Looper and the infinite loop of time-travel
Time travel has not yet been invented. But thirty years from now, it will have been. With these words, Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) introduces Rian Johnson’s improbably enjoyable Looper, the story of how young Joe at first faces off his older self (Bruce Willis) and then, with considerable cunning, does something completely unexpected. Yes, I got brain cramp figuring out the physics of being in time and out of time at the same time. No, it’s not slightly heavy lifting in the plausibility department. And yes, it’s a lot of fun when the infinite loop of this mobius-strip of a narrative untwists and becomes something quite different.
If you’ve seen it, where does it rank in your time-travel pantheon? And if you haven’t, which time-travel movies do you like to board? Let me put in a plug for my favorites, La Jetee and its remake, 12 Monkeys (the latter also starring Willis), and the deeply strange and satisfying Happy Accidents.
Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt and his prosthetic nose) get abducted by his older self (Bruce Willis) in Rian Johnson’s Looper.
My favorite is “Time After Time,” starring Malcom McDowell as H.G. Wells, David Warner as Jack the Ripper, and Mary Steenburgen as the thoroughly modern woman in peril. In the “so cheesy, it’s fun” category, there’s “Timeline,” where Frances O’Conner gets to speak one of my favorite lines of dialogue ever: “Do I *look* like a wormhole physicist??”