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beccaelizabethYou know what I said earlier about trigger warnings, and how if films had them I'd watch far less of them?
... yeah.
So: warnings for discussion of suicide
also: dear writers: death is not a solution, okay? death is the problem. FFS.
Looper would have been easier to watch if I didn't spend the whole film going 'seriously, that makeup is weird'. I mean, I know why they had to look like each other, it was essential that they had matching wound and scar patterns, I do get that. I'm just rather accustomed to both their faces, and seeing one overwritten with the other is just weird.
The science fiction elements... I felt the TK stuff was entirely superfluous. The story was about the perpetuation of a cycle of violence. All you need for that is guns. The TK felt like trying to absolve the little kid, like they didn't set up an accident, they set up a biological accident he couldn't control. I felt that weakened the whole thing. You're watching something about time travel, and now you're supposed to accept it's also about TK, except the only way that it matters is because they don't want to show a tiny kid pulling the trigger.
Consider: The scene where he falls down stairs and accidentally kills a guy. He's gone down the stairs as far as the looper's set aside blunderbuss. Why isn't it just that the kid picks up the gun? He wants a gun, he wants to be able to protect his mum, why doesn't he do that? The rest of the scene plays through, he falls, the gun goes off by accident, the guy gets dead. Why not do that? Then it's about handing a kid a gun.
Later in the field the kid gets shot and then nearly blows up, like, everything everywhere. That's harder to set up without the TK. Make it about guns and maybe the kid is carrying or the older drops it or there's one dropped in the field where he ran to it or there's some dug out or hiding place to run to. Make it about blowing stuff up and Joe's earlier comment about burning the fields and 'how much gas do you have' plays through. The kid built a communication system, he could build a triggering system. If you take TK away you have more elements of the story make sense, more of it be guns on the mantelpiece.
So why have TK?
It feels dishonest about guns. It feels like the kid should be deciding guns solve everything, that the comments about handing Joe a gun when it's as tall as he is should go full circle with Cid. I don't understand why that element went SF.
The time travel stuff though, that played through. That was solid. Also, horrific. The bit in the middle with the surgery? That's a set of images that'll stay with me.
It's also using fear of disability to drive the guy to his death. I mean, it's pretty logical in that specific circumstance, because he's losing chunks of himself and there won't be enough to keep running with if he doesn't run in that specific direction so he'll get caught and die either way, but... it's playing on the old fate worse than death idea. Nasty.
Using that to simply demonstrate the laws of time travel is... memorable and effective.
The central thing though: This is a story about a guy killing himself slowly, with drugs and with making a deal that ends his life on a specific date. That is his problem. His solution is to kill himself quickly.
... the hell?
Okay, so the other statement of his problem involves him losing his soul. He's already a murderer, but younger him is horrified that older him would kill children. Older him is sufficiently well motivated within the story, he has memories of a wife and kid, however hazy. The messed up blur of his memories sounds like a life of drug addiction too. Old Joe feels his wife saved his soul, not just kept him breathing, because she got him off the drugs. Young Joe quits too, though the time scale looks... really? One day since his last dose, one night of withdrawal, then he'll be fine? Or hey, maybe two nights! ... movie versions of drug addiction are unimpressive. If it's that quick it rather undermines Old Joe's motivations too. Did I miss where it was longer? It doesn't seem like it could have been. Messy. But the addiction thing is key, because he's killing himself slowly, the Loop thing is just the SF defamiliarisation of it. The drugs and the violence to feed them, that's the problem that sets him up to die. So the solution, where he kills himself before he can do more damage? That's... really? That's better than addiction now?
He's deciding he'd rather be dead than be that empty and violent.
I just reject that solution.
I mean, if the idea is the kid's formative influence was watching someone die, this should still fuck him up just as bad. He liked Joe, Joe was protecting him, Joe was suddenly dead. That should be a problem. Still having a mum is the solution? Really?
Maybe being very rich is the solution. All that metal all over the road.
Maybe there was no solution and he'd grow up the same after all. Film for once doesn't tell us. I was expecting more Hollywood tidying up.
I'm with Dickens: if a guy sees he's going to the bad, all he'll do is hurt people, and then he'll die, the only solution is to live better instead.
there was another arc about selfishness. the way he'd give up a friend for silver shook him up. but young Joe's plan to give up his future wife to protect her would have worked fine too, if old Joe wasn't hanging on to that future for himself.
(ways I might have written it different: never show the audience the picture in the watch, and at the end show the watch case empty. wonder if there even was someone, or if it's dreams he's holding on to.)
so the way the writer figures it, he's letting go of his life, his money, everything, he's being generous by killing himself.
