Anticipate LOOPER starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt wearing Bruce Willis facial prosthetics, a Rian "Brick" Johnson joint

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/sony_pictures/looper/

Two day countdown to the teaser trailer apparently. JGL's future self as played by Bruce Willis is sent back in time to get murdered by JGL. Or something.

the brothers bloom was kind of terrible

"Brick" is amazing, J G-L is amazing in it, time travel paradox thrillers are amazing, so this trailer better be good.

I've read the Looper script, it is fucking awesome imo

i'm gonna watch the shit out of this movie

the brothers bloom was kind of terrible

Yes, it was. Guardedly excited for this, though.

^^same. i'm a sucker for ill-consequences time-travel films, so i'm down

Thought this would be about anticipating new album from Belle & Sebastian spinoff

anticipating

I think this is about Bruce Willis coming back in time to stop his past self, Stuart Murdoch, from recording The Return of Bruno.

think the director still has a lot of unrealized potential but i hope he doesn't put Gordon-Levitt in every other movie he does, kinda can't stand that guy

Looper is Stuart David not Stuart Murdoch but haha anyway

Looper, oh you're drivin' me out of my mind

don't like this teasers for a trailer crap that is suddenly in vogue

nothing sudden about it, been standard for decades

I only really noticed it with Prometheus and (maybe?) the Avengers. Guess i didn't have access to wherever they showed those teasers for decades.

to clarify, I'm talking about the "in 2 days, see the Trailer!" and then the "In 1 day, see the trailer!" nonsense.

nothing sudden about it, been standard for decades

Except that no.

Yeah, these are trailers for a teaser, which is odd - the only thing it really does is show us the director's dorky enthusiasm, and that JGL is good at saying nice things about the film.

The cast though - Paul Dano, Emily Blunt, Piper Perabo, Jeff Daniels - I kind of wish someone would make a high-school-based noir with that cast.

didnt like brick, dont like teaser-of-a-teaser trend, jgl's makeup is making me laugh & makes him look like young mickey rourke (btw i just googled 'young bruce willis' and one of the first results was a pic of young mickey rourke, and also this:

http://i.imgur.com/QKFtT.jpg)

but the guy who made Primer consulted on this and it does sound pretty cool

but the guy who made Primer consulted on this and it does sound pretty cool

Now I am very interested in seeing this.

PS best pic of Bruce Willis I have ever seen

Brick was really weird and felt all wrong at first but it sucked me in

sci-fi Brick plus Primer with Bruce Willis sounds kinda great

Brick was really weird and felt all wrong at first but it sucked me in

yeah, this. decent story, interesting characters, good performances & strong visuals overcame the initially off-putting and patently ridiculous dialogue. the problem with the brothers bloom what that the balance shifted and the overwriting just crushed the life out of everything else onscreen. i hope this one is a lot less self-consciously literary.

hated Brick and got in a huge argument about it here

this looks interesting tho

stoked. aside from the misplaced apostrophe at 0:24.

don't think this is gonna be a primer level headfuck but it looks like it could be a lot more fun than inception, even if there's still a lot of running round with guns in it.

Righteous. I'm all-in on this.

That apostrophe has got to be intentional. Rian Johnson seems to be one of the most super detail-oriented filmmakers around.

yeah, this. decent story, interesting characters, good performances & strong visuals overcame the initially off-putting and patently ridiculous dialogue.

i had the opposite experience, where i was amused by the quirks at first but was indifferent by the end. However, it was watched late enough at night that I can't be sure I wasn't fading for other reasons.

I'm always down for a good Bruce Willis sci-fi yarn (even saw Surrogates) but the JGL make-up is pretty wtf.

The Brothers Bloom may well be a delightful bit of whimsical caper starring Adrien Brody but I don't plan on ever finding out.

Guys what if it says "Looper's Guns" because there's only one Looper. In a loop. I cracked the code!

"I just don't believe that Joseph Gordon-Levitt's eyebrows could be Bruce Willis' eyebrows. Let's lacquer them."

What happened to the Primer guy (answer: I guess he's making another movie right now)? I loved that movie.

I think when your first and only feature was a beloved, 100% independent sci-fi classic that cost less to make than a year of college but took years of struggle, you may be a little reluctant to take another bite at the apple anytime soon.

I liked "Brick" a lot, but hated the Wes Anderson remakes "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" whimsy of "Bloom."

this will probably have better sound mixing than brick, so there's that at least

lol i noticed the apostrophe thing too

also why would there even be a sign that said that in the first place, just put the guns there, everyone will know

Idiot, you put your gun in the apple barrel and grandma shot her face off!

I would guess it's too underscore the quotidian nature of their professions. This is what we do. Guns go here. Kill people here. Go home.

use apostrophes wrong

To, not too. The gun bucket. And the apostrophes, too, maybe. I'm sure it's a bad grammar in-joke.

looks cool, but i have strong reservations off the bat. kind of hate sci-fi that takes an idea and uses it for a specific purpose without really considering what the larger effect on society would be. if time travel were so easily available that criminal organizations used used it simply to dispose of bodies, you'd have to assume that it would be used for all sorts of other things, too, and that there would be massive social repercussions.

Eh, we really know nothing about the larger context/effect in this case. Though I hope it is more fleshed out than the sci-fi in "Inception."

lol contenderizer really

"i'm worried this movie isn't going to be boring enough."

hey, i like what i like

failing to really think through the premises kills sci-fi for me

how do you know they didn't, i mean, there's even a box for looper's guns

lol, i know, just a hunch

Did you know that the end of the world date in the Terminator films shifts? Those movies all suck.

you'd have to assume that it would be used for all sorts of other things, too

iirc when time-travel is outlawed, only the outlaws will time-travel

seems likely to me that there is only one looper

but he says there's more than one in the trailer

maybe they're all him

yeah but ok, the teaser v/o states that there are multiple assassins called loopers. and i don't get the terminology, b/c apparently the looper doesn't travel back in time, his victims do? so what is being looped? who is looping what? uhhhh xp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNBywh_XQJQ&feature=fvwrel

Who's Loopin' Who?

xp hahaha goddamnit

does mort drucker still illustrate for MAD magazine because i can already imagine the movie parody of this in his style

nb I didn't watch the trailer

maybe loopers are just called "looper" so it would be "looper's guns" if there was just one

and i think if this movie sucks all newspapers should agree to use the one-word headline "pooper"

Maybe it's supposed to be LOOPNER'S GUNS

http://snl.jt.org/caps/characters/GiRa-Lisa%20Loopner.jpg

actually I agree with s1ocki; the plural of "looper" is "looper"

"Loopers Gun's"

Well, there's got to be a reason why people from the future are sent back to the past to be killed.

Hmmm ...

actually not clear yet why they dont just kill them then and there or send them back in time to the jurassic park

Well, there's got to be a reason why people from the future are sent back to the past to be killed.

right now that reason is "so there can be a movie"

Maybe he's called a looper because he's continually being sent back to future from the past to the future and back again, over and over again, so that he essentially just ... exists.

"looper" is a generic term. whoever the looper happens to be, these are his guns.

the thing I keep wondering is "how did they set this business up in the first place"

UNLESS... the squad of killers is made up of kids sent back from the future who grew up in the past and whose grandkids get sent back to be raised as new assassins

I like that idea. xp

;_; the cruelest xp

"looper" is a generic term. whoever the looper happens to be, these are his guns.

― BEMORE SUPER FABBY (contenderizer), Friday, April 13, 2012 12:38 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's what i was saying!

i like the idea that all the loopers are the same guy. like you send JGL back in time to be loopa1. then, once he's gone, you go back in time a few seconds and send the slightly younger JGL back to be loopa2. then you do it again to make loopa3, and so on. like shaving off slices of leavitt-ham.

when you've got as many loopers as you need, you go back in time another second or two (nanosecond, whatever), so that JGL again exists in the present day (i.e., the future) and can grow up to be bruce willis.

DAMMIT.

This has been like my idea for a movie since 4th grade.

jgl's makeup is not quite as distracting in the trailer as his bruce willis vocal imitation imho

Now I have to go back in time and prevent this movie from being made.

But I can't, because it's already been made.

"You can't change the past. But you can change… the future."

LOOPERS 
The new film by PLEASANT PLAINS

Oompa Loopa

you think this film will have a looper reel after the credits???

http://www.gearwire.com/media/boss-rc-3-rc-30-storypic.jpg

I'm in!

you think this film will have a looper reel after the credits???

― swaghand (dayo), Sunday, April 15, 2012 7:02 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I imagine it will be like watching a movie on TBS, where the end credits get squeezed to allow room for the opening credits of the same movie to roll.

Looper Fiasco
Pooper Looper
Loop Dreams
Super Duper Looper
Loop Doggy Dud
Duper Looper

(In this part of the thread we - OK, I - predict snide/stupid headlines and photo captions that will match various reviews in several months)

Well, there's got to be a reason why people from the future are sent back to the past to be killed.

Pretty effective body disposal, I'd have thought.

I think the thing with Looper's Guns Here is that there's contextually only one - like "manager's office", if you're seeing that, then it's not the only manager on the face of the planet, but it's clear which one you're talking about. Which I now see is what S1ocki was saying.

I guess they're called loopers because they close off the loop of someone's life? Like, just at the point where it becomes a loop, where they arrive in the same time twice.

time travel movies will never add up (there's a future where people are sent back in time to be killed but authorities don't know enough to think to check old bones when people go missing?), what matters is that you're too entertained to notice/care while they're on. Not sure watching an actor do a Bruce Willis imitation under heavy make-up is the right kind of distraction, but we'll see.

this is true, but i must respond by saying that there's a scene in the trailer itself of JGL burning up one of the corpses to remove the traces

i have enough faith in JGL to pull off this character, what i'm worried about is if the script is too loose and predictable

seems like a waste of time travel to burn bones in the past instead of in your own time

yeah I watched the trailer and immediately though "what if his older self appears" and boom it happened halfway through

also what is up with the jacket made of gold bars

primer is the rare time-travel movie that really does "add up" (ha), and its author co-wrote looper, so there's every reason to be optimistic, imo.

timecrimes is another recent time travel flick that avoids the usual plot holes and contradictions.

Shane Carruth had nothing to do with the script

guh, you're right. dunno where i got the idea that carruth was involved in the looper script. my bad. looks like he's only doing some effects work. story and script are johnson's alone, which isn't exactly reassuring.

:(

I believe he read the script and made suggestions or something

he 'consulted' on it

he had an idea about time travel once

Jacket made of gold bars = how you pay the looper! I assume that the gold-version-of-water-marking is off on them, but I'm sure that someone will happily resmelt them for a percentage.

seems like a waste of time travel to burn bones in the past instead of in your own time

― da croupier, Sunday, April 15, 2012 4:37 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is what im sayin

also can i just say that everyone needs to see timecrimes, it is really the dopest

Jacket made of gold bars = how you pay the looper! I assume that the gold-version-of-water-marking is off on them, but I'm sure that someone will happily resmelt them for a percentage.

― Andrew Farrell, Sunday, April 15, 2012 4:53 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

if this is true they should strap the gold bars to the legs, not give the guy a de facto bulletproof vest!

also... carbon 14 dating. dirty money!

