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| “ | Hello, my name is Arthur. | „ |
| ~ Lucian's most famous catchphrase |
Arthur Brighton, better known as Lucian Ionescu is the main titular antagonist of the fictional 2001 movie Foreigner, also the main protagonist in its 2003 prequel Welcome Home, Arthur. He is supposedly a 15-year-old British boy who lost his family in a terrible fire accident and is an exchange student in the USA that is hosted in Michigan by an American family, the McCanns. However in reality he is 34-year-old mentally unstable Romanian man who has a very rare disease called Late Maturation Endocrine Dysplasia, which made him look younger than he actually is. Although he grew up normally, this disease continues to make people confuse him with a teenager or young adult throughout his life.
Arthur is portrayed by reggae singer Sean Paul, who also portrays Damon Fierce in 2002 fan film Irreplaceable.
He is a reimagination of Esther Coleman from 2009 Orphan movie and the 2022 prequel Orphan: First Kill.
Biography[]
Backstory[]
Lucian Ionescu was born on April 20th 1967 in Romania in Eastern Europe more precisely in a Gypsy village in the rural region of Sibiu in Transylvania. He was born with a very rare condition called Late Maturation Endocrine Dysplasia, which made him appear younger than he actually is. Although he was able to grew up normally, this disease continues to cause people to mistake him for a teenager or a young adult throughout his life.
When Lucian was a little child, his mother, Elena died of AIDS. This caused him to become depressed and with that he began to suffer constant sexual abuse from his father, Vasile Ionescu, culminating in a incestuous relationship, the non-stop abuses went from his childhood to adulthood, with that Lucian developed mental problems and an unhealthy addiction to sex and began to feel attracted to men (that's why he seduces the male parents who take him in). And he sees incest as normal thing and an affection of love.
In addition to sleep with Vasile, his father also made his son prostitute, making him sleep with older, wealthy and pedophiles men in exchange for money. Lucian's life worsened over time, and in 1993, already an adult, his father found a female younger lover named Sorina and brought her home. Sorina provoked Lucian about his illness, and Vasile defended her by humiliating his son, he pushed Lucian aside and paid attention to the girl who was there. Lucian's sanity collapsed once and for all with his father's humiliations saying that he will never be a real man, and that's why he murdered Vasile and Sorina.
A old man on the village witnessed it, and made a telephone call to a institute in Bucharest called Popanovic Institute and consequently Lucian was captured and admitted to the institute. He was one of the wildest, most violent, and feared patients, often attacking the hospital staff, which led to him being put in a straitjacket, but Lucian always escaped and returned captured there, which gave him scars, that he would later in 1997 he decided cover with ribbons.
Welcome Home Arthur[]
In 1996, Lucian allegedly murdered an art therapist named Dorian who did not follow safety protocols, and a woman named Alexandra Sobotick was hired to replace him. After Christmas and New Year's, in the early hours of the dawn on January 5, 1997, Lucian escaped from the Popanovic Institute by luring, seducing and killing the male head of security, Emil who felt drawn to his room. He banged the guard's head against the wall, took his keys, and left. In the hallway, he is seen by another guard trying to escape, but fortunately another patient identified as Laurentiu appears, and Lucian shouts to him that the guard has candies hidden in his pocket. This causes the patient to attack and bite the guard. Lucian takes advantage of the confusion and leaves, he followed Alexandra's car when she goes home.
Lucian kills Alexandra with a tire iron, steals her money, another coat that was hanging in the wardrobe of her bedroom and leaves for England, he was never found after this. On a more deserted road, Lucian tricked a Romanian truck named Boris who was traveling to Hungary for a delivery and convinced him to give a ride to Hungary with a elaborate story saying that his name is Florin Petrescu and needed to go to meet his girlfriend who was studying in Budapest because Boris questioned why he was wearing a woman's coat (stolen from Alexandra). In Hungary, he tricked a group of younger hitchhiked named Nikolina, Viktor and Zoltán who were going to France convicing them to give a ride still using the name Florin, saying that he needed to visit his aunt who was in France, and from there, Lucian hid on a ship that was going to cross the maritime border to England.
In England, he wanders along the snowy road until he sees a poster of a 4-year-old boy named Arthur who has been missing since 1985, and Lucian realizes that he bears a resemblance to the child in the photo. He sees the police car coming from afar, realizing that they have seen him. Afraid that they might stop him, Lucian quickly pretends to be Arthur Brighton, the boy from the poster, as the police approach him.
