Looper and Harry Potter
Still waiting on my copy of The Casual Vacancy to show up…in the meantime, I saw Looper on Saturday, and now I want to squee about the similarities it has with some Harry Potter tropes…
[Plot spoilers; please read at your own risk]
I found Looper to be very enjoyable: dark and thinky with excellent acting while still being fun. Er, except for the torture scene, which managed the feat of hitting my tolerance threshold while taking place entirely offscreen (whoa). Not sure how I feel about Joseph Gordon-Levitt making himself up to look like a younger Bruce Willis; I don’t think that was entirely necessary and definitely detracted from his character for me since he looked kind of fake and plastic. But I still liked him and thought he did a good job.
One thematic element behind the plot of Looper is basically the “let’s kill Hitler through time travel” thought experiment: if you had the ability to go back in time and kill Hitler as a child, would you? Should you? When it came down to it, could you? (I feel rather like Dr. Seuss.) At what point does evil manifest in humans? How risky is theoretical time travel? Is it possible, for instance, that your very act of going back to kill this child who will later be an evil maniac could create those tendencies in him in the first place?
Interesting stuff to think about-and in Harry Potter, Voldemort decided that he would try to kill off his future rival when he was a baby, thereby actually creating him. Time travel and prophecies are risky business! In Looper, Bruce Willis’ character decides to do the same thing: to kill off the child who will become the murderously evil “Rainmaker,” except that there are three possible kids born that day instead of two, as there were in Harry Potter.
One of the little kids who is a possible young Rainmaker, Cid, reminded me so much of the young Tom Riddle whom Dumbledore goes to visit in the orphanage. The actors even look a bit alike: intense eyes, dark hair, pale skin, constant watchful looks, very impressive core magical abilities (and remarkable acting in my opinion). Not to mention family problems-mysteriously absent fathers, stressed mothers (well, Merope Gaunt dies, but I’m sure had she tried to raise little Tommy, she would have been very stressed). In Looper, we’re told that Cid is partially raised by his aunt, though-remind you of anybody from Harry Potter?
My favorite character in Looper was Kid Blue, who is played by Noah Segan, and this character is a dead ringer for Draco Malfoy. A dangerous but incompetent bully who is physically attractive (at least to me) but ultimately rather pathetic. He’s a minor antagonist who introduces unnecessary irritations for our hero, but underneath it all, he’s just a kid trying with increasing desperation to impress his father (or father figure).
I don’t know what it is about that type of character that interests me. I think it may be that I hate being told what I should feel. The filmmakers/writers seem to expect the audience to dislike the character right away, and the rest of the characters always single him out for physical humiliation-because he must deserve it for all the nasty but ineffectual bullying he’s done in the past. This happened so often to Draco (the ferret incident, the slug incident), and it happened several times to poor Kid Blue here. I dislike being told whom I should and should not empathize with in a story by its creators, so when it seems that the creators don’t like a character, I guess it draws me to them.
So, yeah! Go see Looper if you like sci-fi and can handle some violence. Be amazed at Emily Blunt’s great American accent! And let me know if there are other Harry Potter similarities I’m overlooking.
[Plot spoilers; please read at your own risk]
I found Looper to be very enjoyable: dark and thinky with excellent acting while still being fun. Er, except for the torture scene, which managed the feat of hitting my tolerance threshold while taking place entirely offscreen (whoa). Not sure how I feel about Joseph Gordon-Levitt making himself up to look like a younger Bruce Willis; I don’t think that was entirely necessary and definitely detracted from his character for me since he looked kind of fake and plastic. But I still liked him and thought he did a good job.
One thematic element behind the plot of Looper is basically the “let’s kill Hitler through time travel” thought experiment: if you had the ability to go back in time and kill Hitler as a child, would you? Should you? When it came down to it, could you? (I feel rather like Dr. Seuss.) At what point does evil manifest in humans? How risky is theoretical time travel? Is it possible, for instance, that your very act of going back to kill this child who will later be an evil maniac could create those tendencies in him in the first place?
Interesting stuff to think about-and in Harry Potter, Voldemort decided that he would try to kill off his future rival when he was a baby, thereby actually creating him. Time travel and prophecies are risky business! In Looper, Bruce Willis’ character decides to do the same thing: to kill off the child who will become the murderously evil “Rainmaker,” except that there are three possible kids born that day instead of two, as there were in Harry Potter.
One of the little kids who is a possible young Rainmaker, Cid, reminded me so much of the young Tom Riddle whom Dumbledore goes to visit in the orphanage. The actors even look a bit alike: intense eyes, dark hair, pale skin, constant watchful looks, very impressive core magical abilities (and remarkable acting in my opinion). Not to mention family problems-mysteriously absent fathers, stressed mothers (well, Merope Gaunt dies, but I’m sure had she tried to raise little Tommy, she would have been very stressed). In Looper, we’re told that Cid is partially raised by his aunt, though-remind you of anybody from Harry Potter?
My favorite character in Looper was Kid Blue, who is played by Noah Segan, and this character is a dead ringer for Draco Malfoy. A dangerous but incompetent bully who is physically attractive (at least to me) but ultimately rather pathetic. He’s a minor antagonist who introduces unnecessary irritations for our hero, but underneath it all, he’s just a kid trying with increasing desperation to impress his father (or father figure).
I don’t know what it is about that type of character that interests me. I think it may be that I hate being told what I should feel. The filmmakers/writers seem to expect the audience to dislike the character right away, and the rest of the characters always single him out for physical humiliation-because he must deserve it for all the nasty but ineffectual bullying he’s done in the past. This happened so often to Draco (the ferret incident, the slug incident), and it happened several times to poor Kid Blue here. I dislike being told whom I should and should not empathize with in a story by its creators, so when it seems that the creators don’t like a character, I guess it draws me to them.
So, yeah! Go see Looper if you like sci-fi and can handle some violence. Be amazed at Emily Blunt’s great American accent! And let me know if there are other Harry Potter similarities I’m overlooking.