I've done drugs and I've never heard of being able to permanently change your brain so it's like you are on drugs.
shareWhatever Sally
Enrique Sanchez
There is Hollywood ending, and there's ending that makes sense.
Personally I love a realistic ending, something like Requiem for a Dream, where it doesn't end well for the drug takers. I prefer when there's a lesson in the end, not the usual American lie, that as long as you are successful, it doesn't matter what you do. Bla bla bla, Success, success, success. I didn't like the ending either.
Requiem for a Dream was okay. There was no reason for the two guys to be sent to jail.
sharei actually thought they left it open for viewer's interpretation. is he still on the drugs, is he off them. did he really tell the truth to deniro's character. maybe they were thinking of making a sequel???
but i guess you can interpret it as a bad ending. the character you're rooting for ends up giving up completely to the drug and not overcoming the 'addiction' ... i dunno???
Actually, I wasn't much rooting for the character, I don't know how anyone could. He became successful overnight not because of hardwork or talent, but because of drugs. He manipulated everyone to get where he was, and as far as we are concerned he also killed people while he was on drugs, and not just only as self-defense. He gained power and manipulated the justice system. Was he one of the good guys, just because he had a lame charity organization now? And the character of his girlfriend is completely unbelievable. After she experienced the drugs, she understood, that she didn't recognize the self she had become, and that's why she didn't want Bradley's character to continue with them, and she was very strong on the notion, that she was not going to be with him, if he didn't quit them. If his brain permantly changed because of the drugs, wouldn't that mean that he had permantly changed? She would never be with someone like him.
I just think that someone had a philosophical question, of what would happen if we could use 100% of our brains because of a drug, and ran with it, but wrapped it up to give it a satisfying Hollywood ending. America loves a winner, that's how Americans are conditioned, and they don't care how the winner got there. They just love success, no matter what the methods. I would even understand the ending that Bradley's character's brain had permantly changed and he didn't need the drugs anymore, but it wasn't a believable ending because of the tone of the film. We as an audience are supposed to empathize with Bradley's character? At least, spoiler alert, in the end of Godfather, we know that Michael Corleone had completely changed, didn't have the morals of the beginning and he had started to work on the family business. The closing of the door separated him from us, and from his wife. In this case, because it is a mediocre film, no such thing happens. The character is the hero, when in fact he should be clearly portrayed as an antihero. I am not one to always route for a message in a story, but in this case it was actually very important to be given a good message, because what it reinforced is a really outdated and poisonous idea that has destroyed the economy of the US and the world, which is supporting the Winner, the Successful one, no matter what his methods, as long as he's a winner.
I very much agree with you, however I don't think the ideal ending you or I want would thematically be possible. Sure it might suit the tone, but the problem is who's telling the story. It isn't some third-person, impartial account of the events; Bradley Cooper's character is telling us what happened, who to believe and who to root for. Because he's telling it, he makes himself the hero. So while I might not particularly like the ending, I could understand how it ended up that way.
sharevery well said but I think we get the impression, over time, he was already once pretty brilliant. I mean to say he probably did work towards success at one time and fell off the tracks, so the story is told to us like he is an underdog but yes, I agree It's crazy the whole 'killing a hooker' thing is swept under a rug.
sharei actually thought they left it open for viewer's interpretation. is he still on the drugs, is he off them. did he really tell the truth to deniro's character. maybe they were thinking of making a sequel???
I think they're both on it at the end. Throughout the movie, his eyes get bright blue when he's on. Hers do too, get brighter I mean, you can see it in the scene at the park before she runs out from behind the rock. Up until then her eyes are brown, and suddenly after she takes it, they turn sort of a bright amber brown. Then, rest of movie, she's back to her plain dark brown. End of movie, he's got his glowing blue eyes and she's got her glowing amber brown eyes. She might not have left him if he'd learned somehow how to control it. She might want it for herself too.
shareI think they're both on it at the end. Throughout the movie, his eyes get bright blue when he's on. Hers do too, get brighter I mean, you can see it in the scene at the park before she runs out from behind the rock. Up until then her eyes are brown, and suddenly after she takes it, they turn sort of a bright amber brown. Then, rest of movie, she's back to her plain dark brown. End of movie, he's got his glowing blue eyes and she's got her glowing amber brown eyes. She might not have left him if he'd learned somehow how to control it. She might want it for herself too.You make some very good points, and I'm inclined to agree with you.
