WARNING: LIKELY SOME LIGHT SPOILERS

I preferred Dredd to Looper.  Maybe I just have an aversion to time-travel-infinite-causational-loop-what’s-real-what-isn’t-what-if-we-create-a-paradox-to-undo-the-other-paradox-and-oh-my-god-that-somehow-worked-just-accept-it-aren’t-we-smart-now-go-home stories (I blame bad Trek), but Dredd didn’t muck around with anything weird, kept it simple, and gave the audience what it wanted, and I just like the purity of a simple story elegantly told (yes, Dredd is elegant) over a story that seems needlessly complicated, especially if it still feels like a retread.  Looper was also built on too many technological plot contrivances that the audience is just expected to buy however the filmmakers want to shoehorn them in.  Time travel, body tracking, and telepathy, all developing at the same time?  And there’s a permanent post-apocalyptic society too?  OK.  If you really feel you need all that to tell your story about guys shooting people….

Dredd, I think, had the good sense to make its drug a gimmick in the best way – audience eye candy and little else – without using it to either excuse a weird story or to allow the creators to write their way to an easy resolution.  Everything else seemed perfectly plausible and easily relatable – huge shanty towns, breakdown of law and order, limited ammo.  It didn’t spring any contrivances on us after the first five minutes, so you could get that out of the way and just enjoy the movie.  But, in Looper’s defense, it’s rare when any sci-fi story with an element of mystery doesn’t go there.  Also, if Looper’s budget was truly as modest as Wiki claims, it was an impressive movie.  It was good, it just wasn’t Dredd good.  Dredd’s the kind of pure, uncomplicated, refined (yes, Dredd is refined) action experience I find the easiest to enjoy and love.