Limitless by Emily LaBrie

Oh, Bradley Cooper, you were so great in Limitless, why did you have to go gross me out like that…..sigh. Oh well, I first need to say that I really liked the movie. I loved the concept. How many of us have dreamed of a super pill that could solve all of our problems. I was along for the ride……until my Mr. Cooper started drinking blood off the floor. The breaking of that taboo I believe ties in with the desire for a human being to live; that instinct that Cooper’s character was talking about. To the question about why it seemed so disgusting in Limitless while it seems “okay” in the wave of Vampire movies and TV shows; I think the difference lies in the context. Vampires too drink blood in order to stay alive, but they exist only in a fantasy world where we can glorify them to be the pin ups in a teen age girl magazine. The blood sucking trait of the character can also be traced back hundreds of years since vampire stories have existed. Our cultures are used to the long standing fantasy aspect of it. Plus, the character drinking blood in Limitless is the guy we are rooting for; vampires are often seen as the bad guy who would naturally do the wrong thing. Now, this is not to say that I think that what happened in the movie is reality, however, the miracles provided by science (made up or not) seem a little more real than Robert Pattinson flying around the woods with an angsty teenage girl on his back. That being so, death and blood in real life are gruesome, and I think the director did a great job in Limitless by emphasizing the “ew” factor the audience felt as Bradley Cooper did whatever he could to stay alive.
I also agree that the girlfriend, Lindy, was the one true moral figure in the movie. During the table discussion we discussed how, like Dr. Redick’s email said, she was the one good moral figure because she was able to turn away from the power of the drug. However, I do not think it was her that inspired Eddie to give the drug up, I think its limited availability and the results of withdrawal did that motivated him. Not that Eddie did not love Lindy; but I think the power of being all knowing was too strong for the Eddie. Therefore, I think Eddie was lying in the end when he said he was off the drug; I think he found a way to purify the drug to make it better for his system.
In having an ending where it seems that Eddie had it all while still being on the drug, I think the movie lost some of its power here. In Limitless we saw the abandonment of the “wholly other” by Eddie for the drug that made the “wholly other” obsolete. The prolonged result would have been illness and death. The message being, nobody can be “God” without consequences. If this message held true, it would support that Eddie did stop the drug and that Lindy was the moral figure Eddie needed to get through his ordeal. However, I think the way he acted toward DeNiro’s character and how he could just speak Chinese at the end proved he was able to get away with being a genius at no cost. It is an interesting twist at the end, but like I said, the movie lost some of its “moral” message and power. He could be God like (as was mentioned in the movie earlier) with no consequences. Then again, the idea of moral precepts has to do with what one considers moral, and that is an entirely different conversation.