But even if carbon-14 dating applied to metals (which I didn't think it did) - the gold is as old as it was when it went through? So if the bars had been created 10 weeks before, they're still 10 weeks old?

seems like a waste of time travel to burn bones in the past instead of in your own time

― da croupier, Sunday, April 15, 2012 4:37 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is what im sayin

― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Sunday, April 15, 2012 1:53 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, this. that's what i was saying upthread. if time travel is inexpensive and accessible enough to use on something like this, then people would be doing all kinds of other shit with it, too. (not saying they aren't. have to wait and see, i guess.)

I am guessing the bulletproof vest is of 0 actual use without three other factors: the victim's familiarity with the procedure, the looper's hesitation, and the lack of a bag over their head / hands tied.

I'm gonna go ahead and surmise that the reasoning behind the looping process is elucidated better in the film itself.

Also J0hn Darni3lle said he liked the script on twitter a few days ago.

Yeah I was going to say there are a lot of questions about this, the sort that I'd like to watch a film about, or a film from Rian Johnson and JGL, that'd do too.

another thumbs up on CRONOCRIMINES, a comparatively "small-scale" time travel movie but still dope

http://i.imgur.com/fRBON.jpg

I'll have to check out these TT movies that "get it right", but so far, the only one that really made any sense was another Bruce Willis movie, 12 Monkeys.

yeah Timecrimes is awesome, glad the proposed remake never got off thr ground.

timecrimes was pretty stupid

yeah, that's what gbx dos would say.

the time travel in 12 Monkeys mostly makes sense because the time travel there was based on La Jetée, which you can watch on Netflix Instant! Or you could a while ago. It might be Criterion, and thus now on Hulu Plus.

timecrimes is on Netflix instant right now btw

watch it

Couldn't almost anyone stand in one spot waiting for a time portal to open and then blasting whoever comes through? Doesn't seem like a job that pays enough to give you champagne wishes and caviar dreams.

i figure that elimination and cleanup in service of the very wealthy will typically fairly pay well, if only to keep the triggermen happily mum

timecrimes was pretty stupid

bosh

time crimes was fun and stylishly shot, don't get me wrong, but the plot was telegraphed pretty early on and there's a whopping big whole in it, to boot. which was doubly embarrassing since the script is wincingly expository

you're wincingly expository

the part when young dude explained, laboriously, that time travel was a thing that had just happened was like listening to someone explain the internet to my dad

i dont remember that part at all

i feel like you are picking on one thing that bugged you in the movie that no one else even noticed

everyone I watched it with thought the same thing but w/e. it was fun, just not v clever

http://www.zootpatrol.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/girls3.jpg

"everyone I watched it with"

the part when young dude explained, laboriously, that time travel was a thing that had just happened was like listening to someone explain the internet to my dad

― catbus otm (gbx), Monday, April 16, 2012 10:24 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i feel like you are picking on one thing that bugged you in the movie that no one else even noticed

― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Monday, April 16, 2012 10:26 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no, gbx otm about this (and this alone). timecrimes seems to assume at the outset that time travel will a completely unfamiliar idea that we and the central character both need to be very carefully walked through the concept with lots of examples and hand-holding. was initially frustrating, but once the plot kicked in, it ceased to be a problem. didn't interfere at all with my overall enjoyment. also, i didn't notice any significant plot holes (paradox yes bigtime, plot holes no). but maybe we should start a separate thread for it if you want to discuss this further...

threadcrimes

ha

timecrimes seems to assume at the outset that time travel will a completely unfamiliar idea that we and the central character both need to be very carefully walked through the concept with lots of examples and hand-holding.

wtf was i trying to say here? suggest replace w:

"timecrimes seems to assume that time travel is a completely novel idea, one that the audience and protagonist both need to be carefully walked through."

primer was going because it followed the effects of time travel to their logical conclusion: if you get it right, nothing will make any goddamn sense at all.

going = good

exactly

gbx, are you just talking about the 30 seconds where the dude drew on the back of a calendar?

Man, I love Netflix.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4l3n6ZaFX1qz6hjyo1_500.jpg

The number one star ... of the WORLD!

So this is almost here.

I am looking forward to this, but otoh JGL's weird Bruce Willis face makes me apprehensive. I just don't want to be distracted by it.

there's a skrillex joke in the trailer

Seeing this tomorrow. Also worried about weird face.

I think it's weirder that JGL looks absolutely nothing like a young Bruce Willis even with a prosthetic face

like, for all the impact they've had they could have made JGL up to look like Jimmy Walker

honestly it never bothered me at all. you guys are just obsessed with JGL's face!

it's just, if you're going to make a big deal about how you made the younger actor look like the older actor, it helps if you've actually made the younger actor look like the older actor rather than a living Cabbage Patch doll

Or a Garbage Pail Kid.

there's a skrillex joke in the trailer

This decade's version of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UNQzBynaQY

haha i was just watching that movie a few days ago and i was like 'that would never play today' during that part

Most of the movie prob wouldn't play today.

yeah it's pretty of its time.

I checked, that line is in the final draft for The Expendables 3.

ppl here are pretty blah about it

Hmm, really? Any more specifics?

are you in the future?

oh TIFF right duh

it's just, if you're going to make a big deal about how you made the younger actor look like the older actor, it helps if you've actually made the younger actor look like the older actor rather than a living Cabbage Patch doll

Every time I see the trailer it's like "...how could an entire film production agree that this ridiculous plastic forehead makes it EASIER to suspend disbelief?"

yeah i really don't get this. if you say that BW is the old JGL, audiences will go with it

I liked it quite a bit, tho the second half takes some turns that felt a little, shall we say, limited.

yeah, i did not expect it go the way it did at all. It's still fun but gets progressively cheesier once the main conflict is set up. The prosthetics aren't terrible (well not all the time) but they are still really distracting. Wanted more Jeff Daniels

Big Bird angrily demands to know why things have to be the way they are, and no one has a ready answer. Finally, Gordon figures out what to say: "Because. Just because." This is perhaps the only answer that could make sense to Big Bird, at least for now, and he sadly accepts it. He then—as he constantly has throughout the years—humorously, but glumly mispronounces Mr. Hooper's name once again, even in death ("I'm gonna miss you, Mr. Looper"). Maria, laughing but with tears in her eyes, says, "That's Hooper, Big Bird. Hooper." And the adults and Big Bird embrace.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51rJhzQVrLL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Some ppl whose taste I respect are enthused over this. Guess I will give Rian Johnson one more shot.

this seems like maybe the stupidest fucking premise ever

It's really dope.

xp I was thinking that the other day, some some stoned fratboys coming up w/ plotlines that are like so profound, dude

Paul Dano's storyline is the most stupid part

It's maybe not quite quite on the order of Children of Men, but excels in similar ways.

xp all 3 minutes of it?

stupid premises are usu no obstacle in well-executed genre movies.

srsly anticipating much humorless fanboy hand-wringing over the movie's assertively ridiculous plot holes.

it was a pretty stupid 3 minutes. The kid is the real problem though

Waiting for the self-incest parody porn version Pooler.

don't they p much have Willis say "i'm not going to explain this"? I approve such anti-Inception.

The kid is the real problem though

See, that's when I fell for the movie wholesale. Hits one of my admitted sweet spots (i.e. unofficial tributes to great Brian De Palma setpieces).

oh, curbing my enthusiasm, huh?

yeah i don't think the premise will have any impact on the quality of the movie but when i saw the trailer i did think "this is an unnecessarily elaborate method of having somebody whacked"

you say that simply bcz you do not take advantage of time travel

actually i am posting this from the future

in a methodological oversight i was sent back in time to whack my younger self

Selves you'd like to whack

no, ned

Tell me what life is like after lunch, nv.

Better yet, come back to mid-morning and bring sandwiches.

^^^ better use of time travel than mob hits

I would like to time travel to november when it is FALL and it stops being so goddamn hot

is that a misuse of time travel?

this started really great but plateaus hard once they get to the farm and never recovers imho

also the more you think about it the less it makes sense, and not just in a time travel plothole way, in a why is this blank character doing what he is doing kinda way

also the bruce willis makeup and mannerisms on JGL are just ridic distracting and exaggerated

the kid stuff is kinda terrible, and the TK seems imported from another movie... i almost LOLed at that flash-forward shot of him riding the rails like a hobo

the more you think about it the less it makes sense

I can think of one potential solution to that problem.

http://www.nickypapers.com/images/get-high.jpg

btw I had NO idea what the spinning top signified at the end of Inception, so mission accomplished there.

That'll make that quarter dance.

first 1/3 really was terrific sci-fi tho

i keep seeing trailers and posters and thinking "wait where are these facial prosthetics?" -- had to look really hard at some stills to even figure out what people were talking about

is there a way I could pay just enough for my ticket to see the first 1/3 and only the first 1/3

i keep seeing trailers and posters and thinking "wait where are these facial prosthetics?" -- had to look really hard at some stills to even figure out what people were talking about

― some dude, Friday, September 28, 2012 12:21 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

didnt notice it in the trailers and stuff but when you're seeing it on the big screen it really kind of is something

I liked this! I liked the kid and his creepy brilliance. The movie sort of felt like a few different short sci-fi stories mushed together. The pacing did stretch out too much when he got to the farm though.

i'd love it if a time travel hitman movie turned into a meditation on farming.

xpost it does sort of feel like a linear Illustrated Man.

i wanna see the movie of the TK kid as a hobo riding the rails and solving crimes

I thought this was great all over, but then I generally enjoy films that are a bunch of things as long as they're good: good sci-fi and good black comedy and fkn great horror. Also a really good kid performance (for the role).

Also we should totally chip in and get Dr. Morbius one of those frogs for Christmas.

Yeah i agree andrew, the kid was great. this is pretty good. the scene where dano's future self starts losing body parts is so sick. it does start to drag some when it hits the farm but i didnt think unforgivably so

yeah i really don't get this. if you say that BW is the old JGL, audiences will go with it

Count me as one of those people who absolutely loved it but was distanced from it every time young Joe's face is in frame. For me the only major bad call of the film.

Whoever that kid is, he needs an award stat, that's an incredible performance (I know a lot of that is probably achieved in editing, but still). I wish all SF movies were like this.

I suppose you could say that the makeup makes him look inhuman, which is kind of what he is at that stage in his life. Was trying to rationalize it while watching by thinking it was rich-persons' plastic surgery, making him look like Jude Law in AI

yeah otm about the kid; he must be a bit older than the character's age (4 or 5?) but even if he's 8 or something what a great job. Just pulled off the screaming ragey faces so great.

Pierce Gagnon won't put up with your shit

I loved the kid because most child actors get into acting because they know how to overact to get the 'aw that's cute' reaction, this kid was stone cold and must have known that the script would get the laughs, not him. Maybe I'm overanalyzing this but I hate most child actors for that reason, so this was great

Ah sorry Mr Gagnon, not 'the kid'

I laughed at the kids screaming ragey faces. I wasn't the only one either

Hah, I even liked the prosthetics! It's a gimmick but then it's always going to be a gimmicky performance - the only one I can think to compare it to is Ewan McGregor as young Alec Guinness in the Star Wars prequels. But yeah, it looked spookily at time like a young Bruce.

I understand Bruce Willis waived 25% of his fee in exchange for being rehaired in the flash-forward.

Is this a good film to go and see with someone who has zero interest in plot and just wants to see a load of chases and explosions?

