Looper

[pita]

Nonspoiler:
I saw Looper yesterday.
Kind of mixed emotions.
I'll begin by saying this is obviously a very good movie. It is definitely the best time travel movie out there, with the exception of the Bill and Ted movies. The heartwarming bits are perfect, the tense moments are incredibly tense, and the scary moments are completely insane. Suffice to say I will never be able to watch Little Miss Sunshine again, and the Paul Dano plotline isn't even the most disturbing thing about this movie.
Unfortunately, the most disturbing thing about the movie is Joseph Gordon Levitt's face. I dunno what happened there, whether they wanted to actually make him look like Bruce Willis or if he's aged fifteen years since The Dark Knight Rises, but it's incredibly disturbing to look at a face you know and see a different one. There would be times when I felt like I recognized him, and then it would hit me that he looks nothing like himself. This must be what face blindness feels like.
He also tried to act like Bruce Willis, which didn't work. It felt like he was a bad Robert De Niro, especially when compared to the actual Bruce Willis, who is pretty much the greatest movie star of all times (no one is allowed to dispute me on this). It kind of annoyed me that I was watching a guy do a bad Willis impression while I was watching a movie with Willis. As a result, I enjoyed Jeff Daniels, Paul Dano, the kid, and the female cast members who I don't recognize much more than I did the actual star of the movie.
Now for the spoilers.
I also got an irritating vibe from the ending. I might be overthinking it, especially since I'm a Terminator fan, but my problem is that the loop is the only thing keeping the loop in existence. If Bruce Willis never shoots the kid's mom, the kid never grows up to be a monster. If the kid never grew up to be a monster, Bruce Willis wouldn't have been returned to the past in a wave of suspicious loop endings, and therefore wouldn't try to shoot his mother. There was no way for the loop to begin. This is also a problem in Terminator, but Terminator is a much more stupid movie than this so I forgave it.
On the good side, though, the Willis/Levitt conversation is a brilliant scene. Willis fully captures the whole "I really wanna give Past Me a smack in the face" bit, which is something we've all felt, even without actually meeting Past Us. Levitt also manages to hit the right note, despite being outshined at being the actor who he's acting against. God, I can't get over that. Willis is one of my favorite actors in the universe, and a cheap copy doesn't cut it.
All in all I'd give it an 8/10 stars, and fully recommend it to sci-fi lovers, though not to Bruce Willis fans. Gah dammit Levitt...

[Hiro Protagonest]

Yeah, when Levitt appeared on Ellen, he said that he spent a lot of time for makeup to make his face look similar to Bruce's.

Also, Clint Eastwood is the greatest movie star of all time. It's practically a meme.

[KillianHawkeye]

Yeah, when Levitt appeared on Ellen, he said that he spent a lot of time for makeup to make his face look similar to Bruce's.

That was makeup?? I figured they did the whole thing with cgi.

I think my favorite part of the movie was how there was really no hero or villain. It was a story of a man who was willing to do terrible things for the greater good, and another man who'd done selfish things choosing to sacrifice himself to save an innocent life, but they were the same man. The way that the older one seemed good but became bad while the younger one seemed bad but became good, each for their own reasons, was really enjoyable to me.

[Yora]

I heard of it for the very first time yesterday when we were looking if there's anything to watch to go to the theatre in the evening with friends that were visiting for the weekend. I had lots of doubt and went to rotten tomatoes as a quick weather check and was amazed to see a 90+% rating.
But it only starts next week here... :smallamused:

[Soras Teva Gee]

Was put off by the silly name, but I'm guessing by responses it actually uses a stable time loop since that's broadly the only way to have a time travel story make sense.

So is the movie at least as good as Fry becoming being his own grandfather?

[KillianHawkeye]

Was put off by the silly name, but I'm guessing by responses it actually uses a stable time loop since that's broadly the only way to have a time travel story make sense.

Essentially, when two versions of the same person are in the same time stream, it works by having any change to the younger version instantly and retroactively affect the older version.

[hamlet]

I saw it, and must say was surprised at how good it was, and dissapointed at how good it could have been, and yet wasn't.

If you take it on a superficial level, and just go with what you're handed, then you'll love the movie. It's heartfelt, well written, well acted, and even if Levit's makeup is a bit of a distraction, it's not that bad and you can understand what they were going for. He does a good job with it, and Willis does a fairly good job of toning back his . . . Willis-ness I guess.

However. If you watch it with your brain in gear and fully operational, you're going to be a little cheesed off. There was so much potential that just wasn't realized IMO.

The whole shtick about not killing the younger looper until 30 years when he's boxed into the machine and sent back left me absolutely screaming at the end wondering what the consequences would be for young Joe killing himself and wiping old Joe out of existence. What, exactly, would be the results of that?

