 –Lance Armstrong–time 38’38″- 450 watts (‘miraculous’ threshold’)
1995 -Richard Virenque – time 40’30″ – 417 watts (‘suspicious’ threshold’)
1989 -Greg LeMond – time 42’30″ – 394 watts (‘normal’ threshold’)

http://bikepure.org/2013/06/watts-the-story-to-tour-de-france-glory-report-into-doping-in-the-tour-de-france/

Most people use only 10% of their brains. Whereas I use 10% of my brain.

“Sir, you have to see this… she’s adding probabilities of non-mutually-exclusive events!”
“That’s impossible!”
“No,” says Doctor Freeman, “not for Miss 110-Percent.”

Limitless starring Bradley Cooper had a protagonist developing super-intelligence using a new drug nicknamed Focus that simply enabled the user to concentrate. The movie failed. Like Transcendence it didn’t make sure who was the hero and who was the villain and it wasn’t an action movie. But as for the key question of whether this guy could beat Lucy? You must remember these things are largely decided by sexiness quotient, and Scarjo will always beat Bradley Cooper. Cooper is probably quietly suspected of playing for the wrong team.

For a classic of the genre, see AE van Vogt’s ‘Slan’, which was important to both SF and SF fandom, as it reflected/reinforced fans’ opinions of their ostracism and superiority. ‘Fans are Slans’ etc.

“Well, that was spectacular nonsense”, is what I said to my friend as the credits rolled. I really wouldn’t recommend it – quite apart from the “science” there were plot holes I could steer an aircraft carrier through, using only 10% of my brain.

I also spent the whole movie thinking of the Simpsons episode where Bart takes the drug focusin (yes, that’s what it’s called) – “Lisa, scientists say that most people only use 10% of their brains. I am now one of them.”

On the other hand, I just got back from “A Most Wanted Man” which was the best movie I’ve seen in a long, long time. Thoroughly recommended.

How many of those demanding 110% from others ever give even 90% of themselves?

According to my old little league coach – the phrase giving 110% is actually fully possible.

Its meant to describing giving 100% of your physical best and using 10% of your brain as maximum mental power so: max phyiscal 100% + max mental 10% = 110%.

I’ve no idea the truth of the derivation, but it always made sense to me that some coach could have dreamed up a formula and that it would make perfect sense to the average jock.

“According to my old little league coach – the phrase giving 110% is actually fully possible. ”

Yes and no. You can always borrow from the future and get more resources than your present circumstances normally would give you, at the cost of having less than you otherwise would in the future. In physical sports, this translates into being exhausted or injured and having to sit out the next few plays or next game.

This is often a good strategy, if the use of resources in the present is really, really important, or you have some confidence that you won’t need to or for some reason be able to use them in the future.

However, in the sense that there is always some hidden reserve that is fairly cost-free to use that the player is not tapping into because of insufficient willpower, the idea is nonesense.

I’d prefer more realism about superhuman cognition. I remember a short SciFi story by a Russian author whose name I haven’t a clue of (only accessing 9.1% of my brain is a bitch isn’t it). In any case the protagonist was using neutrinos (the physics is totally wrong, but neutrinos are appropraited mysterious) to boost his brain. They found him dead at his desk, and the investigation showed he died of a massive brain hemorage whilst trying to telekinetically move a match-head.

@15
Limitless was interesting, but I agree. It tried to show what “Focus” (and being addicted to it) would be like, and that was a mess. And I don’t think a viewer should wonder how much of the “authorities” being unconvincing was due to casting.

I saw it the day it came out. It was interesting, at least at first, but then got carried away with itself. Too violent, too much CGI, but that’s Luc Besson’s thing, and his violence porn has worked better in the past (The Professional). But I still like seeing ScarJo take on these crazy roles. Quite the change from her Girl with the Pearl Earring, which while a bit slow, was beautifully done.

My biggest problem was not the movie itself, though. It was the audience in the theater. Why do people insist on giving play by play narrations? Do they think they’re sitting at home, in their living rooms, and not disturbing others in the process? Every time Besson put the percentage of brain usage on the screen, for instance, someone was sure to read it aloud. And then the person in front of me kept turning on his smartphone, with a powerful light, etc. etc. I suppose he wanted to make sure others were as distracted as he was while watching.

People in the theater all too often make it better to wait for the DVD.

It’s just a movie, JimV. Apparently not a very good one, but people can make entertaining movies out of crap science. I seem to recall something called Star Wars, for instance.

I get more frustrated when a movie violates common sense or its own logic. I really wanted to like “Prometheus”, and it was perfectly believable that a biologist would feel affection and awe when he first sees what looks like an alien moray eel, but these biologists aren’t wearing any kind of protection from alien bacteria and even a mere terrestrial moray eel lacking super alien strength (another norm in movie science) can be pretty dangerous. There was no reason to have a plot where a bunch of ostensibly brilliant people go to an alien planet and then act like morons. Shouldn’t the point be that really smart people encountering an alien civilization might still find themselves utterly outmatched?

