On a Monday, I send out an e-mail to a half dozen friends, inviting them to go the following day. Many decline, but one stands out and says he'll be there. We make a meeting time and I go, and I wait. And wait. I got a feeling twenty minutes before the show starts that I'll be going home without seeing Looper, and I was right. He never showed up, and I confirm that he believed it was for Wednesday night. A bit of miscommunication from both of us I guess, and two weeks later I found myself doing the same invite, but this time, with more notice and bolded dates and times. It works, and a group of us are going out to see Looper. This in itself is a big deal: it could have been high school where more than four or five of us had gone to a movie together at one time. In an effort to recreate those adolescent "good time" memories, we had inadvertently done just that, although perhaps without as much good times, as we are all being crushed under the load of adult-hood and all the responsibilities that being in your early thirties bring.
This may be significant for a couple of reasons, the first of which is to attest at the level of awareness that Looper is indeed a good movie and that you should go see it. Word of mouth is strong with this one, and reviews are incredibly positive. I spend entirely way too much time on Reddit, and the community there seemed to have exploded in unison over how fantastic the film is. Having a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 93% certainly speaks volumes about the film as well, and everyone in our group was jazzed about seeing it. I don't feel like that happens: we know the movie involves time travel and by definition, those movies require a suspension of disbelief and acceptance of time-travel related plot holes. It's standard for all movies (except perhaps something like Star Trek where any time travel creates multiple realities, or such great films as Primer, where time travel is realistic and nobody can wrap their mind around the film to see if a hole exists or not anyway).
The second significance is how the plot parallels our own thirty year old lives and our attempt to relive the past. While Old Joe is not trying to relive the past, he is trying to correct the future, and aren't those the same thing? Young Joe is living the life free of any real responsibility, and in general, is a terrible person. He's a drug addict, he frequents hookers and drives under the influence. Of course, he also kills people for a living. But those people don't exist - yet. Just as we were teenagers and generally terrible - although we did none of the above, we were simply jerks. And we did stupid things, and we live with regrets. Who wouldn't want to go back and just tell yourself to act in a different way? The lesson of both the movie, and our lives, is the answer to that question: perhaps you should rethink your ways, and you should rethink those regrets. My friend asked me - earlier this year actually - if I live with any regrets. Of course, I do: I could probably give you an itemized spreadsheet of them all. She said that she used to as well, until she received some advice/words of wisdom herself: all the decisions and actions you've made have brought you to where you are now. If you really regret those things, what kind of life would you have then? Would you be happy, or happier? The grass is not always greener on the other side, and when you look at things relatively, you have things pretty good. If you change things, you will lose out on all the good memories, and the bad ones that have made you a better person (which literally happens in Looper). The conversation and expanded thoughts on it have stayed and grown with me ever since.
I've tried to avoid spoilers but the next paragraph may contain some. Be warned!
What's interesting is that Looper embodies the greener grass. Sure, Old Joe was kind of being forced to go back in time, but he's a guy who likes to make lemonade out of lemons. What he discovers is that he should have let the lemons be. In many movies about time travel, this is often the case: the future is practically written in stone and refuses to be changed. In Stephen King's 11/23/63, the past tries its damnedest to stop you from preventing the assassination of political figures, and barely lifts a finger when you change little things. The bigger the change, the stronger the resistance. Perhaps the same past (perhaps The Past should have an entry on the IMDB) is acting in Looper, except instead of destroying the world in the future, it continuously loops thirty years of the same time period until somebody does something about it. That is, until The Past is satisfied that an action will safely protect its future that it allows said action to be carried out. Perhaps we are just witness to the last loop.
Regardless, all six of us walked away from Looper disappointed. Granted, the film crawled to a near stand still, following an explosive first act. It's your standard first act that afflicts all these types of movies: you quickly learn about the world, the characters, what they do and the life they lead. You get a glimpse into the future, which looks realistic and believable here, and is fascinating. Then you have to settle down with the plot, which leaves a bit to be desired. Is it confusing? I don't find that it is, but I don't put a ton of effort into it: I accept that time travel is going to create those plot holes, and I don't care: it's fine. The effects are low key and good; I'm distracted by Levitt's makeup to make him look like a younger Bruce Willis. I wonder why Joe is addicted to this drug, has one night of recovery and is apparently well and fine afterward. I enjoyed the action, the concept, and really enjoyed the humour throughout. I did have a problem with Bruce Willis though: I didn't find he added anything to the film, he only took away. He plays himself (practically) by being a bad-ass dual-wielding automatic guns. He's invincible, and the entire "future montage" is downright comedic.
Most importantly, I wonder if I enjoyed this movie as a whole. I did, but it has to grow on me. It needs a second viewing, a viewing without the crushing expectations put unfairly onto it. I must have seen a hundred Looper posts in Reddit before seeing the movie, but I didn't look at a single one. I wanted to experience the movie without any influence: that in itself, is impossible. I feel responsible for creating hype for this movie in the simple act of trying to organize a group outing to go see it and thereby leading to disappointment in the film for others. And perhaps in doing this, you will go see the film without heavy expectation and be blown away, although if you saw my spoiler warning above, you may not be reading this at all.