Looper (2012) (1 Viewer)

[Jason_V]

Originally Posted by lanalowe
I was disappointed in this film. I was so glad I didn't see it in theaters because it put me to sleep, literally. Looper got my hopes up, good thing Joseph Gordon Levitt is so attractive or I would have totally hated it.

I forgot it was JGL most of the time, so that wouldn't have helped!
If you pick anything apart, it's going to fall to pieces. The only part I'm still thinking about is the ending:
Is it at all possible Cid is Joe? Young Joe told the stripper he liked it when his mother ran her fingers through his hair. And the last thing we see is Sara running her fingers through Cid's hair. Coincidence?
I know this flies in the face of what happens to Young and Old Joe: Young kills himself and Old disappears. But it is fun to speculate.

 

[RobotDolphin]

Good movie... love JGL. Prosthetics on his face were a bit weird, though.

 

[Scott McGillivray]

I was very impressed with this film. I agree with pretty much everything others have said (both the good and bad). I just found myself very entertained. It really was like watching a mash-up of three different movies. I never knew what the primary plot-line was until the end. Was a fun ride and one of those that are fun to think about and talk about afterwards. The young child actor was amazing. He was perfect for the part. Great acting and a unnatural creepiness about him. One of the few movies that I have watched recently that left me satisfied!

 

[Rhett_Y]

I forgot it was JGL most of the time, so that wouldn't have helped! If you pick anything apart, it's going to fall to pieces.  The only part I'm still thinking about is the ending:

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

Is it at all possible Cid is Joe?  Young Joe told the stripper he liked it when his mother ran her fingers through his hair.  And the last thing we see is Sara running her fingers through Cid's hair.  Coincidence? I know this flies in the face of what happens to Young and Old Joe: Young kills himself and Old disappears.  But it is fun to speculate.

Good catch with the hair.... It does make one wonder. If you look at age difference, since he is killing himself at a much older age and the BW character is much older, in theory the younger kid would still be alive at the point when he kills himself..... hmm... another brain teaser!

 

[Jason_V]

I like that, Rhett! I hadn't considered the action only goes forward in time and not backward! Maybe I need to revisit the movie to see what else can corroborate or debunk the idea now...

 

[DaveF]

I rewatched Looper last night.

Looper holds up 10 years later. But it feels this is coming at the end of the 2000’s era mid-budget, high-concept sci-fi that have been largely trampled by MCU and Star Wars behemoths in the 2010s.

Against the rise of de-aging SFX, that was initially terrible but is increasingly believable, seeing old school, actors-acting with JGL embodying young Bruce Willis is a fascinating experiment. Maybe someone will bring this back in some future stunt casting?

Riann Johnson, now a dominant force with Glass Onion, can be seen truly as a mature storyteller in Looper. His ability to craft a tight, surprising but satisfying, twisty movie in 100% here. The quiet moments that are now found as a strong artistic style in Poker Face are interesting dynamics in Looper which swings from almost inaudible quiet dialogue to ear-crushing booms of shotguns, punctuated with moments of silence, a character just turning their head, looking and scene shift.

I’m also watching this, processing my experience in the contrast of Barbie a week later. This is a guy’s movie. Men must protect women and children. With violence. Things go boom.

I wish for more Loopers: I miss the mid-budget sci-fi movie experience. But we also need more Barbies.

 

[JohnRice]

I rewatched Looper last night.

Looper holds up 10 years later. But it feels this is coming at the end of the 2000’s era mid-budget, high-concept sci-fi that have been largely trampled by MCU and Star Wars behemoths in the 2010s.

Against the rise of de-aging SFX, that was initially terrible but is increasingly believable, seeing old school, actors-acting with JGL embodying young Bruce Willis is a fascinating experiment. Maybe someone will bring this back in some future stunt casting?

