Looper (2012) | Sci-Fi Saturdays

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This movie will spin you right round, like a record, right round.

Looper is a time travel film that presents itself in new and innovative ways, utilizing a paradoxical structure and complex characters to create an engrossing sci-fi film. Audiences may come for Bruce Willis, but they’ll stay for everything else.

First Impressions

This high-concept trailer introduces Bruce Willis talking to a younger version of himself. They are Loopers, people who kill other people using illegal time travel. The one rule is, don’t let the person escape alive. That’s what young Bruce Willis does when he sees his older self appear. There’s much action, running, and gunning in a paradoxical film about the perils of time travel. There will be much discussion of the Looper this week.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

In Kansas, 2044, Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) works as a Looper, a group of young men who kill people sent back in time from 30 years in the future. Time travel has been outlawed, and the only ones using it are criminals who send people they need eliminated back in time to be killed and disposed of in the past. Joe makes four bars of silver for every person he kills. He stashes half of them in a hole in his floor. His days are spent killing, getting paid, taking drugs, and partying with his other Looper friends, including Seth (Paul Dano). He also occasionally sees Suzie (Piper Perabo), a dancer and prostitute at the club.

When the criminals in the future are done with their helpers in the past, they send the future version of that person back to be killed. This is known as closing the Loop. Seth misses closing his Loop and is hunted by Abe (Jeff Daniels), the leader of the Loopers and Gat Men. Joe gives up his friend to protect himself. Joe goes out for his next kill, but the body is late in arriving. When it does, he is shocked to see an older version of himself (Bruce Willis) who knocks him out and takes off. Instead of running, Joe returns home to try and retrieve his silver, but is met by Kid Blue (Noah Segan), a Gat Man sent to kill him.

The film rewinds with Old Joe’s arrival, but this time, Joe kills his older self. Joe gets his payday and goes to Shanghai to live out his days. He becomes a more violent gangster and hitman, partying often. In his 25th year there, he meets a woman (Summer Qing) and marries her, enjoying his life until 5 years later when men in black wide-brimmed hats who work for The Rainmaker–a “holy terror boss man”–come in, killing Old Joe’s wife and kidnapping him. They tie him up to send him back in time to be killed by his younger self, but he fights back and manages to time travel without bonds. He arrives in the past, knocks his younger self out, and runs.

Old Joe gets new memories as Joe does things differently. Old Joe heads to his old apartment, saving his younger self from the Gat Men. With a number written on his hand and a printout of a map, Old Joe begins his journey before finding a new scar on his arm directing him to meet with Joe. The two find each other at a diner they frequent. Old Joe refuses to discuss time travel and reveals he has come back to kill the Rainmaker as a child, before he can gain power. He has a list of three potential children. Joe manages to get a piece of the map before they both take off into a cornfield when Kid Blue and his men show up for them.

Joe finds himself held hostage by Sara (Emily Blunt) on her farm, having been led there by the piece of Old Joe’s map he ripped off. Sara reveals that the number is the birthdate and hospital code for her 5-year-old son, Cid (Pierce Gagnon). Meanwhile, Old Joe heads to the first address on his list and kills a young boy. Joe suffers from withdrawal from his drug addiction, which Sara helps him with. She wants him gone, but he needs to stay to catch Old Joe and make himself right with Abe. When a Gat Man, Jesse (Garret Dillahunt), shows up at the farm looking for either version of Joe, Cid hides Joe in a secret tunnel. Thinking Jesse has left, Joe returns, but the Gat Man returns. He startles Cid, who falls down the stairs, releasing a burst of telekinetic activity that kills Jesse.