Nooooo. It is nearly all about the plot and the feelings.

yeah its about p & f's, not c & e's

i really love johnson's shooting style. stuff like bruce's perspective of the fire escape scene was awesome. he's a talented director

Okay, I'm still stoked for seeing this but maybe not with this particular person.

Going to see this later today, first movie I've been sort of excited about in a while - I love time travel stuff and was on a big dystopian future sci-fi kick a couple months ago (watched Blade Runner, Children of Men, Fifth Element, 12 Monkeys again in a couple of weeks). Combine all that with a big crush on Joseph Gordon Levitt and I was sold when I saw the trailer.

i really love johnson's shooting style. stuff like bruce's perspective of the fire escape scene was awesome. he's a talented director

― turds (Hungry4Ass), Saturday, September 29, 2012 9:16 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i agree with this... some good visual ideas and ways of shooting action

you know what i liked best, was the sequence when he starts aging and turns into bruce willis. that was dope

ok fuck it i'm gonna start talking plot points

- why was it a big deal when the rainmaker started closing loops? wasn't that their whole contract, that in 30 years their loop would be closed? i don't understand what he was doing in the future that was any different from what was supposed to happen
- wasn't bruce willis aware that his 30 years were up? what were his feelings about it? if he wanted to escape them, why was he hanging out in his house with his wife? if he knew they were coming, why would he put her in danger? and if he didn't know they were coming, how did he forget the fact that he had closed his loop and was a looper and that's the whole huge deal? and if he didn't know they were coming, why did his friend call him with the rainmakers id #? clearly he DID, so why just sleep in with his wifey?
- why are loopers given that 30 year contract anyway?
- if the rainmaker was going around killing everyone in the 5 families how was that possible w/o him getting caught, isn't the whole thing that you can't really murder someone in the future without 'looping' them so it can't be traced to you? and if his powers allow him to kill people w/o that contingency, why 'close the loops' at all, considering he KNOWS that a looper from the future was the one who killed his mom? why would he risk sending ANY of them back? and if he DOESN'T know his mom's killer is a looper from the future, why was his whole big deal to 'start closing loops'?

The contract is just "you kill people, with the guns, and the silver, etc" - the 30 years is because that's the moving window of the time travel. So you could go working as a looper now, and your second job closes your loop, and off you go until 2042. And I could start today and work at it for five years before closing my loop, and I get 2017-2047 as my time off. The contract doesn't specify when the loop is closed - it just has to be 30 years for causality.

There's some fiddling with free will and timey-wimey of course - if the Rainmaker decides to close someone's loop, is he creating the fact that the looper received a payoff 30 years ago?

I got the impression that the Rainmaker is sufficiently a psychokinetic badass that he DGAF about being traced for killing people - hence also not needing the loopers.

One thing I am not entirely certain about why it's a good idea to send a looper back to be killed by themselves, except possibly that if they've heard about what has happened to Paul Dano, they realise it is in their very best interest to close their loop.

ya seriously why not send them to other available loopers??

It's a loyalty thing.

That somehow works out surprisingly well.

after some desperate scrolling, I think this thread should have a spoiler warning

Liked this a lot - but even so think I would have preferred it without the TK element.

after some desperate scrolling, I think this thread should have a spoiler warning

― well if it isn't old 11 cameras simon (gbx), Saturday, September 29, 2012 3:36 PM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The movie's already open, this should be assumed

They heavily implied that Jeff Daniels was the same guy as the fuck-up "Kid Blue", right? Except the younger guy shot one of his feet off, and they never said anything about Daniels' character's foot, which you'd think they would have.

i didnt get that at all!

i was wondering that

O rly? didn't think of that at all. Would be cool if they had played it that way. That character was pretty much a lame plot contrivance as it was

Also did anyone else find it weird how pointless the learning French stuff was?

That theory was floated immediately after my screening.

Wait, having Kid Blue be the younger Jeff Daniels' character makes no sense, mainly for two reasons:

1.) Kid Blue's main motivation, it seems, is to please Daniels' character (I remember a scene where he states something like: "I just wanted you to be pleased(or proud)(or something)." Why the hell would he be trying to make himself pleased/proud?

2.) At one point, Daniels' character slams a hammer into Kid Blue's hand. Wouldn't that mean he'd be potentially disfiguring his future self?

I just thought it was his son or something...

This was fun.

But a question just occurred to me -- did they explain how Farmgirl knew about the existence of loopers?

it didn't seem like the existence of loopers was that big a secret? at the start of the movie, joe goes to exchange his silver for cash and there's a sign specifically telling loopers to leave their blunderbusses at the front, and it doesn't appear to be a particularly secret place.

ya i found that a little weird too... also i wasn't sure about the distinction between silver you keep and silver you exchange for cash?

it didn't seem like the existence of loopers was that big a secret? at the start of the movie, joe goes to exchange his silver for cash and there's a sign specifically telling loopers to leave their blunderbusses at the front, and it doesn't appear to be a particularly secret place.

― just1n3, Saturday, September 29, 2012

that was at the looper office/secret hideout tho

The word "blunderbusses" was probably my single least favorite thing about this movie.

my favorite sci-fi touches were the jury-rigged solar-powered cars and Jesse the gat-man unfolding his iPhone 26

I liked this, was kind of exactly what I was expecting. And I also dug the patched / fixed cars, stuff like solar panels on the farmhouse, etc.

Still don't quite get why the future rainmaker could kill a bunch of people ("massacres" were mentioned) plus old joe's wife, but they still have to send everyone else back to get killed 30 years ago?

And after reading about the prosthetics (which in and of themselves didn't really distract me), the gunshot ear made me notice how completely different old and young joe's earlobes were in the diner scene.

I think s1ocki comes up with some good points but all that is prety much standard time travel movie stuff, and as far as those go I thought this one made some internal sense.

I still don't really get why Bruce Willis seemingly wasn't aware of the exact date they'd come for him. Isn't it exactly 30 years after you recieve the gold?

Anyway I do agree that the first third is really really good, but all the farm scenes slow things down. The whole TK thing wasn't really explained too well. They really never say anything about who Rainmaker is or what exactly he winds up doing, why he happened to be the one with super TK-powers, etc. Felt more like two half movies than one full one. But in the end I thought it was really good and that it lived up to the hype. The whole Paul Dano scene really freaked me out and I can't explain why. But it was really well done.

also I'm kind of wondering if the kid that JGL almost runs into was supposed to be his past self or something. i dunno. this movie's weird

as a symbol that is

also I wonder why they just murdered Bruce Willis's wife if it is, in fact that hard to dispose of bodies. unless they just send the dead body into the past?

haha ya good point

this movie makes no damn sense at all does it

my favorite sci-fi touches were the jury-rigged solar-powered cars and Jesse the gat-man unfolding his iPhone 26

― the physical impossibility of sb in the mind of someone fping (silby), Sunday, September 30, 2012 12:34 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^ otm, i dug all this stuff

yeah i felt like it was a flimsy premise that the whole use of time travel was for murder - like, a future where you can't get away with killing someone but you can get away with making them disappear??? but idk it was still a super fun movie, very visually satisfying, great to see on a big screen.

xps i thought that "bank" was pretty much right on the street, it seemed like he just walked in and that sign was near the door, but i don't remember it 100% clearly.

exactly. on that note I wonder why they don't just send the bodies into the past. then again maybe they (the mob) haven't thought all this through. if time travel is outlawed, then only outlaws will have time travel?

also I wonder why they just murdered Bruce Willis's wife if it is, in fact that hard to dispose of bodies. unless they just send the dead body into the past?
--frogbs

They set the house on fire with her inside.

so if you can just burn the bodies, why send them to the past?

ya i found that a little weird too... also i wasn't sure about the distinction between silver you keep and silver you exchange for cash?

The silver is something that'll keep its value no matter what - so they send it back as payment, but the looper's have to fence it - the mob also provides a fence, but rates are probably a little lower than you can get on the street because it's watermarked "Hi we are future mobsters".

You can keep back some silver in order to get a better rate elsewhere but that is, ah, frowned upon - hence the scene where Joe has to give up either Seth or his silver.

but the looper's have to fence it

This is totally a tribute to the apostrophe wars above! :) Though that makes sense now that we know that it's a mob-bank - damn right it's one looper at a time past this point.

Also I might misremember, but isn't the whole point about the Rainmaker that he's out of control, just killing people left right & centre?

Just seeing this reviewed this weekend in Guardian related papers. One did say that it was probably the 2nd best time travel film that Bruce Willis was involved in, I assume from that that best was 12 Monkeys?

Got good reviews in both places anyway.
Was it any good as a punter?

sorry, will read through thread which I thought i'd just had to retrieve from obscurity.

Also I might misremember, but isn't the whole point about the Rainmaker that he's out of control, just killing people left right & centre?

― Andrew Farrell, Sunday, September 30, 2012 6:13 AM Bookmark Flag Post

they make a big point about how "the first thing he did" was to "start closing all the loops." but all the loopers had 30 year contracts anyway that were going to be up around then, so I don't see how he did anything that different. I suppose he could have waited longer and given the young loopers slightly longer careers, but that still doesn't explain why his first move would be to send his mother's killer into the past where he knew he'd kill her instead of just finding the right looper (or all of them) and do the same rain of blood treatment he did with all the other mobsters.

the "closing the loops" thing was a cool idea but the more I think about it the more I don't think it served the story very well. might have been better if the loopers weren't aware of it, until JGL discovers his next victim is himself. (maybe another looper could have suspected he killed himself but got written off as crazy or something). then JGL, and maybe bruce willis too, has a mystery to unravel. and would explain why BW was taken unaware. I dunno

yeah I'm not sure why they had to kill their future selves. cool plot point but i dunno why other loopers couldn't just do the deed to prevent things like this from happening

I think we might have to let this one go. Rian half-explained some of the details to Slashfilm

Oh wait no this is one of the things he talked about.

6. Why is it essential for a looper to close his own loop?

This is another one of those questions Johnson had answered in his head but didn’t put in the movie. In fact, he even conceived a scene with Abe addressing it but never shot it.

“People in the future, all they know about time travel is to be afraid of it. So they’re trying to keep it as tight as possible. So the initial reason they set it up this way was to keep the causality loop as tight as possible,” Johnson said. Because, for example, if someone else kills your older self and you have to exist with your own murderer for 30 years, what’s stopping you for murdering them or doing something to screw everything else up? ”Every bit of evidence is gone from that loop when you kill yourself,” he said.

that does explain a few things, thanks for that

apparently there's 40 minutes of unreleased footage being planned for the Bluray, I'm guessing that will explain quite a bit too. similar to Donnie Darko I guess, another movie that was really great while you're watching it but kind of leaves you with a lot of unanswered questions

I've only ever heard bad things about the Donnie Darko director's cut

Also did anyone else find it weird how pointless the learning French stuff was?

I dunno, you get info on Joe (he's planning on what he's going to do after he closes his loop - but isn't most of the stuff he's practicing first generic horndog?), a nice bit about progress and routine (being back at the diner, better and better at French), a joke from Abe about future knowledge, and a joke from Old Joe at the diner (plus the info that he went back and learned French after Mandarin). It seemed decent value for money.

they make a big point about how "the first thing he did" was to "start closing all the loops." but all the loopers had 30 year contracts anyway that were going to be up around then, so I don't see how he did anything that different.

