With the release of Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Bruce Willis Jr.’s new film Looper hitting the theaters, I was reminded that every so often Hollywood ends up making a time travel movie that actually has a bit of a brain behind it. Smart movies are few and far between, but smart time traveling movies are a rarity that springs forth once every hundred Timecops.
A smart movie about time travel is a different thing than a smart movie about, say, actual science. When a movie like ?The Core? comes out and just acts like the world can stop spinning without much consequence, or when ?The Day After Tomorrow? says you can walk from Philadelphia to New York in three days during the ice age, you’ve got a stupid movie. There isn’t really any science for time travel to be held up against. Instead, a smart time travel movie is a movie that at least pretends the subject is serious and realistic.