Lucian invents a well-crafted story about how an Italian woman kidnapped him and forced him to be her son. The Brightons sought him out and took him home believing him to be their missing son.
Lucian spent time deceiving the Brighton couple, Alan and Margareth for several weeks. However, Lucian secretly kills a chief police inspector, Dixon, who begins to suspect that he might not be the real Arthur Brighton. Lucian eventually tried to seduce the father, Alan, but his sexual advances were rejected. However, Margareth discovered from one of Arthur's former kindergarten teachers, Eleanor, that his son, the real Arthur Brighton indeed disappeared in 1985, but he died by drowning in a lake due to neglect during a school trip, something that was never told to the parents.
He gets furious and had his true identity discovered, Lucian murdered Alan and Margareth by setting the house on fire, he flees but remains in England for 2 years, where he takes refuge in a shelter for homeless youth in Durham, obviously using his illness for that, Lucian he continued under the identity of Arthur Brighton but discreetly.
In 1999, Lucian leaves England after learning on a article about an exchange program in Michigan in USA only for teenagers or pre teenagers, Lucian maintains Arthur's identity but forges documents lying about his age assuming he was born in 1986. He arrived in America in 2000, where he was taken by the director of the exchange agency Global Horizons Exchange, Alice Brown, to a house for young exchange students owned by the agency itself.
Foreigner[]
In the dormitory of agency, is implied that Arthur/Lucian did not get along with the other teenagers and spend most time alone painting, in 2001 he was chosen by Alice to go stay at the home of a host family, Arthur was welcomed by the McCann family, made up of Kate, John, teenagers kids Kale and Ashley, despite the fact that she is hostile to him especially Arthur is pampered and has all the attention focused on him.
On the first day of school, Arthur has problems with a boy named Trey, who bullies him because of his style and knocks his book to the floor. Trey makes Arthur scream in pain when he touches his ribbon on his neck. In the classroom, Trey mocks Arthur again, and he stares back at him.
The McCanns go to a restaurant for a meeting with a family friends couple, the Hintons. At lunch, Arthur fascinates Peter and Susan Hinton with his stories about England; their children, Jake and Layla, find Arthur strange because of his appearance, and Peter reprimands them.
After spending weeks living with the host family, Arthur catches Kate and John almost making out on kitchen, next day, Kate begins to become suspicious when Arthur displays extensive knowledge about sex more than what would be expected for a teenage boy his age. The school takes a field trip to a park, Arthur frightens and pushes Trey off a bridge from a height, causing him to break his arm.
Kate becomes even more alarmed when the exchange program director, Alice Brown, visits the couple and says that Arthur is always getting into accidents and she mentions that she thinks Arthur may have been abused in childhood. Arthur overhears the conversation and kills Alice by stabbing her with a machete, Arthur convinces Kale to hide all the evidence in the treehouse. Arthur antagonizes Kate by picking flowers for the stillborn child, Karen McCann to give her as gift. One day later, at school, Arthur throws Ashley's books on the floor to distract her, Kate leaves the car running and goes to help her, leaving Kale in the car. Arthur goes back to the car, puts the gear shift in neutral, and releases the parking brake, causing the car to roll down the hill with Kale inside, but fortunately, Kate and Ashley save him.
Ashley came up with a plan with Kale to recover the machete that was used to kill Alice and prove that Arthur is the guilty, but Arthur ends up overhearing their plan. Next day, Ashley goes to the treehouse only to find it unlocked. She looks for the hammer and finds nothing. Arthur appears behind her and sets the treehouse on fire to silence Ashley. He leaves the treehouse in flames and locks Ashley inside to kill her. Ashley manages to get out through the window, injured and unconscious, and falls to the ground. Arthur tries to kill her with a brick, but Kale pushes him away. Ashley is hospitalized for a neck injury and abdominal bleeding. Arthur once again tries to kill Ashley by suffocating her with a pillow, but the doctors manage to save her. When Kate finds out, she slaps Arthur, knocking him down. Kate is immediately sedated and subdued.
Arthur takes a shower and dresses elegantly, trying to seduce John who is drunk. He finally realizes that Kate had been telling the truth all along and threatens to send him back to England, leaving Arthur heartbroken as he goes to his room. At the hospital, Kate comes out of sedation and receives a telephone call from a doctor named Dr. Bilodeau, who works at the Popanovic Institute revealing that Arthur is not a teenager but a 34-year-old adult Romanian male mentally stable sick named Lucian Ionescu who has a very and unknown rare disease called Late Maturation Endocrine Dysplasia and he has spent most of his time posing as a young teenager in addition to about his incestuous past and the time as male escort of wealthy men and how he deceived the Brighton posing as the dead son they believed to be missing, he killed the whole family and burned down the house when he couldn't seduce Alan.
