[Movie] Looper

[rshetts2]

First Ive heard or seen if this.  It stars two people I like (Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt) in a time travelling action flick.


http://blastr.com/2012/04/1st-teaser-footage-from-j.php

Looks good to me!

[PR_GMR]

Awe-some! This is from Rian Johnson, director of my favorite indie debut film of all time, 'Brick'. It's gonna be gooood!

[hepcat]

Brick is in my top 10 favorite indie films.   I even enjoyed his follow up, the brothers bloom.  In.

[rickfc]

Some teaser footage from the director and Joseph Gordon-Levitt

http://io9.com/5900339/first-footage-from-rian-johnsons-time+traveling-hitman-movie-looper

[rickfc]

Full trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5kGFyVKmqA0

Looks awesome

[EngineNo9]

Honestly that trailer didn't excite me nearly as much as I expected.  I mean, Joseph Gordon-Levitt back with the director of Brick in a sci-fi action thriller?    I think my brain created something they couldn't live up to, but we'll see.

[Bullwinkle]

I just got back from CitW and saw this trailer, and my head about asploded.

I cannot wait for this.

That said, it ain't Brick, for sure.

[CeeKay]

[metallicorphan]

everytime i see that title i think of

[TheEgoWhip]

Saw the trailer this weekend attached to Premium Rush.  I had totally forgotten about this movie, but the trailer looks good.  Will have to add it to my list.

[TK-421]

everytime i see that title i think of

I love that movie.  I had to buy it twice on DVD. 

The first copy I had I loaned to a coworker and that same night our boss called him and told him he was fired and not to bother coming in to work.  Never saw him again.

So I had to buy it a second time.  Totally worth it though.

[hepcat]

You still have a copy of your other favorite movie?

[CeeKay]

now I need to track down a copy of Hooper.

[Isgrimnur]

I preferred John Ritter as Hooperman.

[TK-421]

You still have a copy of your other favorite movie?

Was never a fan.  I saw it once and that was enough for me.

This movie however....

[kratz]

Surely I'm not the only one to have gone to this.

What an incredible movie!  I was disturbed by a lot of it, to be honest... the last time I was this impressed with a Sci Fi movie was Children of Men, I think.

[pr0ner]

I honestly tuned the thread out after seeing Hepcat and CeeKay be weird.

But, Looper is amazing, and, indeed, very disturbing in parts.  How this movie was marketed was brilliant, too.  Saying more than that really ventures into spoiler territory.

[Soulchilde]

It's a go see...


Actually reminded me of Inception in some places

[rittchard]

I saw it last week and really enjoyed it.  I think fans of Twelve Monkeys and other "darker" time travel movies will enjoy it.  I was surprised that it seemed like a good part of the audience was completely confused by the ending, which I thought was pretty self-explanatory, and almost telegraphed in the sense that they kind of set it up to make sure you understand the "rules" for the story.  And this is coming from someone who has been recently confused by movies like Inception.  But then again, I've watched a large share of time travel stuff so maybe I'm just used to it.

Spoiler for Hiden:

Apparently no one in the future was familiar with Die Hard, as they completely underestimated Bruce Willis's ability to slaughter everyone so easily lol.  Interestingly that was probably my least favorite part of the movie, even though normally it would have been my favorite part (I love seeing my action heroes kick major ass).  It felt kind of jarring for Bruce to suddenly turn into "Die Hard Bruce" when they'd already established young Bruce was only a mediocre fighter.  I had to say "Yippie Kai Ay Mother Fucker" after he was done slaughtering everyone.

[Soulchilde]

Rittch

Spoiler for Hiden:

I think you overlooked how his life turned out once he stopped being a Looper.  His time in China he became some sort of bass ass gangster in his own right

[kratz]

Rittch

Spoiler for Hiden:

I think you overlooked how his life turned out once he stopped being a Looper.  His time in China he became some sort of bass ass gangster in his own right

Bingo.

