Looper; Steak and Eggs

I don't want to talk about time travel shit because if we start talking about it then we're going to be here all day talking about it, making diagrams with straws.

Looper (2012)

Director: Rian Johnson

Had I seen this before: No

Time loop variety/genre: Science (technology; mild superpowers)/thriller

Well, three movies into this series I have made a grave error, which is allowing a time travel movie (sort of, more on that later) with a deeply misleading name to sneak into my time loop space. This movie is called LOOPER. I came here for LOOPING. Loopiiiiiiiiiiiiing! I guess I will join the ranks of the internet’s coolest and most normal people and hold an eternal grudge against Rian Johnson for this titular betrayal. I mean, unless Benoit Blanc encounters a temporal anomaly in the next Knives Out movie to humorous effect, obviously. Then all is forgiven.

In the meantime, this is still in some ways a movie about being trapped by fate, so we’ll do the best we can. The year is 2044, and guess what? Things are not going great—seems dystopian as all get-out, if I’m being honest. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is in a field in Kansas, practicing his French on the future version of Duolingo, which is what I should be doing instead of this write-up, so I immediately have something in common with this character. What he has that I lack, however, is facial prosthetics to make him more closely resemble Bruce Willis, who will be playing his older self. Would it have been a lot funnier to try to make Bruce Willis look like JGL? Sure, but this is a serious movie about mobsters and guns and telekinetic preschoolers, so it’s extra manly jawlines for everyone. This is Young Joe and he is passing the time until a man, tied up and hooded, suddenly appears out of nowhere on the blue tarp in front of him, at which time Joe shoots him with a large gun that we will soon learn is called a blunderbuss. It’s not the historical blunderbuss, it’s, you know, a future version. And I cannot tell you how many times they say the word “blunderbuss” in this movie, but it is a lot and it’s low-key hilarious every time.

Joe works for an organized crime ring, but a future organized crime ring—not 2044 future, 2074 future. Got it? Time travel hasn’t been invented in 2044 but it has been invented in 2074, and I guess it’s mainly used for mobsters disposing of people and getting rid of their bodies in the (2044) past. Which is…not ideal, in terms of the potential of time travel technology. You hate to see it. So they send some poor schmuck back to Joe in 2044, where he takes care of them blunderbuss-style, and collects his payment in silver bars, which are taped to the schmuck. Here is where I am sorry to report that our protagonist is really just a bad guy and I’m not sure he even rises to anti-hero, so my emotional journey with this film mostly consisted of not really caring what happened to the young or old versions of Joe. But YMMV!

After he finishes his duties, Young Joe goes to a diner in the middle of nowhere where every car in the parking lot is at least 30 years old because they look very much like vehicles from 2012. He has a nice rapport with a waitress named Beatrix, and makes an expression that does in fact look a lot like Bruce Willis—I’m not totally sold on all of JGL’s choices in this film, but credit where credit is due. I actually think the weird fake face works pretty well. He arrives in the dirty future city where all of the cars are still at least 30 years old but also there are hover bikes. I guess they stopped making cars in like 2015? You know what, it’s fine, who cares. I don’t need future cars or, fortunately, future clothes. The movie lampshades Young Joe’s necktie and leather jacket by making it a character beat that he’s obsessed with old noir movies. It would be like someone now walking around in a 1920s zoot suit all “I’m a scary assassin, watch out,” but okay.

Joe picks up his friend Seth (Paul Dano) who has a ponytail and a shiny jacket and a new hover bike and mild telekenetic powers because whoops this is not really even a time travel movie, is a preventing someone with superpowers from becoming a future supervillain movie. Surprise! Seth isn’t the supervillain we’re worried about though (not in this movie, anyway), he’s just a dipshit who can float a quarter a few inches above his hand. So are about 10% of the population in this world, people referred to as TKs who can…sort of barely move stuff around. It’s basically a 2044 party trick that no one seems particularly impressed by. Joe and Seth go to a sleezy looper-hangout nightclub called La Belle Aurore, which gives us an opportunity to see some boobs. Apparently one of the loopers there has just “closed his loop,” meaning he was sent his 2074 self to kill. Cool job! But that’s dystopia for ya, I guess. This is treated as an occasion to celebrate, because the young version gets a huge payout and the chance to “retire” and all he has to do is have absolutely no forward planning skills. The celebration includes doing some future drugs that are administered via eyedrops, which is our first indication that Young Joe also has a drug problem, which is also, you know, dystopia for ya.

