[00:02] A few months ago, I made a video about&nbsp; the 2011 film Limitless and the book it&nbsp;&nbsp; was based on. I called it “Limitless is a&nbsp; Bonkers Franchise” but I only managed to&nbsp;&nbsp; I only talked about the book and the movie.&nbsp; There’s some other stuff to talk about too.
[00:20] To recap, Limitless is a film starring Bradley&nbsp; Cooper about a struggling writer who finds an&nbsp;&nbsp; intelligence boosting pill that lets him become&nbsp; extraordinarily wealthy on the stock market. wildest dreams and ends the story in&nbsp; the midst of running for the senate.
[00:37] In the original 2001 novel, the story is more of a&nbsp; cautionary tale with the main character succumbing&nbsp;&nbsp; to the after effects of the drug, showing the&nbsp; consequences of the unfettered pursuit of wealth.
[00:49] But there’s another key difference between&nbsp; the two that I’ve saved for this video. money and makes no claims that his&nbsp; actions are for the betterment of society.
[01:01] In the film, Eddie plans to save the world. In the original novel, after his initial uses&nbsp; of the drug, Eddie cycles through a list of&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:14] potential ambitions. What grand thing could&nbsp; he do with his newfound cognitive abilities? are too high. He thinks about going&nbsp; back to school for a second career&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:26] as a doctor or an engineer, but is&nbsp; exhausted by the idea of school work. in it. None of them would transform&nbsp; his life as quickly as he wants to. “What then — I asked myself — was I left&nbsp; with? Well, what do you think? Making money.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:41] Making money… how? By making telephone&nbsp; calls. Hhn? The stock market, stupid.” So, he enters the stock market with no&nbsp; higher purpose. He just wants to make&nbsp;&nbsp; as much money as possible, which is&nbsp; at least, refreshingly honest, right?
[01:56] He’s not trying to convince the reader that&nbsp; he’s a good person for doing this. He’s simply&nbsp;&nbsp; and after that he just likes&nbsp; seeing the numbers go up. “Being a guerrilla market-maker wasn’t going&nbsp; to be anywhere near enough to keep me happy.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:10] The fact is, I wanted to know what it would&nbsp; be like to trade from the inside, and at the&nbsp;&nbsp; highest levels… what it would be like and how it&nbsp; would feel to buy millions of shares at a time…” There’s no plan for the money once&nbsp; he has it. He just wants to have it.
[02:22] wondering if he’d be able to become&nbsp; president with it. This was back in&nbsp;&nbsp; And again, he doesn’t do this with any kind&nbsp; of altruistic motive in mind. It’s not like&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:36] he sees some problem in the world he wants to&nbsp; solve. If he ran, it’d only be a vanity project,&nbsp;&nbsp; just to see if he could do it, if the drug&nbsp; could help him be successful in that arena. The movie, on the other hand, is the&nbsp; complete opposite of all of this.
[02:51] Morra: “I’d come this close to&nbsp; having an impact on the world.&nbsp;&nbsp; And now the only thing I was going to&nbsp; have an impact on was the sidewalk.” Those are some of the first lines that Eddie&nbsp; Morra speaks in the film, and they point to a&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:06] subtle adaptational shift between this character&nbsp; and the character in the book. There are a lot&nbsp;&nbsp; of superficial changes to the plot between the&nbsp; two — the movie has a lot more thriller action&nbsp;&nbsp; sequences — but the biggest difference is right&nbsp; here, at the heart of the character, the idea&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:21] that motivates him. Book Eddie doesn’t care about&nbsp; having an impact on the world. Movie Eddie does. Eddie decides that he wants more in life than&nbsp; the pleasures of wealth. He has… an epiphany…
[03:37] Morra: “And then I began to form an idea.&nbsp; Suddenly I knew what I needed to do.&nbsp;&nbsp; It wasn’t writing. It wasn’t books.&nbsp; It was much bigger than that.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:51] From then on, Eddie Morra constantly reassures&nbsp; the audience that everything he’s doing? It’s&nbsp;&nbsp; actually for a good reason. You just have to&nbsp; trust him. He’s going to get rich and then&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:03] do something good with it. Give him&nbsp; all the money because he’s a genius,&nbsp;&nbsp; and he’ll be a philanthropist who will&nbsp; save the world after he wins at capitalism. I’m sorry, you’d like details on what his plans&nbsp; are? No, no, he can’t be specific or anything,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:17] EDDIE: “Time someone shook up the&nbsp; free world and got things done.” I find the decision to characterize&nbsp; Eddie this way SO GODDAMN INTERESTING.