Joe is shocked by this revelation, realizing that Cid will grow up to be the Rainmaker. Sara believes that she can help control the boy’s emotional and deadly outbursts by being a good mother and teaching him self-control. Old Joe, now with the memory of Cid, shows up at the farm intent on killing the boy. He tells Joe to leave as he takes aim at Cid. Sara stands between Old Joe and Cid, protecting him. Joe realizes that this is the moment that will create the Rainmaker, as Cid watches his mother get gunned down by a crazy man. Joe cannot possibly get to Old Joe in time, so he does the next best thing and shoots himself, which causes Old Joe to vanish from the timeline. Sara calms Cid, and she takes him back to the house, bandages his wounds, and cuddles with him in bed.

“I don’t want to talk about time travel because if we start talking about it then we’re going to be here all day talking about it, making diagrams with straws.” – Old Joe

History in the Making

Looper proves that it is still possible to create new and interesting time travel films. It was based on an original idea by writer/director Rian Johnson and is his first science-fiction film. This film was his breakthrough hit, even though he’d been working professionally for almost a decade. He had made Brick, a neo-noir film with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, in 2005 (which started over 20 years of collaborations between the two of them), and followed that with a story about two con men called The Brothers Bloom, with Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo. Between that film and Looper, he also directed three acclaimed (and most popular) episodes of the television series Breaking Bad. Looper seems like a departure from the type of material that Johnson had worked on, being a sci-fi film about time travel, but at its core, it’s still a character-driven film with mystery and noir overtones.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt started acting at a young age, with a role in the television show 3rd Rock from The Sun and films such as Angels in the Outfield and 10 Things I Hate About You. As he transitioned into more mature roles, with films like Hesher and 500 Days of Summer, audiences began to see what an amazing performer he had become. His previous sci-fi film, Inception, provided him wider exposure to an audience who could see a more mature actor. But when it was revealed that he would be playing a younger version of the iconic Bruce Willis in this film, I just didn’t see it happening. Amazingly, the production utilized some minor prosthetics to match Gordon-Levitt’s face to Willis’s. Apart from that, it was a master-class in characterization as Gordon-Levitt appropriated mannerisms and ticks from Willis, losing himself in this role and adding another amazing film to his filmography.

Kudos to Johnson and his team for casting Bruce Willis in the role of the antagonist in the film. He is a beloved actor and performer who always plays the hero, however reluctantly. His fame was cemented by the Die Hard films, of which four out of five had been released by the time of Looper. He also had a string of sci-fi films to his credit, including the time travel-based 12 Monkeys, The Fifth Element, and most popularly, Armageddon. The character he plays in Looper begins as a sympathetic character, trying to right the wrongs of his life, but soon takes a dark turn as he resorts to the murder of children–an often discussed time travel topic–in order to ensure his future/past happiness.

Genre-fication

Films about time travel are an important part of the science-fiction genre, if not one of the most important aspects. They have been a staple of popular sci-fi movies since 1960s The Time Machine, and were taken to another level in 1985 with Back to the Future. Truly new and unique time travel films are few and far between, with many taking the same paths and themes as those that have gone before them. Primer, from 2004, was a good example of a filmmaker taking another path in telling a story about characters traveling in time. Looper continues that tradition with several unexpected consequences. The first thing the film does is eschew making the film contemporary, as the majority of previous time travel films have done. It takes place in 2044, 32 years in the future, and makes the conceit that time travel was invented 30 years beyond that. It places the fantastic technology just out of the reach of modern audiences by enough years that it becomes less of a question about how this may have come about. Looper also refuses to answer any questions about the “how” of the technology. Willis’ character becomes angry when asked about how it works and refuses to explain the technology by “making diagrams with straws,” as movies often want to do. The film does as the adage states: it shows, not tells, how time travel works. When Seth allows his older self to go missing, the Gat Men grab young Seth and perform several surgeries on him. They remove his fingers, his nose, a leg (or two), which immediately manifests on older Seth in real time as body parts begin to disappear. A dramatic and memorable explanation of the power of consequences through time.