Riann Johnson, now a dominant force with Glass Onion, can be seen truly as a mature storyteller in Looper. His ability to craft a tight, surprising but satisfying, twisty movie in 100% here. The quiet moments that are now found as a strong artistic style in Poker Face are interesting dynamics in Looper which swings from almost inaudible quiet dialogue to ear-crushing booms of shotguns, punctuated with moments of silence, a character just turning their head, looking and scene shift.

I’m also watching this, processing my experience in the contrast of Barbie a week later. This is a guy’s movie. Men must protect women and children. With violence. Things go boom.

I wish for more Loopers: I miss the mid-budget sci-fi movie experience. But we also need more Barbies.

What you’re asking for seems like something Alex Garland excels at. Or pre-Dune Denis Villeneuve.

 

[Walter Kittel]

What you’re asking for seems like something Alex Garland excels at. Or pre-Dune Denis Villeneuve.

Agreed.

Exhibit A: Dredd (2012) (which has Alex Garland's fingerprint's all over it and fits the criteria that @DaveF describes.)

- Walter.

 

[JohnRice]

Agreed.

Exhibit A: Dredd (2012) (which has Alex Garland's fingerprint's all over it and fits the criteria that @DaveF describes.)

- Walter.

Not to mention Ex-Machina and Annihilation.

 

[DaveF]

Not to mention Ex-Machina and Annihilation.

Loved Ex Machine, but haven't seen Annihilation.

Everything, Everywhere All At Once is also of this sort of movie I love and kinda miss being more common.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

This is a guy’s movie. Men must protect women and children. With violence. Things go boom.

I don’t know that I agree with this.

Emily Blunt’s character Sara is the argument against that.

Old Joe’s plan is horrific, but it’s a version of the old thought experiment about whether it would be morally wrong to kill Hitler as a child before he grew into the Hitler that nearly destroyed the world. He has reasons that, if not justifiable, are at least understandable.

Young Joe’s response initially is to stop Old Joe, but it’s a response of self-interest rather than altruism. Young Joe doesn’t want to be killed by his employer for allowing Old Joe to live. He’s not considering the moral implications of his dilemma.

Sara is imperfect, as all of the characters in the film are, but unlike those characters, Sara is atoning for her mistakes by quietly doing the everyday work that requires without looking for validation or reward in doing so. She is tough is nails and uses that to protect her son, not because of any potential reward or personal gain, not because she expects him to love her again, but because it is the right thing to do.

And that’s what changes Young Joe, and ultimately drives the film’s resolution. Through Sara, Young Joe learns that there are things more important than one’s own life. He realizes at the last moment that using violence against Old Joe wouldn’t solve the problem. Young Joe realizes that whatever his intentions, his life has not been a good one and will not turn out any better, and that his choices perpetrate a never-ending cycle of violence that will loop around forever. Young Joe sacrifices himself to break that cycle, allowing Cid to be raised by his mother rather than letting Cid watch his mother be murdered in front of him. And in doing so, Young Joe not only affirms the importance of free will (stopping a loop where the future keeps trying to engineer what it wants the past to be), but more importantly, ensures that Cid is raised by Sara. It’s an acceptance on Young Joe’s part that violence doesn’t stop violence, that men with guns can’t undo the damage caused by being raised without love, that love is the answer, that feminine compassion is more powerful than masculine aggression.

Ultimately I think it’s a movie that’s enormously pro-woman and anti-violence. I think it effectively uses an environment of male aggression and hostility to demonstrate the limits of those approaches, and the loop only closes once Young Joe decides it’s not for him to control the situation, that the answer is let Sara be Cid’s mom.

 

[JoeStemme]

The Time Travel element has a bit of a convoluted set-up, and one can certainly question the hows, whys and whens of how it's used. Bruce Willis is fine - although his inclusion seems to necessitate a big action shoot-out that seems more a 'contractual obligation' than a plot necessity. Still, it's great to look back at Willis in his late prime, still vigorous and exuding star power. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is good, but the makeup job involving his 'looping' looks more like a genetic mutation than the wages of 'time' that it's supposed to be. Emily Blunt is a bonus.

