Yet more movies

[akashiver]

I just saw Looper and enjoyed the hell out of it. Props to the script: the foreshadowing was very, very subtle. Also, I appreciated the fact that the writers didn't rely on a cast of stereotypes, but developed their minor players. Hell, even red-shirt assassin-guy got some character development, and he was only on screen for, like, 5 seconds.

Comments

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

The brutality of that first unclosed loop went a little far for my taste. It was seriously horrific, and while there was other bad stuff in the movie, that bit was just skin-crawlingly awful.

But I want fic about Cid now, post-movie. Maybe something juxtaposing his life against that of the Rainmaker.

[akashiver.livejournal.com]

It really was horrific, wasn't it? But -- for me, at least -- intellectually horrific, and therefore far more watchable than a visceral torture scene. I flinched far more at seeing a character's hand smashed with a hammer than I did at seeing the Unclosed lose... what he lost.... because the latter didn't involve immediate pain. It was like something out of a nightmare rather than a crime drama.

Story-wise, I think it accomplished its objective: I really, really didn't want Joe to get caught after seeing that.

When you say it went a little too far for you -- what part drove it over the edge? And would you have stopped watching if you were at home?

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

It went over the edge for me when his feet etc started vanishing. Up to that point, it was creepy and disturbing, but not quite as bad. But the accelerating pace and increasing seriousness of the losses as he got out of the car moved it well past "here's incentive to show up" and into "sadistic torture."

I don't think it would have stopped me watching, but it did feel tonally worse than everything around it.

[akashiver.livejournal.com]

>>as he got out of the car moved it well past "here's incentive to show up" and into "sadistic torture."<<

Yep. When you ask someone to show up in 15 mins, and then literally cut off his means of transportation (HANDS! LEGS!), you've definitely moved into sadist-ville. Which raises the stakes for the main character in ways that go beyond fear-of-getting caught. People who literally cut off noses to spite faces are not the sort of people who can be negotiated with.

On reflection, I think that scene helped the writers solve a bunch of story problems that would otherwise have come up. Why do these smart people not accept young Joe's repeated offer to join forces? Why can't young Joe resolve all this by getting a message to his boss? Answer: when bad guys' authority is challenged, they become more interested in inflicting pain than in pursuing practical solutions to their problems.

And then there's the viscerality of a limbless, tongueless person crawling to his execution. That obviously emphasizes the helplessness of the "old" looper. Was that necessary? I'm not sure. I'd be interested to know what the effects of a less brutal version of that scene would produce on the audience. And how it would affect the dynamics of the story.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

For me, it felt unnecessarily brutal to the viewer. Much more a horror moment than anything else in the movie, to the point where it started distracting me from the story, rather than contributing.