As someone
deeply invested in the content of the film
LUCY, I really am upset to hear about the bullshit linguistic stunts they've pulled, and the echoes of colonialism throughout.
Even if we posit that we can contextualize this as a grocery store--which it
seems to be?-- and that maybe the scene in question is taking place in the stock room of said, then we still have the fucked up semiotics of torture in the harshly-lit room with blood red writing on the wall.
Now, sure, these background set pieces are all things that have
very different cultural significances in China; this film, however, is crafted not for Chinese audiences, but for Western ones, and the semiotics are therefore Western. What I mean is that room was likely chosen
because it screams "White-Girl-In-Danger/
Yellow Peril Torture Porn," to a Western audience.
So far as the colonialism goes, the trailer is actually pretty gross about that, when you start to deconstruct it, but I am withholding judgment on the full film edit, until I see it.
That being said, even if the full film edit is less racially-tinged than the trailer seems, I am deeply concerned that they would market it using these tactics. Concerned and more than a little disappointed.