[04:29] On one level, it’s probably the result of a&nbsp; studio note saying Eddie should be more likeable.&nbsp;&nbsp; If he is given a noble pursuit, then maybe&nbsp; the audience will identify with him more. But it’s really the nebulousness of his&nbsp; motivations that is truly interesting.
[04:43] It’s the empty hole at the center of the&nbsp; movie that is never explained and is yet&nbsp;&nbsp; crucial to everything. What is Eddie actually&nbsp; going to do if he accumulates enough money and&nbsp;&nbsp; power? What is his big plan? We just have&nbsp; to have faith that there is indeed a plan.
[04:59] And is there any better depiction of modern&nbsp; capitalism than that? That even when you enter&nbsp;&nbsp; into it with the thought of doing good for others,&nbsp; the pursuit of that wealth takes up all your time,&nbsp;&nbsp; And yes, I know that Eddie ends this film&nbsp; running for office, but that’s not an&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:15] inherently altruistic thing to be doing, not when&nbsp; we don’t know what his actual goals in office are. As much as this movie tries to characterize&nbsp; Eddie as a good guy, as a hero, I always get&nbsp;&nbsp; this really ominous feeling when watching&nbsp; the conclusion of the film. This man has&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:29] gotten away with everything. He’s completely&nbsp; unrepentant and power hungry. The text wants&nbsp;&nbsp; us to think of him as a hero, but the subtext&nbsp; and framing make this feel like a villain. because it’s basically the main&nbsp; idea of the sequel to the movie.
[05:49] CBS made a TV spin-off sequel show&nbsp; to capitalize off its success. but only ran for one season&nbsp; before it was cancelled.
[06:01] It takes place in the same universe as&nbsp; the film and really wants you to know it.&nbsp;&nbsp; But apart from the pilot episode, the show&nbsp; bears very little resemblance to the movie.
[06:14] The pilot somewhat eerily goes through&nbsp; the same plot motions as the film,&nbsp;&nbsp; which is weird again because this is happening&nbsp; in the same universe. The show begins with a&nbsp;&nbsp; failure-to-launch twenty-something&nbsp; artist. This time his name is Brian Finch.
[06:28] just like Morra’s writing&nbsp; career hadn’t in the movie. of the drug, then later finds out that&nbsp; the guy who sold him the drug is dead.
[06:40] After episode one, Brian gets hired by the FBI&nbsp;&nbsp; but secretly he’s actually there to be Eddie&nbsp; Morra’s eyes and ears within the organization.
[06:54] police procedural with case-of-the-week&nbsp; style storytelling. It’s like they took&nbsp;&nbsp; the first third of the Limitless movie&nbsp; and stapled it on to a basic cop show. And… it’s fine? Relative to&nbsp; other procedurals… it’s fine?&nbsp;&nbsp;
[07:10] To the extent that you can stomach shows that&nbsp; romanticize law enforcement in 2020… it’s fine? are on here on a mission of goodwill from&nbsp; the FBI. See, we even brought you donuts.”
[07:24] To its credit, the show recognized that the&nbsp; original premise of Limitless was basically&nbsp;&nbsp; a superhero story, takes&nbsp; that idea and runs with it,&nbsp;&nbsp; because this is basically a Spider-Man story,&nbsp; echoing the themes of “with great power&nbsp;&nbsp;
[07:38] comes great responsibility.” He’s even got a&nbsp; wholesome dad to fill in the role of Uncle Ben. Brian: “I just want you to know that the reason&nbsp; I take the pill isn’t because I’m some junkie.&nbsp;&nbsp; It’s to help people. That’s what it’s always&nbsp; been about. That’s what you taught me.”
[07:53] Probably the strongest element of the show is&nbsp; its frenetic visual style meant to illustrate&nbsp;&nbsp; the way Brian’s mind works. And since he’s&nbsp; characterized as a millennial man-child,&nbsp;&nbsp; of course he defaults to superhero tropes and&nbsp; imagery, using comic book style thought bubbles,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[08:08] and dubbing the group of mysterious bad guys&nbsp; at the end of the season the “Legion of Whom.” Brian: “I have decided that we will&nbsp; refer to them as the Legion of Whom.” So if Brian is our plucky superhero working&nbsp; to solve crimes, then who is Eddie Morra?
[08:25] The writers of the show, smartly I think,&nbsp; reinterpret the film and come to the conclusion&nbsp;&nbsp; that, this Eddie Morra guy, he’s kind of an&nbsp; egotistical, power-hungry, amoral villain. Unlike the movie, the show actually&nbsp; has an answer for what Eddie’s plan is.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[08:40] The giant gaping hole at the center of Eddie’s&nbsp; character is finally addressed in Episode Six. Morra: “This rice contains a complete nutritional&nbsp; profile, everything the human body needs, can grow&nbsp;&nbsp; in the harshest environments. With a little&nbsp; more research, this rice can feed the world.”
