A few months ago, I made a video about the 2011 film Limitless and the book it
was based on. I called it “Limitless is a Bonkers Franchise” but I only managed to
scratch the surface of the franchise itself.
I only talked about the book and the movie. There’s some other stuff to talk about too.
To recap, Limitless is a film starring Bradley Cooper about a struggling writer who finds an
intelligence boosting pill that lets him become extraordinarily wealthy on the stock market.
In the film, the main character Eddie Morra succeeds beyond his
wildest dreams and ends the story in the midst of running for the senate.
In the original 2001 novel, the story is more of a cautionary tale with the main character succumbing
to the after effects of the drug, showing the consequences of the unfettered pursuit of wealth.
But there’s another key difference between the two that I’ve saved for this video.
In the book, Eddie only cares about making
money and makes no claims that his actions are for the betterment of society.
In the film, Eddie plans to save the world.
In the original novel, after his initial uses of the drug, Eddie cycles through a list of
potential ambitions. What grand thing could he do with his newfound cognitive abilities?
He considers writing another book, but concludes the chances of failure
are too high. He thinks about going back to school for a second career
as a doctor or an engineer, but is exhausted by the idea of school work.
Whatever idea he comes up with, he pokes a hole
in it. None of them would transform his life as quickly as he wants to.
“What then — I asked myself — was I left with? Well, what do you think? Making money.
Making money… how? By making telephone calls. Hhn? The stock market, stupid.”
So, he enters the stock market with no higher purpose. He just wants to make
as much money as possible, which is at least, refreshingly honest, right?
He’s not trying to convince the reader that he’s a good person for doing this. He’s simply
doing it. He quickly makes enough money to take care of himself;
and after that he just likes seeing the numbers go up.
“Being a guerrilla market-maker wasn’t going to be anywhere near enough to keep me happy.
The fact is, I wanted to know what it would be like to trade from the inside, and at the
highest levels… what it would be like and how it would feel to buy millions of shares at a time…”
There’s no plan for the money once he has it. He just wants to have it.
Later on in the novel, he considers using the drug to run for office,
wondering if he’d be able to become president with it. This was back in
the early 2000s when most people assumed you had to be smart to become president.
And again, he doesn’t do this with any kind of altruistic motive in mind. It’s not like
he sees some problem in the world he wants to solve. If he ran, it’d only be a vanity project,
just to see if he could do it, if the drug could help him be successful in that arena.
The movie, on the other hand, is the complete opposite of all of this.
Morra: “I’d come this close to having an impact on the world.
And now the only thing I was going to have an impact on was the sidewalk.”
Those are some of the first lines that Eddie Morra speaks in the film, and they point to a
subtle adaptational shift between this character and the character in the book. There are a lot
of superficial changes to the plot between the two — the movie has a lot more thriller action
sequences — but the biggest difference is right here, at the heart of the character, the idea
that motivates him. Book Eddie doesn’t care about having an impact on the world. Movie Eddie does.
After getting used to the drug and indulging in a little hedonism,
Eddie decides that he wants more in life than the pleasures of wealth. He has… an epiphany…
Morra: “And then I began to form an idea. Suddenly I knew what I needed to do.
It wasn’t writing. It wasn’t books. It was much bigger than that.
But it would take money to get there.”
From then on, Eddie Morra constantly reassures the audience that everything he’s doing? It’s
actually for a good reason. You just have to trust him. He’s going to get rich and then
do something good with it. Give him all the money because he’s a genius,
and he’ll be a philanthropist who will save the world after he wins at capitalism.
I’m sorry, you’d like details on what his plans are? No, no, he can’t be specific or anything,
just like, you know he’ll run for office or whatever and “cut through the noise.”
EDDIE: “Time someone shook up the free world and got things done.”
I find the decision to characterize Eddie this way SO GODDAMN INTERESTING.
On one level, it’s probably the result of a studio note saying Eddie should be more likeable.
If he is given a noble pursuit, then maybe the audience will identify with him more.
But it’s really the nebulousness of his motivations that is truly interesting.
It’s the empty hole at the center of the movie that is never explained and is yet
crucial to everything. What is Eddie actually going to do if he accumulates enough money and
power? What is his big plan? We just have to have faith that there is indeed a plan.
And is there any better depiction of modern capitalism than that? That even when you enter
into it with the thought of doing good for others, the pursuit of that wealth takes up all your time,
that you never actually get to the part where you help other people?
And yes, I know that Eddie ends this film running for office, but that’s not an
inherently altruistic thing to be doing, not when we don’t know what his actual goals in office are.
As much as this movie tries to characterize Eddie as a good guy, as a hero, I always get
this really ominous feeling when watching the conclusion of the film. This man has
gotten away with everything. He’s completely unrepentant and power hungry. The text wants
us to think of him as a hero, but the subtext and framing make this feel like a villain.
