Extreme Pharmacology: How Crank Out-Sciences Batman Begins
Getting this annoyed about using one class of drugs versus another may seem like quibbling. But it’s the pharmacological equivalent of an experienced realtor repeatedly describing a house as having aluminum siding and then being shown a brick house. Remember, Dr. Crane is a hotshot psychiatrist, who plainly states in the movie: “Psychopharmacology is my primary field”. You can’t set a character up as an expert and then have him get basic information wrong (compare this with the simple-minded Verona’s off-base statements about the Beijing Cocktail in Crank).
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the resolution of Batman’s encounter with the so-called hallucinogen. After his terrible encounter, he wakes to find himself cured (of course) by the cleverness of Lucuis Fox (Morgan Freeman). Lucuis tells Bruce:
I analyzed your blood, isolating the receptor compounds and the protein-based catalyst.
They picked out some of the right words, but they clearly have no idea what order to put them in. After that garbled explanation, Lucuis proceeds to mention that he’s synthesized an antidote (in two days), and that it should inoculate Bruce from the effects of the drug. This particular sin of the film world, in which antidotes to brand-new toxins can be made in a matter of days or hours, is so common, it’s hard to even get worked up about, but let me say this: every pharmaceutical company in the world wishes it were that easy.
For the remainder of the movie, the pharmacology goes from barely treading water to drowning in the deep end. Crane’s master plan turns out to be that they’ve poured his chemical into the water supply, planning to vaporize the water with a microwave emitter (surprisingly, this plays out as almost reasonable in the movie), causing everyone to go nuts. As the main bad guy states, he’s going to release the compound and "then watch as Gotham tears itself apart though fear." I kid you not. In fact, the plan succeeds for a section of Gotham (the poor side of town, of course), with residents getting into large mobs and attacking some of the main characters.
The number of problems here borders on the astronomical. I almost called the Chicago Water Reclamation Board to ask them about the rate that water passes through the system before it’s being post-user treated, but I didn’t want to be put on a terrorist watch list. Besides that sanitary-engineering detail, there’s a huge problem with the presentation of symptoms in this portion of the movie: namely, that the drug which previously caused paralyzing fear (even in Batman), now provokes people to form mobs and become violent! It doesn’t make a lick of sense, and it’s clear that the plot simply dictated a completely new pharmacology for the drug in the climax sequence. And that doesn’t even bring into the conversation that Dr. Crane, who’s back in the saddle (literally!) even though he got reduced to a quivering pile of pudding with his own medicine just hours earlier. And as far as a cure for all the people who got hit with the gas, Lt. Gordon (Gary Oldman) sums it up succinctly as the film ends rather abruptly: "The Narrows is lost." Damn, Jim, that’s harsh: what happened to whipping up an antidote over a long weekend?
Many would argue that all of these complaints are mere nit-picking by grumpy scientists, reasoning that presenting accurate science in a film like Batman Begins would bog down the movie’s pace with unnecessary detail or change thrilling fantasy into hum-drum reality. But the ability of Crank to use legit pharmacology as the plot’s main fuel and as accelerant to the action argues against this point. Does this mean that good science is relegated to small-budget films where the filmmakers actually take the time, in the words of Mark Neveldine “to research the hell out of it?” Hardly. The fact is that there are many interesting drug effects out there waiting to be exploited by creative filmmakers. With a little research and taking a little time to make the plot fit the science, instead of the other way around, a film can be a solid storytelling experience that is strengthened by being scientifically factual.
Notes and References
1. I want to thank Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor for taking the time to speak with me about Crank. I’d also like to thank the good folks at Lakeshore Entertainment for getting us all on the line together.
2. For details on heart function and sympathetic nerve effects, I used Vander, Sherman, & Luciano’s Human Physiology: The Mechanisms of Body Function. Almost all of the basic information & pharmacology for this article comes from Feldman, Meyer, and Quezner’s outstanding Principles of Neuropsychopharmacology. This textbook is a fantastic reference on the largest neurotransmitter systems and the major classes of drugs of abuse. It can be skimmed to get a glimpse of both the basic research and the clinical histories of drugs of abuse, or scrutinized thoroughly to understand chemical structure, biochemical pathways, and pharmacological effects. Much of the background information (especially on hallucinogens) comes courtesy of their wonderful book.
3. It is important to note that the word psychotic is not at all related to psychopathic, which is a term often used for violent criminals with no conscience (also called antisocial personality disorder). Nor (as wikipedia details) should it be equated with mental illness, because psychosis is a descriptive concept, not a defined illness or legal term.
Nichols DE. 2004. Hallucinogens. Pharmacology and Therapeutics. 101(2): 131-81.
Widmaier EP, Raff H, Strang KT. 2006. Vander’s Human Physiology: The Mechanisms of Body Function (10th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