[Isgrimnur]

Hijinks Ensue

Are Screech and the 'Step By Step' siblings going to turn me into a Chinese finger trap while Jaleel White and the baby from 'Dinosaurs' make a snuff film with my mom?!

[disarm]

I saw it last weekend and agree that it's a really good movie...interesting concept, good action, and it's a time-travel movie that actually holds up pretty well under scrutiny. It's definitely one of the better scifi movies that I've seen in quite a while 

[Rowdy]

I saw it last weekend and agree that it's a really good movie...interesting concept, good action, and it's a time-travel movie that actually holds up pretty well under scrutiny. It's definitely one of the better scifi movies that I've seen in quite a while 

I actually thought that while it was pretty interesting take, and I loved how the lines between good guy and bad guy were very blurry, the time travel logic broke down pretty fast. 

Spoiler for Hiden:

The scene where they dismembered young Seth to get old Seth to come back (only to be killed), while impressively disturbing, was broken.  They proved that they changed Old Seths history by doing things to young Seth - so obviously then that should extend to the thirty years that Old Seth spent up to that point!  As soon as they started cutting off feet and hands clearly Old Seth would never have left that hospital bed, never did anything for 30 years and would never have run away, even assuming he had existed until his loop...  Wasn't the whole point of not killing young Seth because the future impact would be too catastrophic, according to Abe?

I think Young Joe killing himself was more consistent, although it's harder to follow the loops.  At that moment Old Joe ceased to exist... so that means that nothing Joe did after that event ever happened.  No future mob life, no killing off the mob (so I assume Abe and the gang appeared as soon as Old Joe disappeared), no killing of the kids, etc.  They implied that the future was totally changed, so I guess that one works.

Just felt like they were a little inconsistent in the writing around the impact of changes in the past on the future.

[kratz]

Spoiler for Hiden:

Well... that's where it all gets interesting, though.  Wherever old Seth was, he would be affected by what happened to young Seth, as long as they didn't kill him... but yes, then he never would have come back, so it gets... Loopy.

Same thing with Joe, if he kills himself, then he never can have come back, so young Joe would never have had to kill himself... which would the result in it looping back the way it did loop back.  Maybe the explanation is just that in this loop, both of those things happen.  I dunno... the paradox is what makes it so interesting.  It's not as cut and dried as you state... and it is as cut and dried as you state.

It's an infinite loop in which he's a sort of Schrodinger's cat...

[Zarkon]

The problem with time travel is that most people try to view it as one timeline.  The moment someone travels back in time, they create a new timeline (Marvel was always really good about that one).  So you have the 'main timeline' which is in the present.  Then you have Alternate Timeline A with

Spoiler for Hiden:

old Seth, where Seth finishes out his contract and lives 30 years before going back in time

and then Alternate Timeline A2 where

Spoiler for Hiden:

Joe finishes out his contract and comes back in time to stop the kid from becoming the Rainmaker.  Also, this could ALSO be Alternate Timeline A because it's entirely possible that old Seth and old Joe could be from the same timeline. 

Then you have Alternate Timeline C (Seth is mutilated, Joe doesn't kill himself) and Alternate Timeline D (Seth is mutilated, Joe kills himself).  At the end of the movie, we're on track to Alternate Timeline D (now the true timeline), and Timelines A-C become just that -- failed alternates.

Don't you love time travel?

[hepcat]

My only issue with the film was the Cid story line.  It just felt tacked on.  The movie was great up until that point, then (for me at least) it seemed to veer away from the promise of the first half of the film. I still enjoyed myself, but I think I would have enjoyed it more had it remained steadily focused on the conflict between old and young joe, and the looper community in general.

[kratz]

That doesn't make a lot of sense to me, since Sid (Cid?) was THE storyline...

[hepcat]

No, I don't believe it was.  

