Let's all go to the Lobby - and get plowed
So, during the film, there were these two guys behind us - we knew they had been drinking because at several points during the movie they discussed whether or not to go back out and buy more wine. They decided to engage in an interactive dialog between themselves and the movie. The first comments ranged from - "I can't follow this, what's happening here" and quickly degenerated into - "Oh my god this is the worst movie ever - what the hell is going on - how could anyone understand this - it's impossible." This went for nearly the entire film.
Now we could spend a lot of time dissecting the movie, but why bother, we'll never remember it as well we will as the theater dialog about it. Let's do a quick overview on Looper anyway:
- The near-future looks really depressing
- The distant-future looks worse
- Bruce Willis and Robin really don't look much alike
- Bruce Willis with long stringy dark hair is just not something you want to see (5 seconds onscreen was 4 seconds too long)
- That little kid really needed a time-out (no time travel puns intended)
- There was lots of gratuitous violence towards the end - but where were the laser guns ???!!!!
I'm not working for Batman one minute longer!
Anyway, enough of that, what we really need to address is time travel and paradoxes. This is what seemed to be troubling our intoxicated fellow movie-goers. The basic premise is this; if you change something in the present it effects not just the future but any future travelers who happen to be visiting your own temporal neighborhood. Now just to be clear for all you doubters out there - time travel is in fact possible - we all do it every day - only it's one way - forward. This movie assumes that there is a device which looks like a cross between an iron lung and a vacuum cleaner that can somehow send people back in time (the other way). To help better understand how this might be possible we've brought together the world's two foremost experts on time travel and physics, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking...
Time Travel is simple, don't believe us, just ask Einstein and Hawking
So, now it's all perfectly clear now right? Still don't get it. We'll this isn't a science blog, but we will provide a checklist to determine whether or not you should attempt to watch complex, alternate reality and time travel movies.
The Sci-Fi IQ Test:
- Jean Luc Picard is the guy who directed The Fifth Element. (T or F)
- If you go back in time and kill your grandfather the only thing you miss out on is Christmas presents. (T or F)
- In the show Sliders, there was an alternate Universe where the Bengals actually made it to the Superbowl and won! (T or F)
- In the original planet of the Apes, the three guys and 1 girl were supposed to repopulate the human race (T o F) and BTW who came up with the math on that?
- In the Matrix, it was the Machines who scorched the sky or was that the Terminator series?
- How many levels of dream reality (Inception) can you sink into without getting lost?