The holes in the plot (and the idiocy of the basic premise) really glare upon reflection. I don't care how "really illegal" time travel is - why send back people back? Toss in random telekinesis, absurd makeup on Gordon-Levitt (they couldn't find ANYone that looked more like Willis?) and obvious borrowings from the Terminator series and you have a pretty dumb violent flick. An enjoyable dumb violent flick, but pretty silly nonetheless.

Much of what one thinks of the movie will depend on the final act twists and turns. Suffice it to say what begins as a TERMINATOR riff, somehow morphs into a combination of DePalma's duo of THE FURY and CARRIE.

Spoiler: SPOILER

the time travel premise doesn't really even make internal sense - why does the kid still have a gunshot wound at the end if that timeline never actually happened? When Writer-Director Rian Johnson was pressed on this point, he was evasive "The approach that we take with it is a linear approach. That was an early decision that I made. Instead of stepping back to a mathematical, graph-like timeline of everything that’s happening, we’re going to experience this the way that the characters experience it." Ok. But, that causes even more issues. Why does Willis just disappear if he existed all along?

 

[JohnRice]

These recent replies prompted me to watch Looper today. This is my third viewing. Once when it came, out and a second a couple years ago. First, I think the previous comment basically doesn't understand the movie. For instance, the moment in time mentioned in the spoiler still happened as the story ultimately plays out. What does not happen is the "Then I saw it..." contingency. Everything before that still happened. At least... in a way. The difficult thing to work with is the inherent paradox of the story. Yeah, an argument can be made where the thing mentioned no longer happens, but the movie also establishes some rules where it does. This movie and Predestination both involve massive paradoxes, which opens the door for finding a lot of flaws, if someone chooses to. I think this is actually a lot easier to grasp than Predestination though. That movie makes my head hurt. In the end, I've actually always thought this one played rather well by it's own rules, and it works for me.

Old Joe’s plan is horrific, but it’s a version of the old thought experiment about whether it would be morally wrong to kill Hitler as a child before he grew into the Hitler that nearly destroyed the world. He has reasons that, if not justifiable, are at least understandable.

That concept is not nearly as simple as what is presented here, though.

Because...

Spoiler

we learn that old Joe's plot to kill Sid is actually what ultimately turns him evil. Since young Joe eliminates that trauma, the movie seems to be telling us that he does not turn evil. Of course, that also causes a paradox, or maybe it actually eliminates it. The main paradox was in Old Joe coming back in time to kill Sid, killing Sarah instead, which causes Sid to become evil. Since the movie ends with Old Joe no longer doing that, is it possible that puts the timeline back (mostly) to what it was "supposed" to be? I say "mostly" because Old Joe still comes back in time, but he no longer does what we ultimately see will send future history into chaos.

This all is why I actually find Looper to be a rather interesting and effective piece of speculative SciFi. Any story that intentionally takes on time travel paradoxes is biting off a lot.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

This all is why I actually find Looper to be a rather interesting and effective piece of speculative SciFi.

It’s one of my all-time favorites, both for the movie itself, and for the memories I have of watching it with someone who’s no longer here.

 

[JoeStemme]

. For instance, the moment in time mentioned in the spoiler still happened as the story ultimately plays out. What does not happen is the "Then I saw it..." contingency. Everything before that still happened. At least... in a way. The difficult thing to work with is the inherent paradox of the story. Yeah, an argument can be made where the thing mentioned no longer happens, but the movie also establishes some rules where it does. This movie and Predestination both involve massive paradoxes, which opens the door for finding a lot of flaws, if someone chooses to. I think this is actually a lot easier to grasp than Predestination though. That movie makes my head hurt. In the end, I've actually always thought this one played rather well by it's own rules, and it works for me.