Joe passes out one night after a long day of blunderbussing and doing eye drugs only to be awoken by the frantic knocking of Seth, who has—uh oh!—let his older self escape and failed to close his loop. Mobsters hate that. Before he ran off into the night, Old Seth reported to him that in 2074 there’s a Big Bad called The Rainmaker and he’s on an anti-looper rampage, closing all the loops left and right. Which is where I have to, again, point out that loopers are just mob assassins and maybe I am on Mr. Rainmaker’s side here? This is really a y’all problem. However, Paul Dano is a good actor and I do feel kind of bad about the terrible stuff that’s about to happen to him. Joe stashes Seth in a secret space under the floor as Kid Blue (Noah Segan) and some other “gat men” pound on the door. So now we have the other kind of gun in this movie, which is a gat. Gats are more precise than our friend the blunderbuss, and are indicative of a gangster middle management position. Like blunderbuss, “gat” is fun to say out loud, so I imagine all these actors had a pretty good time.

Kid Blue drags Joe to see Abe (Jeff Daniels, who rules). Abe came from 2074 to run the loopers and drink whiskey and look tired. His demeanor actually indicates that he might be in his own mini-time loop of having had this same discussion with Joe over a thousand times, based on the general exhaustion exhibited. He makes fun of Joe’s tie, and then blackmails him into giving up Seth because he knows that Joe has been stashing half of his payments after each job and it’s gonna be Seth or the money. Joe surrenders Seth, because Joe is a villain! I’m not saying I don’t understand that choice, but I am saying that I might also be a villain.

Old Seth is on the run when a scar suddenly appears on his arm: “BE AT 75 WATER STREET IN 15 MINUTES.” I’m sure this isn’t a trap set by the gangsters who have seized his younger self or anything. Oh, whoops—now Old Seth is missing some fingers….shit…and a nose. And he’s picked up a nasty burn scar along the side of his face. Aaaaaaand there go his feet and it seems like maybe his tongue? And both hands. Well this isn’t good. He drags himself to the appointed location, where he is promptly gatted by Kid Blue. Loop closed! Young Seth tortured! It’s all very…to the pain.

Joe isn’t doing great post-Seth-betrayal. His eye drug usage is getting out of control. I could probably use some eye drugs myself at this point, because we are about 25% through this film, and there is still, I would argue, an entirely different movie waiting for us on the horizon. Onward, onward. One of Joe’s schmucks is running late, which is disquieting. Joe checks his watch. Flies are buzzing. When the schmuck finally arrives he is neither tied up nor hooded and also he is Bruce Willis. He takes advantage of Young Joe’s surprise and escapes. Young Joe, understandably, does not want to lose his nose and feet and hands and maybe tongue at the hands of the gat men, so he’s determined to chase down his Old Self. Probably my biggest hangup with the movie is not anything time travel or telekinesis related, but rather Young Joe’s unrelenting screw my future self approach—he treats Old Joe like an estranged father that he hates and not like literally his own future. I try to be very gentle with Old Erica! I floss every night so that future Erica can get a pat on the head from her dental hygienist! It makes no sense to me.

Young Joe narrowly escapes an encounter with gat men at his apartment, then we flash back to the exact same scene of him waiting in the field, checking his watch, hearing the flies buzz, but this time Old Joe is bound and hooded and he closes his loop as intended. Confession time: I had to enlist my extremely helpful brother to rewatch this scene for me because it was unclear that the original version of the loop-closing was a flashback that kicks off the next 30 years of what happened to Joe leading up to the botched loop-closing. Thanks, Nathaniel! Also of note that the first time I watched this and was not attempting to explain it to anyone I just went along unbothered because, eh, time travel, what are you gonna do.

Original Young Joe retires, moves to Shanghai, does eye drugs, does crime, grows out a very unattractive stringy haircut, abruptly and hilariously transitions to Bruce Willis with a a very unattractive stringy haircut, meets and falls in love with a beautiful woman who is so not an actual character that their flashback dialogue scenes are captioned "[dialogue inaudible]”. That’s right—we’re cueing up a classic Nolanesque dead brunette wife protagonist-motivator. Sure enough, it’s Year 30, and here come the loop-closing Rainmaker goons to murder the CNDBWP-M and get their asses kicked by Old Joe, who escapes his time travel shackles but jumps in the machine anyway, on a mission to change his perfect dead wife’s fate by traveling back in time and killing The Rainmaker as a child. It’s like one of those “would you kill Baby Hitler” thought experiments but if Hitler grew up to mostly murder mob assassins.

Oh, and also—Old Joe only has Baby Rainmaker narrowed down to three potential children, so his plan is to murder three children, two of which are 100% just regular little kids. Have I mentioned that Joe…is…a villain? He’s got his Baby Murder Map all printed out and ready to go when suddenly a scar appears on his arm. Yikes! “BE AT” we see, and in a little filmmaking misdirect that I grudgingly appreciated, instead of the expected gat man ambush address, the rest of a name: “RIX.” To the diner!

