Trailer Tracking: ‘Rise of the Guardians,’ ‘Looper,’ ‘Ted’

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Movie: “Looper”

Best Parts of the Trailer: Rian Johnson’s name means quality; Did I see a flying motorcycle?; That twisted angle shot of Joseph Gordon-Levitt falling; Who doesn’t have a soft spot for time travel movies?

Worst Parts of the Trailer: The make-up alterations to Gordon-Levitt’s face are a little unsettling. I get why they did it, but… gah; Bruce Willis gets top billing, but the trailer makes it look like JGL does all the heavy lifting…

OUR TAKE: Another high concept premise that, while not the slam-dunk on a conceptual level that “Rise of the Guardians” is, still looks incredibly intriguing. I’m a bit biased on this one because I’m a huge fan of writer-director Rian Johnson’s previous films – “Brick” and “The Brothers Bloom” – so, to some extent, his name in the credits affords the trailer a huge benefit of the doubt on my end. And maybe that’s helping me dig the premise so much. In a nutshell, in the future, mobsters from the way future – a future when time travel has been invented – send people back in time to have killers in the non-time-travelling past to kill and dispose of them. One of those hitmen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) finds himself in a bad situation when the mobsters send his future self (Bruce Willis) back in time and he fails to end his own life. (His future Bruce-self escapes.) Thus begins a really unique chase movie concept – a younger killer having to hunt down his older, more experienced self.

Gordon-Levitt and Willis make a really strong younger-older pair, so the idea of watching them play cat-and-mouse with each other is an appealing concept, although I have to say that the prosthetic work they did on Gordon-Levitt’s face to make him look more like Bruce Willis feels very weird to me. After films like “Inception” and “500 Days of Summer”, Gordon-Levitt has a very recognizable marquee face at the moment, so altering his familiar look just doesn’t sit right. (It mostly makes me recall Nicole Kidman’s nose in “The Hours.”) Face aside, there’s a ton of texture in the “Looper” trailer that burns past the viewer at a very fast speed, so it’s a little hard to digest at first. It seems apparent that this is much, much more than a “Face/Off” style man-vs.-man thriller. First, there’s the look of the “Looper” world, which, I think, does a fantastic job of feeling realistically futuristic. The sets, the vehicles, the wardrobe – they’re all a nice mixture of the lived-in real and the cautiously optimistic for the future. “Minority Report” tried to create a world like this – a future that actually seemed reachable in a few years – but the crazy futuristic highways scenes were just a bit too speculative for reality. But, at first glance, it seems like “Looper” gets the look right – yes, there are flying motorcycles, but they look like rusted, weather-beaten real machines, not Asimov-inspired concept art. There’s also a touch of “Goodfellas” in the “Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s life as a hitman” scenes, which could either bring a lot of emotional depth to JGL OR… they could drag the story down as we sit there screaming, “Enough angst! Go kill your older self and make it exciting!” (I have enough faith in Johnson that I don’t think it’ll be a problem.)

The rest of the trailer is just glimpses – Jeff Daniels dropping in for a quick joke, a big shockwave devastating a cornfield, and, in probably the most interesting fragment, Emily Blunt with a shotgun. The “Looper” trailer teases a lot, which is good for a first trailer, but I left the trailer both excited for the concept and frustrated that I didn’t learn more about Blunt and Willis’ characters. Hopefully, we’ll learn more about the emotional shape of “Looper” in the months to come. However, for now, I’m just happy to see a trailer for such an unusual and unusually engaging sci-fi film that, unlike a lot of previews, leaves me with more questions than answers.

TRAILER OUTLOOK: Optimistic. A fragmentary trailer that promises a lot and explains little. And I like that… for now.