“Looper felt to me like a maddening near-miss: It posits an impossible but fascinating-to-imagine relationship — a face-to-face encounter between one’s present and future self, in which each self must account for its betrayal of the other — and then throws away nearly all the dramatic potential that relationship offers. If someone remakes Looper as the movie it could have been in, say, 30 years, will someone from the future please FedEx it back to me?” — from Dana Stevens‘ 9.28 Slate review.

“The biggest disappointment, for me, is that the great haunting concept of an older guy (Bruce Willis) being able to give counsel to his younger, stupider, less wise self (Joseph Gordon Levitt) has been almost completely ignored, and that’s really a shame.” — from my 9.6 review, titled “Looper Dooper.”

Notice I didn’t say this potential was completely ignored; I said it was “almost completely” ignored. It was toyed and fiddled with but not really developed.