Lucian furiously removes the base of makeup, and the tapes on his neck and wrists that he received due to the constant attempts to get out of the straitjacket, he destroys the room in a fit of rage, revealing his true identity. The power in the house goes out and Lucian disappears. John grabs a flashlight and investigates Arthur's room but is attacked by Lucian and stabbed multiple times, killing him. Kale sees his father stabbed and runs to hide in a closet. Kate runs home and finds John dead. Lucian takes a revolver from his safe and shoots Kate in the arm, chasing her before looking for Kale. While Lucian shoots at Kale in the garage, Kate leaps on top of Lucian, knocking him out.
Lucian follows Kate and Kale to the park and attacks her, they fight in the grass while Kale watches them, Kale maneuvers to get the gun that was dropped in the fight and shoots Lucian, but misses.
Kate and Lucian fall under the pond, after a brief fight in the water, Lucian stabs Kate in the leg and ends up getting elbowed in the face, Kate comes out of the lake followed by Lucian, who begs her not to let him die while holding a knife from behind, Kate does not fall for his lie answering that it is not "your motherfucking mommy" and violently shoots Lucian on his neck, finally killing him. Kate and Kale are greeted by the police as Lucian's corpse sinks into the water.
Personality[]
While Arthur presents himself to McCann as quiet, charming, peaceful, friendly and talented teenage in the arts who wins everyone, but this is a facade to hide his true nature because later is revelead that Arthur is not a teenager but instead a full-grown man. Lucian is a full cold, antisocial, heartless, pessimistic, disturbed, sexually addicted, cruel, violent, wild, hatred and manipulative, using lies and, of course, LDEM to get what he wants and satisfy his lust for men using murders, threats, attacks on families and making wives appear as bad women.
Basically, his lust for men and attempt at seduction by the male parents is due to the incestuous relationship with his own father in the past that sexually abused him, but that Lucian saw as something normal and had sick romantic feelings for his own father.
Lucian also shows a lack of self-love because even though he killed Vasile, he keeps a photo of him, taking this photo with him wherever he goes.
Despite his psychopathic side, Lucian is very skilled in arts and music, able to play the piano flawlessly and able to draw. However, his paintings are dark and disturbing, depicting his obscure and incestuous past, one of assassination of several people, other includes a encounter between him and John . He is also very bilingual and an excellent polyglot, able to do a British English accent, and he was also able to communicate in Hungarian when he arrived in Hungary after fleeing Romania and get a ride of a trucker on road and in French when he was in France.
He also has a refined musical taste, particularly for ABBA's song 'I Have a Dream,' which has a personal meaning because it is part of the incest abuse between him and his father Vasile, who would play the song.
Lucian also showed a certain contradictory hypocrisy by condemning Kate for passing out drunk and almost letting Kale drown in a pool as a child, but in the final fight with the McCann matriarch, he himself asked her for save (although he was pretending to be afraid in order to kill her if Kate do it) when he was almost drowing in the lake.
Kill Count[]
- Vasile Ionescu - Stabbed 7 times.
- Sorina - Also stabbed 7 times in the chest and in the thigh.
- Dorian The Former Art Therapist - Was stabbed after ignore the security protocol and underestimating Lucian.
- Emil The Head of Security - Had his head bashed against the wall six times.
- Alexandra Sobotick - Attacked and beaten to the death with a tyre iron.
- Chief Inspector Charles Dixon - Shooted in back by Lucian when he started to suspect that he was not the supposed missing boy Arthur Brighton.
- Alan Brighton - Killed in a fire after rejecting Lucian's sexual advances.
- Margareth Brighton - Killed in the fire by Lucian.
- Diego - While was in the house offered by the Global Horizons Exchange travel agency, off-screen before the events of the movie Lucian impaled him with scissors and had his body hidden in a closet.
- Rat - Crushed with a rock by Arthur after accidentally being shot by Ashley in paintball.
- Alice Brown - Stabbed on belly and back of the head with a hammer six times.
- Ashley McCann - Suffocated with a pillow. Revived by doctors with CPR.
- John McCann - Stabbed five times in the chest with a knife kitchen.
Trivia[]
- Lucian is based on Esther Coleman from the movie Orphan, parts of his story like Popanovic's escape and the Brighton couple plot, Alan and Margaret, were taken from the prequel Orphan: First Kill. The backstory between him and his father Vasile, however, was taken from the original 2009 Orphan script.