PS - If he was able to figure out how to control it, I hope he was able to figure out a way to help his first wife, and get her healthy again. She looked rough, and that's a shame.
I don't know, although your interpretation is intriguing, for me it was a straight and simple Hollywood ending, that somehow ruined the whole movie for me...
shareRequiem for a Dream is an American movie. What was your point?
shareI agree with the OP. It was a lame ending to an otherwise good film.
For the record, I rated it 8/10.
It was a bad ending to people who want fairy-tale endings to movies.
Americans especially have a hard time accepting any movie that doesn't end with "the bad guy got what he/she deserved and they all lived happily ever after."
This movie was deeper than that.
Assuming you disagree with the OP, I beg to differ with on two points:
1. People who like fairy tale endings would like this ending because of the feel good quality. I'm excluding original Grimm's Fairy Tales because some of their endings are quite gruesome.
2. It's not only Americans who can't accept totally implausible endings. I'm not an American.
If you agree with the OP but don't appear to because of your subtleness then please ignore my comments above.
None the less, would you mind elaborating on the deep aspects of this film? Please include a justification for the ending.
I've had this discussion a LOT on this board.
I'll cut and paste some of the reasoning from other threads but I'm not going to have another elaborate, detailed typing session to say the same things I have said before.
Nice job movie .. so taking drugs, cheating, stealing, sleeping around and killing people are a-ok and lead to a happy, successful life?
Well, I guess you missed the bailout of 2008?
Billions stolen; not one arrest. All of those criminals got to keep their spoils if they just "promised to do better", which they have not. I think the end was very fitting. People are generally self serving and often ride the line of good and bad.
Oh, and Its safe to assume the drug was permanent since he paid the neuropharmacologist to replicate and revamp the drug in six months. It is quite possible that its effects became permanent.
y - Druscila on Sat Jun 23 2012 05:35:18 Was this supposed to be non fiction or a documentary? I thougt it was more of a fantasy going in, by the description. Just checking.
It is what I would call a future feasible fantasy.
The subject of transhumanism is very real and there is a lot of non-fiction about it. This movie is ahead of current reality but the premise is based in reality. Its like how virtual keyboards in Minority Report are actually real now (though still in the early stages) but at the time, they were "fantasy but feasible in theory" OR like video phones; used to be fantasy, now every smartphone can be one.
y - FINSLAW on Fri Oct 7 2011 08:45:14 Bettering the world by becoming a politician? Does that really sound like a SMART idea?
Why do so many multi-milionaires become politicians and run for President? I doubt that its for the $450k/yr paycheck.
They never reveal his plan. Maybe it doesn't end with becoming President?
Hi blaqueknight2000,
Thank you for your comprehensive reply.
I hadn't heard of transhumanism but was aware of the concept and realised that this is what the movie was about.
I personally don't believe in all that sort of thing. Neither do I believe in the precept of the film. I think it's all rubbish.
The bit at the end about "smart people" and the "little guy" seems like propaganda and conspiracy theory stuff to me but thanks anyhow.
I have heard and believe that our brains haven't really changed much in the last 10,000 years. We have access to a lot more information but which is not a measure of intelligence.
Some say that, if anything, our intelligence has slipped over the past 100 years or so. I would go along with that. With changes in society and less family bonding, particularly in the western world, there is less passed on from parents to child. Parents are mistakenly led to believe that it's the teachers' responsibility to "educate" their children.
Some people are led to believe that there is a pill to fix this and fix that. It all seems like a marketing ploy to me. For instance, Nestle told the mothers of poor African nations that they should not breast feed their children and bottle feed instead because a formula is more nutritious. No consideration was given to poor water supplies. Women were diluting the mixture with unhygienic water and spending a large proportion of their little income thinking they were doing the right for their child but they were killing them. All Nestle cared about was profit. This is a sad but true story.
In my opinion, this film and your transhumanism hobby-horse is rubbish.
No offense. You can carry on as you like.
Well, there are roughly 7 billion people on the planet. We can't all think and believe the same things. If that were the case, it would be a pretty boring world, wouldn't it?
shareYes, it would be a boring indeed. It's all very well to talk about aspects of the story but, getting back to the subject i.e. the ending, I still think it sucked.
shareIf intelligence is the capacity to understand and manipulate information then I disagree, access to information does increase intelligence. 100 years ago you'd have needed rich parents to have access to an encyclopedia while nowadays we 1st world peasants have access to the world's knowledge.