Young Joe is waiting for him, making his best Old Joe face. They proceed to have an argument that, to me, is very amusing, because it’s like a generation gap fight within one person who theoretically should have more empathy for his older/younger self but absolutely does not. Old Joe also shows off that he speaks French fluently now, which I admit I probably would do to my younger self. Young Joe is even less impressed with the concept of the CNDBWP-M than I am—he absolutely does not care about this future dead brunette that he has not met yet. He is more intrigued by The Rainmaker, who in the future is apparently enacting “mass executions [and] vagrant purges” which, fine, I admit sounds a little more serious than just cleaning up organized crime goons. Speaking of goons! The diner, which now seems to be entirely empty other than the Joes (whither Beatrix??) is attacked by Kid Blue and his guys, and the two Joes scatter.

And now, 53 minutes into a 126 minute movie, Sara (Emily Blunt) and the actual endgame plot appear, chopping wood at an old, isolated farmhouse, and wearing 2010s era fashion without the benefit of a quirky character trait to justify it, although I guess we can just assume that tissue-paper-thin tops with skinny cargo pants come back into style in twenty years, which is unfortunate. Young Joe arrives at the farmhouse because it’s one of the potential Baby Rainmaker spots that Old Joe was headed toward, but he’s in pretty bad eye drug withdrawal and not at the top of his game. Sara and her young son Cid nurse him through withdrawal but Sara is very grumpy about it.

Meanwhile, Old Joe murders a random small child across town. Wonderful. Guys, I’m starting to think Joe might be a villain.

Obviously Cid is the future Rainmaker and Sara is the Sarah Conner of this situation. Turns out Cid’s telekinetic powers are a little more intense than all the quarter-floaters out there—he’s more of a Carrie than a Miranda, if you know what I mean. It took me a minute to put that together because a stubborn kid throwing a tantrum that blows out your eardrums and destroys everything in the room and invokes the power of the elements tracks so closely with my memory of having regular small children, but I guess he’s meant to be exceptional. When one of Abe’s men comes around looking for Joe (Young and/or Old at this point I guess), Cid dispatches him with some real telekinetic flare. So we’re rooting for a protagonist who is a straight up bad guy to protect a child who is a homicidal supervillain from his own future self (straight up bad guy, still). And also Emily Blunt, who has an impressive collection of thirty-year-old going out tops and still smokes old-fashioned cigarettes. So I guess in the Terminator 2 analogy, Young Joe is Arnold and Old Joe is Robert Patrick but we feel bad for Robert Patrick because he has a dead brunette cyborg wife.

Eventually Old Joe Bruce Willises his way through Abe and all his guys and makes it to the farmhouse, where Young Joe realizes that it’s Old Joe’s murder of Sara (in pursuit of Cid) that sets Cid on the Rainmaker path. The only way to change the course of things is to remove his own presence, so Young Joe turns the blunderbuss on himself and Old Joe disappears, leaving Sara to uhhhh….research child psychiatrists in her area and hope for the best.

I suspect it might be hard to tell but I really got a kick out of this movie, otherwise I wouldn’t have spent an irrational numbers of words describing it to you. Is it a loop? Not really. Does it totally make sense? Eh, what does, am I right? Is Joseph Gordon-Levitt wearing a Bruce Willis face the whole time? Absolutely. But it’s a pretty fun mix of blunderbusses and Jeff Daniels and demon children and friendly diner waitresses. Piper Peraboo was also in there somewhere but I just had so many other things to cover, sorry Piper.

Time loop solution: Blunderbuss to the chest

Did I understand/care how the loop worked: I was satisfied with the general time travel rules, it was an acceptable level of hand waving

How unpleasant would this loop be for me personally (1-10): If I’m Joe and spend all my time doing pretty heinous dystopian shit 9; if I’m Emily Blunt and I have a nice farmhouse and only occasionally have to shoo off hobos BUT have to deal with a small tantrum-prone child again 10; if I’m Beatrix and I work at a far-flung diner with mildly weird patrons 4

Steak and Eggs

“We eating?” asks Old Joe when he and Young Joe have their diner meetup. “I ordered something,” Young Joe says. “Steak and eggs,” says Old Joe. “Rare and scrambled.” Turns out that’s exactly what Young Joe ordered as well because in thirty years Joe has failed to develop any imagination whatsoever. Also, neither of them take a single bite at any point in the scene. Anyway, I ate mine, and also a green salad that was not pictured because it was not noir enough.

Up next: Let’s go another few rounds with Emily Blunt