It looks like any major-movie adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story--a solid SFnal hook, filed down so far that it's just another inoffensive popcorn movie. It's the nature of the beast.
In one of those angels-on-a-pin discussions of hardness in SF, I proposed (though I'm sure someone else has done it first) that hard stories are hard because they play fair by their own rules, that they introduce a change and don't just use it as a clever metaphor or bit of snappy attire, but truly take it seriously. SF in movies is more like fantasy, where events are driven by the moral and plotwise needs of the story; Aslan asspulls "deep magic" because it's a story about resurrection, and I'm sure the protagonist of Limitless will learn humility and either return to his original life or a slightly shinier version thereof or die in a tragic self-sacrifice, rather than changing the world, because it's not a story about changing the world.
The annoying thing is that it's not inevitable in movies; it's just an attractor, a set of well-worn grooves that, absent a very strong countervailing force, the stories will regress to.
I just discovered this thread. I don't know if you've seen the movie yet, but if you avoided seeing it for the reasons you mentioned here, I would recommend actually watching it. Especially this one:
I'm sure the protagonist of Limitless will learn humility and either return to his original life or a slightly shinier version thereof or die in a tragic self-sacrifice, rather than changing the world, because it's not a story about changing the world.
It's a bit more imaginative than that.
Limitless is a movie coming out this Friday which includes nootropics as a major plot device. I think that the way they are portrayed in the movie, and the subsequent media discussion (if any) about nootropics would be of interest here, even if the movie isn't.
From what I can tell, the movie is about a guy who uses a drug to improve his mental capabilities, uses those to radically alter his life, who is then targeted because its just that genre of movie.
Just a heads up, if anyone is interested.