This film is partly a dialogue on nootropics and opens an ethics debate which is important in my opinion. If you use these drugs to study and gain information which makes you a more capable individual, have they not permanently altered your intelligence? Have you cheated, or is it important that exams only measure capability? Does the risk of an academic performance enhancing drugs arms race outweigh their benefit and put people at risk, like we have decided in sport?
Old comment but something to consider: you said that some say our intelligence has slipped in the last hundred years. That has however been known to be untrue since the 80s. The Lynn-Flynn Effect refers to the increase in IQ over time of populations around the world. It has been documented since the standardization of IQ tests--they make the mean 100 with a standard deviation of 15. Every decade or so, they reset the mean. They adjust the test to maintain the bell curve. However, if you give a current generation an old test, they score higher--the bell shifts. What is 100 today would have been around 118-125 in 1950. There are a ton of theories as to why--better nutritional standards globally, rise in literacy, better schooling. Even environmental factors. In, say, 1850, walking down a street meant little stimulation. Store fronts were plain, minimal signage, minimal noise in the environment. Fast forward to today, and walking down a street means being bombarded with neon signage, billboards, music, all kinds of stimulus. Al stuff we need to perceive and contextualize instantly. Like upgrading the CPU in a computer and getting better physics and particle effects in games--more fire, more realistic smoke and collisions, more NPCs, more complex AI. In order to handle the level of input we all deal with every day, our brains must be more robust.
It is true that our brain structure hasn't changed very much, or at all, since at least the creation of civilization. But the way neurons are dispersed inside your brain changes on a daily basis. Pick up guitar and the part of your brain that controls the finger movements gets more dense with neurons. Did learning guitar mean you had less time to, say, do the daily sudoku and crosswords and stuff? The part of your brain governing the processes for that--spacial reasoning, logic, whatever--will lose neurons. So the idea that a drug could stimulate the brain in such a way as to cause neurons to grow exponentially in all areas of the brain, maxing out the areas controlling spacial reasoning, logic, coordination, memory formation and storage, is at least a premise that makes sense. Whether it is possible is another question.
I would agree with your gripe about pills and pill culture.As an American, I can speak to the plague of pharmaceutical dependence today. Ever since the laws regarding drug commercials--that as much time be devoted to explaining the side-effects as to advertising the drug--changed, *beep* has hit the fan. Drug companies advertise constantly the newest drug to treat this and that. Ask your doctor if this is right for you. If it was right for you, the doctor would have prescribed it. And then five years later, there is a class action suit over the side-effects. It is a *beep* system that has created this mindset of every little thing being a medical condition, and there must be some kind of drug, some kind of chemical, to treat it.
But I would say that the central premise of the film--a guy gets hold of a drug that is basically like adderall on steroids and may even stimulate neuron growth like some kind of crossover with an Alzheimer drug, then sure. The degree of the change and the ridiculously *beep* "10%" of the brain thing is a valid point of contention, though.
"In, say, 1850, walking down a street meant little stimulation. Store fronts were plain, minimal signage, minimal noise in the environment. Fast forward to today, and walking down a street means being bombarded with neon signage, billboards, music, all kinds of stimulus. Al stuff we need to perceive and contextualize instantly."
I just don't agree at all with you.
Big cities are indeed full of noise and useless information (like all the advertisements), but that doesn't make our brain works more. As it is noise, brain separate it from the important messages. I don't care much about advertisements which are, most of the time, embarrassing for whom made it. If it does anything, it's make you dumber, not smarter.
There were lots of things to listen to back in 1850: more people working outside, more discussions, the sounds of the birds (specially passenger pigeons in North America before they go extinct), no stupid TV or lol and wtf videos on computer but time for outdoor activities (if, of course you were not staying 12 hours a day in a factory).
" Like upgrading the CPU in a computer and getting better physics and particle effects in games--more fire, more realistic smoke and collisions, more NPCs, more complex AI. In order to handle the level of input we all deal with every day, our brains must be more robust."
You mean that we are in enhanced reality now? Wow, I want my old computer back. I don't call it enhanced, I call it bloated.
I agree wholeheartedly. I thought it was very brave of the filmmakers to not do the typical Hollywood ending where "drugs are bad" and where its better to be a "natural" nobody than use something unnatural to advance yourself.
