LOOPER -- new, original scifi from Rian Johnson

After reading some of the other discussion points in this thread:

I thought the obvious reason why it was mostly set on the farm (the cycle theme a happy coincidence) was because if you've got a kid that can literally blow up at any time, you don't live in the middle of a city. I would have liked to have seen more effort made in showing some signs of the future setting on the farm though. Also, that blunderbuss is loud. If he's been killing people there for years surely coincidence alone would see him interrupted at least once?....must...not...over...think...

I don't think young Joe knew that he was going to stop the Rainmaker. I think he sacrificed his life to allow the chance of stopping the Rainmaker. Or more likely just to give the kid a chance. He doesn't demonstrate any concern for the future at any point. Not when it comes to france/china, not when his older self tells him about his future (which he disowns as 'your future, not mine'). Secondly, as far as I noticed the only innocent (and guilty by association) harmed by the Rainmaker is Willis' wife. Those we know are victims of the Rainmaker are Loopers (not exactly moral paragons). Nothing I saw or heard suggested that the world at large was made worse and from what was shown, the 'present' wasn't too flash even for a well paid Looper.

The main purpose of old Joe being 'saved' by his wife served to show that the potential to respond to being saved existed in young Joe, to justify his arc (although I have trouble believing sweet Joseph Gordon-Levitt to be mean spirited in the first place). It's rather neat that it also provides motive for his own actions. Speaking of the two I found the makeup to be both impressive and fascinating...but short of suspending disbelief didn't think he could pass for a young Bruce Willis. The acid test is could you see him playing Hudson Hawk?... :) Stunning makeup though. I found myself unintentionally spending half the closeups looking for the joins but never found them. Bruce Willis ear wasn't nearly so well done. It stuck out like a sore...well, ear I guess.

On a side note, the anamorphic flares for the most part were quite well done. Got a little out of control for a while there but the subtle and sometimes quite intricate flares in the first 15 minutes were nice. Once small lights started appearing in unmotivated places to get unnecessary flares was when you could see the director/DP start to touch themselves inappropriately. Some really nice examples of stretched bokeh too, although I swear some shots were only included specifically for those of us looking for them.
 
I thought it was one of the better movies of the last couple of years, and exactly the kind of sci-fi which was my drug of choice growing up. If it had been made in the '80s, I would have watched it a zillion times by now.

Making the world of 2044 an economic wasteland was a great way not to have to go to the expense and probably silliness of creating futuristic cars.

The one thing that bugged me about it is that Old Joe changed his own fate for no apparent reason. In his own original timeline, Old Joe came back hooded, gagged, and tied, and Young Joe killed him. There was no reason for this to have changed when Joe lived out his own life. It's not like the Old Joe who was killed didn't know it was coming the first time around.

But, I can live with it, and the changing history effect was wicked cool.

OK, one more thing bugged me, too -- the contrivance of the Rainmaker hailing from Joe's hometown.
 
David Jimerson said:
OK, one more thing bugged me, too -- the contrivance of the Rainmaker hailing from Joe's hometown.
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If it were a series TV show... then having Joe cover the earth looking for the Rainmaker, followed by the GAT, or local equivalents... would make sense.

But in the movie, the reason why this city is the city of the film, is because of the interconnectedness of the Rainmaker and the loopers in that city...

I thought the film was good. I think the biggest 'missing' piece was the demonstrations of the TeleKenetic people. In the deleted scenes there's several more sequences with the TK shown, so then finding a 'kid' with more power is not a 'say what???' moment.
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
But in the movie, the reason why this city is the city of the film, is because of the interconnectedness of the Rainmaker and the loopers in that city...
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I don't think that follows. The loopers were created by someone other than the Rainmaker, who took over from whomever set up the loopers -- which appeared to be several different gang bosses. And I don't think there was any indication that they were the only loopers, just the loopers of a particular boss.
 
David Jimerson said:
I don't think that follows. The loopers were created by someone other than the Rainmaker, who took over from whomever set up the loopers -- which appeared to be several different gang bosses. And I don't think there was any indication that they were the only loopers, just the loopers of a particular boss.
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I don't think I worry to this level on the 'setup'.

But, say for the moment that loopers the world round began to notice there was an increase in loops being closed, then some set of them in some city may come to the conclusion the 'Rainmaker' was a child of their region...

Alternatively, these loopers in this city where the Rainmaker hails from, are the 'inciting coincidence' needed to kick this story off.

I think young Joe's tearing off of the map with 'The Rainmaker' childhood home on it is more of a 'hole', than the setup for the city where the Rainmaker is born.
 
