Discussion of Looper with spoilers

[dalebert]

Just coffee talk. No big whoop. Talk amongst yahselves.

[Damien Valley]

I saw it and even though I liked it I expected a bit more from it.  The first half is really good but then the plot takes kind of an unexpected turn.  Not really a twist, but just a different direction from what most are expecting.

Joseph Gordon Levitt is really good in it and is obviously the star.  I thought Bruce Willis was good but he is very under used.  This is just a guess but it kind of seemed sort of like a passing of the torch.  Levitt has been featured more and more in action movies which is kind of surprising considering his small stature.

[Bill Brasky]

I liked the part where the dude did the thing, where he put a bunch of popcorn up his asshole.

Sorry to spoil it for ya.

[dalebert]

I liked the part where the dude did the thing, where he put a bunch of popcorn up his asshole.

That must have been when I took a pee break. Damn it. Why did they have to serve me such a giant glass of seltzer water at the cinema pub? Then you feel a compulsion to keep drinking it.

[anarchir]

I enjoyed it. You're right though, it did take a different route in the last third of the movie. I actually laughed at the one point in the movie where Bruce Willis just basically said "fuck it" and literally killed everyone.

[dalebert]

I think I was let down because people raved about how good it was and it was really just okay. I thought I had predicted a clever twist that was coming up but they didn't actually go there. I thought the fuck-up mobster was going to be the younger version of the head mobster and that he was trying to protect him so he wouldn't die himself. That would have been an interesting element.

Joseph's make-up to make him look like Bruce was pretty distracting. He actually looks kind of fake, like he's CGI or something, particularly his eyes. I don't know how much is because I know (and like) what he actually looks like.

I think part of my problem enjoying this is I can't help over-thinking a time travel plot. In a sense, that's kind of the point. It's supposed to be convoluted and you have to think hard about it to get what's going on, but then you can't help but find a bunch of holes in it.

Like, if the younger Bruce Willis suddenly has a revelation that he shouldn't kill the kid, why does he need to kill himself. Wouldn't he have decided at that point not to do it and so the older one would suddenly realize it too and stop? And why does he need to carve something on his arm by the same notion? They pointed out that his memories were being re-written as he did things. That wouldn't be as cinematic though.

A bigger issue, however, is that they showed events could be drastically altered. The first time he went back, he got shot. The knowledge of having shot himself somehow alters what he does in the 2nd loop so that he escapes being tied up and then he doesn't get shot, but I don't see how that matters. He knew even before he actually shot his future self that he would at some point have to shoot his future self. I didn't see any knowledge gained that would cause him to be able to escape the 2nd time when he didn't the first time. Ultimately it just didn't seem to work.

[anarchir]

There were certainly plot holes. Like why they didnt use their time machines for useful purposes. Or if they were going to use them to kill people, why didnt they just send people back in time to somewhere they'd die at. Like a volcano or the ocean.