- Both were born in the same date, April 20th, although Leena was born in 1976, and Lucian in 1967.
- In the original script of Foreigner, while was in the house provided by the Global Horizons Exchange, Arthur killed a Mexican boy named Diego whom John and Kate were supposed to take home so that he could go in his place, Arthur impaled him with a pair of scissors and hidden his body in a closet. However, this scene was discarded for being considered too violent. However, a deleted scene from the movie shows Alice finding a blood-stained pair of scissors and Diego's corpse when she goes to accompany a cleaner for the house cleaning.
- Other deleted scene from the movie shows Arthur walking alone in the yard at night to take out the trash. As he throws out the trash, a man looks back and sees nothing there. It also shows Arthur hiding from him behind the trash.
- Lucian pretends to be a British boy, ironically in real life, Sean Paul has English ancestry on his mother's side of the family, since his maternal grandmother lived in Coventry.
- He also has some Serbian ancestry on his father's side, in addition to Portuguese (his surname is Henriques). In real life, Serbia is Romania's neighboring country.
- Lucian can be considered a Cluster B sociopath with traits of borderline, histrionic, and narcissistic personality. It is quite likely that Lucian has both Antisocial Personality Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder.
- In the final credits, it is possible to see a photo of him when he was at the Popanovic Institute, a torn paper written in Romanian about his disorder and his nationality, the photo of his father Vasile that found by Kate in Lucian's room when she decided to investigate Lucian on her own, and a torn photo of Alan and Margareth Brighton, a old photo of his late biological mother and a fiery old photo of the Popanovic medical team.
- Just like Esther Coleman, Lucian is based on two real-life people: Barbora Skrovlá, a Czech woman who posed as a 13-year-old child, infiltrating a family and taking part in a disturbing child abuse case. Later she fled to Norway where she posed as a 14-year-old boy named Adam. Barbora Skrolová was found and arrested on January 5 (interestingly, the same date that Lucian escaped from Popanovic). DNA tests confirmed her true identity, and in 2008, she was sentenced to five years in prison for her role in the child abuse case and her elaborate fraud. Skrlová was released from prison in 2011, and her whereabouts remain unknown.
- And he is also based on Frederic Bourdin, a French criminal and impostor who impersonated the missing son of a family. Bourdin himself said he believed that the family took him in, despite the obvious signs that he did not resemble the son at all, because they were responsible for his death and covered everything up. However, in Foreigner, the Brightons did not accidentally kill their son.
- His birthday date is the same as Adolf Hitler.
- Ironically, Lucian's tragic end mirrors that of the real deceased Arthur Brighton, both having aquatic deaths, although Kate killed him in the lake.
Quotes[]
| “ | Hello, my name is Arthur | „ |
| ~ Arthur/Lucian's most famous catchphrase |
| “ | They f****. You wanted it and he wanted it too | „ |
| ~ Arthur/Lucian to Kate |
| “ | Maybe I am not just a boy | „ |
| ~ Arthur |
| “ | You know, I have a motto that I think people should take the bad things that happen in life and try to turn them into something good. | „ |
| ~ Arthur/Lucian when he met Kate and John |
| “ | If I'll find that you're lying and you tell someone what you saw me and Kale doing, I swear I'll cut your tits before you find out what they're for, do you get me, girl? | „ |
| ~ Arthur/Lucian threats Ashley. |
| “ | STOP TALKING TO ME LIKE I'M A BOY! | „ |
| ~ Arthur/Lucian after John rejects his sexual advances and threatens to send him back to England |
| “ | It doesn't matter. They're going to send me to prison just for you helping me hide her. I had to kill Alice because she was going to tell on me. You won't tell on me, will you, Kale? | „ |
| ~ Arthur tells Kale the reason he killed Alice, the director of the exchange program |
| “ | I thought you might enjoy teaching me. It must be frustrating for someone who loves music as much as you do to have two teenages children my age who are not interested in it. | „ |
| “ | I'll shoot mom if you tell. | „ |
| ~ Arthur's threat to Kale |
| “ | Stop to complain. Grab one foot from her and take her body off the street. NOW! | „ |
| ~ Arthur/Lucian convincing Kale to finish Alice off |
| “ | Take the mouse out of misery. It is in pain and it is your responsibility. | „ |
| ~ Arthur offers Ashley to kill a rat with a stone |
| “ | Alright, I understand. It must be difficult to love, let me say, an "adopted child" even more from another country as much as you love your own. | „ |
| ~ Arthur, to John |