Saturday 26 January 2013

Why do I love Looper

Looper (directed by Rian Johnson) was the best movie that was made last year. Well, in my opinion, because you may think it's something else, something so much better known and all that shit. But I liked Looper, and being not so well known (at least not in here) is one of the many reasons I loved the film.

So, since I haven't made any posts since that Barney Stinson from HIMYM appreciation post, I thought I could make Looper appreciation post. since I loved every second of that movie.

And here I will give you a list of reasons WHY I enjoyed it so much. And I'm also giving you some screenshots from the film. Ugh, I just realised that there is no screenshots of Sarah and Cid, well, I guess it's OK. 

Let's start with this brief summary of the whole movie:

Joe is a looper. Their job is to eliminate people that criminal organisations send to them from the future. And the only rule they have is:
Don't let the target escape. even if the target is you.


  • The whole movie is a quite like a summary of my taste in movies. It has everything I love and enjoy in movies, there is nothing I would need more to it. Even if it has very few actors, very few characters mentioned by name, I wouldn't add characters. And yes, I will list all those things I love on their own, because what would be the point?
  • Great actors and simply great acting. Joseph Gordon Levitt was brilliant here, because I think he had  the most... difficult job here. Yes, what do I know, I'm not an actor, but still, when you think about it: Acting with Bruce Willis, or more like acting the same character as Bruce Willis... Which one here is more respected, an older actor who's done this longer? Willis. So, JGL has to do his best as being... like Willis, because they share the characters. Some critic was complaining how JGL tried to act too much like Willis, but I think he kind of had to. Because when two actors are the same character, there can be so much that is different, especially if they are older and younger, like here, but still there has to be something that it is the same, that makes them the same person.
  • Brilliant writing, amazing story. I didn't even know the story when I went to see this with Elli. I just had to see a movie because of School, and I just took the first one that looked quite interesting, even though the theatre hadn't put the plot in the Internet. I just thought that hey, that has JGL in it, let's see that. That was it. I mean, when you understood the plot, it was all so brilliant. When I understood what the movie was about, when I realised that this is the film my dad has been talking about, I started love it before it even ended

  • Science Fiction. There was so much science fiction things in it, well d'uh, the genre, and I've loved Science Fiction since I saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show. So yeah, by science fiction I mean these little things besides the genre:
  • Time travel hasn't been invented yet, but in 30 years from now, it will have been. That line was the one that made the time travel thing in this one even better. There is time travel, but not yet, it will be, and some people know about it already. Like... there's so much time travel shit here already, it's so good. Travelling in time is one of my favourite things in books, films and TV-shows, or just in general, not even in fiction. I mean in real life, I would love it too. Why else would  I watch Doctor Who? I love time travel!
  •  Paradoxes, or well, a paradox. There was a paradox, a really, really huge one. I mean, it was so huge, that the ninth doctor would've gone insane, and in Whoniverse anyway, it would've been so... I don't know. It was so huge, that it would've bugged me so much more than it does, because it was like... did they think about the paradox, or did they mean to create this paradox? It bugs me, of course, but without the whole paradox, the story would've been so much... emptier. I mean, if the world would've worked like it should've worked, then... what was the point? You know..
  • The whole story took place in the future. And even in this films presents future, which is like... futures future, you know what I mean? I mean, there was 2044 and 2074 in the same time... kind of. I love films and stories and all sort of stuff that take place in future (I'm repeating the word future too much, aren't I?), because there is so much more... artistic freedom in that, than taking place in present or past. Well, you know, if your story requires that kind of freedom. If a story takes place in the future, there can be so much more new things, so much more... everything, everything you can imagine! It's simply brilliant 


  • Great scenery, or as some people on the Internet would call it, scenery porn. I mean, the scenery wasn't as astonishing as in some films, some TV-shows and such, what I mean is, there wasn't too much scenery, like... we didn't have to watch some fucking scenery all the time. But when there was, it was somewhat beautiful, it... gave a great picture of where everything happened. Yeah, that is what scenery is for, but... still.
  • Some little details in what they were shooting. Like when they were actually filming the watch that younger Joe looked at, and then older Joe looked at it too, about 10-15 minutes later. And her photo on older Joe's watch, I loved it. And then there was this cloud (a photo above) that was always there when Joe was waiting for his loop. It was there. It always was there, and it was... somewhat annoying cloud, but it still was there, and it's now part of the movie. Because when I think about Looper, I usually think about that scene, if I don't start to think about the whole plot and stuff


  • There was the right amount of action in the movie. Ok, well, let's be honest: I don't know about action, because I'm not even sure how action is defined in movies. So, let's say it this way: there was violence. And it was just the right amount of it. Because I enjoy... violence in films, even though it makes me sound very sick, but it's quite... liberating. It's just like violence in the games, except that video games are more liberating, but still
  • And when there is action (and now I'm actually talking about the genre, not the thing that I can't tell apart from simple violence), Bruce Willis is being always so amazingly brilliant. I don't even care, if he's "the same in every movie", like some people say, because I've liked all his characters I've seen so far. And Looper is the film that made me love Bruce Willis.
  • The fact that there was actually a TK-mutation. It made people able to use telekinesis, even though it wasn't much. People had hoped that they'd become superheros, but they can only like... put a coin in the air, and that's it. ...Until we meet Sarah and Cid. Sarah can do a bit more than this coin trick, but Cid can do so much more. But the whole thing was like a reference to X-men: Last Stand, I mean... there was so many parallels between Cid and Phoenix / Jean Gray. Yes, it made me sad, because Jean Gray always makes me sad, but it was still kind of cool. Because there is a person, who has the great, great power and ability to do something, but then it is out of control and... Just like Jean Gray tried to put all this away, and she accidentally created Phoenix: this is just like when Cid is just a kid and he can't control it either. Even if their "not controlling it" is quite different.

  • Life in the day, which is when we see how Joe was doing the 30 years before he was sent back, and he changed the story. Anyway, we didn't hear a word from his future. There wasn't any dialogue in it. There just were simply 30 years, and we know exactly how it went, even if nobody says anything about it: we see how Joe is doing first, and then how he starts to.. well. And we can see how he changes again. We see all those years very quickly, in a very few scenes, but we still know everything
  • And this brings me to how older Joe met his wife. I simply love that scene, I mean they didn't ruin their first meeting with too much... sugary. It was quite simple scene: We still can't here a word what Joe is saying, before she turns around, but when Joe raises his eyebrows a bit, his facial expression is telling us everything. We can just imagine what he was saying to her. Especially when she just gives him a finger
  • The fact that we don't know Joe's wife's name. She just is there, being astoundingly loving and beautiful, taking care of him when he is at his worst, because all this time being a looper..., being killed by Rainmaker's men... For us she's there for at most, 5 minutes, but for Joe... she was there all the time. And he never tells her name to anyone: not even younger Joe. We don't know who she is. It makes her quite mysterious, and even though I adore her, I don't know a thing about her.


  • Just the right amount of romance. Older Joe and his wife, younger Joe and that prostitute, whose name I can't even remember, and younger Joe and Sarah. There is something, but there is never too much of it. I don't like it when movie just takes romance and shoves it to your face. I love romance when it's subtle, when it's eclectic. (There is few exceptions, like The Fountain for example)
  • The ending. It was something I did not expect. I hate the endings that are so predictable you want to have the writer's head on a stick. But in Looper, it was perfect. It was tragic, it was devastating, it was sad to even those who had a happy ending in the movie, but it was perfect. 



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