Smackledorfer: I think I may be too anal to get over that aspect. No acid in the future to melt a body with?
Nothing better to do with time travel than disappear folks?

A part of my brain is screaming about it every time I see the add :)

Watch it. It all makes sense. If you were able to suspend your disbelief for any sci fi movie, let alone any time travel movie, this will be fine. It's not even a plot hole. Everything is explained, but the cool thing is that they know you don't really give a sh*t so they don't try to explain themselves in detail. Bruce Willis' character even says something like "Enough with all that stupid timeline science sh*t. It doesn't make a difference and it gives me a f*cking headache."

Also, Jeff Daniels has one of the funnier lines about picking vacation spots.

I enjoyed Looper a lot. Though I picked up on some glaring problems with the premise (such as "Why do the loopers have to kill themselves? Why not have another looper do the deed?"), I was willing to suspend my disbelief for the film. As others have mentioned, there are components to the movie that aren't in the trailer (At. All.), and it's the type of film that you do want to pick over later. Even if it falls apart a bit, the fact that you felt compelled to dig a little deeper means it made some impact.

/For me, though--Joe's story is compelling, Cid's is less-so.
***SPOILERS***
//Biggest suspension of disbelief: That a young Shanghai hottie would fall for Bruce Willis as Joe in his early 40s. They should have used JGL for that scene and switched to Willis later, once they're established as a couple.
///Biggest tear-jerker: Old Joe's memory with a baby crying in the background.
////I wish this story had been done without telekinesis. Yes, they needed a reason for the Rainmaker to do so much so quickly, but...we're already along for the ride for time travel. Why throw TK into the mix?

fallingcow: Forty-Two: I enjoyed Looper a lot. Though I picked up on some glaring problems with the premise (such as "Why do the loopers have to kill themselves? Why not have another looper do the deed?")

... Why don't they drop them in a volcano?

An explanatory response from Rian Johnson in an interview:

How does murder work in the future? Why can't the mobsters kill there and what happens when Joe's wife is killed?

The film mentions briefly mentions that, in the future, tracking technology stops murders from happening. But we explicitly see Joe's wife murdered in the future. Johnson said this was one of several things he worked out in his head but didn't put in the movie because it felt superfluous to the story. He instead explained it to us.

"Everybody in the movie has this nano technology tracking in their body and whenever there's a death, a location tag is sent to the authorities from this tracking material. So they can't kill people in the future. But if they send them back, that is not triggered." He continues, "The material is powered off the body's heat and it has a two year life after the person dies." As for the wife, that was a big mistake made by the mobsters and the reason we see the shot of the village burning is that's their half-assed attempt to cover it up.

Other things I liked about Looper: They trusted the audience to a certain extent; they didn't explain things that were apparent onscreen. For example: most of the automobiles were current models with various adaptations (solar panels, a rig that sent the exhaust back to the gas tank), but no line of dialogue said anything like, "Oh, yeah, we had to find alternative fuels, but most people are too broke to afford new vehicles." Also, the China/France argument--there are larger implications, but all that mattered in the dialogue was what it meant for the characters. We don't know what France looks like in the future, but we don't need to--Shanghai certainly looks better than Kansas.

GungFu: PC LOAD LETTER: The plot of Looper sounds familiar. Is it a ripoff of another movie or book?

Timecop

Ahh yes. Now you got me thinking of Mia Sara. I'll be in my bunk.

One of my few gripes concerning this otherwise fun movie was the tk nonsense. It kinda felt tossed in for the express purpose of making things future-y. Why couldn't Sid have just grown up badass like Batman? Why go all Akira? Cause it's the future, and there's gotta be mutants. And really, Sid was probably better off without a mother who sleeps with a drug addict hitman she's only known for a day.

/griping aside, Sid was an awesome little actor. great expressions.
//Also Sid's mom was stunningly gorgeous..

Forty-Two: telekinesis.

I liked the fact that this wonderful magical ability was only being used as a cheap nightclub trick to pick up chicks. Says a lot about society with one quick joke. I think that was it's real purpose in the film. Just like how time travel was merely a waste disposal system for the Chinese Triads.

LDM90: If you've got time travel, why not send your enemies to 65 million B.C. to be eaten by a dinosaur or something? Or even better, 64.99 million when the Earth is a wasteland. Then you don't have to worry about hitmen, or gold & silver, or the possibility of a screwup.

Maybe 30 years was the maximum that a bootleg junker time machine could send a guy without knocking out an entire power grid and attracting any attention. The payment was their retirement money. Once they offed themselves, their obligations were done. 30 years of spending in return for a few years of easy work. And letting some other guy kill the future you seems like an insult in this context.The best part of this film was not getting the urge to nitpick.

LDM90: Just don't watch her in The Adjustment Bureau. You'll want to smack her.

I wanted to smack everybody involved with that film.

Hoboclown: Also agree on the TK, they mention it briefly in the beginning and then completely forget about it until the kid goes Super-Saiyan. I guess it was there to explain how Rainmaker could take on the whole mob by himself, but there were probably a dozen other ways they could have explained it. I thought it distracted from the time travel.

Yeah, the obvious explanation for how someone became the Rainmaker was that they were sent back in time, and used that knowledge to plan the future perfectly. Then when he took power, he banned the use of time travel so no one else could do what he did.

skinink: robohobo: One of my few gripes concerning this otherwise fun movie was the tk nonsense. It kinda felt tossed in for the express purpose of making things future-y. Why couldn't Sid have just grown up badass like Batman? Why go all Akira? Cause it's the future, and there's gotta be mutants. And really, Sid was probably better off without a mother who sleeps with a drug addict hitman she's only known for a day.

