Looper

Zoombie said:

Oh, also, it has the single most CREEPY, DISTURBING SCENES EVER, and it manages to do so without a single drop of blood.

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Yeah, that one scene was quite genuinely the single most disturbing use of time travel I've ever seen.

Very much enjoyed the film.

This is sci-fi, right? Good sci-fi?

I like Levitt. And he's hot.

I think I'll be checking this out soon.


btw, his name is Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Okay, someone either rep me the disturbing scene or post it in white so I can scroll over. I have a very low tolerance for certain kinds of disturbing and I was looking forward to this movie. I want to see if it's going to be something that's beyond my reach.

Hi all!

At first, I thought that the time travel was mostly consistent, but then I thought about it and it didn't match up at all. Then I thought about it again, and it did. Now I'm back at 'no'. Looking at it from a multiverse angle allows for the film to even take place at all, but individual scenes couldn't happen if it wasn't one timeline. I think. Young Joe can't even become Old Joe and get married if there's one timeline -- he either escaped or he didn't. But whatever.

(I've also seen a few people say 'But DOCTOR WHO!'. "Wibbly wobbly timey wimey" is how they explain it in the show, so it's clear how important how important they view the science side of sci-fi. It matches up with the rest of the show. Looper seems to want its time travel to make sense.)

Everyone is talking about plot twists, but I saw only one -- Seth seemed to be introduced as a fairly major character, but... er... wasn't. Shame, he was my favourite. Am I missing something?

For Cyia:

I think this is the disturbing scene they're talking about:

One of the Loopers lets his target escape, so to track him down the old version of him, they cut off the young version's nose, then his legs and arms while still keeping him alive. As they are both in the same time zone, the older version's nose disappears, then the rest of his limbs.

Overall, despite what I've said, I enjoyed it and would recommend it. It's just probably not what you were expecting and I can probably think of a few things that would improve it (make more of Young Joe's decision at the end, SHOW Old Joe's final fight with Jeff Daniels, put the violence/action on a curve upwards rather than at a constant.). Even so, recommended.

Thanks for the info guys. Looper stays firmly on my "to watch" list.

Enjoyed it. (And, with 12 Monkeys, that's two good time travel movies for Bruce Willis.)

Went to the theatre feeling a little sick, because the trailer made me think there might be too many similarities to an idea I want to develop. But, I think there's enough distance between the two. (For one thing, mine is a romantic comedy.)

Looper uses the "Back to the Future" theory of time travel, which, normally, I hate because it makes no sense. But they stated it clearly, used it consistently, and brought out some really strong themes.

The world in both 2044 and 2074 looks believably depressing (for anyone who isn't rich).

There were some logical holes, of course. (Like, what did they do with the body of the person we saw shot in 2074? We're told the reason for using time travel is that it's impossible to dispose of a body in 2074. For that matter, why not just shoot the person in 2074, and send the dead body back to 2044 for disposal?) But it's still a good story.

I would have thought that the introduction of a completely different sf idea (TK) would have been a stupid complication, but it actually worked.

Just saw it. Definitely worth a watch. I could probably pick holes in the time travel theory, but (a) time travel movies are generally good thought experiments proving the impossibility of time travel and (b) there's a whole scene where Bruce Willis tells us not to pick holes in it because it's so murky. It gets a solid 7/10 from me on my revolutionary 0-10 scale. Would Watch Again.

I loved it up to the moment whenBruce Willis got into his whole Die Hard act and mowed down an entire building full of weapon-toting villains. That was a facepalm moment for me.

Zoombie said:

They're good time travel movies WITH Bruce Willis. In both, his characters have a terrible time.

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Boy, that's the truth. Time travel lends itself to tragedy, I think. Maybe because it makes one conscious of the past, and therefore of loss.

Come to think of it, Bruce Willis also did a Disney movie called The Kid, in which a 40-something man magically finds himself accompanied by the eight-year-old version of himself.

Loved it. Not gonna nag myself out of a good time by crying over time travel issues.

Very intense film. Still trying to recover from it. They went to places I never thought imaginable.

Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are BADASS. This movie is a reminder that Bruce Willis picks some of the most interesting, controversial, and hardcore roles.

Not for the faint of heart when it comes to children or how society treats undesirables. I loved the subtle Telekenetic material and how that developed slowly further in.

No complaints at all. I'll leave the nitpicking over time travel to people who actually want to waste time doing so instead of letting themselves get pulled into great story and characterization.

I really enjoyed it, but there are a few pretty big plot holes. SPOILERS














































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1. If it's impossible to dispose of a body in the future, then why would the people after Willis even carry guns? Wouldn't they simply carry stunners? But no, we need them to carry guns so Willis's wife can get shot...

2. More problematic still--why can't they just kill people in the past and then send the bodies back to the present? Or better yet, to the far, far past. Why have loopers at all?

3. Most problematic of all--if Gordon Levitt kills himself, then Bruce Willis's character never existed. If Bruce Willis's character never existed, then he could not do any of the things that he did in the movie. In essence, everything from the point at which Bruce Wills's character shows up couldn't have happened.





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Just got around to seeing this. Really liked it. There are some gaps, but I tend to expect that in this sort of movie. It's either going to require a ton of exposition to explain everything, an exorbitant run time that allows an explanation of the back story, or some plot gaps that the audience has to fill in independently. Given those options, I don't mind having some questions left over. In fact, I would really be interested in seeing the Looper universe expanded - a comic book, a television series, some novels, what have you.