I am sick of that garbage having seen it to many times and coming to the conclusion that it is totally not true.
I would take the drug in the film without a qualm. Transhumanism all the way:)
Well they must have heard you because they're making a TV show now so it will never end!
shareYou have never heard of an acid flashback?
share
It wasn't just the ending though. There were a number of instances that left me thinking how far fetched or stupid the film was. Like, that sinister bastard who killed all those people, he just got away with it and that was fine? And the girlfriend who saw what happened to those two guys who tried to help her.... She got over that very well. And the super safe flat he moved into.... lmao.
I was very surprised that this film was rated so highly on here. I looked forward to watching it, as it was a good and interesting idea, but I was very disappointed with the movie. I'd give it a weak 6/10.
He was bluffing at the end. He knew that the other guy would grab full control of him if he could and you see a moment where he is sitting there after the last exchange and he is thinking about what to do.
If he has a iq of 1000 he would of been able to run scenarios in his mind in the amount of time it took for us to watch cooper's character think.
It's impossible for him to be bluffing, unless he'd planned for that van to smash into the taxi at that precise moment. That car accident was the proof that he was not bluffing.
shareI had a totally different interpretation of the ending than everyone else here. Eddie said he did a few tweaks to the drug and now he no longer needed it. I was under the impression that he was smart enough to manipulate the drug so that instead of getting sick, like everyone else who took it, it permanently altered his brain. He no longer needed the drug as his brain was now functioning at full capacity without it. And in response to the OP, I'm sure you've never heard of a drug that made you super smart. If Eddie had an IQ of over 1,000 he would be able to do anything. I loved the ending.
shareI saw this film last night and loved it-except the ending was horrible! I couldn't wait to log in here and post that----only to find others hated it, too! With Bradley Cooper's awesome performance in this movie, and his amazing performance in 'the Words', I cannot for the life of me figure out why he got an Oscar nomination for his lousy performance in 'Silver Linings Playbook'.
shareI think Bradley Cooper was excellent in Silver Linings Playbook, as he also was in The Words and in Limitless.
I liked the ending, it was also open-ended i.e. did he stop taking the drugs or not.
I liked the ending, it was also open-ended i.e. did he stop taking the drugs or not.Same here. You can't be quite certain of what has actually occurred. share
i thought the same thing :)
and i think the girlfriend also finally gave in and took it as well, for her eyes are bright gold, like eddie's bright blue eyes and the bad guys bright eyes.
i thought the ending sucked too. Win or lose, I would have much preferred to see van loon live up to his threat and see the two battle it out.
shareAgree with others who felt it was a good movie with a weak ending. Seemed awfully convenient and slapped together in that last scene.
I also agree with the sentiment that he could have been portrayed a bit more as an anti-hero. Unfortunately, I think that many people having just finished watching this film will be thinking more about the possibility that something like NZT might really exist (it doesn't), and wondering how they might procure some, rather than seeing the downside of his actions and the parallels in our "me first" dog eat dog society.
Slapped together is exactly how I viewed it. I know that pace is important in a movie but you can't end it with "I solved all my problems, got everything I wanted and we lived happily ever after." The whole movie built up the dilemma of NZT causing permanent issues or death. Maybe a better ending would be if his first wife is the one who found the solution and then he was able to benefit from it as well. Maybe if his girlfriend did leave him but he got back with his first wife, or even someone else. Or maybe he faces some consequences for something.
shareThe whole idea of NZT is so nebulous, as well. So it unlocks the full 100% of our brain? That's an urban legend. Even more than that, how does using 100% of the brain somehow give us complete immunity from fear and emotion, muscle memory we've never learned and the ability to predict the future? How was he able to fight those guys in the subway after watching three Bruce Lee movies in a flashback? How would using 100% of his brain give him that ability?
If the central concept was something more like "The drug leads us into the next stage of evolution" I could get behind it a lot more. That's an interesting idea. That would be more legitimate science fiction, whereas this movie is just fantasy.
I think something "like" NZT *does* exist. I remember reading a magazine article about an experimental drug that when given to older people returned their thought processes back to as strong as when they were young. Not exactly the same, but somewhat "like" it. I remember one of the guys who took it said that if there was any way, "legal or illegal" for him to get more of it he would do so.
share