Monday, April 8, 2013

NOKW - Looper

Here comes the next chapter in our "I'm Okay With, I'm Not Okay With" series (if you don't know what this is, click here for all of the past posts):

Movie:  Looper

Basic Plot:  Good question.  It's about time travel and the mob and assassins and mob assassins.  That should probably about wrap it up.

I'm Okay With:  The fact that Joseph Gordon-Levitt couldn't look any less like a young Bruce Willis and that 'make-up' they used didn't help.  The fact that we know time travel is discovered, then outlawed, and then used by the mob to kill people, but I don't care how well financed the mob is there is no way they could afford something like time travel.  The fact that they just casually throw in that people have telekinetic powers.  The fact that the whole point of sending people back in time to be murdered is because it disposes of the bodies and yet the mob kills old Bruce Willis' wife without any apparent problems from the authorities in the future.  The fact old Bruce Willis is apparently bulletproof and walks into many shootouts without trying to shield himself from the bad guys' guns.  The fact that when young Bruce Willis asks old Bruce Willis how time travels works, old Bruce Willis basically tells him to shut up and that is the only explanation we get.  The fact that Loopers have to kill their future selves for some reason that is never explained very well.  The fact that all of the telekinetic people can do nothing more than make a coin levitate, but that kid can lift every piece of furniture in a room and make people explode.

I'm Not Okay With:  The fact that I'm still not sure who the protagonist (that means good guy) was.  Was it young Bruce Willis?  No, he was a drug-addicted mob assassin who was attempting to kill his future self.  Was it old Bruce Willis?  Nope, he seemed like the good guy for about 10 minutes until he started murdering children.  Was it Emily Blunt?  Nah, she abandoned her kid and only came back because her sister died and forced the kid back into her life.  Was it the kid?  Hell no, he may or may not grow up to be the most feared mob boss of all time and he literally made a man explode with his mind.  And it sure as hell wasn't any of the other characters in the movie, who were either Jeff Daniels or mob underlings, so you know they were bad.  You are probably going, come on, it was young Bruce Willis, he killed himself so that old Bruce Willis wouldn't murder that kid and could have a mom and wouldn't turn out to be the ultimate evil mob boss.  But I counter-argue with, they are the same person no matter how you look at it, young and old Bruce Willis were bad guys.  So, I'm just kind of confused as to who the good guy in this movie was.  I am not okay with that.

"In what way does that look like a young Bruce Willis?"

1 comment:

  1. Nice blog post. You might want to try Looper, as it fits with the context.

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