[09:00] He’s got an invention that will cure world&nbsp; hunger. If only the stupid governments of&nbsp;&nbsp; the world would just get out of the way. If&nbsp; only the dumb public would just shut up and&nbsp;&nbsp; let themselves be saved then the brilliant&nbsp; chosen heroes of the world like Eddie.
[09:15] you shouting it from the rooftops?” Morra: “Because people won’t want it.&nbsp;&nbsp; I make an announcement. Lobbyist bring it to&nbsp; action, people rave about GMOs and it’s buried.” I find this characterization of Eddie&nbsp; so authentic to the way that actual&nbsp;&nbsp;
[09:28] real world billionaires think, it’s kind of&nbsp; amazing. Self-appointed saviors who pledge&nbsp;&nbsp; to use the wealth they’ve hoarded to fix the&nbsp; problems the hoarding of that wealth created. That’s a bit controversial. So to get to the&nbsp; problems of Eddie’s way of thinking here,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[09:42] let’s take a look at a novel that is&nbsp; basically a critique of this position.&nbsp;&nbsp; Morra: “Can you remember what’s it’s like&nbsp; to be inside your mother’s womb? I can.”
[09:56] Under The Night is actually both a prequel&nbsp; and a sequel to the original Limitless book,&nbsp;&nbsp; telling two parallel stories. One is in 1953 and&nbsp;&nbsp; is about an ad man named Ned Sweeney who uses&nbsp; an early version of the mind-altering drug.
[10:12] his grandson is investigating the mysterious&nbsp; circumstances around Ned’s alleged suicide. In an early chapter, Ned takes the drug and has&nbsp; a kind of awakening about how capitalism works&nbsp;&nbsp;
[10:25] Sweeney: “here we are in 1953,&nbsp; eight years on from the war,&nbsp;&nbsp; and as a society we’re already capable&nbsp; of producing whatever we need to survive,&nbsp;&nbsp; more than enough, in fact, and I mean for&nbsp; everyone — food, automobiles, TV sets,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[10:39] It’s not that we’re not producing enough stuff&nbsp; — we are. It’s that we’re not consuming enough.” The need for production to increase year after&nbsp; year means we need to consume more every year;&nbsp;&nbsp;
[10:57] but it has little to do with what we&nbsp; actually want or need for survival. This was true of the world in the 1950s; it’s&nbsp; even more comically true today. Our problems as&nbsp;&nbsp;
[11:10] a society are not because we lack resources.&nbsp; It’s because of how we distribute resources. genetically modified rice or&nbsp; whatever is completely absurd.
[11:22] We could solve global hunger today with the&nbsp; technology we currently have if he had the&nbsp;&nbsp; political and economic willpower to do so. We&nbsp; don’t need some scientific breakthrough to solve&nbsp;&nbsp; the problem. We need people like Morra to give up&nbsp; SOME of their wealth and power to make it happen.
[11:37] But the thing with the show, and I suspect it’s&nbsp; because it’s being produced on network television,&nbsp;&nbsp; is that isn’t not really interested in depicting&nbsp; a world with believable politics or with&nbsp;&nbsp; making a statement. I mean, early on in&nbsp; the season, a tv anchor says the following.
[11:51] TV Anchor: “Preliminary polls show&nbsp; New York Senator Eddie Morra would&nbsp;&nbsp; At which point you just know that the world&nbsp; of Limitless bears little resemblance to our&nbsp;&nbsp; reality. It’s a show that unironically uses&nbsp; the phrase “Radical Canadian Nationalist.”
[12:08] And as a Canadian I find the&nbsp; show very culturally insensitive. That’s not even cool, eh? The show’s rejection of making any political&nbsp; statement — outside of FBI good actually — is&nbsp;&nbsp;
[12:25] cemented in how it abandons Eddie Morra’s&nbsp; character in the final run of episodes. With Eddie, they’ve got an interesting&nbsp; conflict here. He’s clearly power-hungry,&nbsp;&nbsp; but he claims to have good intentions. Are&nbsp; those intentions actually good? How should&nbsp;&nbsp;
[12:38] he be handled? How much power should he have?&nbsp; How much power should any one person have?&nbsp;&nbsp; Is the good he means to do outweighed by&nbsp; the bad he’s doing? Those are interesting&nbsp;&nbsp; questions that I suspect the show maybe&nbsp; intended to tackle in a second season.
[12:51] so that they could convince Bradley Cooper to&nbsp; show up for more than four cameos in it. Like&nbsp;&nbsp; season one ends with them setting up Morra&nbsp; as the next big bad evil guy to take down.
