There is a lot of anticipation and positive buzz building for Looper, a time travel story starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis that hits theaters on September 28.
Looper recently premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and even back when it was first test screening it was generating positive responses from audiences. Although we just finished up a big blockbuster summer, you get the feeling Looper could be a big Fall hit.
I always loved The Terminator’s storyline of an indestructible cyborg going back into the past to try and prevent the future, and when I first heard the plot of Looper, it sounded a bit Terminator-esque to me: In 2072, the mafia sends people back thirty years in the past where an assassin, played by Levitt, is waiting to do them in. Then the mob wants to “close the loop” by sending back Bruce Willis, which is who Levitt will be in thirty years, and Levitt has to track Willis down when he goes on the run, and tries to alter the future.
As the Hollywood Reporter tells us, Cameron Bailey, the co-director of the Toronto International Film Festival said that the film delivers on both “the action level and the ideas level,” and those are the kinds of blockbusters you hope for these days, something that’s action packed and exciting, and isn’t mindless.
Going through the reviews round up at Rotten Tomatoes, Variety called Looper a “grandly conceived, impressively mounted feature [that] shows a giddy, geeky interest in science-fiction, then forces it into the back seat and lets the multidimensional characters drive.”
The Reporter tells us Looper” keeps the action popping while sustaining interest in the long arc of a story.” Screen International also called it, “spectacularly cool,” while SFX termed it, “The most ambitious, inventive, downright invigorating film you’re likely to see all year. Original science fiction film-making at its very finest.”
While Looper’s going to be in theaters in a few weeks, we’re still a few years away from another Planet of the Apes flick, May 24, 2014 to be exact, and screenwriter Rick Jaffa, who co-wrote Rise of the Planet of the Apes, was asked by IGN if time travel would play a factor in the next one.
“I don’t foresee that,” he said. “But it’s interesting you should ask that, because it’s the one big element that we made a conscious decision not to explore in the first one, and we were worried that there might be some backlash in the science fiction community because of it.
“When the story first came together we were very, very excited,” Jaffa continued. “And yet before we pitched it, I thought, ‘The one thing missing though is time travel. But it’s not necessary for this particular telling.’ And I don’t really foresee it, to tell you the truth.”
But there’s of course still a little time to change your mind before shooting begins sometime in the near future.
