It’s probably telling that the 2011 movie Limitless was directed by Neil Burger, director of the brilliant fantasy film The Illusionist, starring Paul Giamatti. Strangely marketed as a movie about a dead-end would-be writer that finds a way to gain intelligence by using more of his brain than the ordinary guy, Limitless is a film the studio just didn’t understand. It is listed in various places, in reviews, in marketing lists and DVD sales notations as each of the following: fantasy, drama, science fiction, thriller, mystery, urban fantasy. It is neither and yet it is all that. Above all it is a superhero film. Yesterday we reviewed the new comic book series Uncanny, and we previously reviewed the new series Dream Thief. These are only recent examples of an ordinary guy gaining strange powers. Bradley Cooper’s Eddie Morra gains similar extraordinary abilities in Limitless. In the process of honing these powers, he’d fit right in with another tale of the X-Men.
