What I Thought
Banger. Fire. Incredible stuff. Very satisfying and smartly-executed time travel story in a stylish retrofuture Kansas. Joseph Gordon-Levitt does good work as lead playing an assassin who kills people from the future, and Bruce Willis plays a good secondary as JGL's 30-year-older future self, who is brought back in time to be killed at the end of his contract but refuses and fights back. There's a lot I'm not covering in that summary, but it's a movie with a lot of surprises anyway, so I think the less said the better.
The film mostly switches settings between "the city" and "the farmland" around 2044 Kansas, and both places allow for lots of beautiful still shots. Make a lot of popcorn so you don't have to get up, but your eyes will be glued to the screen either way!
🥚 (4.5 eggbugs)
People I Liked
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
In the first third of Looper before Bruce arrives, my friend and I couldn't stop from saying shit like "wow, JGL looks like Bruce Willis! He's killing it" They go to look up facts after the movie ends, and go figure, there was a makeup crew on hand to sculpt his face -- thank you makeup crew. 
JGL does great work taking on the mannerisms of Willis in scenes with that support behind him.
Other Things I Thought About
Max Payne (2008)
I think JGL could make a good Max Payne! He wears a lot of nice suits in the city portions of Looper, and he's generally a pretty sharp looking guy. I wish the 2008 movie was better, but it did have the bravery to cast Beau Bridges as BB, who was one of the antagonists near the end of the first game. It's probably not every day that a slam dunk casting choice like that comes around.
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
I recognized Emily Blunt's face while watching but it wasn't until her name appeared in the end credits¹ where I finally got to shout her name out. She's a great part of Edge of Tomorrow as the hero who turned the tide for the human race in a war against alien invaders. From what I recall, most of her potential comes in early, but by the ending she's watered down to "love interest." But my god that potential. More media featuring women in power armor pls 😭
Blunt gets a lot more to do in Looper, I think! She gets to put some good weight on the dialogue and functions much better as a love interest here. She also has two different scenes where she's in a tank top and chopping at a tree stump with an axe while talking to someone, because Rian Johnson is a fucking genius.²
We Need To Talk About This Poster Tagline:
Bro what the fuck does this mean? I don't want to give specifics on the plot, but suffice to say that future Joe (Willis) is not trying to hunt his younger self. Like first off, how the fuck can you be hunted by literally your own future? It's like the poster writers heard "time travel" and "hunting," thought of The Terminator and then forgot it doesn't actually work if the time traveling assassin's target is the past version of himself.
I don't think the promotional material did the film any favors. In the process of research, I discovered that the last 15 seconds of the trailer are scored with some vintage dubstep, which I think solidifies my case³.
-
Speaking of end credits - Looper's end credits were produced by a company called Scarlet Letters! It was at the very end of the end credits! I had no idea that you could just hire a company for those, but I guess it definitely makes sense with an industry at that scale!
-
While writing this whole post, I've had
fourfive different times where I thought about that log chopping scene and stopped writing so I could take a deep breath to process it. Thank you cinema -
Thank you to the YouTube channel that sourced the song in the description of their Yahoo Movies trailer rip, because I did not like the trailer's reveals! I am not linking your channel, because I did not like the nature of the rest of your videos! All the best!