Again, there's no such thing as 30 year contracts, the 30 years is just the time travel gap.

I agree there's that free-will / time-streams bit I brushed off earlier - is the Rainmaker choosing to close their loops now or he just closing them because time's up and someone has to go back?

The implication from the films is a) stop thinking about this too much and b) reality is okay as long as someone goes back.

If you think about it too hard, Seth's story is two loops - there's the one we see, but then obviously that Seth, after living in a box for 30 years, is in no position to run when he gets sent back, so the Seth that meets him will close the loop cleanly and the grow up into the one that we see escape..

I appreciated Old Joe's line: "I don't want to have a conversation about time travel. We'll just be here all day making diagrams with straws."

the "closing the loops" thing was a cool idea but the more I think about it the more I don't think it served the story very well. might have been better if the loopers weren't aware of it, until JGL discovers his next victim is himself. (maybe another looper could have suspected he killed himself but got written off as crazy or something). then JGL, and maybe bruce willis too, has a mystery to unravel. and would explain why BW was taken unaware. I dunno.

One of the way that I thought that conceit did serve the story well is that we get the Seth story, which was A++ hairs on the back of the neck, but this also establishes neatly why "Go explain to Abe" is never on the list of things that Joe considers doing.

also can we step back from the lol time travel for a moment and appreciate the excellence of the shot where (spoilers) Cid makes Jesse's fucking blood explode out of him

Jesse was just ridiculously good in this - and yeah that shot was lovely, but also the shot just before when you realise that Sara is running at Joe not for her safety but to get him the fuck out of the house for his safety.

The only bit that I thought anywhere near bad was the supercoincidence of the third kid being of Joe's old flame. And I suppose some of the two-gun action from Old Joe at Abe's, but I forgave it for the Very Rian shot where Bruce is being quiet and henchman arrives lengthily and loudly.

I liked the noirish future city stuff so much that the kinda boring farm stuff was a big letdown, is my basic $0.02 on this flick

Also the best moment was the first looper kill we see, the way the guy pops in mid-scream and the sound of the gun was pretty A+

I also enjoyed the conceit that BW could remember anything JGL did, after he did it

I guess in general I just wish all the stuff I liked added up to something better

Again, there's no such thing as 30 year contracts, the 30 years is just the time gap.

P sure the voiceover established that the whole deal is, you looper for a while, then get a big payoff, then get 30 years to enjoy it before your loop gets closed

Another thing that I liked at first, but didn't like the payoff, was the club drug they eyedroppered... Was a bit disappointed that they had to have a scene unrelated to anything else where he has to "kick", prob just because some studio exec was worried the protagonist might enjoy recreational drugs without Serious Consequences (never mind that he's a murderer by trade)

this movie kicked ass

- the nod to terminator after the kid's force-blasted everyone in the cane fields, you sort of think it's over, but willis stumbles to his feet, and the soundtrack puts the fear back into you
- willis pausing in the carnage with a large gun in his hands to do his patented "can you believe this shit?" look
- joseph gordon-levitt looking like a plasticene cross between jim carrey and keanu reeves
- what the time machine looks like
- the hard swerve into the countryside for the last act
- everything everybody already said

- the pointless parental "issues" tossed into the dialogue like wet lint ("i just wanted you to say i done good!"; "my mom always ran her hands through my hair like that")
- someone in a movie yet again picturesquely hacking away at a large tree stump with an axe for no immediately discernable reason. what is it with this? directors genuinely appear to believe this is what axes are for, to pointlessly thump into innocent tree stumps over and over.

still don't quite understand how willis appeared in the cane field twice, once to get killed (and allow JLG to live out his life, and meet the love of his life) and once to survive (and save JLG's life)

- oh and i loved how at the very end, when JLG makes his decision, willis hangs around for a couple of seconds, feeling the effects work their way towards him, as if time travel causality carries a certain lag, like when water keeps running out of the garden hose for a few seconds after you've turned off the spigot

the supercoincidence of the third kid being of Joe's old flame.

yeah, that seemed totally unnecessary - why put in a huge coincidence like that if it doesn't matter?

http://www.slashfilm.com/ten-mysteries-in-looper-explained-by-director-rian-johnson/

still don't quite understand how willis appeared in the cane field twice, once to get killed (and allow JLG to live out his life, and meet the love of his life) and once to survive (and save JLG's life)

I was confused here too, as I initially thought that the fall from the ladder which immediately preceded this had killed JLG and somehow reset the loop. But in fact that's just the story of Bruce Willis's subjective experience - he did kill his older self, and then grew up and got sent back. So it just runs through all of that again from his point of view until he meets JLG again in the alley and peels him off the busted car.

Yeah, Joe's life follows 2 threads because he didn't close the loop.

ah i see. it would have been clearer if we saw Willis get killed, then JLG live out his life, the Willis get sent back, then sock JLG in the jaw.. whatevs man, suffice to say i got over it. had to pee like a two-peckered hound and held it the whole time.

+ Summer Qing flipping Bruce the bird the first time that they meet
+ Jeff Daniels turning into Jeff Bridges
+ Loaded-gun slapstick at Jeff Daniels' first appearance!
+ "You know there's another waitress, works here at weekends?"

Basically I dug the fuck out of this - between this and Dredd I've had good but different sci-fi experiences at the cinema lately.

i was surprised at the plush amenities of the dystopic future's public library system. free printing, even!

the scene where Joe has to give up either Seth or his silver.

i was beyond pissed off at joe for giving up seth but then i realized seth was IN the silver stash; joe didn't have a choice

free printing heck, it was free color large-format printing! There were just so many thoughtful sci-fi elements in this; they made a delightful contrast to the cowboy-looking gat-men and the magic time orb

i was beyond pissed off at joe for giving up seth but then i realized seth was IN the silver stash; joe didn't have a choice

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Sunday, September 30, 2012 7:50 PM Bookmark Flag Post

let's also not forget dog is a merciless, prolific killer

xps oh yea, I forgot I have been convinced I have to see Dredd

One shot that got a big laugh in my theater is when they revisited Old Joe's first escape from young Joe in a really de-romanticized, matter-of-fact way (throw gold brick, run over and knock him out with a single punch).

The way the camera was pulled way back, to make it look uncinematic

This was great.

Sound designer deserves an Oscar.

xps oh yea, I forgot I have been convinced I have to see Dredd

― Ham Lushbaugh (Eric H.), Sunday, September 30, 2012 9:49 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

me too

One shot that got a big laugh in my theater is when they revisited Old Joe's first escape from young Joe in a really de-romanticized, matter-of-fact way (throw gold brick, run over and knock him out with a single punch).

― Dan I., Sunday, September 30, 2012 10:44 PM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ya that got a laugh when i saw it too

+ I loved all the gunplay. It was amazing. A spray of bullets that the protagonist mujically avoids? No. Shoot and miss, shoot and hit, loved it.

- This is a pesky complaint in an action movie but there wasn't really a standardized currency for "human life", characters would oscillate between being cold-hearted killers and heart-of-cold crybabies (or whiny underlings who just want respect!) with no consistency or underlying logic.

I liked this movie more than "Signs" which is basically what it felt like

xp OTM re: Old Joe

*cold = gold

The two black hat cowboy refs in the kids room were a nice touch.

Dredd is fun, but don't expect too much. It's basically a way-downgraded RoboCop.

The only bit that I thought anywhere near bad was the supercoincidence of the third kid being of Joe's old flame.

Exactly, thought the movie was headed for a real awful turn there, but when it didn't happen I was just wondering, what was the point?

what was the point of there being three kids in the first place? why not have old joe simply on the trail of little sid?

It gave Joe some time at the farm to slow down and think, which I liked (and which I understand is not uncommon in say Westerns)

DOES NOT COMPUTE, GO FAST, KILL KILL KILL

actually no i liked the slowing down. it was like suddenly we're in days of heaven or something. still if they were looking for ways to trim down the 2+ hr running time...

- This is a pesky complaint in an action movie but there wasn't really a standardized currency for "human life", characters would oscillate between being cold-hearted killers and heart-of-cold crybabies (or whiny underlings who just want respect!) with no consistency or underlying logic.

this is otm, joe in particular was a complete blank, beyond "wanting to learn french" and "mad about dead wife"

slightly dumb, slightly selfish hired killers aren't often studies in complexity imo

Nah it was more the dissonance between a) the setup shots of Kansians in 2044 killing vagrants with wanton abandon and b) Joe 1 vowing to protect random strangers with his life, Joe 2 crying over the death of his wife/the death of the kid he's just executed, despite having more lifetime kills than Charles Taylor. It didn't work for me.

Still loved the movie, though. My mom-in-law was hilarious, "you can really see how they left it open for a sequel." Huh? What do you mean? "Well, what's going to happen to the kid and his mom?"

Joe 2 crying over the death of his wife/the death of the kid he's just executed, despite having more lifetime kills than Charles Taylor.

I think those two things are gonna hurt you regardless

i still hope the kid ends up riding the rails like a depression-era hobo

slightly dumb, slightly selfish hired killers aren't often studies in complexity imo

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Monday, October 1, 2012 10:46 AM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

who needs complexity? i'm talking about a compelling protagonist. which dog was not

I will say the attention to detail in this film was pretty astounding. i.e. Bruce Willis saying "the Rainmaker has a mechanical jaw"/Cid getting hit in the jaw with gunfire/Cid's Mom dying in a different timeline/"things tend to fall off and get infected around here if you don't take care of them", very cool. Also there's a scene where Young Joe subtley checks his hairline in the mirror, perhaps suspecting he's going bald.

i'm talking about a compelling protagonist. which dog was not

He was kind of compelling? Just not very stream-lined. Joe 2 was great as the dogged killing machine but Joe 1's motivations got weird and uneven pretty quickly

maybe it's because i just finished an elmore leonard novel but the idea of a kinda blank guy who doesn't really know what he's doing and seldom stops to ask why he's doing it rings pretty true for a guy in his line of work and certainly caused me no consternation in the cinema

i still hope the kid ends up riding the rails like a depression-era hobo

"Get to the rails" is a running theme in the movie. I hope it wasn't totemistic re: desire for linear timelines, running on time, or some other similarly stupid sentiment.

http://www.ukparentslounge.com/images/features/chuggington.jpg

a kinda blank guy who doesn't really know what he's doing and seldom stops to ask why he's doing it

Didn't they sort of acknowledge this, saying how the loopers generally weren't the smartest, most forward-thinking people out there?

OMG they cut off Brewster's nose!

I was going to post something about how the trains were the symbol of "getting out of town" but that cartoon train is really distracting

"Chuggers"

Fall 2013

The whole part with Seth is probably the thing that bothers me the most. Are they really planning to keep him alive for 30 years in a box? Who's going to look after him? How can they prevent him from dying? Why cut off SO MANY body parts? Maybe it's not the most thought out part of the movie but it's definitely one of the best visual effects, seemed to freak out a good half of the theater

when seth finally gets sent back into the past, it'll be the first time he's had limbs in 30 years - the feeling of freedom must have been incredible

What? No, that's not how it works!

haha why not though??

i'm mixin my timelines again i know

hence why it doesn't make sense. if present Seth is going to live 30 years in a box and then get sent back, no way does he make it to that location to watch his own vivisection. or does that not really matter here.

maybe he thinks he can stop it

Seth getting sent back 30 years but not getting his loop closed = creating a second strand of his lifeline, same as Joe coming back and having 2 strands (1. life with wife; 2. events from canefield onward).