/griping aside, Sid was an awesome little actor. great expressions.
//Also Sid's mom was stunningly gorgeous..

Sid's mom? She's farking Emily Blunt! You should check out one of her earlier movies, "My Summer of Love" I saw it awhile ago, so I can only remember it's a lesbian love story and Emily Blunt gets nude, or at least shows her boobs. She's a great actress.

I've heard of her, hadn't ever seen her in anything. She's farking exquisite.

I loved Looper. I walked out thinking "people on the internet are going to spend so much time nit-picking the mechanics of the time travel that they're not going to enjoy the movie." Hey, looks like I was right!
/Bruce Willis practically looks right in the camera and tells you not to think too hard about it
//Emily Blunt as a profane, shotgun-wielding farmer. Mmmm.

I saw looper. I didn't get why there were two (or three) different paths for blasting Bruce. 1. he missed and is hunted for the rest of his life. 2. He shot him and lives to fill the path. Or the third. Reminded me of Clue.

DamnYankees: robohobo: DamnYankees: robohobo: //um, young Abe was in the movie...he was Kid Blue

Where are you getting this from?

Earlier drafts of the script. There's been a lot of discussion over at AICN.

Hm. Doesn't really make much sense to me.

My husband thought the same thing--that Kid Blue was young Abe. It would stand to reason that older Abe would want to keep a close eye on his young self, to make sure he didn't die, thereby erasing himself. Also, why else keep such an obvious f*ck-up around? Lastly, when Kid Blue really DID f*ck up royally by letting both Joes escape, his only punishment is a hammer to the hand.

I thought they were good arguments but, seeing as how much of a screwup he really was, even shooting himself in the foot, I'd think older Abe would want to put him someplace safe. Or at least keep him far away from guns.

Hoboclown: Also agree on the TK, they mention it briefly in the beginning and then completely forget about it until the kid goes Super-Saiyan. I guess it was there to explain how Rainmaker could take on the whole mob by himself, but there were probably a dozen other ways they could have explained it. I thought it distracted from the time travel.

They toyed w/the TK a lot throughout. Seth playing w/the quarter in the car w/young Joe, the billboard they park under, Sara being able to float the lighter (and that was a cute scene, when she's telling young Joe how she'd mess w/guys in the bar by stopping them from floating quarters). It not only reinforced that TK wasn't uncommon but 1) Sarah was better at TK than most people Joe had seen and 2) that since she had it, she was more likely Sid's real mother (I was beginning to wonder who was telling the truth until that scene).

robohobo: Went with the wife to see Looper last night. Thought they did a good job of representing a possible KC skyline 30 years down the road. They actually used existing buildings, not some crazy-made up nonsense.

/loved the joke about taking over KC being no big deal
//um, young Abe was in the movie...he was Kid Blue
/Cloud Atlas trailer looked like a bigger mess than 'Lana' Wachowski

I've seen it twice in three days now, and on first viewing, I thought it was KC as well. But the second time, I noticed Old Joe getting his target information from a "Kansas State University" library computer. I think the big city was actually Manhattan, Kansas.

/but what do I know?

"I'm from the future. You want to go to Shanghai."

Really liked Looper, one of my favorites this year.

FTFA: The script was rewritten to take place 60 years into the future in China which has become the world's largest superpower in the world.

"World's largest superpower in the world." That's pretty damned large.

Dow Jones and the Temple of Doom: Saw Looper Friday night. I wasn't expecting it to be nearly as thought-provoking, layered, or intense as it was. Best sci-fi film of the year for me.

Saw it this afternoon. Excellent movie. The only thing I didn't like was Gordon-Levitt's eyebrows. I understood what they were trying to accomplish with the makeup and prosthetics (and some damned-fine acting), but the eyebrows didn't work for me. Poorly done and a bit distracting at times.

Looper's pretty well covered here. And I liked it for the most part; aside from the usual temporal paradox (if you eliminate the reason someone is sent back in time, why are they sent back to prevent the now non-existent event?). So, I'll hype up the other movie I saw this weekend: Solomon Kane.

Not bad for the most part. A bit slow sometimes, but when the action gets going, it's good. James Purefoy play Solomon pretty well for what they give him in the script. The big downside is that they go into a long origin story to give the character more motivation than 'it's evil/in my way, so I kill it'. Robert E. Howard's characters were all about continuous action, moving forward. Out of all the dozens of Conan stories, the extent of Conan's origin was 'born in Cimmeria'. It's the same with the Solomon Kane stories and poems; there's almost no background on the character given.

Pulp-era heroes don't need complex motivations and development, they're all about action. Would Eastwood's 'Man With No Name' be more interesting if we saw the troubled home life as a child that shaped him into who he became? Nope, and the same with Conan, Solomon Kane, and any pulp character. There's a wealth of great characters and stories from that era that shaped the literary and cinematic landscape of the 20th century that are just seeming to be discovered by Hollywood now. Directors need to spend maybe 5 minutes at most on the origin/background of pulp characters, and the rest of the 2 hours should be all action and drama. For as much as we laugh at the films, that's the one thing 'The Shadow' and 'The Phantom' got right: less origin, more action.

Hopefully, 'Pacific Rim' will be a big enough hit to let GDT do his vision of 'At The Mountains of Madness'. Also, let's get a Lensman film going; the anime movie was 'meh'.