Looper Trailer Review
Hollywood, it seems, has been spending too much time watching its own movies...
Hollywood, it seems, has been spending too much time watching its own movies. Therefore its current activities model resembles a James Bond villain with mind control abilities and a desire to spread pain and sadness throughout the world, which it does through many angles: Bringing back 3D, making popcorn more expensive than a lovely semi-detached bungalow in the Yorkshire dales, giving Nicolas Cage movie roles, and also releasing the brand new teaser trailer for Looper officially 30 minutes after I went on to twitter to complain to literally a few people about the fact it hadnt come yet. You made me look foolish. You cunning, cunning warlords of sadness. However, the warlords of sadness do save themselves further animosity from me by the sheer quality of what is on screen for a film we (me, collectives make me feel like Im part of the team) at WhatCulture! have, without any reservation, labelled as one of our films to watch this year. If you haven't seen the trailer yet, do so immediately now; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uIWGOKW5OM&feature=player_embedded The trailer opens with a ticking stop watch (its about time travel you see), then continues with Joseph Gordon Levitts heavenly tones talking about time travel (I told you) and a shot of a man appearing out of thin air and his Looper, Joe, shooting him without a moments hesitation... Now this is weird, bad-ass, morally wrong, against the laws of physics, biology, chemistry, history, art, scone making, egg painting and generally everything that has ever happened ever, but all of these nuggets of originality and constant on edge that you may need to change your underwear at any time help characterise this film as one of the most exciting pieces of cinema in modern times. 
Luckily for the audience, this trailer does get away with one of my main trailer no-nos (voice overs), as it is A. The main characters voice. B. Not an unusually chipper middle aged American man trying to claim the latest Miley Cyrus abomination is an Emotional rollercoaster and C. Its crucial to understand whats going on; being the first trailer it doesnt want to over burden you with dialogue, instead focusing on the action which is anchored by JGLs, narrative highlighting, voice over. So what indeed is happening here? Well JGL plays Joe, a Looper, hired guns who kill off men that the future mob would rather be erased from history, he rather surprisingly comes across his future self, played by Bruce Willis, who runs away and kicks off what looks like a power house of a narrative. Theres more than just the linear story of JGL chasing Bruce Willis shown here, Emily Blunt appears wielding a shotgun in a part horrifying/part sexually confounding shot, JGL gets shot at either through or by the floorboards which is again intriguing as it offers the idea of the mob bosses come through time to actually kill JGL, or the future actually involves mutinous floors, in which case I would like to pledge my allegiance to King Carpet of the Living Room Upholstery Realm forthwith. 
The only issue I can see in this trailer is the rather shallow one of the effects, not being a huge budget movie it cant embellish its scenery with overly lavish pieces of digitally animated tat (a la Michael Bay), however the immediate things we see, like flying cars, arent entirely convincing. Granted, its the first trailer and the film is several months from release and the visual effects may still need sprucing up, however if this doesnt happen poor quality effects could dampen what looks like a brilliant story. As much fun as it is seeing Robert Pattinson zoom about in CGI sequences which look like they were drawn by a 4 year old on his own palm as he stands in the cold, for actual good films it would be nicer to see that avoided. All jokes aside (I bet you wished I said that at the beginning, right?) this trailer looks incredibly good. Theres more than just the simple narrative here, the inclusion of the Loopers obvious success in their business is an important one. Will he question what REAL value is? Turn his back on the life he left he led and help his future self? Its all so intriguing. Its going to be awesome. Looper is set for release on September 28th. 