Another Familiar Picture

Neil Burger’s 2011 film Limitless tells the story of a New York writer who is given a drug that enables him to access a large amount of his brain which ultimately leads to his success along with downsides to it, but in the end he prevails without the drug after realizing his full potential. This may have been creatively thought out…but really? How many movies have we seen that’s identical to this one? Limitless was another one of those films that fills the consumers with the illusion that a person can use this specific item to fulfill his/her dreams or desires. In From Dialect of Enlightenment, Adorno and Horkheimer argue that “All the other films and products of the entertainment industry which they have seen have taught them what to expect” (1227). The tone, lighting, and a few other film techniques within the first 20 minutes of this film foreshadows the ending. No movie with warm colors in the filtering is expected to have a depressing feeling. We mainly see these warmer colors when ever the drug is active in any of the characters.  Adorno and Horkheimer also mention that the media only exposes what’s already familiar to the consumer. There has been many films where the main character has attained some special object that pushes this character to exceed his or her own expectations to become successful. Just to name a few, Randall Miller’s The Sixth Man (1997), John Schultz Like Mike (2002) and Paul Hoen’s The Luck of the Irish (2001), can all fit in this category of unrealistic objects being used to get ahead of others, along with Limitless. From consumers viewing similar films like these, they already assume what will happen in the film.