Didn't like it. Thought it would be something different from other time travel movies, but it wasn't. The only good time travel movies are like Hot Tub Time Machine or Back to the Future, where something actually does change the future.

Otherwise, it all seems pointless. Hey, all that stuff that happened? yea, never happened, you know, Time Travel! Seems like cheating instead of actually spending time on a story. You just go, gotcha! never happened! Time Travel!

Also, killing himself creates a Paradox. It's no different than going back kill your parents or something like that.

Why does he kill himself? Because his older self comes back in time and screws up everything. Ok. So he kills himself to stop that. But, once you stop that, then what's the reason he kills himself? His older self never comes back in time because he's already dead, so he doesn't screw up his life, so there's no reason to kill himself...
 
Gillvane said:
Also, killing himself creates a Paradox. It's no different than going back kill your parents or something like that.
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Any time travel to the past creates a paradox, unless it instead creates an alternate reality. If you travel back in time to save your sister, you save her and then you have no reason to later go back in time, because she's not dead in the future, therefore in said future, you DON'T go back in time to save her. So no matter what you do in a time-travelling story (or reality, if that day ever comes), you'll be creating an alternate universe or a catch 22 paradox. If science wasn't constantly breaking new boundaries with experiments which utterly defy logic and physics as we know them, one would conclude that time travel would never be possible because of this immediate paradox-creation.

Or in short, it's "only" a movie... ;)

-EMB
 
Not saying this should change your opinion but the script did have Willis deliver a line on their first meeting in the diner that was clearly aimed directly at the audience, to the effect of 'don't worry about paradox, this isn't that kind of time-travel movie'. There are plenty of other small problems to focus on with this movie. I thought it was somewhere between okay and good. My disappointment largely derived from how easily it could have been better. Probably shouldn't have watched Primer the week before...

It could have been the movie to return some intelligence to scifi big screen cinema, it dipped a toe but stopped short of diving in. My impression was written around a handful of key punchline images/scenes (moments that would be a full page frame in a comic book) and neglected the journey between them. Still it was a start. Scifi has broadly failed to service its key demographic for a few years now, reduced to dressups for the mainstream.
 
Egg Born Son said:
It could have been the movie to return some intelligence to scifi big screen cinema, it dipped a toe but stopped short of diving in. My impression was written around a handful of key punchline images/scenes (moments that would be a full page frame in a comic book) and neglected the journey between them. Still it was a start. Scifi has broadly failed to service its key demographic for a few years now, reduced to dressups for the mainstream.
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I think I agree. As much as I wanted to love this movie, and be a total fanboy about it, (and I do REALLY like the movie, just don't love it), I can't because ultimately I don't really even think of it when I think of the great movies I've watched so far this year. Need to watch it again, but I think, like you, I was hoping for something much more... sophisticated. I don't think I've seen a truly brilliant work of science fiction since Inception.

-EMB
 
Egg Born Son said:
Not saying this should change your opinion but the script did have Willis deliver a line on their first meeting in the diner that was clearly aimed directly at the audience, to the effect of 'don't worry about paradox, this isn't that kind of time-travel movie'. There are plenty of other small problems to focus on with this movie. I thought it was somewhere between okay and good. My disappointment largely derived from how easily it could have been better. Probably shouldn't have watched Primer the week before...

It could have been the movie to return some intelligence to scifi big screen cinema, it dipped a toe but stopped short of diving in. My impression was written around a handful of key punchline images/scenes (moments that would be a full page frame in a comic book) and neglected the journey between them. Still it was a start. Scifi has broadly failed to service its key demographic for a few years now, reduced to dressups for the mainstream.
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I got that, and didn't buy it. He might as well have just looked into the lens and said, we're going to do stuff in the story that makes no sense, but please ignore it and continue on with your suspension of disbelief!

That being said the actors did a great job, the sets were good, I liked the Universe they created, and the production value. I was just waiting for something in the end that made sense, but instead I got "Fooled you! Didn't happen. Time Travel!"

After Bruce Willis said, "hey, we're not going to do that so don't worry about it!"

I was just like, "Ok. Another time travel paradox. Yawn".

I was entertained, but after that line I was expecting a better pay off and just didn't get it.
 
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Eric Boellner said:
I think I agree. As much as I wanted to love this movie, and be a total fanboy about it, (and I do REALLY like the movie, just don't love it), I can't because ultimately I don't really even think of it when I think of the great movies I've watched so far this year. Need to watch it again, but I think, like you, I was hoping for something much more... sophisticated. I don't think I've seen a truly brilliant work of science fiction since Inception.

