Time travel is tricky. Not because science hasn't figured out how to make it a real thing, but because anytime it's used as a storytelling device, the plot can be compromised by the type of mind-bending paradoxes that can ruin suspension of disbelief.
Rian Johnson's latest film Looper, out Friday, is a time-travel flick that sidesteps most of the problems presented by time-travel tropes. By focusing on a smart, character-driven story instead of getting bogged down in the "what if?" questions, Johnson's film stays above the fray.
"Time travel is a really weird thing in narratives because it's so easy for it to completely take over the narrative and suddenly all you're thinking about is butterflies and paradoxes," Johnson told Wired at Comic-Con International.
Looper even manages to poke a little fun at time travel. During one scene where a young man named Joe (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is talking to his future self (Bruce Willis) in a diner, the elder Joe finally says, "I don't want to start talking about time travel because if we start talking about time travel, we're going to be here all day, making diagrams with straws."
(Spoiler alert: Minor plot points follow.)
That doesn't mean the film is totally without time-travel tropes. Without giving too much away, Looper serves up a pretty strong twist on the idea of going back in time and correcting what once went wrong – a concept that's popped up in flicks as disparate as Timecop and Hot Tub Time Machine. More specifically, Looper has a weird twist on the Hitler murder paradox, which essentially points out that there are a slew of pitfalls in going back in time and killing somebody.
In honor of Looper's smart storytelling, Wired is taking a trip back in time to revisit some the best time-travel flicks of the past. Click through the gallery above for a guided tour of some of the finest space-time-shifting tropes on film.
[h/t to the TV Tropes wiki for incredible insight]
Photo: Alan Markfield/Sony Pictures
No comments:
Post a Comment