Author Topic: Movie Recommendations/Want To See List  (Read 167685 times)

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Offline cmdterps44

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Re: Movie Recommendations/Want To See List
« Reply #1050: February 10, 2013, 10:14:47 PM »
I'll spoiler for Looper to save others waiting 'til it hits HBO/Starz...



I loved Looper. The concept, awesome. Truly, truly awesome. But... I think they overdid things with the TK aspect. You've got a film about time travel and the paradox of meeting yourself, amped up in Looper to killing your future self. Amazing and rich, relatively untapped story potential there. Then to add the Rain Maker portion, humans gai ing TK/psionic powers? Then to boot, this almost 'second coming' like child who towers over us all?

Too much, imo, and enough to cause the general public to shrug their shoulders Inception-like. Admittedly the time travel equals mega-suspension of disbelief, so why not go all out? I just think they had more than enough room to play around with one crazy sci-fi element without adding yet another.

Particularly since Push (2009), handled this secondary element superbly, and was largely panned by critics and the general public. I think Push is one of the best films of the past decade for sci-fi, and it got no attention or respect.  So as much as I enjoyed Looper in all regards, I think adding the TK bit not only prevented it from gaining traction with large numbers but also detracted from exploring time travel and subsequent paradoxes.

Maybe I'm slightly biased because I felt like they were forced to use that plotline for all the wrong reasons. I saw it as studio execs saying, 'Yeah, time travel. Neat. What's the end game/ultimate conflict to leave Joe Blow satisfied. The way it stands, there's not even a protagonist. Give him something to fight, sacrifice, a big battle to send people home happy.' I just can't imagine why it gets included for any other reason.


I believe time travel and tk were merely a setting and plot device to keep the story going. The story seemed to be mainly about what drives people to do things. It started out like one film and then immediately went to something else once they reached the farm. I'm with you 100% when it comes to how they handled the setting... but I think that was their primary objective from the get go.

As for the story itself, I think they should've just killed the kid. Sure, the last 5 minutes explains the possibility of preventing a rainmaker, but it still leaves that chance for him to develop to that level... I dunno... just felt attached to Bruce and JGL's characters that I felt it was random to feel sympathy for a kid who has these abilities that will eventually kill people. It's the exact same scenario in the show Lost.



Anyway, I recommend watching End of Watch.