The film world is obsessed with time travel and among the most interesting time-traveling movies is the Star Wars director Rian Johnson’s movie starring Emily Blunt and Bruce Willis. Known best for his unique storytelling and innovative work, Johnson’s $176 million movie was a significant work on the theme of time travel as it explored innate themes of free will, determination, and human relationships.
Not only does the movie grapple with these themes, but it also raises questions like using time travel to resolve real-world problems and more. And director Rian Johnson has some interesting answers to give.
Rian Johnson’s Interesting Time Travelling Theory
Set in the future, Rian Johnson‘s Looper has the world in a dystopian society where time traveling exists but is banned. Used only by criminals, time travel is used by them to send targets they want killed back to the past where specialized assassins called Loopers execute them. The main character Joe, played by Joseph Gordan-Levitt, knows that eventually he will have to kill his future self, and is faced with a dilemma when his future self, played by Bruce Willis, escapes.
The story then revolves around the future Joe’s determination to end this system once and for all by executing the one who created this system. Thus, the inevitable question about whether killing someone, such as Hitler, in the past could save our future, pops up. And the Star Wars director has an interesting answer to this, as he revealed in an interview with The New York Times, back in 2012.
“For me, that’s essentially the wrong question. Which is weird, because you could say that, in some way, it’s the question that ‘Looper’ eventually puts its chips down on. But for me, the real question isn’t ‘Would you kill Hitler?’ It’s ‘Does solving a problem by finding the right person and killing them ever work? Or does it create a self-perpetuating loop of violence?’ And that to me is not a theoretical, time-travel question. That’s a real-world question.”
Thus the director’s question not only transcends the bounds of fiction but raises a very potent question of the perpetuating cycle of violence in our own world and its cyclical nature.
Looper Wasn’t Inspired By Other Time Travelling Movies At All
One would think Rian Johnson’s Looper would be inspired by or based on a time-traveling movie. However, while constructing the movie, the acclaimed director started out by not thinking or even watching all the other time-traveling movies at all. Instead, the actor was inspired by the writings of Haruki Murakami, Macbeth, and TS Eliot’s Four Quartets.
Furthermore, Looper was also inspired by Witness, an interesting 1985 dramatic Harrison Ford movie set on an Amish farm and countryside. While there were other influences as well, the majority of them weren’t the typical time-travel fare. However, Johnson’s unique approach helped the movie to stand out from the rest with a unique narrative and thematic depth.
Looper can be rented on Amazon Video.
Source: The New York Times