Parallels can be drawn between Looper and other films, such as 12 Monkeys (gritty time travel process) and Witness (man protecting a child from a killer). But the most interesting parallel that may not be immediately obvious is The Terminator. In both films, a killer from the future returns to the past to kill the child of a woman named Sara (or Sarah). It’s up to the protagonist to protect the woman and her son (or by protecting the woman, which in turn protects her unborn son) from the killer. Looper presents its story in a closed loop of actions, which are paradoxical but may indicate alternate realities. In Old Joe’s timeline, he always closed the Loop on himself and grew up to marry a woman in Shanghai before getting kidnapped by the Rainmaker’s men and sent back in time. But when that older man realized that he was about to be sent to the past, remembering his memories of his younger self committing the act, he alters the course of time by returning without his bonds and knocks out his younger self. This paradox can be seen to have introduced an alternate timeline where Old Joe’s actions would create the Rainmaker–if Joe had allowed his older self to murder Cid. As the title suggests, it’s a loop, but not just a single circle. It’s more of an infinity or Mobiüs loop that twists and turns over itself to add some additional complexity.

This change of action creates complexity with the characters. The audience follows and becomes sympathetic to Joe during the first 30 minutes of the film. He is a young character who has made some questionable choices, but is doing his best to get out of the Looper lifestyle. When he gets his payday, in the original timeline, he leaves the country as he has dreamt of doing, but continues with increasingly morally dark actions. That is, until he meets a woman who saves him from himself and turns his life around. When he is sent back in time, his only thought is of getting her back and somehow preventing her murder, but killing the person in the past who was responsible for it. He fails to see how his actions may complicate or completely eradicate the possibility of meeting this woman in the first place. Time travel films and stories often postulate the idea that by going back in time and murdering Hitler as a child, so that he never grew up to become the dangerous leader that he would become. Most argue that this is paradoxical, since it’s unclear what else may change in the world as a result of those actions. Looper takes that thought experiment to task. Time travel may have never been invented as a consequence of the traveler’s actions. Many fail to pursue the moral implications of killing a baby or a child. Here, audiences who might be rooting for Bruce Willis to be the hero and regain his life, but become horrified to see him murder a small child (which thankfully happens off-screen). He, too, is distraught with his actions, yet continues with this course of action because he is a hardened killer who will stop at nothing to meet his goal. It is equally heartbreaking when Joe decides that the only way to stop his older self is to commit suicide. He sees the future in front of him and knows that this is the only way. It’s a moment of self-awareness and selflessness that has gone unseen in all aspects of the character until the end.

Societal Commentary

Thematically, Looper is not much different from other sci-fi films about time travel. It deals with the ideas of fate versus free will and the nature of regret over past actions. The character of Joe is always looking out for himself. Having been raised on the streets and being given a life by Abe, he realizes he does not want to change his life by giving up money, clothes, drugs, and women, for a life of poverty. That’s why Joe eventually rats out Seth to the Gat Men. He realizes how much he has to lose. In the original timeline, his chance to get out of the lifestyle was moving to Shanghai. Unfortunately, the montage shows him becoming more hardened and ruthless as he continues being a hit man. But he soon finds a woman who helps him get sober and turns his life around. It’s no wonder that Old Joe wants to do whatever it takes to get that life back. But Old Joe hasn’t learned any lesson at this point. He’s still the same person who sold out his best friend to do what was best for Joe. The murder of the children was not an altruistic act to save humanity (as with the thought experiment about killing baby Hitler). It was cold-blooded murder that would benefit one person, and that person was Joe.