Also, the kid Cid has to be the cutest future mass-murdering crime lord ever.

Glad to see that this movie - an R-rated, sci-fi thriller sprinkled with drama that isn't a sequel, remake or adaptation - is doing pretty well at the box office. Goes against the grain of what is typically seen as profitable in Hollywood.

Mr. Anonymous said:

I really enjoyed it, but there are a few pretty big plot holes.

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(3) is a problem with many time travel plots - they generate paradoxes, or cancel each other out, etc. The Terminator and Back to the Future are two of the most successful and well-loved time travel movies, but they don't really hold up to close scrutiny either.

I think it's a great movie although it was much darker and more violent than what I usually watch. The disturbing scene was indeed extremely disturbing.

The one thing that really stuck with me seems petty: the bed linen in the farmhouse. My daughter bought that exact comforter cover and pillow case set from Ikea to take to college last year. It's a very popular floral print that's been out for a while. I'm not particularly interested in fashion or textiles, but it jumped out at me. Why choose a popular design from a chain store that's everywhere?

Loved the end.

Priene said:

I loved it up to the moment whenBruce Willis got into his whole Die Hard act and mowed down an entire building full of weapon-toting villains. That was a facepalm moment for me.

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That was the only segment of the film that didn't work for me. I can ignore all the time-travel plot holes, I can ride along with the "TK" stuff rather easily, but that part just seemed rushed and ridiculous.

SPOILER-VILLE - Population: You

Just... why is he suddenly Rambo? I wouldn't even call it his "Die Hard act" because at least John McClane gets physically brutalized in every Die Hard movie and has to rely on a ton of luck and improvisation. In this he just spontaneously turned into an invincible gun-god like he was in The Matrix. They could have presented that sequence much better. It wasn't enough to ruin the film for me, but it stood out in a bad way.

Now Leaving SPOILER-VILLE

Jcomp said:

That was the only segment of the film that didn't work for me.

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Do we not assume that in the decades between JG-L and Bruce he has become meaner, tougher, a more badass killer? There's even a kind of training montage (JG-L/Bruce whacking a lot of guys in various gang hits.)

Sorry, this is Bruce Willis and people are complaining about him being too "Die Hard?" He was badass from the moment he popped into the earlier time. And he was badass throughout. I would have been disappointed if he wasn't kicking ass here.

I don't see the problem. He was a looper for a long time, got some experience.

So, yeah.

He's Bruce Willis. That's my answer and I'm sticking to it.

Torgo said:

Do we not assume that in the decades between JG-L and Bruce he has become meaner, tougher, a more badass killer? There's even a kind of training montage (JG-L/Bruce whacking a lot of guys in various gang hits.)

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SPOILER ZONE... NOW WITH NO HIGHLIGHTS!

Meh. That one part just didn't work for me. Yeah he got more experience killing people, but he still had an entire crew with him during his relapse into gangster-ism. There wasn't anything in the Singapore montage to suggest that he could mow down an entire building full of armed, trained gangsters like it was a video game set on Easy. The rest of the movie the action is all pretty under control and reasonable. He takes a few shots to take down the man on the balcony. He gets captured by the movie's designated flunkie. He's established as a fallible guy on a mission who's got some skills and wherewithall, but isn't anything near a one man army. Then suddenly he's Chow Yun Fat in a John Woo flick, then a minute later he can't hit center mass on his primary target with allegedly the most accurate handgun in this fictional universe in the middle of a field. And don't get me started on Jeff Daniels off-screen death while surrounded by armed henchmen and locked down in his office, which reeked of "even we don't know how to make this work, so we'll just skip to the aftermath."

Again, I really, really liked the movie. I'm already planning to see it again. I just didn't think the brief detour into Hong Kong action movie territory was a good fit for this particular film.

Saw this yesterday. Enjoyed it very much, even if it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Personally, I think the Time Travel concept is inheritably flawed, what with the paradoxes and such. It's basically the Greek tragedy of the self-fulfilling prophecy with a SF twist.

One thing that I don't get, and this was probably the writers being lazy, but
I love that they brought back the blunderbuss. Plus, it's such a fun name to say.

Defcon, re: your spoiler...

I think he did struggle with it. Think of older Joe trying hard to concentrate and hold to his fading thoughts/memories under the bridge, where for a moment he tried to remember the woman he cared about and instead saw her face...

Cool movie! Really original and surprising, and Joseph Gordon Levitt was amazing as a young Bruce Willis. He really did a great job of mastering his facial expressions-I was impressed.

Am I the only person on here who didn't like it?
Too many unanswered questions, too predictable, and absolutely corny.
Both of us walked out of the theatre and went "really!!"
I had heard great things about it and was really looking forward to it, but ended up hating it.
Yes, why can only some people be killed in the future, others have to be sent back to be disposed of, why not kill them first, if Joe killed himself then everything would not have happened, many characters were not fully explained, why could Joe kill people through out the 23 years before he met his wife and those bodies were not a problem. How was that kid 10, really he seemed like a genius 4 year old (great actor though). And so many other questions that didn't make sense. It was hokey. It did feel like the Back to the Future style, but it wasn't.
Anyway, glad you all enjoyed it.