[13:03] But that leaves Season One with all this build up&nbsp; about who Eddie Morra is, but then having to do a&nbsp;&nbsp; little switcheroo at the end and making Eddie’s&nbsp; security guy, Jarrod Sands, the main villain. Sands doesn’t have any interesting goals though.&nbsp; He just wants to steal some NZT and then get rich&nbsp;&nbsp;
[13:19] with this convoluted plot to profit off a stock&nbsp; market bubble. Oops he died there. The end. At one point near the end, Sands releases&nbsp; NZT out to the public as a kind of&nbsp;&nbsp; 4D-Chess move to out-fox Morra, and it’s&nbsp; treated as an obviously bad thing: like&nbsp;&nbsp;
[13:35] “NO! We can’t just let average people&nbsp; use the smart pill. It’d be chaos!”&nbsp;&nbsp; Even though we have a second magic drug&nbsp; that gets rid of the bad side-effects&nbsp;&nbsp; of the first with no downsides. Only Brian&nbsp; can use the pill! Only he can protect us.
[13:47] And all of that is kind of funny because&nbsp; Under The Night ends with the promise&nbsp;&nbsp; At the conclusion of the novel we learn&nbsp; that the smoking industry killed Ned&nbsp;&nbsp; Sweeney in 1953 because he discovered&nbsp; that, in addition to making you smart,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[14:01] NZT also cures nicotine addiction. The message&nbsp; is bluntly that corporations would quash&nbsp;&nbsp; anything that actually helps people if&nbsp; it interferes with their profit margins. After learning this, the characters in the&nbsp; present day resolve to get the smart pill&nbsp;&nbsp;
[14:15] out into the world so that everyone can&nbsp; share its power. The book isn’t subtle.&nbsp;&nbsp; It explicitly argues that the profit&nbsp; motive gets in the way of our well-being&nbsp;&nbsp; as a society. Corporations and the Eddie&nbsp; Morra’s that run them can say they are&nbsp;&nbsp;
[14:28] concerned about this-or-that issue, but they can&nbsp; never act in a way that makes them lose money. mostly as a means of improving their public&nbsp; image or avoiding taxes. And even the ones that&nbsp;&nbsp;
[14:42] are sincere in their concern are compromised when&nbsp; it comes to dealing with problems that capitalism&nbsp;&nbsp; creates. They can’t solve global hunger if their&nbsp; fortunes are based on starvation and exploitation. In its four installments, the Limitless franchise&nbsp; is in constant tension with itself. Not a single&nbsp;&nbsp;
[15:01] text agrees with the one next to it, but within&nbsp; it is a fascinating back and forth conversation&nbsp;&nbsp; between the novels and the screen adaptations&nbsp; on this issue. As a franchise, Limitless might&nbsp;&nbsp; not have a lot of cultural influence, but&nbsp; I find the figure of Eddie Morra for the&nbsp;&nbsp;
[15:16] ways we valorize the rich and fall for the lie&nbsp; that they are capable of or willing to save us.
[15:28] So one of the challenges I face&nbsp; with this channel is demonetization. videos aren’t making any money&nbsp; because of Youtube’s policies. teamed up to create our own platform where&nbsp; we don’t have to worry about demonetization&nbsp;&nbsp;
[15:47] It’s called Nebula, a streaming service featuring&nbsp; Youtube’s best educational content creations,&nbsp;&nbsp; including a bunch of video essayists like&nbsp; Patrick Willems and Lessons From the Screenplay.
[16:01] We’ve also partnered with Curiosity Stream.&nbsp; So if you sign up for CuriosityStream,&nbsp;&nbsp; you’ll also get Nebula for FREE. And it’ll be free&nbsp; for as long as you’re a Curiosity stream member.
[16:13] And since it’s the holiday’s, it’s an&nbsp; especially good time to sign up for&nbsp;&nbsp; CuriosityStream, since an annual&nbsp; membership is currently 40%&nbsp;&nbsp; off. That’s just $11.99 a YEAR for two&nbsp; amazing educational streaming services.
[16:26] Cause if you don’t know, CuriosityStream is&nbsp; all about documentaries. Like this one which&nbsp;&nbsp; is fitting to today’s video, “The Origins&nbsp; of Alturism” which takes a look at how&nbsp;&nbsp; and why humans do act altruistically,&nbsp; which might just be a little bit of a&nbsp;&nbsp;
[16:41] refreshing story to think about at&nbsp; the end of this year in particular. So click the link in the description below, get&nbsp; both CuriosityStream and Nebula, and you'll be supporting my channel and educational content in&nbsp; general. That’s curiositystream.com/justwrite.
[16:58] And I also want to thank my patrons for supporting&nbsp; this channel on patreon. Keep writing everyone.