The film also deals with the idea of what is most important in life needing to take precedence. Not for oneself, but for others and for the greater good. This is typified by Sara, and eventually Joe himself (the young version). Sara is revealed to be the birth mother of Cid, even though he believes that another woman (Sara’s sister) is his real mom. She had Cid young and was more interested in partying in the city than taking care of her boy. But when her sister died, she returned home to take care of Cid, giving up everything that she thought was important. Her life is now all about taking care of her boy. The film goes deeper than that in its depiction of her need to take care of Cid. She feels a responsibility to teach him to control his gift so that he doesn’t hurt himself or anyone else. She has given up everything that she enjoyed, including her vices–like smoking–in order to raise Cid as a caring human being. This is what Joe realizes by the end of the film. Nothing has been more important to him than himself and his things. But at this point, he sees the circle completing itself. How Cid would grow out of control to kill many people, himself included. Joe takes responsibility for the first time in his life, with an experience that his older self never had, and chooses to kill himself to protect Sara, Cid, and many other people who will never know the sacrifice he made.

The Science in The Fiction

One element of the film that hasn’t been discussed yet is its use of other science-fiction elements apart from time travel. According to Joe’s voiceover, 10% of the population has a mutation that gives them the power of telekinesis, or being able to move objects with their minds. He says that everyone thought they’d get superheroes, probably referring to characters like The X-Men, but all they got were people being able to hover quarters above their hands. Every other film about time travel focuses on technological futurism without intermingling physiological futurism. At first, this seems like just another element to let audiences know that the film is occurring in the future, but it soon becomes clear that it’s part of a major plot point. After Joe and Sarah spend an intimate night together, she reveals that she, too, has the TK gene, as she makes her silver lighter fly circles above her hand. She claims her powers are stronger than the average city kid who hit on her with floating quarters, as she would use her powers to force those quarters to stay still while the guy would “bust a blood vessel” trying to make it float. It’s then revealed that Cid has an even stronger mutation of the gene, which makes him insanely powerful, especially when startled or in emotional distress. This twist on who the Rainmaker is and how he was able to take over so easily in the future is more than any other genre film of this type has done before.

Looper also has technological advancements to let audiences know it takes place in the future. While most people get around in what appear to be gasoline-powered automobiles, several characters are seen with cool hover bikes. These jet-powered, floating, single-seat motorcycles are to Looper what the Mattel Hoverboard is to Back to the Future Part II. These are not a big part of the film, but a nice element added to give that futuristic feel. Characters, like Joe, also use ocular drugs. Whatever this drug du jour is, it can be administered with an eyedropper, which appears to speed up the characters getting high. This is presumably due to the increased number of capillaries in this area, as well as its proximity to the brain. However it works, it certainly seems addictive and effective.

The Final Frontier

Rian Johnson would follow up Looper with the most prestigious film of his career, being tapped to direct the eighth film in the Star Wars saga, and the middle film of the Sequel Trilogy, The Last Jedi. It was received with mixed reviews based on fan expectation and Lucasfilm’s apparent lack of direction for this trilogy, but is considered to be the best film of the Sequel Trilogy. Since then, he has focused on decidedly non-sci-fi related projects with his trilogy of original detective stories featuring Benoit Blanc: Knives Out, Glass Onion, and Wake Up Dead Man. He also produces (with the occasional writing and directing credit) the crime series Poker Face. He has reportedly been asked to return to the Galaxy Far, Far Away with a new trilogy of films outside the Skywalker storyline. We’ll all keep our fingers crossed that those films materialize.

Looper represents the middle film in a trilogy of sci-fi works starring Emily Blunt between 2011 and 2014. The first one was The Adjustment Bureau with Matt Damon, where she was the woman who caused Damon’s life to run off-track–according to the Bureau. Her next film, Edge of Tomorrow with Tom Cruise, puts her in another time travel film, a time loop film to be precise, where she gets to be a tough and action-oriented soldier. Her future work also includes the sci-fi/horror films A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place Part II. Even though she was known for her role in The Devil Wears Prada, Looper is one of the films that brought her attention to a wider audience.

As a time travel film, Looper creates new and uncertain moments for audiences, as their normal notion of how films like this are supposed to work. The acting, writing, and cinematography all combine to create an interesting story about people, not technology, that emphasizes the reality of human experience and invites audiences to ask what they might do in a similar situation.

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