-EMB
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I didn't care for Inception. First, it was overly complicated for no real reason, the dream, within a dream, within a dream. I knew it wasn't working when one of my friends leaned over and said "But aren't they going to die now?" and I was like, well, this is the third dream, and tthey are going to wake up into the second dream, and then...by then even I was confused.

The other thing was it didn't look like a dream unless your dreams look like a big Hollywood production James Bond movie.

The other big let down was of course Prometheus. I watched it again the other night and actually found it more entertaining the second time around. that was because I didn't pay as much attention hoping there would be a good story Because I already knew it was a crap story, so it just just some cool visuals to look at in a mindless ScyFY channel sort of way. It still had all the same plot holes and things that just made no sense (like why is Charlize Theron even there except to look cool? and why are the only one to get lost the guy that's the map maker? and how does a little alien baby turn into a giant monster with nothing to eat? Where does all that new mass come from, magic?), but I just didn't care.
 
Oh, this reminds me of another one that's not Time Travel, but same sort of "Gotcha!" ending that I don't care for, Repo Men.

It was like, it didn't happen. It was all a dream! Gotcha!

Again, I just find that to be a cop out. You can end any movie at any time like that. You just suddenly go, Haha! Time Travel! or Dream! Didn't really happen! thanks for waiting 2 hours to find that out.
 
Gillvane said:
I didn't care for Inception. First, it was overly complicated for no real reason, the dream, within a dream, within a dream. I knew it wasn't working when one of my friends leaned over and said "But aren't they going to die now?" and I was like, well, this is the third dream, and tthey are going to wake up into the second dream, and then...by then even I was confused.
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Isn't that kind of exactly what the marketing and trailers promised, though? It's not a ride-along sci-fi like Star Trek or Transformers, it's a thinking man's movie. I went to see it in theaters three times, and got more out of it each time. It was the same way with The Prestige. My sister and I watched that movie, and the moment the credits rolled, we both had the same idea: "Let's watch it again."

-EMB

Not saying it's for everyone or that you should have to like it, just saying I think Inception was, as a film, exactly what it promised in the movie trailer.
 
Gillvane said:
I got that, and didn't buy it. He might as well have just looked into the lens and said, we're going to do stuff in the story that makes no sense, but please ignore it and continue on with your suspension of disbelief!

That being said the actors did a great job, the sets were good, I liked the Universe they created, and the production value. I was just waiting for something in the end that made sense, but instead I got "Fooled you! Didn't happen. Time Travel!"

After Bruce Willis said, "hey, we're not going to do that so don't worry about it!"

I was just like, "Ok. Another time travel paradox. Yawn".

I was entertained, but after that line I was expecting a better pay off and just didn't get it.
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That's the essential problem with the time travel movie. You can either have some consistent science behind it (and 9 times out of 10 it will disappear up its own backside) or play fast and loose with the paradox issues, just using it as a mcguffin to do something with the story you couldn't use with any other device. That's why the best time travel movies are comedies. Makes the science less important. In fact Primer is the only hard science fiction time travel movie that I can think of that worked off the top of my head. The other way to make it work is like Terminator where it forms backstory/motivation but otherwise plays little to no part in the core story. I was able to accept that Willis almost literally looked into the camera (might as well have broken the fourth wall). For me it was the whole telekinesis/Rainmaker thing that was a bridge too far. The movie didn't know what to be. Unfortunately it was written by the family guy manatees, a bunch of individually cool ideas thrown together in a meaningless way.
 
Egg Born Son said:
That's the essential problem with the time travel movie. You can either have some consistent science behind it (and 9 times out of 10 it will disappear up its own backside) or play fast and loose with the paradox issues, just using it as a mcguffin to do something with the story you couldn't use with any other device. That's why the best time travel movies are comedies. Makes the science less important. In fact Primer is the only hard science fiction time travel movie that I can think of that worked off the top of my head. The other way to make it work is like Terminator where it forms backstory/motivation but otherwise plays little to no part in the core story. I was able to accept that Willis almost literally looked into the camera (might as well have broken the fourth wall). For me it was the whole telekinesis/Rainmaker thing that was a bridge too far. The movie didn't know what to be. Unfortunately it was written by the family guy manatees, a bunch of individually cool ideas thrown together in a meaningless way.
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When dealing with Time Travel in movies its best you just heed the advice of (the aptly named) Basil Exposition in this clip. They manage to introduce the idea of Time Travel into the movie, show how they are going to deal with it, and tell you how to deal with it in under 50 seconds:


Genius, no?
 
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