No Really, Limitless Is a Bonkers Franchise

[00:02] 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   I only talked about the book and the movie.  There’s some other stuff to talk about too.

[00:20] 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. wildest dreams and ends the story in  the midst of running for the senate.

[00:37] 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.

[00:49] But there’s another key difference between  the two that I’ve saved for this video. money and makes no claims that his  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  of the drug, Eddie cycles through a list of  

[01:14] potential ambitions. What grand thing could  he do with his newfound cognitive abilities? are too high. He thinks about going  back to school for a second career  

[01:26] as a doctor or an engineer, but is  exhausted by the idea of school work. 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.  

[01:41] 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?

[01:56] He’s not trying to convince the reader that  he’s a good person for doing this. He’s simply   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.  

[02:10] 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.

[02:22] wondering if he’d be able to become  president with it. This was back in   And again, he doesn’t do this with any kind  of altruistic motive in mind. It’s not like  

[02:36] 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.

[02:51] 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  

[03:06] 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  

[03:21] that motivates him. Book Eddie doesn’t care about  having an impact on the world. Movie Eddie does. Eddie decides that he wants more in life than  the pleasures of wealth. He has… an epiphany…

[03:37] 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.  

[03:51] 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  

[04:03] 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,  

[04:17] EDDIE: “Time someone shook up the  free world and got things done.” I find the decision to characterize  Eddie this way SO GODDAMN INTERESTING.

[04:29] 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.

[04:43] 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.

[04:59] 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,   And yes, I know that Eddie ends this film  running for office, but that’s not an  

[05:15] 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  

[05:29] 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. because it’s basically the main  idea of the sequel to the movie.

[05:49] CBS made a TV spin-off sequel show  to capitalize off its success. but only ran for one season  before it was cancelled.

[06:01] It takes place in the same universe as  the film and really wants you to know it.   But apart from the pilot episode, the show  bears very little resemblance to the movie.

[06:14] 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.

[06:28] just like Morra’s writing  career hadn’t in the movie. of the drug, then later finds out that  the guy who sold him the drug is dead.

[06:40] After episode one, Brian gets hired by the FBI   but secretly he’s actually there to be Eddie  Morra’s eyes and ears within the organization.

[06:54] 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?  

[07:10] To the extent that you can stomach shows that  romanticize law enforcement in 2020… it’s fine? are on here on a mission of goodwill from  the FBI. See, we even brought you donuts.”

[07:24] 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  

[07:38] 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.”

[07:53] 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,  

[08:08] 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?

[08:25] 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.  

[08:40] 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.”

[09:00] 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.

[09:15] 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  

[09:28] 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,  

[09:42] let’s take a look at a novel that is  basically a critique of this position.   Morra: “Can you remember what’s it’s like  to be inside your mother’s womb? I can.”

[09:56] 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.

[10:12] 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  

[10:25] 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,  

[10:39] It’s not that we’re not producing enough stuff  — we are. It’s that we’re not consuming enough.” The need for production to increase year after  year means we need to consume more every year;  

[10:57] 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  

[11:10] a society are not because we lack resources.  It’s because of how we distribute resources. genetically modified rice or  whatever is completely absurd.

[11:22] 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.

[11:37] 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.

[11:51] TV Anchor: “Preliminary polls show  New York Senator Eddie Morra would   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.”

[12:08] And as a Canadian I find the  show very culturally insensitive. That’s not even cool, eh? The show’s rejection of making any political  statement — outside of FBI good actually — is  

[12:25] 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  

[12:38] 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.

[12:51] 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.

[13:03] 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  

[13:19] 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  

[13:35] “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.

[13:47] And all of that is kind of funny because  Under The Night ends with the promise   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,  

[14:01] 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  

[14:15] 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  

[14:28] concerned about this-or-that issue, but they can  never act in a way that makes them lose money. mostly as a means of improving their public  image or avoiding taxes. And even the ones that  

[14:42] 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. In its four installments, the Limitless franchise  is in constant tension with itself. Not a single  

[15:01] 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  

[15:16] ways we valorize the rich and fall for the lie  that they are capable of or willing to save us.

[15:28] So one of the challenges I face  with this channel is demonetization. videos aren’t making any money  because of Youtube’s policies. teamed up to create our own platform where  we don’t have to worry about demonetization  

[15:47] 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.

[16:01] We’ve also partnered with Curiosity Stream.  So if you sign up for CuriosityStream,   you’ll also get Nebula for FREE. And it’ll be free  for as long as you’re a Curiosity stream member.

[16:13] And since it’s the holiday’s, it’s an  especially good time to sign up for   CuriosityStream, since an annual  membership is currently 40%   off. That’s just $11.99 a YEAR for two  amazing educational streaming services.

[16:26] 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  

[16:41] 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.

[16:58] And I also want to thank my patrons for supporting  this channel on patreon. Keep writing everyone.