In ‘Looper’, Joseph Gordon-Levitt Wears Prosthetics To Look Like Bruce Willis.

I can’t wait for Rian Johnson’s ‘Looper’. Time travel, Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Beast mode initialized. Yet, it’s so so far away. Johnson recently spoke a bit about the plot, as well as the JGL-Bruce Willis acting connection.

Indie Wire:

Starring an ace cast including  Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt, Jeff Daniels, Paul Dano  and more, the film is set in a future where hitmen are employed by crime bosses in an even-further-future to kill targets sent back in time, and focuses on one such man (Gordon-Levitt), who finds himself faced with the task of killing his older self (Willis). But don’t get too hooked on the time jumping conceit as Johnson tells the  Los Angeles Times, it’s really only a device for a much broader tale.

“If you just tell somebody the plot, you’re inevitably telling them the time travel stuff, but the movie actually uses that as a set-up. The best parallel I can draw is to the first ‘Terminator’ movie where time travel is used to set up this impossible situation between these people and then that situation plays itself out,” he explained. But it seems the big special effect of the movie — was has VFX assistance from “Primer” director  Shane Carruth  — will be the gear that Gordon-Levitt wears to make him physically resemble Willis.

Noting that JGL will be wearing practical prosthetics to help him morph into the shape of Willis, Johnson notes, “…the biggest thing is Joe’s performance, he’s really doing Bruce in a big and daring way, but he strikes a balance between obviously imitating Bruce and also building this organic performance.”

Oh September, you’re so very, very far away.