In Seth's strand #1, he lives his retirement with all body parts until he gets sent back to have his loop closed. Strand #2 starts when young Seth declines to kill Old Seth. At that point, whatever's done to young Seth's body plays out on Old Seth's body. Abe's people lead Old Seth to the clinic/warehouse with "you better hurry or you're going to fall apart" but they don't have to keep Young Seth's body alive for 30 years. Just long enough in subjective terms to close his loop (ie kill Old Seth), at which point they can just let Young Seth bleed out or whatever.

I wish I'd said that.

Wait no what? They totally keep Seth alive, that's the whole point - you have to send someone back for their loop to be closed. In this case it's the Seth that the old Seth that we saw must've killed 30 years before going back.

Sorry, I literally can't parse your last sentence there.

Fair enough - it's pretty much what I said yesterday:

If you think about it too hard, Seth's story is two loops - there's the one we see, but then obviously that Seth, after living in a box for 30 years, is in no position to run when he gets sent back, so the Seth that meets him will close the loop cleanly and the grow up into the one that we see escape..

*and then

Mmmm, I guess we're at an "agree to disagree" point. After Abe's people closed the loop by killing Old Seth, there's no reason to keep Young Seth alive and in a box.

But why not just kill Young Seth beforehand, then?

Mmm, ok, good question.

It's implied that they are planning on keeping Seth around for 30 years as punishment.

The infinite loop paradox is more apparent in Seth's case-- "If they cut off his feet, how Seth 2 escape Seth 1 in the first place?"-- but the paradox is true of any looper's story. There is way around that paradox, in a literary sense at least, it was explained at me once but I cannot remember it.

when Willis sees "BE AT..." on his arm he gets an oh-fuck look on his face which suggests the imaginatively cruel dismemberment of escaped old loopers via the torture of their younger selves must be a well-known disincentive to letting your old self escape. part of seth's shaky phj3ar when telling JGL about it probably stems from the fact that he knows that's coming?

One of the themes you could pull from LOOPER, tho, is that the person you are today and the person you'll be in 30 years are two completely different people. So there would be one way to sidestep the concept of paradoxes.

Doesn't make physical sense, but thematic. If you think the movie's working that way.

fyi i didn't think about any of this shit while watching the movie

Killing young Seth definitely would have "closed the loop" if the film's final scene is to be believed. I'm not sure why they needed to track down old Seth at all.

One of the themes you could pull from LOOPER, tho, is that the person you are today and the person you'll be in 30 years are two completely different people.

Kind of, but old Joe and young Joe were alike in a number of ways

The kid's chubby face reminded me of Andy Richter.

related media hits:

http://popwatch.ew.com/2012/09/26/looper-rian-johnson-film-crit-hulk/

Film Crit Hulk wrote a thing on this for EW

And JGL got interviewed on the Nerdist podcast today

Both of them met the woman who would save their lives, but from my vantage point (30 years out from my 18th birthday), I gotta go with more different than the same.

xpost

the similarity is that they both really only care about themselves; young Joe wants to shoot his old self so he can continue to party, get rich, and inject heroin into his eyeballs, while old Joe really only wants to save his wife, or even more selfishly, his memory of her. hence why he wouldn't let young Joe see the pocketwatch even though he seems to understand that doing so would save her life.

still no explanation for what bruce willis was doing there 30 years in the future, seemingly simultaneously aware that his loop was gonna be closed (his buddy gives him the info on the rainmaker's serial #, plus of course he knows he closed his own loop 30 years prior in the first strand), and not seeming to give a shit/do anything about it except sleep in with his wife

what exactly was he doing?? it makes no sense

No fate but what we make

also Joe didn't have to kill himself. he could have just blown off the hand that Bruce Willis was holding the gun in and then killed him with the opposite one LOL

the scene should have been willis saying goodbye to his wife in a touching and wordless farewell and then sitting in his house armed to the teeth, then when he runs out of ammo he spies the katana hanging on the wall, pulls it down and cocks his "can you believe this shit??" eyebrow

haaaa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkJu5VX972M

i really love johnson's shooting style. stuff like bruce's perspective of the fire escape scene was awesome. he's a talented director
― turds (Hungry4Ass), Saturday, September 29, 2012 9:16 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
i agree with this... some good visual ideas and ways of shooting action
― Author ~ Coach ~ Goddess (s1ocki), Saturday, September 29, 2012 12:20 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah he's talented. it is weird (not necessarily bad, just weird) how brazen he is about copying other directors' tics, though. wes anderson is all over "brothers bloom" (it's basically a straight rip) and the weird reflecty blue light thing isn't the only aspect of "looper" that makes it seem like johnson told his DP to "get that whole 'J.J. Abrams' thing going on here."

still liked this movie. felt like i anticipated a bunch of different endings, some of them seem like they'd be more weirdly satisfying than the one we got.

re. the france thing.

i think JGL was faking abe out (or trying to), saying he would go to france but actually planning to go to china where he might imagine it would harder for the mobsters to find him.

but Abe was also trying to fake Joe out by telling him to go to China, knowing that they would have an easier time finding Joe's older self there.

Saw this today... basically what everyone else said. I love how the tech advances of the future irregularly filtered down into the poor and criminal class... jury rigged solar panels, beater cars with retrofitted exhaust recovery, and then time travel somehow. Seth's eventual fate was scary as hell. Loved how TK was thrown away as an actual nuisance and then reappears scary as hell when a TK savant is revealed. Loved how the suit/tie get-up was dismissed as douchey nostalgia.

Rainmaker reminded of The Mule character in the Foundation books crossed with Keyser Soze.

i actually liked this a lot better than inception (which was probably the reason this was greenlit w/ a big budget), because it just seemed to have less bombast and i think he's a cleaner, more resourceful filmmaker in a lot of ways. but in both cases the films felt intricate and mentally involving without the emotional payoffs feeling the least bit convincing. these films, for all their emo huffing and puffing, feel strangely reticent about really confronting emotional issues with any directness. which is by no means something that all films (esp sci-fi films) need to be doing, but there's a gulf between the sort of diagrammatic emotional revelations at the end and what i'm actually thinking and feeling (which is largely sorting through the likely narrative possibilities and weighing the success of the ones chosen).

grammar issues. i don't mean that me liking it was why it got green lit! i just mean it was probably an easy/easier sell after inception. "ambitious sci-fi premise w/ JGL--well, the last one made a shit-ton of money, why not?"

Rainmaker reminded of The Mule character in the Foundation books crossed with Keyser Soze.

haaaa, this is well called

Cid also probably inspired by It's a Good Life

Gunna be interesting to see how this compares to Cloud Atlas re: emotional beats

i actually liked this a lot better than inception (which was probably the reason this was greenlit w/ a big budget)

Inception production budget: $160m
Looper production budget: $30m

!!

This is one of the things that Film Crit Hulk talks about in that 27,000 word piece, that basically no-one makes movies like that for money like that any more.

Cid also probably inspired by It's a Good Life

― the physical impossibility of sb in the mind of someone fping (silby), Monday, October 1, 2012

inspired by would be a stretch, i think, but once you've got a kid who can't get upset and a corncanefield, you're pretty much there and RJ knows it.

hmmm, I had kind of wondered why Blunt hid in a safe when Cid got upset but thinking back it totally makes sense now

Oh wow, Boxofficemojo has all sortsa category rankings now:

http://boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=mindbender.htm

a friend of mine speculated that the farm stuff took up so much of the movie because of the low budget, which kinda makes sense?

They got the corn subsidy.

Inception production budget: $160m
Looper production budget: $30m

!!

One of those two movies ends (SPOILER) with the lead killing himself.

a friend of mine speculated that the farm stuff took up so much of the movie because of the low budget, which kinda makes sense?

― Author ~ Coach ~ Goddess (s1ocki), Tuesday, 2 October 2012 16:51 (17 minutes ago) Bookmark

that was my assumption

huh i would have thought this cost much more!

A stroke of self-referential genius to write Slavoj Zizek into this movie, and have Jeff Daniels play him.

yeah, me too. the first third of the movie really looked like a $100m+ blockbuster

yeah, me too. the first third of the movie really looked like a $100m+ blockbuster

Shocked by this too. I wonder if having a bigger budget would have worked against the overall look... I love that the scope of the movie is essentially small (few if any CGI vistas of cataclysm)

Like that when Garret Dillahunt's character shows up, you're sorta thinking that he's an ultimate inhuman Agent Smith hitman of destruction (which is sorta Dillahunt's character type anyway), but Joe describes him as a good hard working, stand-up henchman.

I liked the change of scene to a rural setting. The juxtaposition with the urban grit made the whole world seem more real. Someone's still out there growing cane to put sugar in Abe's coffee!

I liked the change of scene to a rural setting. The juxtaposition with the urban grit made the whole world seem more real. Someone's still out there growing cane to put sugar in Abe's coffee!

Reminded me a lot of PKD's settings in something like Time Out Of Joint where it's clearly The Future, but there's still farming and hard work along with it - despite the nifty VTOL crop duster drone.

Love that young Joe's ultimate car statement isn't the Last Of The V8 Interceptors or a Red Barchetta, but a lowly Mazda Miata.

the fact that she was growing sugar cane in kansas was a nice touch

I thought that car looked familiar, but I couldn't place it with some Ford prototype or whatever. Funny how it wound up being MacGruber'a ride

the fact that she was growing sugar cane in kansas was a nice touch

global warming reference i suppose....

Salon/Alternet declare Freejack king of time travel movies:

http://www.salon.com/2012/10/03/eight_best_time_travel_flicks/

No Primer, no credibility.

I saw Primer and found it intellectually engaging etc, but bone dry.

Stargate is not about time travel

oh wait, just looked through the rest of the list. Forget i said anything

Timecrimes >>> Primer

ok trying to argue about discrepancies in time-travel movies is a bit like banging your head against a wall but...

so as young protagonist (joseph g.l.) changes the present, somehow old protag (bruce willis) finds that he remembers the newly-rewritten past rather than the one he had "actually" lived. even though this makes about as much sense as any other conceit in a time-travel movie (that is: little), it stuck out as being a bit cheesily realized. what's more, wouldn't the changes to bruce willis's "new past" be reflected not just in mental shifts but physical ones as well? well, they do in terms of the scar tissue on the arm stuff. oh, i give up.

Yeah, that salon/alternet list is kinda.....well, you know.

I saw Freejack in the theater when I was 15, and thought it great. Also, I was 15. I do remember Mick Jagger having a lot of fun as the baddie, tho.

Is it just me or are time-travel movies much more interesting when they bring protagonist-centered causality into it? Even Bill & Ted were fucking around with their own timeline.

yeah

back to the future is the ultimate example of this.

Or Primer, but BttF is actually clear, yeah

so many plot holes, but i still liked this: it looked really good, it had the future + time travel, it had bruce willis
i was kind of drunk when i saw it, so maybe that helped. meaning that i didn't care too much about the plot and just went with flow and laughed more than i expected - script was pretty witty!

