12 More Movies You Didn't Realise Stupidly Broke Their Own Rules

7. The Drug Is Deadly - Limitless

The Rule:

Taking super-drug NZT-48 does great things for your brain function, turning you into an absolute genius capable of all sorts of higher functions. Unfortunately, it also comes at a deadly cost and users tend not to do so well after prolonged usage.

In other words, they die.

The Breaker:

That should have been the end of it: Limitless should have been a Promethean tale of human over-reaching biting back, like Frankenstein or Jurassic Park or Icarus, where the arrogance of achievement leads to untold horrors and death. It should have been a morality tale.

Instead, the film decides to break its most compelling rule and just has Bradley Cooper's Eddie realise that he can just use his new special brain to work out the issues with the drug, in a sort of wishing for more wishes loophole. He comes to that conclusion because of his boosted brain-power, which is sort of fine, except it assumes that none of the other users could come to that relatively simple solution with their own identically boosted minds.