Along the lines of “using 100% of your brain” and “giving 110%” let me bring up “failure is not an option.”

I actually heard the sponsor of a overly ambitious and unrealistically scheduled data warehousing project use that exact phrase during the kick-off meeting. Sure enough, death march.

I’m with the Mythbuster guys: failure is always an option.

@Donald Johnson

I’m a bit reluctant to recommend it, as it’s not amazing, but Europa Report has some intelligent people going to space looking for life and it has a really smart take on it all. But you have to watch the whole thing to see it and if it’s a bit too cheap and ropey for you you may not make it that far.

And of course you can read Blindsight, but they’ll never make a movie of that..

I can never tell when a movie will unsuspend my disbelief to a distracting extent. The absurd “human battery” scheme of The Matrix didn’t, or the ridiculous orbital mechanics of Gravity. But the “elevator through the center of the earth” of the newer Total Recall did, and the current action-flick motif of “jump from one moving car to another one off in the distance” always does. It broke my engagement when the Man of Steel had trouble holding his breath in Kryptonian air, even though he could fly in outer space for long periods. Not sure what does it exactly.

“Prometheus” had promise, and the art work was strong, for the most part. But I think the director tried too hard to merge two stories and keep the Alien thing in play. The Chariots of the Gods aspect could have been pretty cool. But, yeah, they did unsuspend my disbelief with their lack of prep before leaving their ship. I suppose the writers and director just thought if they did the smart thing, there wouldn’t have been any “drama,” so they bagged that. I guess they thought it better if the scientists really did use just 10% of their capacities, etc.

Lee,

I like “The Fifth Element,” too, and that operatic moment was sensational.

Something most folks don’t know. Milla Jovovich made one really great (and truly original) album when she was 18, and I highly, highly recommend it. I’ve been a fan ever since.

http://www.theawl.com/2012/04/milla-jovovich-divine-comedy

It seem to be the most important thing these days : is this sf sciencey enough ? And is it sciencey in the right way? And how do the “as you know Sam… ” bits hold up?

It feels weird because I remember I liked my Verne or Van Vogt all right, without worrying about it at all. Maybe it was just me.

Scott Martens @ 26 : if you’re at early Besson and Diva and stuff and haven’t tried “Subway” : do so.

My school rugby coach (a former international player) once famously gave an inspirational speech to the team ending with the phrase “Just remember – rugby is only 20% about strength, and 90% about intelligence”…

Lacero–I loved Blindsight. I was thinking of that book when I mentioned really smart people totally out of their depth. I wish they would make a movie of it, but it is unlikely.

I think Watts is writing a sequel, or whatever you’d call a book about what is going on at the same time (back on earth).

In a World … Where No One Buys Books … Unless they look like Movies…
(Kirkus Echopraxia review (Blindsight sequel))

But “Prometheus” was a prequel to “Alien”, which is a “Split up and look for the cat” horror movie, not a “clever people overwhelmed by alien odds” SF movie.

“Prometheus” was a prequel to “Alien”, which is a “Split up and look for the cat” horror movie, not a “clever people overwhelmed by alien odds” SF movie”

It had greater ambitions than that. Two themes, as someone pointed out above. But even on the level of “ohmigod a monster is going to eat us” level it was not well done.

AW74’s rugby coach may well have been a fan of the baseball player and ursine namesake Yogi Berra – baseball is 90% mental, the other half’s physical.

in my experience, 100% nearly always refers to a rated maximum sustainable output of a machine or process. A number supplied by the manufacturer on theoretical grounds or on experience with earlier builds, not on detailed experiments with the particular machine at hand. It’s typically a guarantee, not an observation.

As such, it’s nearly always a conservative number, and experienced operators can typically run a machine continuously at more than 100%.

Perhaps this is Humpty-Dumptism, but in practice there is rarely a well-defined, objectively measurably ‘maximum’ to a performance. I suspect that both junior league coaches and machine operators understand this better than people who complain that 100% should be a tautologically unbreakable limit.

Hmm, that was really more aimed at the generic group of people who complain a out such things, not to your OP particularly. I am afraid that at this point in a comment discussion, I am liable to forget the details of the beginning…

On the topic of raisin stacking, is the goal maximum density or maximum height?

@59
Zamfir has just eliminated my last complaint about the implausibility of Star Trek. Obviously, Kirk knew perfectly well that the documented capacities of the warp drive were unduly conservative, whatever Scotty might say. And when Torres things like “Cap’n Janeway, the thrusters just won’t take that much stress,” she wasn’t being refreshingly realistic, she was just being a whiner (Seven would have shut up and done it already).