I enjoyed it when I saw it this afternoon.
Joseph's face looks like it's been animated when you first see it, seemed odd.
Thought I recognised the kid among several other of the lesser role actors.
One thing that struck me that nobody's brought up as far as I've noticed, what was the wife doing when she first meets Willis? Was she a crime figure too? Seemed to be walking through a heist scene or something, didn't quite get what was going on there.

... why would you expect to?

Soundtrack was interesting, Richard & Linda Thompson and was that James Carr over the end credits?

i think bill & ted's is the best time travel movie ever, no joke—it uses it so well and inventively. well, it's a tie with la jetée. and back to the future coming in a close third.

i'd put timecrimes up there too. don't care for primer and its intentional "you have to see this three times to reallllly get it!" obtuseness.

I was very O_O about the Richard & Linda Thompson song showing up

yeah that was weird.

i think bill & ted's is the best time travel movie ever, no joke—it uses it so well and inventively.

^^^^^^

I think all time travel movies should have a lot of good jokes if not be outright comedies!

Even terminator had good jokes

At least Bruce Willis is inherently comedic

Saw it today, crossing fingers it was genuinely entertaining enough to overcome my issues with JGL face/time travel silliness. It definitely was. Loved it.

There was enough inspired shit piled on top of the conceit that somehow THE ONLY WAY FOR THE MOB TO KILL is to send people 30 years back in time, that it was sort of like when THE ONLY WAY FOR THE MOB TO KILL was to put snakes on a plane. Why fight that logic when it pays off like this?

Saw it last night. People clapped. I almost did too.

Yeah, saw this last night and really, really enjoyed it. Really hope Carruth's next film gets finance soon, incidentally.

I was the only person who literally lolled when JGL was wearing a white vest and when he was doing his best BW impersonation in the duologue with Abe - maybe I've just seen Die Hard too many times, or liked Face/Off too much: love it when actors pointedly impersonate other actors.

Obviously it's time travel sci-fi so the are loads of plot holes but I thought it was to RJ's credit that the only plot point I ought worth mentioning to Em on leaving was that fact that, despite time travel being illegal 30 years hence, there didn't appear to be any law enforcement at all in JGL's present day.

Loved the kid, such a sad face, and such angry eyes when he got mad.

Assume the extended farm sequence was for budgetary reasons - very glad this was a $30m production and not $130m, gave it a real sense of focus on plot and character. Which, say, The Dark Knight Rises could have done with.

Saw Dredd last week, Looper this: good fortnight for tight, well-executed sci-fi which doesn't try too hard to be "important".

so is Dredd actually worth seeing? As a matinee or at the cheapies?

I will say that I appreciated the extended quiet farm setpieces, as they required a degree of restraint that several thousand lesser studio exec types would excised or filled with horseshit.

There were many, many choices in this flick that I feel were made well; many involving shots w/ no sound but plenty of score.

Yeah, Dredd's worth seeing, but I'd go for 2D if possible - save yourself a quid, and 3D is just a fucking troll of a concept. It's very tight - 90 minutes of action, no origin bullshit or romantic sub-plot, just plenty of Dredd brutality. The girl from Juno is very good.

I wanted to get a better look at the fancy future turntable that JGL had in his apartment!

Dualogue scene between Abe and JGL reminded me of the dualogue scene between the headmaster and JGL in Brick: in both films it's a pivot where the film reveals itself to not be taking its premise too seriously, and snaps everything from there on in into focus. Except that, with Looper, it didn't need snapping into focus quite as much as Brick, because Looper was already very tight. Some great lines and performances in this.

Also, avoided this thread in case of spoilers: are people up thread really complaining about the "stupid premise"? This is sci-fi, gtfo of the fucking cinema.

Dredd's 3D is really beautiful by the way - but yeah it's a good tight film either way.

I've seen a few mentions of Dredd's 3D being beautiful. The only other 3D film I've watched (in 3D) was John Carter [of Mars], and Dredd didn't strike me as being any better or worse in regards to its 3D than that; were they both good, or am I just such a glasses-wearing 3D cynic that I'll never be fussed by it? It's like a veil in front of the film to me, feels like it gets in the way of my enjoyment. (And I'm not just syaing that from the basis of 2 3D films - we've got a 3D visualisation suite in the engineering dept here, which I've seen demonstrated with football and 3D design and a purpose-edited-to-show-off-3D-technology showreel.)

are people up thread really complaining about the "stupid premise"? This is sci-fi, gtfo of the fucking cinema.

i do think an illogical premise can hurt a movie, if it doesn't reward the audience for accepting it. Saying "this is sci-fi" ignores the fact that there can be really shitty sci-fi.

Yeah, one of the problems I have with geek culture is the unabashed slavering over any genre flick, with no filter for quality at all. Just as long as it has spaceships n shit, people go all apeshit for it.

Just from reading FB posts from my geek friends, it's akin to people still reacting as if geek culture hadn't taken over and become a dominant driver in mass pop culture. Like they're still in high school and only one or two scifi/fantasy tv shows will be out that year; a dearth of genre trappings so desperately needed that any glimpse of them getting ravenously snapped up.

Then again, either Chandler or Hammett wrote about this behavior back in the 30s when talking about fans of detective novels.

Oh sci-fi can be shit, complete and utter drek in fact when done wrong, but usually, IMO, that's little to do with the premise and a lot to do with the execution. Johnny Mnemonic, Prometheus: fine ideas, fucked up.

I didn't have all that much issue with Johnny Neumonic. It seemed like more of a misfire rather than Prometheus, which was upside down on the launch pad and buried itself so deep into the planet's mantle as it possibly could,

Out of curiosity, would people who are unhappy about the premise be any happier if it was a magic portal that threw you back 30 years?

I didn't have all that much issue with Johnny Neumonic.

You should come up with some kind of handy memory device for remembering how to spell this.

Not the kind of thing I normally see, but I'm glad I did. Hated Brick--thought this was a big improvement. (Didn't realize it was the same director until my friend pointed it out afterwards.) The kid was fantastically weird and scary, and two or three of the images having to do with him were stunning. I thought Jeff Daniels was funny, and clearly having a good time. Liked the ending--found it moving even. Some of the action stuff loses me, as always--people are either expert marksmen or wildly erratic, whatever moves the plot forward--but I realize that's a genre given.

And Daniels' line about China was great.

pretty sure I saw two movies at TIFF that both employed that Richard and Linda Thompson tune. Super weird.

Do you know who the soul singer was who appeared twice? We thought it might have been Solomon Burke, but his name wasn't in the credits.

would just like to second how random-ass the richard & linda thompson track is. Did we even hear another pop song after that?

also keep in mind that song would be 70 fucking years old.

it's not even like if some call girl today is like "oh lemme throw on some frank sinatra" cuz it's not like richard thompson was the frank sinatra of 1972. i guess it's just good rian johnson was able to keep himself to that one indulgence soundtrack-wise.

james carr was kind of left-field too.

ha did they play him too? honestly i don't even remember any song moments beyond r&l

Was trying to work out if that was James Carr or not, had had his You Got My Mind messed Up pop up on the walkman earlier that day, but missed the music credits. Hoped IMDB would have music down but they don't seem to have that as a feature.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1276104/soundtrack

The Obscure Song From 1974 That Connects LOOPER And SMASHED

Richard Thompson's song "I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight" is featured in two TIFF films, SMASHED and LOOPER. Jordan talks with the two directors and the musician about the new anthem for film lovers with distinguished taste.

http://badassdigest.com/2012/09/13/rian-johnson-james-ponsoldt-and-richard-thompson-see-bright-lights-at-tiff/

Obscure??

Johnson's commentary track

‘Looper’ Infographic Explains It All: http://www.film.com/movies/looper-infographic

http://www.film.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Looper_Infographic_600trim.jpg

In Timeline A, the looper hitman Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) successfully “closes his loop” in 2044, executing his time-traveling older self (Bruce Willis) at the prescribed moment, earning his golden payday and proceeding to live out the rest of his life. Regarding the other key characters in Timeline A, the infographic illustrates a problematic time paradox in the film: Despite Old Joe’s execution in this initial timeline, young Cid must still somehow come to lose his mother Sara and, devoid of her positive influence, develop into the angry, telekinetic, all-powerful gangster kingpin known as the Rainmaker in order to send Old Joe back in time to close his loop in the first place.

Something seems not quite right about this but as I think about it maybe it is right.

I guess here my take:

In a paradox-free closed-loop timeline: Joe closes his loop, gets old, then goes back in time to get his loop closed.

Thanks to the many-worlds interpretation (or whatever), there's another timeline where Joe closes his loop, gets old, meets his wife, wife gets shot, Joe overpowers his captors and goes back in time, landing in

In another timeline, Joe is about to close his loop when Old Joe throws a gold brick at him. The main events of the film transpire here. Old Joe intends to kill the Rainmaker to save his wife, but his actions are going to create the Rainmaker, leading to his wife's death. Young Joe realizes this and kills himself, a major act of quantum weirdness, but saving the world and his erstwhile wife from bad-Cid.

…this isn't gelling. I think what's important to note is that in Looper's world, time travel is a source of causal weirdness that can easily spark divergent timelines that nonetheless bleed into each other.

I was happier before I started thinking about this, stupid infographics. Truth is the only version of time travel I really think holds up causally is the one where time travel exists but there's only one timeline but by the time you are able to travel back to the past, everything in the past already happened the way it happened, with you traveling back to it and everything, so you'll find yourself hilariously failing to kill Hitler etc.

Old Joe intends to kill the Rainmaker to save his wife, but his actions are going to create the Rainmaker, leading to his wife's death.

When the film ended, I was exceptionally proud that I'd figured out this much. I'm never able to sort out the intricacies of plots like Inception and Memento--piecing together Pulp Fiction's timeline was enough of a challenge. So when my friend tried to push past that and tie up every last loose end, I kind of waved him off and asked him not to ruin this moment for me.

But but but how did Skynet begin if the Terminator hadn't gone back in time??!?11

actually I think the linked article makes a decent amount of sense, more legible than that graphic anyway. But I think it's a bit too clean and physics-y for the effect Johnson was going for, which doesn't seem to stick to clear points of divergence between timelines or causal consistency within a single timeline

i think this film definitely had its cake and ate it too in terms of whether it was depicting alternate timelines or some kind of imbricated single timeline with variables

terminator franchise is probably the most blatant and almost teasing with all the issues of paradoxical causality. that's right in your face from the first film. the end of the first film basically tells you how it all works, anyhow--that basically everything, including the instances of time travel, is preordained. but of course the hollywood narratives of the films themselves, driven forward by goal-oriented protagonists and fixated on causality, necessarily undermine this. it's pretty clever, and lot more clever than looper (which i liked pretty well).

given the smorgasbord of obviousness that was avatar i hate to give jim cameron points for cleverness but there you go.

Isn't the paradox thing even more upfront in Back to the Future?

I was thinking there were multiple timelines cos I didn't see Old Joe throw th egold brick at Joe when the camera was in longshot behind & to the side of Old Joe. Could be I just missed part of the sequence but seemed at the time as though it might just indicate yet another strand.

He def threw the gold then.

