With Rian Johnson stirring up time travel, hitmen and god knows what else in his upcoming, highly ambitious "Looper," it will take a deft hand to not only balance all the elements at play, but also provide something fresh and original. But so far, it looks the man who changed with the game with film noir in "Brick" and twisted the con artist in "The Brothers Bloom" is doing just that, and this first clip from the movie is particularly compelling.
In the scene we see Joseph Gordon-Levitt and his older self, played by Bruce Willis, try to discuss the metaphysical predicament they're in. But in what looks like a particularly smart narrative tweak, Willis' character acknowledges the thorniness of such a conversation and decides he wants to side step it. It seems to be pretty much a way of Johnson saying, "Listen audience, this is the world the movie takes place in, deal with it." And indeed as he told us earlier this year, he wanted to make "Looper" both high-minded and accessible.
"One of my big priorities in writing the script was to make sure that it didn't feel dense, it didn't feel like homework," he said at Comic-Con. "I put a lot of shoe leather into going over the script, and making sure the story worked, and ticked, without the sci-fi elements complicating it too much. Making sure the time travel did its job and got out of the way. So hopefully at the end of it, it makes sense, you don't have to think about it too deeply."
"Looper" opens the Toronto International Film Festival and hits theaters on September 28th.