And apparently I’m not the only one who felt that way,
because it’s basically the main idea of the sequel to the movie.
After the film was a surprise hit,
CBS made a TV spin-off sequel show to capitalize off its success.
It didn’t really work out. The show got okay reviews,
but only ran for one season before it was cancelled.
It takes place in the same universe as the film and really wants you to know it.
The first scene tells us that Bradley Cooper is running for re-election to the senate.
But apart from the pilot episode, the show bears very little resemblance to the movie.
The pilot somewhat eerily goes through the same plot motions as the film,
which is weird again because this is happening in the same universe. The show begins with a
failure-to-launch twenty-something artist. This time his name is Brian Finch.
He’s down on his luck because his music career hasn’t taken off,
just like Morra’s writing career hadn’t in the movie.
But then he reconnects with an old acquaintance, gets his first taste
of the drug, then later finds out that the guy who sold him the drug is dead.
But that’s pretty much where the comparisons end.
After episode one, Brian gets hired by the FBI
so that he can use his new found intelligence to solve mysteries,
but secretly he’s actually there to be Eddie Morra’s eyes and ears within the organization.
At this point, the show morphs into a standard
police procedural with case-of-the-week style storytelling. It’s like they took
the first third of the Limitless movie and stapled it on to a basic cop show.
And… it’s fine? Relative to other procedurals… it’s fine?
To the extent that you can stomach shows that romanticize law enforcement in 2020… it’s fine?
Brian: “My colleague, Rebecca Harris, and I
are on here on a mission of goodwill from the FBI. See, we even brought you donuts.”
Yeah...
To its credit, the show recognized that the original premise of Limitless was basically
a superhero story, takes that idea and runs with it,
because this is basically a Spider-Man story, echoing the themes of “with great power
comes great responsibility.” He’s even got a wholesome dad to fill in the role of Uncle Ben.
Brian: “I just want you to know that the reason I take the pill isn’t because I’m some junkie.
It’s to help people. That’s what it’s always been about. That’s what you taught me.”
Probably the strongest element of the show is its frenetic visual style meant to illustrate
the way Brian’s mind works. And since he’s characterized as a millennial man-child,
of course he defaults to superhero tropes and imagery, using comic book style thought bubbles,
and dubbing the group of mysterious bad guys at the end of the season the “Legion of Whom.”
Brian: “I have decided that we will refer to them as the Legion of Whom.”
So if Brian is our plucky superhero working to solve crimes, then who is Eddie Morra?
Well. He’s Lex Luthor.
The writers of the show, smartly I think, reinterpret the film and come to the conclusion
that, this Eddie Morra guy, he’s kind of an egotistical, power-hungry, amoral villain.
Unlike the movie, the show actually has an answer for what Eddie’s plan is.
The giant gaping hole at the center of Eddie’s character is finally addressed in Episode Six.
Morra: “This rice contains a complete nutritional profile, everything the human body needs, can grow
in the harshest environments. With a little more research, this rice can feed the world.”
He’s got an invention that will cure world hunger. If only the stupid governments of
the world would just get out of the way. If only the dumb public would just shut up and
let themselves be saved then the brilliant chosen heroes of the world like Eddie.
Brian: “Why aren’t
you shouting it from the rooftops?” Morra: “Because people won’t want it.
I make an announcement. Lobbyist bring it to action, people rave about GMOs and it’s buried.”
I find this characterization of Eddie so authentic to the way that actual
real world billionaires think, it’s kind of amazing. Self-appointed saviors who pledge
to use the wealth they’ve hoarded to fix the problems the hoarding of that wealth created.
That’s a bit controversial. So to get to the problems of Eddie’s way of thinking here,
let’s take a look at a novel that is basically a critique of this position.
Yeah, it’s the last part of the Limitless franchise — Under the Night.
Morra: “Can you remember what’s it’s like to be inside your mother’s womb? I can.”
Whaaaaa
Under The Night is actually both a prequel and a sequel to the original Limitless book,
telling two parallel stories. One is in 1953 and
is about an ad man named Ned Sweeney who uses an early version of the mind-altering drug.
Then, in the present day,
his grandson is investigating the mysterious circumstances around Ned’s alleged suicide.
In an early chapter, Ned takes the drug and has a kind of awakening about how capitalism works
and the problems of the new consumer economy rung in by the end of the Second World War.
Sweeney: “here we are in 1953, eight years on from the war,
and as a society we’re already capable of producing whatever we need to survive,
more than enough, in fact, and I mean for everyone — food, automobiles, TV sets,
shirts, toothpaste, cigarettes, you name it. but you know what the problem is?
It’s not that we’re not producing enough stuff — we are. It’s that we’re not consuming enough.”
So, here’s what he’s saying here.
The need for production to increase year after year means we need to consume more every year;
but it has little to do with what we actually want or need for survival.