Spoiler for Hiden:

The story was Joe's, not Cid's.  He was merely a catalyst to bring them together.  Cid could've been replaced with just an ordinary kid who brought them together.  They made him a baby Akira essentially and that, to me, diluted the real story with a component that felt inorganic to the story.   Even the hokey, offhand way they introduced the subject of TK's to the world Rian created felt forced to me.

I still enjoyed the film, mind you.  And I'm still a huge Rian fan.  But I'll take Brick over Looper still.

[Rowdy]

Sid was the loop.  If it wasn't for Sid none of the conflict between young Joe and Old Joe would have ever happened...  Sid was the reason Joe's loop got closed, and Joe was the reason Sid grew up and started closing loops.  Seems pretty integral to the storyline.

[McNutt]

Cid spoiler:

Spoiler for Hiden:

I was expecting the movie to be about the decision to kill one's future self.  That alone is an interesting idea.  But the Cid story really improved that.  In the future Cid becomes this unstoppable force.  I couldn't really tell how much evil he had unleashed, but it seemed like the Rainmaker was going to be the next Hitler.  That's what made the story come alive for me.  Now Joe has to wrestle with saving himself by killing future Joe, or letting future Joe rid the future world of this abomination.  Plus future Joe now has to do the very unpleasant task of killing little kids in order to save the future world.  Future Joe is also saving his future wife (whom he'll never see again) by killing the Rainmaker.  What was his real motivation?  Saving the world from Cid?  Saving his wife?  Just getting revenge?

To me the Cid element really elevated this story from good to great.

[hepcat]

Sid was the loop.  If it wasn't for Sid none of the conflict between young Joe and Old Joe would have ever happened...  Sid was the reason Joe's loop got closed, and Joe was the reason Sid grew up and started closing loops.  Seems pretty integral to the storyline.

Spoiler for Hiden:

And the need fo his being a super powered telekinetic in a film otherwise grounded in a gritty noire sensibility was?  Sid (Cid?) was a catalyst.  He could have been replaced with almost any criminal mastermind and it wouldn't have disrupted the story in the slightest.  The mother was more a central figure due to Sid's past mommy issues, to be honest.

I did think Old Joe's struggle with his own morality a la his Terminator quest was well done.  When he broke down outside that first murder scene...well...that was just gut wrenching.  I would've preferred more time be spent on that than on Baby Akira.
  

[rittchard]

As much as I enjoyed the movie, and as much as I'm generally a fan of mental powers, etc, I'd have to agree with Hepcat that the movie really didn't need that extra element, and could have succeeded as an even stronger "pure" sci-fi story if they had focused on the core elements (time travel and loopers).  

Spoiler for Hiden:

The main storyline was already so interesting and filled with possibilities, the addition of mutant super powers just seemed unnecessary.  As a catalyst, the boy could have still been in the story as a normal boy who either grows up good or bad depending on the events that happen in his childhood.  Or they could have made the woman the critical piece as the Rainmaker's mom, so her survival or even becoming pregnant by Joe or whatever is the choice/catalyst.  Or she turns into the Rainmaker after he kills her son so she sets out to destroy all loopers.  There are a ton of possibilities that really didn't require the little boy turning into Dark Phoenix.  For a second I was expecting Drew Barrymore to appear and go Firestarter on everyone's ass.  

[hepcat]

rritchard, you and i are just going to have ride this storm out....and I predict strong winds are on the way, my friend.  

I'm still a Rian fanboy, folks.  I will most likely get this on blu ray when it comes out, even.  I have some complaints about the film, but those are just my own personal opinion.  I eagerly look forward to more Rian films since this one is apparently doing pretty well at the box office and with critics. 

[Victoria Raverna]

I saw it last weekend and agree that it's a really good movie...interesting concept, good action, and it's a time-travel movie that actually holds up pretty well under scrutiny. It's definitely one of the better scifi movies that I've seen in quite a while  

I actually thought that while it was pretty interesting take, and I loved how the lines between good guy and bad guy were very blurry, the time travel logic broke down pretty fast.  

