"Looper"

If you could go back to any point in history, what would you change?  How would you do it?

What if it was the other way around; if you were faced with someone telling you that you were going to damn the future?  What would you do?

A few days ago, I wrote a post about “Primer” and about the different types of time travel stories. One aspect of time travel stories that I neglected to acknowledge was that of perspective.  The time travel aspects which I mentioned in that post all had the same perspective: the time traveler is the protagonist. However, there are a whole set of stories, few as they may be, where the time traveler is the antagonist. They’ve come back in time to change history, reshape it the way they want, and the protagonist is the one who has to stop them from hurting those who get in their way.

Prior to “Looper”, the two notable films of this type are those in the “Terminator” franchise, and the latest “Star Trek” film. In the “Terminator” films, a series of successively more sophisticated robot assassins from a post-apocalyptic future controlled by machines are sent back to kill the leader of the future human resistance at different points in his life. In the second of these films, we find that scientists who had found the technology left after the first assassin’s destruction are now developing the science which will eventually lead to the future from whence it came.  In the latest “Star Trek” film, when the last survivors from the destruction of a planet are pulled back in time by the technology which was intended to save it, their very presence alters the timeline irrevocably, altering the destinies of the series’ characters along with an entire race.

With “Looper”, filmmaker Rian Johnson brings an original aspect to this type of story:  What do you do when that threat from the future is you?

“Looper” is the third film to be written and directed by Rian Johnson.  Johnson debuted in 2005 with “Brick”.  “Brick” is a revelation: a noir mystery thriller in the best style Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Joseph Gordon Levitt plays the sleuth; a student with a talent for getting information and solving problems at a high school embroiled with drugs and crime, enlisted for help by an old flame who then goes missing. The story is a complete noir world with all the best earmarks of the genre, including the raffish sleuth, the arcane crime boss, the relentless tough, and the duplicitous femme fatale, but set (and by set, I mean embedded tightly) in a high school, and with a clever slang all of it’s own, giving this film a style all it’s own. Johnson could not have shown more potential as a new filmmaker; he had created a world in the film.

In his followup film, “The Brothers Bloom”, Johnson delves into a different type of noir film: the caper. For the uninitiated, the caper is the story of the committing of a crime.  The most critically acclaimed of these is “The Sting”, and the most widely known currently would be “Ocean’s Eleven”. In a caper, a band of thieves, con artists and other disreputables conspire against a whale and/or a heavy, to take the whale’s money and to at least embarrass or, more often, get out from under the thumb of the heavy. In the two aforementioned films, the whale and the heavy are one and the same; a power broker against whom our rapscallion heroes seek to make a retaliatory strike with the reward of long money. However, in “The Brothers Bloom”, our merry band of miscreants are the titular brothers, Stephen and Bloom; grifters of literary esteem and endowment; the whale is a charmingly whimsical and bubbly millionaire heiress shut-in; and the heavy is the nefarious ‘Diamond Dog’, world-renowned thief, con-man and criminal mastermind who wants the boys either dead or back in his fold, but who Stephen wants to see dead and Bloom just wants to be out from under.  Stephen is the orchestrator, writing his cons “with thematic arcs and embedded symbolism and shit” with Bloom as his ever-suffering sidekick, unable to have any sort of real life, wanting out.

With Johnson’s latest film, “Looper”, his penchant for noir falls second to a story of time travel, and, therefore, of regret. However, the story is original on multiple fronts. In this film, Johnson’s noir considerations take the form of a mob story, a tale of drug addicts turned into assassins, brought into a ‘family’, given one extended contract: eighty-six whoever they’re sent at a given time and place. Just so happens they’re being sent from 30 years in the future. They’re sent their kills with their payment and, after enough, they’re sent one last job: their future self, and get paid enough to be set up for the next thirty years. They’re called ‘loopers’ because, when they do their last job, they’ve ‘closed their loop’.

Joseph Gordon Levitt and Bruce Willis both play Joe, a looper. Levitt plays the young Joe, before his loop has closed. Willis plays old Joe, who, when he gets taken to be ‘closed’, fights back, and goes back anyway, hoping to change things, make them better; to take down the tenebrous overlord who has degraded the future in which he’s grown old. When Old Joe gets away from his younger self, Young Joe is on the lamb from the ‘family’ and chasing after the old man to close his loop and get back in.  Meanwhile, Old Joe is tracking down his mysterious enemy; a talented and dangerous telekinetic who is, in Young Joe’s time, no more than a child, and taking on the ‘family’ at the same time.

