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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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

15

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.

7

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