Spoiler for Hiden:

The scene where they dismembered young Seth to get old Seth to come back (only to be killed), while impressively disturbing, was broken.  They proved that they changed Old Seths history by doing things to young Seth - so obviously then that should extend to the thirty years that Old Seth spent up to that point!  As soon as they started cutting off feet and hands clearly Old Seth would never have left that hospital bed, never did anything for 30 years and would never have run away, even assuming he had existed until his loop...  Wasn't the whole point of not killing young Seth because the future impact would be too catastrophic, according to Abe?

I think Young Joe killing himself was more consistent, although it's harder to follow the loops.  At that moment Old Joe ceased to exist... so that means that nothing Joe did after that event ever happened.  No future mob life, no killing off the mob (so I assume Abe and the gang appeared as soon as Old Joe disappeared), no killing of the kids, etc.  They implied that the future was totally changed, so I guess that one works.

Just felt like they were a little inconsistent in the writing around the impact of changes in the past on the future.

Spoiler for Hiden:

If Seth die young then there'll be no old Seth to send back. Young Seth will not fail to kill his old self because that can't happen. So it'll become a big paradox, the future can totally change.

The point is to leave young Seth alive so that the next young Seth can fix the problem. The point is to close the timeline loop or in this case a loop of two timelines.

To do that, they have to send old Seth back to young Seth. So I think what they're doing is to capture young seth, cut his limbs to force old Seth out then keep him alive for 30 years and send him back to be killed by young Seth. They're hoping that in the next timeline, young Seth will not fail to kill his older self because Seth will know what'll happen to him if he can't kill his older self. He'll then kill his older and invalid self and then the timeline loop will change back to Seth get to live for 30 years healthy. So I think in this case there are two possible timeline that keep looping. One is young Seth failed then next one Seth succeeded then loop back to the first version. This kind of loop is probably acceptable since the future will be the same for at least one version. 50% of future dimension change is better than 100%.

I think this is how the looper organization deal with the failure. They make sure that it'll not fail in the next version.

Now with the young Joe killed himself, that is something that the organization try to avoid. It is why they choose people who are selfish to be loopers. As long as young Joe doesn't kill himself, the loop can be closed. Joe's loop is longer than Seth. Joe has a complex timelines that close in one big loop.

[Bullwinkle]

Just saw this and loved it.

While it didn't occur to me while watching it, I can see where hep is coming from.

OTOH, there were some very cool things that happened as a result of it being that way.  May e those things were just window dressing for set pieces, but really, couldn't that be said for many sci-fi/fantasy stories?

Spoiler for Hiden:

Apart from the cool moments like in the cane field and the car getting flipped and the Raising Hope dad getting gently pulled apart, I really liked discovering that the kid killed his own mother.  When he said he wasn't strong enough to stop it from happening it just seemed like he was saying he wasn't hard enough yet, a path that he was already going down, it seemed.

Also, that kid was fucking great.  Fantastic performance, and I hope we see more of him.

My gripes are very minor, but they are that the hoverbike effects were terrible; there were two big deaths that were underplayed a little too much; and who the hell was Jeff Daniels?!  

Spoiler for Hiden:

He came from the future.  He's somebody in the present.  Not revealing that is like. Breaking the old adage that if you put a gun on stage in the first act, someone has to fire it before the end of the play. I thought he might be the dumb kid who shot his own foot off, and maybe he was, but it was never revealed. 

Also, both of those deaths were the lame ones.  Why kill Daniels off-screen?  He was the big bad right up until Bruce started shooting up little kids, he deserved something more.  And the kid slowing down in the fog to get shot was weak.  It should have been something a little more clever, so Joe was using his smarts to defeat the kid's stupidity.

Hey, and Jeff Daniels aid that people went crazy if they stuck around too long after traveling back.  Why didn't it happen with him?  We don't see it happen with Bruce, really (he gets some headaches).  And the guy he's talking about gets killed before it could happen.  Why even mention this?

Anyway, none of that ruined the movie at all for me.  Big fan of this.