Rian Johnson‘s Looper opens this weekend. The film (read our review here), which stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis, puts a unique twist on time travel. Most theater chains hold a midnight screening for every major film, and Johnson thought it might be fun to introduce his film at a midnight screening held at the Arclight in Hollywood. The catch is that he never told anyone in the audience that he was coming, nor did he identify himself.

Check out the hilarious video here below.

For those who may not live in the Los Angeles area, the Arclight Theater is one of the premiere theaters in Southern California. Before the start of every film, an usher comes in to introduce what you are about to watch, ensures that he will stay until the presentation is perfect, and ask you to please turn off any electronic devices.

Looper
Directed by: Rian Johnson
Written by: Rian Johnson
Starring Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt, Paul Dano, Piper Perabo, Jeff Daniels
FilmDistrict | TriStar Pictures
Rated | 118 Minutes
Release Date: September 28, 2012

There year is 2044. Time travel has not yet been invented, but thirty years from now it will have been. When underground criminal syndicates in the future need someone gone, they zap ’em back to Loopers like Joe Simmons (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who do the necessaries.

In 2074, it’s impossible to properly dispose of a body — too many high-tech gadgets like global positioning implants — so those ever-resourceful criminals illegally transport their targets back in time so Loopers can erase them from the future.

Looper, written and directed by Rian Johnson (Brick, The Brothers Bloom), is a science-fiction film noir that seamlessly blends futuristic elements with the world we already know. Old, beat-up gas guzzlers have been retrofitted with solar panels and electric batteries while the rich drive sporty, state-of-the-art speeder bikes. The designer drugs of the future are taken with an eye dropper, and Loopers like Joe are paid in bricks of silver for blasting bound-and-gagged future dwellers with their blunderbusses: short, large caliber boomsticks that obliterate targets at close range.

There’s nothing really new about movies being adapted into video games or visa versa. Oftentimes both products don’t even hold a candle to their counterparts. But on those rare occasions, it can work. Using some trailer footage and other material from Rian Johnson‘s upcoming sci-fi film Looper, Deepak Chetty created Looper The Movie The 8-Bit Video Game. The trailer doesn’t use some cutting edge technology you would see on a PS3 or XBOX 360; instead, Chetty created an 8-bit trailer. Check it out below.

Watching the trailer, there is a feeling of nostalgia that overwhelmed me. The music, the tone, the visuals, even the “press start” option all brought me back to the days of 8-bit video games.

When the distant future collides with a future not too far from now, many things could happen. That idea hits home when Rian Johnson‘s time traveling thriller Looper hits theaters later this year. We’ve seen a couple of trailers before, and we got another trailer that focuses on the action of the film and the profitability of being a looper.

In the trailer Joseph Gordon-Levitt‘s character explains how a criminal organization takes advantage of the illegal practice of time travel. By making use of time travel, this organization is able to send their targets back in time where agents called loopers are there to shoot, kill, and dispose. We also get to see how much these loopers earn for their kills and what they use their blood money for. Let’s just say, they are living the high life. Things go swimmingly for Gordon-Levitt’s character, until his next target is revealed to be his future-self. For obvious reasons, this situation makes it a lot harder to kill the target and understand why you must kill it.

Earlier this year at WonderCon, I was lucky to cover director Rian Johnson‘s panel for Looper, as I had already been a huge fan of his previous work (Brick & The Brothers Bloom). At that time, little had been known about the project and Johnson introduced the intriguing time-travel concept, as well as the amazing makeup work that would transform actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt into a younger version of Bruce Willis. So what updates have transpired on the film since March, now that its release is imminent?

Moderator Ralph Garman (of Kevin Smith’s SModcast Podcast Network) began the San Diego Comic-Con panel by introducing director Johnson, and actors Emily Blunt and Gordon-Levitt. Willis was unavailable, as he’s shooting A Good Day to Die Hard in Europe.