Much like the chipmunk-ify assignment a week or so back, I texted my friend to ask her opinion on which two similar movies to mash together for an all-new-movie poster. She was her typical, kind self and threw out a couple of suggestions, but neither of them clicked with me.
Mean Girls and Clueless are similar in that they have a strong female lead and delve into female interaction and young adult culture, but the overall tones are very different; one is more empowering and positive while the other is drenched with negativity. Plus, Clueless is one of my favorite movies, and I’ve never once compared the two.
Aside from one or two viewings with my mom and knowing a couple classic quotes, I don’t know enough about The Princess Bride to make a strong comparison with any other movie, especially one I saw over five years ago like Stardust.
Long story short, despite my friend’s much appreciated attempts, I was on my own. So many movies with comparable plots and tropes crossed by mind–action-packed car races, international spy thrillers–so I tried to remember movies I’d seen recently, and one immediately popped into my brain: Lucy starring Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman. The general plot is that the main character ingests a new street drug and is able to use 100% of her brain, so she becomes insanely powerful, realizing her full potential as a human being and is able to stop time and make things levitate.
I saw the film with one of my best friends who was visiting me on campus a couple of weeks back. We saw the film via Cheap Seats on campus, and the audience was surprisingly empty (the most packed I’ve ever seen the Cheap Seats audience was a showing of Frozen last semester). My friend and I enjoyed the cinematography and awesome special effects, but the plot was disjointed and the ending unsatisfying and confusing.
A movie often compared with Lucy is 2011’s Limitless with Bradley Cooper. In fact, Lucy and Limitless are often called the male-and-female versions of one another. Again, the plot of Limitless is the main character taking a pill that allows him total brain control and power. Thrilling action ensues.
While the two films are similar plot-wise (dare I say remixes of each other?!), the settings and characters are very different. Lucy has a more feminist, intellectual flair (Scarlett Johansson taking control of and owning every situation she’s placed in without a man or anyone’s help, and Morgan Freeman plays a neuroscientist), while Cooper’s Limitless is more spectacle and arguably easier to follow.
I decided to combine them, regardless of their similarities and differences, into Limitless Lucy. I took Limitless‘s original theatrical release poster as a base, because it’s filled with cool light effects, swirls, and striking colors that are easy to edit, and I edited out Bradley cooper’s smaller form and the subtitle/text.
Limitless’s original poster
Then, I added Lucy’s/Scarlett Johansson’s eyes, which are colored a striking blue. The drug the character takes is the same color blue, so the eye shot was a popular marketing image.
As exemplified here.
I debated on how much I wanted to match the eyes/blend the eyes into the background image, because I wanted Scarlett Johansson’s character and her coinciding awesomeness and feminism to stand out rather than be overpowered by Cooper’s male character.
I finally did a little bit of background erasing and opacity to make the skin tone less striking, and then, I put a filter over the whole thing as well as upped the saturation, vibrancy, and contrast to help everything blend together that much more, and the changes enhance the dramatic red tones in Cooper’s face and around Lucy’s eyes. The result came out quite nicely; your eyes are drawn to Cooper and then Lucy’s striking blue irises. I easily found a matching font, size, and subtle inner shadow effect to compliment Limitless‘s text.
Limitless Lucy
Imagine Bradley Cooper and Scarlett Johansson both using 100% of their brains (even though that concept is a scientific myth!) and kicking butt as super humans. I’d buy tickets to see that for sure!