Which is just messed up.
And depressing suicide logic, to decide the world will be better off if their life gets ended right then.
It's stupid and I reject this as a story structure, as an answer, as a solution. It solves nothing, it fucks things up. Living well is the only answer.
So, for all the film did what it set out to do, f a i l.
In other news: Bechdel fail, two named women, never talk to each other, one is a hooker who is also a mom and one is a mom who also... partied in the city and they both sleep with the main guy. One woman I don't think got named, the future wife, also the only person of color I can remember. No, wait, Beatrix in the diner, who just serves food and speaks French. Other than that, a lot of white guys being very violent to each other.
same old same old.
which is the theme of the film.
I just went to wiki to read the 'critical reception' thing, and I think it's interesting not a word of it mentions the TK. Time travel yes, TK no. As a general summary one critic reckoned it's about, if we can't fix our mistakes, can we at least stop repeating them? And if that's the question, the answer 'yes if dead' is... dystopic to say the least.
The future dystopia elements were sort of routine and looked quite a lot like past dystopias. It worked, but it weren't much interesting. Dried out farms, vagrants, crime, no jobs for anyone, someone's drawing on stories of US history and giving it flying bikes. Plausible enough, familiar enough, to just be background elements to this one guy's story. So that were neatly done.
One guy faces his younger/older self and hates himself for pissing it all away. Older man tries to kill a crime boss in the cradle, thinking that'll sort things out. Younger man tries to end the cycle of violence so that kid won't need to be a crime boss. Younger man's solution is more hopeful. Just for other people only.
So, stupid. But I can see what they were trying to say there. End the violence and grow up better people.
But it painted it more like, never start the violence and you can grow up better, but once started the only thing one can do to improve the world is remove oneself. Sod that.
It can't mean that anyway, kid started it, just with its brain.
I disliked the ending enough I'm just poking the whole film to try and make it line up to not make me annoyed all everywhere, and it isn't working. Stupid film.
I can see why other people would think differently, but I think it's just stupid.
... yeah.
So: warnings for discussion of suicide
also: dear writers: death is not a solution, okay? death is the problem. FFS.
Looper would have been easier to watch if I didn't spend the whole film going 'seriously, that makeup is weird'. I mean, I know why they had to look like each other, it was essential that they had matching wound and scar patterns, I do get that. I'm just rather accustomed to both their faces, and seeing one overwritten with the other is just weird.
The science fiction elements... I felt the TK stuff was entirely superfluous. The story was about the perpetuation of a cycle of violence. All you need for that is guns. The TK felt like trying to absolve the little kid, like they didn't set up an accident, they set up a biological accident he couldn't control. I felt that weakened the whole thing. You're watching something about time travel, and now you're supposed to accept it's also about TK, except the only way that it matters is because they don't want to show a tiny kid pulling the trigger.
Consider: The scene where he falls down stairs and accidentally kills a guy. He's gone down the stairs as far as the looper's set aside blunderbuss. Why isn't it just that the kid picks up the gun? He wants a gun, he wants to be able to protect his mum, why doesn't he do that? The rest of the scene plays through, he falls, the gun goes off by accident, the guy gets dead. Why not do that? Then it's about handing a kid a gun.
Later in the field the kid gets shot and then nearly blows up, like, everything everywhere. That's harder to set up without the TK. Make it about guns and maybe the kid is carrying or the older drops it or there's one dropped in the field where he ran to it or there's some dug out or hiding place to run to. Make it about blowing stuff up and Joe's earlier comment about burning the fields and 'how much gas do you have' plays through. The kid built a communication system, he could build a triggering system. If you take TK away you have more elements of the story make sense, more of it be guns on the mantelpiece.
So why have TK?
It feels dishonest about guns. It feels like the kid should be deciding guns solve everything, that the comments about handing Joe a gun when it's as tall as he is should go full circle with Cid. I don't understand why that element went SF.
The time travel stuff though, that played through. That was solid. Also, horrific. The bit in the middle with the surgery? That's a set of images that'll stay with me.
It's also using fear of disability to drive the guy to his death. I mean, it's pretty logical in that specific circumstance, because he's losing chunks of himself and there won't be enough to keep running with if he doesn't run in that specific direction so he'll get caught and die either way, but... it's playing on the old fate worse than death idea. Nasty.
Using that to simply demonstrate the laws of time travel is... memorable and effective.
The central thing though: This is a story about a guy killing himself slowly, with drugs and with making a deal that ends his life on a specific date. That is his problem. His solution is to kill himself quickly.
