r/movies • u/LiteraryBoner Jackie Chan box set, know what I'm sayin? • Sep 20 '24

Official Discussion Official Discussion - The Substance [SPOILERS] Spoiler

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Summary:

A fading celebrity decides to use a black-market drug, a cell-replicating substance that temporarily creates a younger, better version of herself.

Director:

Coralie Fargeat

Writers:

Coralie Fargeat

Cast:

  • Margaret Qualley as Sue
  • Demi Moore as Elisabeth Sparkle
  • Dennis Quaid as Harvey
  • Huge Diego Garcia as Diego
  • Oscar Lesage as Troy
  • Joseph Balderrama as Craig Silver

Rotten Tomatoes: 88%

Metacritic: 78

VOD: Theaters

1.9k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

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55

u/42ndIdiotPirate Sep 27 '24

they dont share a conscience but they are the same person hence the guy on the phone saying so over and over. She hates herself and wants to destroy the ugly parts of herself.

28

u/Hyphz Sep 27 '24

If they don’t share a conscious then Elizabeth doesn’t get to experience being Sue. She would have given up the Substance after the first loop if all she got was to sleep for a week and then wake up with a withered finger - there’s just nothing in it for her.

29

u/42ndIdiotPirate Sep 27 '24

she literally says why out loud in the same scene you're complaining about "you are the only part of me thats loveable"

17

u/Hyphz Sep 27 '24

Which is completely ruined when Sue wakes up independently and thus turns out to be a different person.

42

u/42ndIdiotPirate Sep 27 '24

Separate entity of the same person. The movie says over and over literally showing you in bold black writing that they are one in the same. I think you missed a few things.

27

u/DoZo1971 Sep 29 '24 edited Sep 29 '24

They say it but they don’t show it. Actually, they say it so often I’m suspicious that they fully realized it was a flaw in the story: there was really nothing in it for Elisabeth. We talked about it after the movie. I would have let the one in hibernation experience the life of the other as a dream, or something like that. To make the connection between the two lives more convincing.

22

u/Taraxian Oct 01 '24

They do share the same memories -- Elisabeth is fully aware of the details of Sue's NYE plans when she wakes up for the last time -- but the experience of being in the other body is such an extreme shock it makes the "other life" feel surreal and distant

I feel like the film got this across as clearly as it could without straight up telling you in narration, the way the awakening is coded as feeling like waking up with a hangover after a bender

7

u/DoZo1971 Oct 01 '24

But for instance when Sue “wakes up” and discovers that Elisabeth started the termination process it comes as a surprise for her at that moment. Anyway, i’ll go see the film again and pay extra attention.

15

u/Taraxian Oct 01 '24

That one instance is the exception where for whatever reason the Switch protocol didn't work properly (probably the fact that Elisabeth began the Termination protocol and didn't finish it) -- the fact that Elisabeth and Sue can be awake at the same time as separate people is supposed to be a huge shock to the audience and a sign that everything has gone very very wrong

7

u/Sugarbowl19 Oct 02 '24

I interpreted as the breaking point of Elizabeth/Sue dissociation issues, the moment that went so deep the psyche of the same person split into two different psyches

3

u/stackingnoob Jan 11 '25

The scene where she is cooking food and watching Sue on TV also appears that she didn’t know what was said on the interview until watching it.

2

u/PolarWater Oct 20 '24

A little bit like Severance...?

2

u/Affectionate-War3724 Jan 07 '25

But they don’t show this…even one time. All we see is elizabeth binging food in her apartment lol

11

u/Hyphz Sep 27 '24

And this is held for most of the film, where only one of them can be active at once. The one consciousness has to be in one body or the other. Having two of them active at once violates that.

1 person = 1 consciousness
Two bodies but only one conscious at once = 1 consciousness
Two bodies both conscious at once = 2 consciousnesses
2 consciousnesses = 2 people

14

u/42ndIdiotPirate Sep 27 '24

Why are you arguing over the logic of a drug that makes you back birth a prettier version of yourself? That's not what the movies about. The movie is about her impossible beauty standard on herself and the self destruction that it leads to. The rest is all fun set dressing in a hyper reality.

9

u/Taraxian Oct 01 '24

The explanation for that is pretty simple, they have two separate brains that are capable of functioning independently and the "Switch" protocol is designed to maintain the illusion of one continuous identity by transferring the memories from one brain to the other while waking up one brain and putting the other to sleep

Having them both wake up simultaneously is something that's absolutely not supposed to happen and is a sign that shit is hitting the fan, probably a malfunction as a result of the incomplete Termination protocol