During Cap’s time, experimenting on prisoners was seen as just and, again, patriotic. Rather than a volunteer supersoldier, he’s a shady prison experiment gone wrong. By 1972, Luke Cage was the one getting injected with superserum. The heroic era of medicine didn’t last long. Stark’s tech savvy is what makes him and his body super. It’s hard to imagine such uncomplicated medical optimism now, but think about the first Iron Man movie, which came out in 2008, before technology had spooked the bejeezus out of people. Back then, the face of human experimentation was heroic, patriotic, and extremely white, because white America loved to think about what science could make them. So from the righteous, government-sanctioned lab emerges Cap, a blond, blue-eyed super(über)soldier, but it’s OK because he hates Nazis. Hitler wasn’t the only one after an übermensch: eugenics was a popular, publicly discussed interest, especially among elites. People clamored for medical progress, lined up for new vaccines. Doctors were war, and comic book, heroes in their own right. Science and especially medicine were really having a moment back then. Take Captain America, child of World War II. A superserum hero is the personification of science’s impact on humanity.
#PROJECT POWER MOVIE#
That said, Fishback is a delight, the male leads are on-brand and charming, and a pill full of temporary superpowers is a welcome twist on the somewhat overdone superserum trope.Īctually, it’s the way the movie deals with that cliche that’s most interesting. I’m pretty sure Foxx is supposed to sound like a badass when he explains that he has the power of a pistol shrimp (a very cool sea creature!), but, well, you already know why he didn’t. However, my appetite for law-breaking cops who think they know better than the system? That’s at an all-time low right now. Director Ariel Schulman has said it’s a movie with “no superheroes,” and that’s fine I don’t need my heroes to be flawless and squeaky clean. As an unlikely and somewhat zany team, they chase the drug from smoldering squats to glitzy meetings of underworld elites to government sanctioned labs, eventually finding the movie’s very own Henrietta Lacks: a young Black woman whose body contains scientific treasure.Īs a film, Project Power, which lands on Netflix on Friday, is a fun enough watch. Dominique Fishback, who plays a talented but troubled schoolgirl, is a power dealer. Jamie Foxx and Joseph Gordon-Levitt-playing an outlaw former soldier and a disgraced cop, respectively-are both desperate to find the source of the drug. It also has a firm hold on the lives of the three protagonists. The heroes disagree, and so must the viewer.įrom the very start of the film, power the drug has ravaged New Orleans. To Project Power’s villain, Lacks is a justification, an object lesson in how the suffering of one vulnerable person can better the lives of millions when that suffering is at the hands of capital-S Science. Lacks’ cells have tested vaccines for polio and HPV, have been used to study cancer and HIV, have been sent into space, all because doctors carved bits of flesh from a dying woman without asking her permission. During her treatment at Johns Hopkins, doctors took samples of her tissue and used them to create the first immortalized human cell line, a scientific breakthrough that was not only lucrative but medically revolutionary. (The sound made by this "bullet," or the snap of the bubble collapse, is actually 60 decibels higher than a real gunshot.) The shrimp uses the shockwave to kill prey, which it will then drag into its home and consume.If you’re unfamiliar with the name, Henrietta Lacks was a real person, a Black woman who died of cervical cancer in 1951. Looking something like a technicolor lobster, the pistol shrimp gets its name from its primary attack mechanism: a claw that fires bubble "bullets." The shrimp is able to build up enough pressure in its snapper to release extreme force-at over 100 feet-per-second. In the ensuing sequence, after taking the power pill, Art demonstrates, making for one of the coolest action moments of the year, part Silver Surfer, part video game bullet time.īut is it an accurate portrayal of a pistol shrimp out of water? How powerful is the pistol shrimp? The answer, he says, the pistol shrimp, "little bitty guy."Īrt then claims this little bitty guy hits so fast it can vaporize the water around it, turning it 8,000 degrees hotter than the surface of the sun and creating shock waves that can rip flesh off bone. "What's the most powerful animal on the planet?" Jamie Foxx's character, Art, asks his captor in Project Power. But how powerful is a pistol shrimp, really? Jamie Foxx's character's power comes from a pistol shrimp.The film features a drug, which grants users the superpower of a real animal.The streaming blockbuster Project Power is now available on Netflix.
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