This was true of the world in the 1950s; it’s even more comically true today. Our problems as
a society are not because we lack resources. It’s because of how we distribute resources.
And it's in the light of that idea that Morra’s speech about
genetically modified rice or whatever is completely absurd.
We could solve global hunger today with the technology we currently have if he had the
political and economic willpower to do so. We don’t need some scientific breakthrough to solve
the problem. We need people like Morra to give up SOME of their wealth and power to make it happen.
But the thing with the show, and I suspect it’s because it’s being produced on network television,
is that isn’t not really interested in depicting a world with believable politics or with
making a statement. I mean, early on in the season, a tv anchor says the following.
TV Anchor: “Preliminary polls show New York Senator Eddie Morra would
have wide-spread bipartisan appeal if he were to run…”
At which point you just know that the world of Limitless bears little resemblance to our
reality. It’s a show that unironically uses the phrase “Radical Canadian Nationalist.”
Brain: “Radical Canadian Nationalist.”
And as a Canadian I find the show very culturally insensitive.
Canada Man: “That’s a terrific question and I’m super glad you asked it, eh.”
That’s not even cool, eh?
The show’s rejection of making any political statement — outside of FBI good actually — is
cemented in how it abandons Eddie Morra’s character in the final run of episodes.
With Eddie, they’ve got an interesting conflict here. He’s clearly power-hungry,
but he claims to have good intentions. Are those intentions actually good? How should
he be handled? How much power should he have? How much power should any one person have?
Is the good he means to do outweighed by the bad he’s doing? Those are interesting
questions that I suspect the show maybe intended to tackle in a second season.
Like I think they were hoping that the show would be a little more successful
so that they could convince Bradley Cooper to show up for more than four cameos in it. Like
season one ends with them setting up Morra as the next big bad evil guy to take down.
But that leaves Season One with all this build up about who Eddie Morra is, but then having to do a
little switcheroo at the end and making Eddie’s security guy, Jarrod Sands, the main villain.
Sands doesn’t have any interesting goals though. He just wants to steal some NZT and then get rich
with this convoluted plot to profit off a stock market bubble. Oops he died there. The end.
At one point near the end, Sands releases NZT out to the public as a kind of
4D-Chess move to out-fox Morra, and it’s treated as an obviously bad thing: like
“NO! We can’t just let average people use the smart pill. It’d be chaos!”
Even though we have a second magic drug that gets rid of the bad side-effects
of the first with no downsides. Only Brian can use the pill! Only he can protect us.
And all of that is kind of funny because Under The Night ends with the promise
of something that is basically the reverse opposite of this.
At the conclusion of the novel we learn that the smoking industry killed Ned
Sweeney in 1953 because he discovered that, in addition to making you smart,
NZT also cures nicotine addiction. The message is bluntly that corporations would quash
anything that actually helps people if it interferes with their profit margins.
After learning this, the characters in the present day resolve to get the smart pill
out into the world so that everyone can share its power. The book isn’t subtle.
It explicitly argues that the profit motive gets in the way of our well-being
as a society. Corporations and the Eddie Morra’s that run them can say they are
concerned about this-or-that issue, but they can never act in a way that makes them lose money.
Many rich people drape themselves in the guise of philanthropists but
mostly as a means of improving their public image or avoiding taxes. And even the ones that
are sincere in their concern are compromised when it comes to dealing with problems that capitalism
creates. They can’t solve global hunger if their fortunes are based on starvation and exploitation.
And the same is true for every other social ill
In its four installments, the Limitless franchise is in constant tension with itself. Not a single
text agrees with the one next to it, but within it is a fascinating back and forth conversation
between the novels and the screen adaptations on this issue. As a franchise, Limitless might
not have a lot of cultural influence, but I find the figure of Eddie Morra for the
ways we valorize the rich and fall for the lie that they are capable of or willing to save us.
So one of the challenges I face with this channel is demonetization.
At any given time, about an eighth of my
videos aren’t making any money because of Youtube’s policies.
Which is one of the reasons some of my other creator friends and I
teamed up to create our own platform where we don’t have to worry about demonetization
or the algorithm. We can just create.
It’s called Nebula, a streaming service featuring Youtube’s best educational content creations,
including a bunch of video essayists like Patrick Willems and Lessons From the Screenplay.
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Cause if you don’t know, CuriosityStream is all about documentaries. Like this one which
is fitting to today’s video, “The Origins of Alturism” which takes a look at how
and why humans do act altruistically, which might just be a little bit of a
refreshing story to think about at the end of this year in particular.
So click the link in the description below, get both CuriosityStream and Nebula, and you'll be supporting
my channel and educational content in general. That’s curiositystream.com/justwrite.
And I also want to thank my patrons for supporting this channel on patreon. Keep writing everyone.