... the hell?
Okay, so the other statement of his problem involves him losing his soul. He's already a murderer, but younger him is horrified that older him would kill children. Older him is sufficiently well motivated within the story, he has memories of a wife and kid, however hazy. The messed up blur of his memories sounds like a life of drug addiction too. Old Joe feels his wife saved his soul, not just kept him breathing, because she got him off the drugs. Young Joe quits too, though the time scale looks... really? One day since his last dose, one night of withdrawal, then he'll be fine? Or hey, maybe two nights! ... movie versions of drug addiction are unimpressive. If it's that quick it rather undermines Old Joe's motivations too. Did I miss where it was longer? It doesn't seem like it could have been. Messy. But the addiction thing is key, because he's killing himself slowly, the Loop thing is just the SF defamiliarisation of it. The drugs and the violence to feed them, that's the problem that sets him up to die. So the solution, where he kills himself before he can do more damage? That's... really? That's better than addiction now?
He's deciding he'd rather be dead than be that empty and violent.
I just reject that solution.
I mean, if the idea is the kid's formative influence was watching someone die, this should still fuck him up just as bad. He liked Joe, Joe was protecting him, Joe was suddenly dead. That should be a problem. Still having a mum is the solution? Really?
Maybe being very rich is the solution. All that metal all over the road.
Maybe there was no solution and he'd grow up the same after all. Film for once doesn't tell us. I was expecting more Hollywood tidying up.
I'm with Dickens: if a guy sees he's going to the bad, all he'll do is hurt people, and then he'll die, the only solution is to live better instead.
there was another arc about selfishness. the way he'd give up a friend for silver shook him up. but young Joe's plan to give up his future wife to protect her would have worked fine too, if old Joe wasn't hanging on to that future for himself.
(ways I might have written it different: never show the audience the picture in the watch, and at the end show the watch case empty. wonder if there even was someone, or if it's dreams he's holding on to.)
so the way the writer figures it, he's letting go of his life, his money, everything, he's being generous by killing himself.
Which is just messed up.
And depressing suicide logic, to decide the world will be better off if their life gets ended right then.
It's stupid and I reject this as a story structure, as an answer, as a solution. It solves nothing, it fucks things up. Living well is the only answer.
So, for all the film did what it set out to do, f a i l.
In other news: Bechdel fail, two named women, never talk to each other, one is a hooker who is also a mom and one is a mom who also... partied in the city and they both sleep with the main guy. One woman I don't think got named, the future wife, also the only person of color I can remember. No, wait, Beatrix in the diner, who just serves food and speaks French. Other than that, a lot of white guys being very violent to each other.
same old same old.
which is the theme of the film.
I just went to wiki to read the 'critical reception' thing, and I think it's interesting not a word of it mentions the TK. Time travel yes, TK no. As a general summary one critic reckoned it's about, if we can't fix our mistakes, can we at least stop repeating them? And if that's the question, the answer 'yes if dead' is... dystopic to say the least.
The future dystopia elements were sort of routine and looked quite a lot like past dystopias. It worked, but it weren't much interesting. Dried out farms, vagrants, crime, no jobs for anyone, someone's drawing on stories of US history and giving it flying bikes. Plausible enough, familiar enough, to just be background elements to this one guy's story. So that were neatly done.
One guy faces his younger/older self and hates himself for pissing it all away. Older man tries to kill a crime boss in the cradle, thinking that'll sort things out. Younger man tries to end the cycle of violence so that kid won't need to be a crime boss. Younger man's solution is more hopeful. Just for other people only.
So, stupid. But I can see what they were trying to say there. End the violence and grow up better people.
But it painted it more like, never start the violence and you can grow up better, but once started the only thing one can do to improve the world is remove oneself. Sod that.
It can't mean that anyway, kid started it, just with its brain.
I disliked the ending enough I'm just poking the whole film to try and make it line up to not make me annoyed all everywhere, and it isn't working. Stupid film.
I can see why other people would think differently, but I think it's just stupid.
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no subject
Date: 2013-05-25 10:44 pm (UTC)Everyone said Looper was brilliant and I hated it but we're not alone. When I admitted hating it on my LJ, I had other people agree with me.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-25 11:00 pm (UTC)the ending you refer to though I do not recall; wiki says it's an alternate ending? I wasn't consciously wondering how that film could be worse, but hey, now I know.
Yeah, I see the resemblance. yuck.
I saw Looper was up for the Hugo this year. In that category I don't think it has a chance. But I'm kind of relieved to hear there's people who don't like it.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-25 11:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-25 11:04 pm (UTC)