• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Looper (dir. Rian Johnson; Gordon-Levitt, Willis)

Status
Not open for further replies.
I never expect such things, especially when it's a popcorn movie with the Expendable Seal of Approval™.
 
I went to a screening last night. As someone who generally isn't a fan of Rian Johnson (didn't like The Brothers Bloom, *hated* Brick, and went into this with very mild expectations)... I thought it was pretty damn great. Easily one of my favorite movies of the year, I really really enjoyed it.
 
Don't confuse pre-release hype with post-release feelings on the movie. GL isn't good.

But neither are Cap or MI4.
 
Don't confuse pre-release hype with post-release feelings on the movie. GL isn't good.

But neither are Cap or MI4.

Well, I agree with Cap. I've grown to hate that movie, when I was meh on it at release.

MI4 was awesome though.
 
Thought it was fantastic. One of the more interesting movies made in a while and best movie ive seen this year (havent seen the master yet).

I knew absolutely nothing going into the film though if that helps.
 
I went to a screening last night. As someone who generally isn't a fan of Rian Johnson (didn't like The Brothers Bloom, *hated* Brick, and went into this with very mild expectations)... I thought it was pretty damn great. Easily one of my favorite movies of the year, I really really enjoyed it.

You don't like Brothers Bloom? I always knew you hated fun.
 
Just came back from seeing this: Really, really good movie.

Smart, inventive and really well put together. SF how it should be done.
 
Gonna check the movie out in a couple of hours. Ended up getting a shirt and a pretty sweet pocket watch from whoever made it, by far the coolest stuff I have gotten while working in projection. The watch is awesome.
 
I saw it today. The movie went into an unexpectedly dark place toward the end...

Also:
The telekinesis stuff felt really out of place and shoehorned in for the rainmaker reveal.
 
I really liked it. Was totally not what I was expecting, but all I saw was the very first trailer they put out. I kinda expected more plot twists than there actually were though.

I highly recommend it.
 
I really liked it except for the final 5-10 minutes, which I really didn't like. So:

a) predictable, and;
b) worse than that, so completely out of character. Joe (both of them) was a completely self-absorbed asshole throughout the entire film. I didn't buy for a second him deciding to sacrifice himself to save the child and mother when every single thing done prior to that was done in the name of self preservation. It wasn't earned at all.

Still though, its 95% of a great movie and easily the best thing Johnson has done yet. Some really fun dialogue, several very cool visual sequences, great performances from everyone and tightly edited. A very cool take on sci-fi and time travel, just needed another polish at the writing level.
 
GREAT movie, but I agree with the reservations with the ending.

If they had shown more of a conncection with Joel and...blondie, it would've worked. Or at least more time after they had sex.

Actually, while I'm typing this, it occurs to me that we see that Bruce Willis Joel had that in him, that kind of love, and willingness to do fucked up shit for it. He just needed someone to give it to him. So maybe that is where we see it, and then young JGL is starting to feel how BW did.

So....i dunno.

I loved this movie.
 
I really liked it except for the final 5-10 minutes, which I really didn't like. So:

a) predictable, and;
b) worse than that, so completely out of character. Joe (both of them) was a completely self-absorbed asshole throughout the entire film. I didn't buy for a second him deciding to sacrifice himself to save the child and mother when every single thing done prior to that was done in the name of self preservation. It wasn't earned at all.

Still though, its 95% of a great movie and easily the best thing Johnson has done yet. Some really fun dialogue, several very cool visual sequences, great performances from everyone and tightly edited. A very cool take on sci-fi and time travel, just needed another polish at the writing level.


Yeah that is true, I thought he would kill Willis and then live out his time raising the kid not to be crazy but I suppose that would be just as predictable?

My gf came out and said "I cant believe he kissed him mum!!"
She thought the kid was JGL and BW as a child because of how he referenced being on a train and hating everyone as a kid rather than that being how he linked how it would play out had he lived/killed his mum etc.

Oh yeah and to make sure I got this, but does he kill himself, lives aslong as hes given with the gold, meeting the asian woman, He then gets sent back a second time to get revenge for what happened to his wife etc because of rain man which lead him to the films "current" loop?
 
Solo, Sculli and Expendable approved! What else do you need GAF?

Regarding your spoiler I think JGL learned A LOT about himself on the farm, handled delicately in a few scenes. Due to that, I believed him in his final realization.
 
Solo, Sculli and Expendable approved! What else do you need GAF?

Regarding your spoiler I think JGL learned A LOT about himself on the farm, handed delicately in a few scenes. Due to that, I believed him in his final realization.