Yeah I missed him throwing the gold brick as well and thought we were seeing some slightly different timeline

I think we're well into spoiler discussion right? I really really enjoyed this. The only plot problem that bothers me really is the existence of the Rainmaker thing - their should have been some kind of explanation of how that kid became him if Old Joe never went back, just to tidy it up. But I guess that would've taken away the dramatic irony of Old Joe having created his own killer. I didn't pick up the fake-jaw thing in the theater though, that's clever.

I think what's important to note is that in Looper's world, time travel is a source of causal weirdness that can easily spark divergent timelines that nonetheless bleed into each other.

I do kind of question how much this all has to make sense in order to be an enjoyable movie. Donnie Darko had many of the same problems but I still really enjoyed it (up to the ending, at least)

the interesting neo-Great Depression world of 2044, the really good shot set-ups (particularly the Young Joe 30 year montage and the Old Joe-perspective sequence of events following his coming back, throwing the gold brick, saving Young Joe's life after he falls off the fire escape, etc.) all very cool. even Jeff Daniels kinda reprising his role from The Lookout!

yup, agreed about Donnie Darko, but i didn't have a problem w/the ending tbh - it is kinda similar to this one

The difference to me is that Looper was probably a better movie all the way through; Darko had so many weird little paradoxes that all I could think about was "how is this going to end" and then being disappointed when the ending didn't make much sense to me (I was 19 at the time so I guess maybe I was more cynical)

Donnie Darko also full of artsy portentous flourishes which were, como se dice, boosheet mang

this donnie d talk is harshing my buzz

Did anyone else think when the kid was in the kitchen talking to Joe that there was a bit of CGI going on? Just in the more extreme moments of dialogue - can't even remember what he was saying but something about killing people probably - it switched to an extreme closeup and I thought there might be some fake mouth trickery. I don't know if they try to protect young kids from having to deal with dialogue that might be traumatic.

Anyway I thought this was pretty dope, maybe it sagged in the middle but maybe it was a relief to have a big (ish) budget scifi film that wasn't all exhausting chases and firefights. Maybe the TK made me rmde but if i rolled with it instead of my damn eyes i can't deny it was put to good use. Maybe it makes no sense when you think about it too much but hey welcome to time travel. And the climax was an absolute perfect moment that just unravelled all the complex confusing loops and knots into one idea, pure, simple, and not a little moving.

Paradox makes time travel movies interesting

that's the fun of them!

Exactly! Skynet has to get created somehow, or else we have no movie(s).

not all of the terminator movies have been that great (i'm only really a big fan of the first one), but the whole tangled narrative definitely is pleasant to mull over.

In a movie full of cool shit the last scene in Terminator is probably the coolest and Looper seems to me like basically an attempt to make an entire movie based on that moment, which I am obviously A++ 100% on board with

you mean the coda where she rides away...?

Yeah, and she's pregnant, and she's recording a message to her unborn son on a tape recorder, and the Mexican kid takes her photo and it turns out to be the photo Connor had to identify her with when he came from the future to save her

yeah mean the SARAH CONNER SNAPSHOT

http://terminator.wikia.com/wiki/Sarah_Connor_snapshot

yeah that's brilliant. i like how the terminator franchise kinds of wallows in whole issue of paradoxical causality. looper sort of hedges and tries to sidestep it in some ways.

and it's just varying satisfying in terms of form. the moebius-strip aspect of it is satisyfing as a formal pattern.

VERY not varying

sorry the guy wasn't named connor was he. for some reason i think that's his name. what was it? mike? cal?

Kyle Reese

REESE that's it. fuckin love that guy. he should have been the lead in a Metal Gear Solid movie.

Well, considering he was the guy they based the original box art on...

Haha I guess that wasn't just some brilliant insight I once had

"Dude, it makes so much sense!!"

"..."

they were utterly shameless
http://mikevsdinos.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/solid_snake_metal_gear_-_kyle_reese_terminator.jpg

Haha wow.

MGS3 would be Huge Ackman, obv

Oh man people have been doing this for years

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oV2I8YYrseU

Yeah, Konami had a habit of doing that

A stroke of self-referential genius to write Slavoj Zizek into this movie, and have Jeff Daniels play him.

looooooolz

this started really great but plateaus hard once they get to the farm and never recovers imho

also the more you think about it the less it makes sense, and not just in a time travel plothole way, in a why is this blank character doing what he is doing kinda way

also the bruce willis makeup and mannerisms on JGL are just ridic distracting and exaggerated

― Author ~ Coach ~ Goddess (s1ocki),

agree with all of this, still kinda loved this

feel like i could knock together a hokey-yet-adequate case for this as a metaphor for the pensions crisis

Dualogue scene between Abe and JGL reminded me of the dualogue scene between the headmaster and JGL in Brick: in both films it's a pivot where the film reveals itself to not be taking its premise too seriously, and snaps everything from there on in into focus

now you say it, otm!

so i think i have everything (even up to the rainmaker existing in the future to kill bruce willis's wife, many-worlds theory otm here) but i kinda have a hard time justifying how willisjoe's mission/existence isn't at all affected by anything jgljoe does once they part ways after the cafe shootout. isn't it extremely unlikely that jgljoe would have gone on to meet future mrs willis in china once the gang of killers decided he needed to be dead? wouldn't willisjoe's memories of his wife have been compromised/fuzzed by jgl's froggy bootycall (isn't the 'first time i saw her face' memory in fact reiterated in a flashback from willis)

i hope spoilers are in effect- i thought it was great that we sympathise more with willis than jgl p much right up until the former becomes holy shit a fucking childkiller

yeah Willis' mission is fruitless, there's no way it can work because he's back here fucking up his entire future - but nothing Young Joe does while he's back running around trying to kill kids has YET ensured that he can't go on to have a vaguely similar life. he's Schrodinger's Willis.

basically you just accept that there's a paradox lag on anything that doesn't directly affect the body.

Man do I need to see this thing

xp oh i do, i do. best advice my doctor ever gave me tbh.

just saw this, my personal theory is that the reason the future is such a fuckin mess is that ron paul won the election and the entire world is on the gold standard. looper is actually a subtle critique of libertarian ideals

kinda didn't like how 'like the present' the future felt, guess it was 'realistic' but I totally wanted to see some flying cars and stuff beyond a bunch of short buildings in midwestern america having big neon signs on them

this movie looked very boring visually

Any word on when this hits DVD?

thirty years after cinema release iirc

kinda didn't like how 'like the present' the future felt, guess it was 'realistic' but I totally wanted to see some flying cars and stuff beyond a bunch of short buildings in midwestern america having big neon signs on them

― 乒乓, Saturday, October 27, 2012 6:02 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

budget was $30 million, apparently, so they probably had to ditch the flying cars.

a flying car should certainly cost LESS than $30 million

not in 2040 or whatever?

(after economy collapses and we have several decades of runaway inflation.)

They did have a flying bike, to be fair.

thought this was average to fairly shitty, just wasnt really interested in anyone's deal by the end. willis badly miscast

about on a par with that justin timberlake future dystopia joint last year

challops

I feel like you are underrating Looper, but others may have underrated In Time

They didn't. It was horrible

It had approximately two moments

I haven't seen all his films but I have a soft spot for Andrew Niccol. If nothing else, In Time reminded me I hadn't watched Lord of War, which I actually did like. Then again, Nicholas Cage, right?

They heavily implied that Jeff Daniels was the same guy as the fuck-up "Kid Blue", right? Except the younger guy shot one of his feet off, and they never said anything about Daniels' character's foot, which you'd think they would have.

― Dan I., Saturday, September 29, 2012 4:28 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i picked up on this too, partly b/c of the weird character dynamic but mostly b/c theres a quick cut right after old joe calls young joe a "piece of shit" or something to a scene where abe is calling KB the exact same insult

thought this was p good. prosethetics were ridiculous though also JGLs eyebrows looked like they were pencilled in

also i love emily blount

blunt

Johnson says on the commentary that Abe is not meant to be Kid Blue but he loves the theories ppl have come up with to deduce that he is

i thought that abe might be emily blunt's character in the future because at one stage she locks herself in a safe and abe lives in a kind of safe

but emily blunt definitely likes to play it "safe" unlike abe who decidedly acts "unsafe"

blunt's frog booty call was such a dumb moment, maybe even a tiny hop over a baby shark tbh

lol at "frog booty call"

Miss Piggy to thread.

Enh, you knew what was coming just from the extended shots of her legs and her pawing at her own skirt.

I just attributed it to terror sex from the recent trauma, etc

Also living alone on the farm with only her kid for several years

Who could resist a prosthetic Bruce Willis chin?

i thought that abe might be emily blunt's character in the future because at one stage she locks herself in a safe and abe lives in a kind of safe

― pronounced darraghmac (darraghmac), Saturday, November 3, 2012 6:46 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but emily blunt definitely likes to play it "safe" unlike abe who decidedly acts "unsafe"

― 乒乓, Saturday, November 3, 2012 6:48 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha these are kinds of arguments i sometimes see in student papers. i blame high school english classes.

So this was pretty good, I guess, esp from the guy who made Brick, except the second-half "moral Terminator" vibe dragged.

I didn't recognize Emily Blunt. Easier to disguise a chick from me than JoGo. (But why did he have rouged lips and silent-movie brows in some shots, like he was playing Willis as Tom Mix in Sunset? Colorist, plz!)

Not sure I've ever seen a child actor with a gory neck wound before; onward and upward with the arts.

and Paul Dano is going to play wet-faced snivellers for at least another 30 years, right? Please kill him in the first 20 minutes every time.

Couldn't agree more

wet faced snivellers need portraying too, guys

Dan Duryea is dead

Sort of feel bad for the dude. Like what was he supposed to do with that face and voice?

become a millionaire award-winning actor apparently

strippers and killers are listening to "I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight" in 2042 -- called it!

Not sure I've ever seen a child actor with a gory neck wound before; onward and upward with the arts.

No worse than what happens to the kid in either Funny Games, really.

Eurotrash doesnt count.

was brick any good?

For about ten minutes.

i liked it but it seems specifically designed to piss you off whiney

I like Brick enough to have seen it several times but the sound mixing is all wonky on the Netflix streaming version

brick did nothing for me tbh

cuz you never fantasized about being a Teen Detective

same xp

Saw this last night and thought it was... okay. I was hoping I'd enjoy it more than I did. Joe being both Kyle Reese and the Terminator was a nice touch.

I think I like Johnson more as a director than a writer; there are some striking flourishes in this (the ever-increasing pace during the of montage of JGL's murders, the fast-forward through Willis' timeline) but the characters were pretty hollow. He got a great performance out of the kid, though, and although JGL's makeup never stopped being distracting I thought he did a good job of adopting Willis' posture and some of his mannerisms.

the thing about JGL's makeup is that some lighting really made it look unnatural while it looked pretty good in other shots, I agree it was distracting but I'm glad they did it.

It was a valiant effort on the part of the makeup artists; I just didn't think it was terribly convincing. I'd much rather have that awkward-looking makeup than a digital de-aging like Jeff Bridges in Tron Legacy, though. That was a nightmarish vision of life in the Uncanny Valley.

when jeff daniels did his "why are you guys putting on 20th century affectations" rant they should have thrown in an "and your make-up is ridiculous"

brick was good

the thing about JGL's makeup is that some lighting really made it look unnatural while it looked pretty good in other shots, I agree it was distracting but I'm glad they did it.

Basically the better the lighting the worse it looked--outside in broad daylight he looked bizarre

I like Brick lots

I also for the record like Brick lots, but never thought it would require actually saying so. I mean, it's Brick, you know? That's some "I ♥ oxygen" shit.

brick was terrible

how'd you rate oxygen?

think it shld be denied to anyone who liked brick

To even the playing field?

film noair

been years since I've seen a sci fi action movie this satisfying.

when I heard JGL's voice over and saw the incepted landscape I feared for the evening but no. Talk about ending quite far from where we began.

I guess I will see this. altho I absolutely hated Brick.

its no Brick

The most idea-heavy SF film I've seen for a while.

Shakey, I disliked Brick/

The plot is still twaddle but I can't say enough about JGL and Willis' credibility.

JGL's great, even though he doesnt play a harmonica to really evoke classic Bruno era bruce.

where's my frog toy to summon emily blunt

otm

he gave her a choice of condoms she said ribbéd, ribbéd

Croak.

bs

subtle

Just saw this on a plane, pretty great, for all the reasons mentioned above. Bruce Willis delivered the shooting and punching in a more satisfying and believable way than say 'Live Free Or Die Hard'.

A thought on the 'Timeline A' needing the death of a mother to produce thmother.maker, is this not adequately served by the kid exploding and killing what he thought was his real mum (ie his aunt). With no cornfield realisation he may never believe Emily Blunt is his actual mothee

Bought on DVD, was awesome

Did we ever determine how the mother knew what loopers were?

The coolest thing about this movie is that it prompts dozens of logistical questions, not even vis a vis time travel but everything elae

Also dig how much is insinuated

u can even put "don't be a geek" in yr movie and it doesn't stop 'em

True

well everyone in say the strip club knew what a looper was so I don't think it was that big a secret

Wait, in the dinner scene with old Joe, why was the joint suddenly empty right before the Gattmen came rolling in?

I don't recall there being an obvious diegetic reason for it.

Geeking out

http://www.splicetoday.com/moving-pictures/the-lost-boys

Indeed. Not bad.

Thanks

I definitely remember seeing the cars w/ mounted solar panels and thought that was a really cool touch

definitely - the world this movie created was pretty lush, one of its best aspects. you could say that about Brick, too

This was canonically good btw.
Did aero weigh in on this? I think he has insider info.

this is a good movie for the most part.

So I guess I'm the only person corny enough to love the fact that instead of the hero killing the bad guy, he kills himself so the bad guy can have a better life and not turn bad.

"canonically good"

i read that as meaning "shit" so me and forks are pretty much in agreement

So I guess I'm the only person corny enough to love the fact that instead of the hero killing the bad guy, he kills himself so the bad guy can have a better life and not turn bad.

― eris bueller (lukas), Saturday, July 13, 2013 5:49 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

i like it when u put it that way

xp praise jesus, someone else sees this bang average film for what it is

was gonna say ILX has a lot of mediocre SF movie lovers but i don't really wanna go at this on a Saturday night, save it for a bored work day

personally i don't ever need to see this movie again, just thought that aspect of it was rare/interesting.

i kinda loved it, which i didn't expect since I thought Brick was corny and The Brothers Bloom was terrible and am generally vaguely anti-JGL. leaving the whole farm half of the movie out of the trailers was great because, well, trailers tell you too much of the goddamn stories most of the time, any surprise is good and i liked how the pace slowed down.

trying to think if i've ever seen an acting performance by a child under the age of 6 as good as Pierce Gagnon in this movie. a really huge chunk of the movie would've crumpled if he hadn't been so perfect.

Brick pwns

I'm not sure I ever finished Looper. Doesn't it go all Akira?

havent seen it in years but i had a lot of time for brick

iirc it is sadly and fatally torpedoed by one single scene where it panders to the audience and breaks noir character for a cheap bugsy malone lol

Brick is godawful. Makes me hesitant to see this. Also bruce willis.

I'm not sure I ever finished Looper. Doesn't it go all Akira?

― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 13 July 2013 23:41 (17 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah dude u totally missed out on enormous jgl biomass billowing over the cornfields and horribly squishing emily blunt

i love her too, and that she wasn't in the trailers made her sudden appearance a delightful bluntroll

Bugsy malone superior to brick in every way btw. Wish it was available on dvd

bm is the creepiest film ever, i cannot bear it

she was in the trailers! spinning a lighter iirc

Love this. Great flick. Easily, easily,easily the best sci-fi film of - god knows - the past ten, fifteen years?

Wouldn't argue the point. If anything, it's the vaguely b-level SF/F pictures (this one, Primer, Attack The Block, District 9, etc.) that have the best staying power. Want to watch Looper again.

Love this. Great flick. Easily, easily,easily the best sci-fi film of - god knows - the past ten, fifteen years?

Children of Men ftw

This holds up quite well.

saw attack the block just tonight as it happens, naaaaaaah

:(

last night i saw 12 monkeys for the first time ever, and well... that is an odd movie

in lots of interesting and entertaining ways that this POS isn't

well, it's true that Looper doesn't boast a performance as terrible as Brad Pitt's.

doesn't feature any performances at all iirc

whatchu talkin' bout? willis!

seriously think i'm turning into Morbs when people rep for by the numbers drivel like this

i stand with nv

last night i saw 12 monkeys for the first time ever, and well... that is an odd movie

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Sunday, July 14, 2013 5:17 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

when i was younger i thought people who said la jetee was better were challopsing, but i rewatched 12 monkeys p recently and was like... they're right

whatchu talkin' bout? willis!

― king of steens (some dude), Sunday, 14 July 2013 13:35 (1 hour ago) Bookmark

was this just for the sake of it or did you really think bruce was anything more than a cipher itf

nv otm again & again

thing is you don't even have to reach for terry gilliam to find an example of a ~canonical~ sf more switched-on than looper, i mean idk timecop would do

I thought the hard boiled noir affectations of "Brick" were backed up by character. I thought the hard boiled noir affectations of this one were more of a crutch. Everyone was a cipher, just gliding around this sorta story.

Timecop>Looper. At least it's fun.

was this just for the sake of it or did you really think bruce was anything more than a cipher itf

― r|t|c, Sunday, July 14, 2013 10:11 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

for the sake of it mostly. although i did like BW -- initially i was like 'this is such a thankless role, kinda stupid to not only cast such a big star in it but make the actual star of the movie change HIS face on account of the casting,' but ultimately he was good, i liked that they actually let Willis look like a dude pushing 60 and not try to finesse his age with action movie bravado.

Willis also fine in Twelve Monkeys. His gravitas holds these things together.

i liked him in Looper but i kinda hate that gravitas is what we turn to him for these days

he is excellent in twelve monkeys but doesnt work in this

i'd have to undertake the regrettable task of a rescreen to provide a proper explanation tho so w/e

but yeah i guess in 12m his gravitas is organic whereas this it's just look guys bruce amrite

More often than not it works when a slow burn foils a manic performance like Pitt's but in TM Pitt looks worse. Now he'd probably play the Willis role idk.

i liked him in Looper but i kinda hate that gravitas is what we turn to him for these days

― i wanna be a gabbneb baby (Hungry4Ass), Sunday, July 14, 2013 10:33 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

'fun' movies these days are afraid of banter, so when he does one these days like say Red he tends to just quietly smirk a lot

hasn't that been his thing for like

i wanna say

a while

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kCFTj5dgX9k/UKn6rTO98jI/AAAAAAAAOrM/o2WfwWfsUA0/s320/l_92666_037e9b47.jpg

iirc pitt's role in 12m is not really to be credibly insane

like if he's "terrible" in it then what would have been a good performance

Gravitas!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Snxi8HD4OzE

BTW, wtf is up with all the meh? Willis and Pitt are both awesome in "12 Monkeys." That movie is so good.

this thread is rapidly approaching maximum challops so i wouldn't take it too seriously

iirc pitt's role in 12m is not really to be credibly insane

like if he's "terrible" in it then what would have been a good performance

― r|t|c, Sunday, July 14, 2013 10:42 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

yeah but he was still terrible

We do need a max challops light on a thread don't we

I can't even figure this out: there are people who don't like "12 Monkeys?"

seriously think i'm turning into Morbs when people rep for by the numbers drivel like this

― the SI unit of ignorance (Noodle Vague), Sunday, July 14, 2013 12:36 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm - i also feel the same way abt pacific rim, but haven't got the energy to engage in a dustup abt that one

i wanna read your thoughts on PacRim ward

ty h4a but actually the poster known as slam dunk p much said it all for me on the pacrim thread.

In what filmic world is this movie "by the numbers"?

Everything I loathe about Brad Pitt's mere presence is encapsulated in his 12 Monkeys performance. Quite annoying cos I love time travel movies and wish it was anyone but him fucking up that movie.

http://content9.flixster.com/photo/13/58/25/13582531_gal.jpg

pitt is terrible in 12 monkeys obviously; i remember him getting major props around then, though. what i don't remember is willis getting props and MAN he is great in it. 1995? literally his next movie after pulp fiction i guess? he was feelin it. like "hey... fuck... you know what? i AM a good fucking actor!" i mean, he makes lines like "i'm insane, and you're my insanity" actually heartbreaking and real. as a movie, it is not really that great, though. it's VERY confusing, and not because it's clever. like, the dude responsible for the virus in the end has.... nothing to do with brad pitt at all? just coincidentally happens to be a dude who works in pitt's dad's lab? mmkay. pretty unsatisfying shiz for a circular time travel movie where everything "fits together".

anyway, i thought looper was great fun but it would certainly have benefited from a little more of the unhinged humanity that willis usually brings

what i don't remember is willis getting props and MAN he is great in it. 1995? literally his next movie after pulp fiction i guess?

well there's the matter of Die Hard III.

2nd best in this lineup imo:

James Cromwell, Babe
Ed Harris, Apollo 13
Brad Pitt, 12 Monkeys
Tim Roth, Rob Roy
Kevin Spacey, The Usual Suspects

if you mean Roth makes everyone else second place, sure.

How many of you guys hated Pitt in 12 Monkeys at the time, vs. hating him later after getting to know Brad Pitt a bit better? He seemed fine at the time, or at least I don't remember much contemporary Pitt hate, save those who envied his Legends of the Fall locks. I guess I have no problem with him in the movie now. Plenty entertaining. And Bruce rules.

Speaking of problems, I was trying to watch "The Raid: Redemption," but the entire movie seemed to be in slow mo, with non-stop ramping. So I figured, what the fuck, I'll finish Looper. And jesus christ, the second half of that movie is sooooooo slooooooooow, and that doesn't even account for the scenes in slow-mo. It's like they ran out of money/script and just decided to bunker down in that barn with the kid and wait it out at half-speed.

as a movie, it is not really that great, though. it's VERY confusing, and not because it's clever. like, the dude responsible for the virus in the end has.... nothing to do with brad pitt at all? just coincidentally happens to be a dude who works in pitt's dad's lab? mmkay. pretty unsatisfying shiz for a circular time travel movie where everything "fits together".

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Monday, 15 July 2013 20:10 (16 minutes ago) Bookmark

pure rong tbph

haha Brad Pitt is the Alicia Keys of male beefcakes. He's only started getting innaresting past 40.

it's not THAT confusing xp