It's apparant that the change was minimal since, for some reason, nothing else changed around him even though we know that the results of him being alive were the birth of the "Rainmaker" big boss. So, I'm guessing that, despite all of this, the Rainmaker still rises to power and goes to town, created by some other event.

At the end of the movie, you should be sitting there smacking yourself in the forehead wondering "and then what!?!?!" But it's plain that the movie doesn't want you to actually ask that question, pretending instead that everything's wrapped up in a neat little bow. Unless they're setting up for a sequel and the ending was a sequel hook that only geniuses or obsessive compulsives who think to much would get.

[Selrahc]

Unless they're setting up for a sequel and the ending was a sequel hook that only geniuses or obsessive compulsives who think to much would get.


I could easily see a sequel for this movie. They left so much unexplained at practically every turn and they hinted at a compelling future storyline.

The Ascent of the Rainmaker, and the reason he decided to close the loops? I'd watch that.

[Eldan]

So, I was totally off with my guess for this movie.

See, I made the mistake of not putting much stock in the Telekinesis. I thought it was a stupid gag that wouldn't lead anywhere. Man was I wrong. I should know better.

When the half-time break came around, I had the following plot guess:

The little kid is Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I remembered him saying something like that he barely remembered his childhood. So, I thought this: the mother gets shot, the boy grabs a gun, is sent back in time, tries to rob a store and is picked up by the gangster boss as his newest, youngest Looper. Seemed to me like the kind of twist a time-travel movie would pull.

Then, a bit later, I had another plot guess. The boy is shown to be pretty damn smart and handy with technology. He invents the time machine, since he wants to undo all the bad things that happened in his life. It's also how he manages to take over five cartels by himself, with time travel.

Again, didn't guess the importance of the TK. Though the second might still be true.

[BRC]

Saw it the other day, loved it to pieces.


Concerning the Time Travel, yes it's illogical. There is no such thing as a Logical Version of Time Travel unless you want to spend an hour charting out branching timelines, or somehow limit the time traveler to non-interference (Normally, this means they only get to observe events in the past, but I guess "Get shot and incinerated" works too). Even Stable Time Loops can twist your head the wrong way if you think about them too much (Even though they at least end in a logical chain of events).

Also, props to the marketing department for keeping what turned out to be the main plot under wraps. It's kind of rare in this day and age to see a movie that hasn't had half it's plot points spoilered by the trailer.

[hamlet]

Saw it the other day, loved it to pieces.


Concerning the Time Travel, yes it's illogical. There is no such thing as a Logical Version of Time Travel unless you want to spend an hour charting out branching timelines, or somehow limit the time traveler to non-interference (Normally, this means they only get to observe events in the past, but I guess "Get shot and incinerated" works too). Even Stable Time Loops can twist your head the wrong way if you think about them too much (Even though they at least end in a logical chain of events).

Also, props to the marketing department for keeping what turned out to be the main plot under wraps. It's kind of rare in this day and age to see a movie that hasn't had half it's plot points spoilered by the trailer.




It's not that the time travel aspect was illogical for me. Hell, any story involving time travel will be, to a certain extent, illogical since we have no clue what time travel would actually entail in terms of consequences and phenomena. We don't know how time works, so any such story will be fuzzy, hence the great bit between Willis and Levitt where Willis tells him to stop thinking so hard about it and just work from what they both know rather than trying to wrap your head around the logic of any of it.

My problem is much more one of aesthetics of sci-fi story telling. I went in kind of hoping for more of a story that dealt with the possible intricacies of time travle possibilities rather than what we got. It was much more a shoot em up action flick with some time travel bit grafted on in my opinion. Heck, in some ways, Back to the Future handled that aspect a little better.

Which is not to say it isn't good. Hell, compared to the other dross out there, it's a great movie. But I was kind of hoping for more.

[Mauve Shirt]

Enjoyed the film...
OH MY GOD that part where Joseph faces away from the camera and then turns his head and he's suddenly Bruce Willis with stupid hair! I laughed out loud. :smallbiggrin:

I'd like a movie that really explored the "I'm a different timeline, I don't want to live the life you did!" attitude that Joseph had. Identity is tough in a time travel universe.

[Tavar]

Here's the director talking about a couple plot elements to the story, spoilers obviously:http://www.meetup.com/SFFBookClub/events/83043062/

[KillianHawkeye]

Here is the actual article: http://www.slashfilm.com/ten-mysteries-in-looper-explained-by-director-rian-johnson/

For those of you who don't feel like wasting your time pointlessly clicking through Tavar's Meetup page.