“Looper” is part “12 Monkeys”, part “Terminator”, part “Fugitive”, part “Pulp Fiction”. Like “Brick” and “The Brothers Bloom” before it, the characters play like a Chandler or a Hammett or an Elmore Leonard. The continuities and causalities are brilliant, they would make even H.G. Wells’ or Einstein's head’s spin.

What is most impressive is the scale.  As incredible as “Brick” was, it was very small; a few small sets, basic locations, small cast.  “The Brothers Bloom” was not much larger, however, it did boast some beautiful locations.  This is his first ‘big budget’ film: futuristic settings, superhero effects, incredible stunts.

And to whoever it was that made Joseph Gordon Levitt up to look like Bruce Willis did it perfectly.

"Primer"

“Man, are you hungry? I haven’t eaten since later this afternoon.”

This was my favorite line from the movie “Primer”; it’s everything the movie tried to be: clever, but subtle.  It’s a different sort of time travel story, but, while concept behind the story is original, the way it’s told falls flat.

Time Travel stories are as different as snowflakes; but what defines the challenges within the story falls to two questions: how do we travel through time, and, more importantly, what effect do we have on the time and place we’ve come to and to ourselves when we try to change things in the past?
The answer to the former question typically has one of three possibilities: 1) by accident / don’t know (“Army of Darkness”, “Groundhog Day”, “Time Traveler’s Wife”); 2) by force of will (“Somewhere In Time”, “Butterfly Effect”); 3) through some sort of device (“Back to the Future”, “Timeline”).  The issue with the second possibility is “how do we invoke our will to travel?”  The issue created with having a device is “what do we do if the device breaks while we’re in another time?”  The real question at the root of all of these is “How do we get home?”.

The answer to the latter question is (typically) one of four possibilities: 1) we can’t change anything, and, even if we change things, time and history move on around us (“The Time Machine”); 2) we can change things, but, in trying to change certain events, we end up causing the outcome we sought to alter (“12 Monkeys”); 3) we need to be extremely careful what we change, because changing even the smallest change in the past could lead to drastic changes to the future (most time travel stories, including “Back to the Future”, “Butterfly Effect” and “Looper”); and 4) we can change anything we want, because our very presence in the past has created an alternate universe, so we will not be affected by any changes we make (JJ Abrams “Star Trek”).

There is a third question which I didn’t approach, because it’s not usually addressed in time travel stories, which is “If you travel back closely enough within your own life, what would happen if you went back to meet yourself?”

This last question is the most relevant of the three, because it spawns the real question at the root of time travel fiction: What would you do over?

Well? Ask yourself that question: If you could go back to any moment in your own lifetime, have one day to live over, have one decision to take back, have one more time to say goodbye to a lost loved one, have a chance to be the hero or get the win or get the girl or . . . anything, what would you do?
Time travel stories, or, at least, many of them, are cautionary tales against regret: If you change that moment, what else would that moment change to your life now?  If you relive a moment, would it live up to how you remember it?

In “Primer”, it is these last questions which get asked, but asked in smaller terms: “If you could go back from tonight to this morning, if you could go back a day, two days, a week, and do anything, what would you do?”

The most original thing about “Primer” is how it limits that question, but I’ll get back to that in a moment.

“Primer” focuses on the story of two engineers who, while working on an a new invention, accidentally discover that they’ve invented a machine that holds whatever has been placed in it in a time loop.  This time loop will run from the time which a setting on the machine is turned on to when it’s turned off, and then it will loop back to when it was turned on.  The important part is that they can enter and exit at either end of the loop, so, if you turn the setting on at say 8am, and turn it off at 6pm, then get into the machine at that time, and stay in for 10 hours, when you get out it will be 8am again. So, those are the rules: Turn the machine on, wait, turn it off, get in, wait, and, when you get out, you will be back at the time when the machine was turned on.

The rest of the movie focuses on these inventors figuring out what the other rules of the machine are, what they can do within those rules, and what they become when they realize that those actions have no consequences.

My only problem with “Primer” is that, in trying to explain the rules and what they are doing, the dialog is overloaded with technical jargon and abstract-speak, making the conversations more difficult to follow than they needed to be.  This is also reflected in how the film is paced; in how the different twists and turns in the movie are revealed; that they are deliberately more confusing and convoluted than they need to be.  I felt as though the story could have been told more clearly and still been just as dramatic and original.

Overall, the film was clever enough to be interesting, and the twists and turns made for an original story.  But, the way in which they made much of the reveals of those twists and turns more confusing and more difficult to understand felt unnecessary, as though it would do more to alienate the audience than draw them in.

In theatre, they say that the only thing the audience won’t forgive is not being able to see or hear you.

They also won’t forgive you if they can’t understand you.

(Also, the trailer doesn't help you any).