I've seen it multiple times, and I'm not the only one with those observations. Sure, you can absolve several paradoxes if you wish, but, then the movie isn't playing fair. And, having seen other of Rian's works, I think he prefers immediated sensation to deep examination

 

[JohnRice]

I've seen it multiple times, and I'm not the only one with those observations. Sure, you can absolve several paradoxes if you wish, but, then the movie isn't playing fair. And, having seen other of Rian's works, I think he prefers immediated sensation to deep examination

We're all free to reject a premise, or contemplate it a little deeper. I don't believe I ever said "This is what happened." I believe I said a lot of "it could be this, or maybe it's that, and possibly it's this other thing." I even specifically said "an argument can be made" for exactly what you're declaring to be the undeniable truth. Again, this movie deals with a paradox, so it's up to the viewer to either ride along with that, or not, because that itself is inherently "absurd", as you described.

One possibility I contemplated this time was...

Spoiler

from the perspective of predetermination. Specifically, is everything that ever happens predetermined, and if something (a temporal paradox in this case) disrupts that, will it send future history into chaos?

I'm not intending to declare anything as the absolute truth. It's a lot more enjoyable to contemplate these possibilities. To each their own, though.

 

[DaveF]

Looper has plot contrivances. The "Back to the Future" time travel contrivance is the least of them for me. You accept them and enjoy the movie or you don't. I was more puzzled by how the Future or the Past knew that a Loop wasn't closed (let alone within 15 minutes).

...

Ultimately I think it’s a movie that’s enormously pro-woman and anti-violence. I think it effectively uses an environment of male aggression and hostility to demonstrate the limits of those approaches, and the loop only closes once Young Joe decides it’s not for him to control the situation, that the answer is let Sara be Cid’s mom.

Not saying it's anti-woman. Woman also love scifi and action, etc, etc. My wife saw it with me and enjoyed it. But I'm also saying this is movie stars two leading men, is a story about violent men who solve their problem with violence. This is very much a movie targeting that key demographic of men 18-45 years old, or whatever it is.

After the past week's conversations and media consumption on/about Barbie, I'm again reminded of the implicit biases in so much of movie-making. Contrast to Everything, Everywhere, All at Once... which is nominally a sci-fi movie with a related theme, but the leads are women and problems are solved through affection and dialog.

I think Looper is pretty great. I'm not tearing it down by stating plainly what it is.

 

[JoeStemme]

We're all free to reject a premise, or contemplate it a little deeper. I don't believe I ever said "This is what happened." I believe I said a lot of "it could be this, or maybe it's that, and possibly it's this other thing." I even specifically said "an argument can be made" for exactly what you're declaring to be the undeniable truth. ..
I'm not intending to declare anything as the absolute truth. It's a lot more enjoyable to contemplate these possibilities. To each their own, though.

That's all fine. I just didn't appreciate the line that I "basically doesn't understand the movie".

Let's just agree to disagree and move on.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

But I'm also saying this is movie stars two leading men, is a story about violent men who solve their problem with violence. This is very much a movie targeting that key demographic of men 18-45 years old, or whatever it is.

I don’t mean to be argumentative and I appreciate your insight into the film . I guess what I’m trying to say is that I see the film as being a story about “men who *try* to solve a problem with violence and *fail* to solve it with violence” and what I find interesting about the storytelling is that the story reaches an ending when the male protagonist concludes that violence doesn’t solve the problem, and instead takes action to ensure that a young boy instead has the chance to be raised by his mother with love.

I don’t think what either of us is saying is necessarily incompatible with each other, I just think that’s one of the more interesting things about the film, that the male protagonist is stuck in a loop of his own making and it doesn’t stop until he gets out of the way. I like how the movie subverts the expectation that a man with a gun will bring an end to violence - though I suppose in a way that does happen, but it’s when he finally turns the gun on himself, not on others.

I don’t think there are many action movies where we see that kind of denouement, that use the expression of violence to demonstrate the futility of violence. It’s sort of a predecessor in that sense to Johnson’s work in “The Last Jedi” where Johnson gives one of the characters a line about how “we’re not going to win by destroying what we hate, we’ll win by saving what we love.”