Yeah, basically

he learned the same sort of things that Bruce Willis learned with china babe, and was also able to make hard choices for her, as John Mclane did.
 
I really liked it except for the final 5-10 minutes, which I really didn't like. So:

a) predictable, and;
b) worse than that, so completely out of character. Joe (both of them) was a completely self-absorbed asshole throughout the entire film. I didn't buy for a second him deciding to sacrifice himself to save the child and mother when every single thing done prior to that was done in the name of self preservation. It wasn't earned at all.

Still though, its 95% of a great movie and easily the best thing Johnson has done yet. Some really fun dialogue, several very cool visual sequences, great performances from everyone and tightly edited. A very cool take on sci-fi and time travel, just needed another polish at the writing level.

Yeah, like I said
not the ending I would have taken, but an ending I'm willing to roll with. I think what makes makes that ending okay is the scene right after JGL finds out what the kid can do and decides that he will kill him. Then coming upon this blood-soaked, scared-shitless little kid.. well, I'm willing to buy that the image of that is enough to shake him out of apathy. Of course, killing himself there isn't logically sound in the scheme of the film, but I give Johnson a pass on it, because I felt that through all the shit, a hope for the future was earned.
 
He was with her for like 2 days. A person doesn't make that kind of a radical change in 2 days, which is why I can't believe it and say it wasn't earned.

I would have liked the film to end with a more ballsier approach. Some thing like

a)
Willis kills the mother, JGL kills Willis, kid gets away and the cycle repeats itself (non paradoxical time travel)

or

b)
Willis kills the kid, JGL kills Willis, JGL gets to live an undetermined future without threat of the Rainmaker or the closing of the loop in 30 years
 
Can someone explain
the two Older Joes that come back? First time, Older Joe ends up in the present, runs, younger Joe chases, etc. until he falls from his apartment and ends up on the roof of that car. It immediately cuts to younger Joe back in the field and killing Older Joe, who is coming back a second time now?

How did Older Joe get sent back twice?
 
He was with her for like 2 days. A person doesn't make that kind of a radical change in 2 days, which is why I can't believe it and say it wasn't earned.

I would have liked the film to end with a more ballsier approach. Some thing like

a)
Willis kills the mother, JGL kills Willis, kid gets away and the cycle repeats itself (non paradoxical time travel)

or

b)
Willis kills the kid, JGL kills Willis, JGL gets to live an undetermined future without threat of the Rainmaker or the closing of the loop in 30 years

Except that
only your a) option is plausible. If Willis were to kill the kid, he would immediately disappear, because he would never have gone back in the first place.

But yes, a) is the ending I've been saying that I would have gone with.
 
Can someone explain
the two Older Joes that come back? First time, Older Joe ends up in the present, runs, younger Joe chases, etc. until he falls from his apartment and ends up on the roof of that car. It immediately cuts to younger Joe back in the field and killing Older Joe, who is coming back a second time now?

How did Older Joe get sent back twice?

It was showing what the previous loop had always been. Before the timeline suddenly changed so Johnson could illogically give us a happy ending, the Joe would always kill his older self in the field, then go to China, meet the girl, she dies, he gets sent back gets killed in the field. Rinse, repeat. The Joe that kills the older version of himself in the field is the one that we come to know as Bruce Willis' present self.
 
Just got back from seeing this. Thought the first hour was very interesting but then it just seemed to drag on a bit when things got to the farm house. A decent movie though but I thought the first half was definitely more interesting and superior to the latter half.
 
Can someone explain
the two Older Joes that come back? First time, Older Joe ends up in the present, runs, younger Joe chases, etc. until he falls from his apartment and ends up on the roof of that car. It immediately cuts to younger Joe back in the field and killing Older Joe, who is coming back a second time now?

How did Older Joe get sent back twice?

First one: JGL Joe
Second one: Willis Joe

Willis does what JGLCan't.
 
If Willis were to kill the kid, he would immediately disappear, because he would never have gone back in the first place.

? Yes he would have. ALL Loopers have their loops closed, regardless of there being the existence of the Rainmaker or not.
 
After seeing this movie, I think JGL could do a good Max Payne movie. Just sayin.

Loved the film,
When the kid flips out with his telek. powers, it certainly flipped me out, I knew he had powers, but the way it comes out, late in the film. It just knocks you out.

Movie really reminds me of the first terminator. How somebody with knowledge of the future can affect the past, but it goes deeper with the same character with an older self in the same timeline. It's all really fucked up and I like it alot.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom