Joseph Gordon-Levitt Opens Up About Mysterious 'The Dark Knight Rises' CharacterNo one's quite sure to make of Batman's John Blake, but actor says he's good really.

We've known for a while that Tom Hardy's Bane is set to be an unpleasant character in 'The Dark Knight Rises', while Batman, despite the ambiguity introduced by Christopher Nolan to the character, is a force for good. Yet the character of John Blake has been a relative mystery to fans.

Whether he'll be a force for good or bad in the movie has been the subject of much speculation, but Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the actor playing the Gotham City cop, has apparently cleared things up.

The star told MTV News: "Well, what I love about John Blake is that he's an idealist amongst cynics. Gotham has become a cynical place. People are going with the status quo, and the fat cats are getting fatter."

He explained that he sees his character as a thoroughly principled policeman, saying: "He's this rookie cop who's like, 'Wait a minute,' and asking questions. Questioning authority doesn't always get you the best reception, especially when you're new, but you've got to love a principled guy who actually wants to be a good cop and isn't just looking out for his own job or some sort of kickback, he cares about Gotham and he wants to be a good cop."

That should be that, yet with the secrecy surrounding details of the film fans are bound to continue to speculate that by being so adamant about his character's integrity Gordon-Levitt is perhaps playing an elaborate bluff.

OVARIEEEEES

Dark Knight Rises first clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jdbx0qM6YsQ

New Looper image:

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The Dark Knight Rises Clip - "Selina's Interrogation"

Out of Anne's interview:

What notes did Christopher Nolan give you when you first got the part, with the fighting aspects of her?

Anne Hathaway: When I had got the part, Chris had called me into his office and said, “OK, so, there’s going to be a lot of fighting. When we did ‘Inception,’ Joseph Gordon-Levitt got in really good shape, Joe went to the gym for months. So that way when we did his fight sequences, he did all of his own fighting….I really liked that.” (Laughs) So I went, “Gotcha, I’m reading between the lines here.” And I just went to the gym and I came out when we wrapped (laughs). It was a complete transformation, I’d never done anything like that because it wasn’t just about looking a certain way. I had to learn to fight, I had to become strong enough to be able to fight for many days at a time. That was something I felt very lucky about, because I feel like in a situation like this….I don’t know what other actresses have gone through, but I feel like sometimes there’s a mandate that comes to you, an ideal of how you have to look. The way I was always treated on this movie was from the point of: learn how to do what you need to do, then however you look, that’s the way the character looks. I just felt, as a woman, very protective in that way.

New Dark Knight Rises:

JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT TALKS ABOUT BECOMING BRUCE WILLIS IN LOOPER'S COMIC-CON PANEL

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and

Emily Blunt took the Comic-Con stage today for their sci-fi movieLooper, in which Gordon-Levitt plays a character in 2072 who makes a living as a hit man, killing people who are sent back from the future (where it's much tougher to kill people, apparently). He comes up against a problem when his next victim shows up, and it's himself, 30 years later, played by Bruce Willis. The character is tough to kill, but for Gordon-Levitt, the challenge was sounding and looking like Willis (who was shooting a film and couldn't make it to Comic-Con). Find out what Gordon had to say about that, and more details about the film below.

• The director is Rian Johnson, who's a longtime friend of Gordon-Levitt's after they worked together on the 2005 movie Brick. Gordon-Levitt revealed that Johnson had written the character specifically for him — the first time that's happened for him.
  
• We saw a bit of footage from the movie beyond what's in the trailer, and Gordon-Levitt's voice sounds completely different because he's trying to mimic Willis. But he clarified that he's not impersonating Willis, but rather "tried to internalize him." He said that he watched all of Willis's films and then took audio from his movies and put it on his iPod to listen to. Gordon-Levitt expressed a lot of admiration for Willis, and said that he learned the most from hanging out with the actor, calling him a sweetheart and declaring what a fan of Willis's he's always been.
  
• If Gordon-Levitt looks a little different in the movie, then it's because he's wearing prosthetics to look more like Willis. Johnson said that after they cast Willis, he realized, "Uh-oh, they don't look anything alike," so they chose "a couple of key features; a little bit to the nose, a little bit to the lips." He thinks that Gordon-Levitt isn't just doing his best Willis imitation, but rather he's "really giving a performance."
  
• Blunt was cagey about what exactly her role was, but in the footage, she seemed to be a love interest of Joe's (Gordon-Levitt's character). She did say that she and her family get "embroiled in this mess when Joe is a p*ssy" and lets Bruce go." The cheeky actress added that she thinks Looper is "the best movie I've been apart of."
  

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ComicCon Looper VIdeo interview

http://www.buzzsugar.com/Video-jgl-emily-23982133#ooid=U2cHJkNTrKykwQ5W2KIQfRM-azDjZzna

Hollywood Reporter Interview:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/video/joseph-gordon-levitt-looper-349162

Joseph Gordon-Levitt Says 'Looper' Defies Sci-Fi Label

'It's got the badass action, and it's a thrill if you want to just watch it for that,' actor says of Rian Johnson's flick at Comic-Con.

"Looper" blends sci-fi, action and densely layered drama with a tale about assassins who take their victims out with the assistance of time travel. Gordon-Levitt's character is tasked with killing his future self, who happens to be played by action-hero icon Bruce Willis.

"It's a sci-fi movie in the tradition of 'Blade Runner,' 'The Matrix' or 'Inception' that gives you a lot to think about," explained Gordon-Levitt, speaking exclusively to MTV News in San Diego, where he, co-star Emily Blunt and and writer/director Rian Johnson debuted footage. "It's got the badass action, and it's a thrill if you want to just watch it for that," he continued. "But if you want to, you can find a really dignified drama underneath the genre."

During the Hall H panel, Gordon-Levitt also regaled the Con audience with tales of how he worked to capture the essence of Willis (it involved watching Willis' movies on repeat, listening to his voice on an iPod and wearing a few facial prosthetics). Blunt called it simply "the best movie" she's been in.

"I loved 'Looper' so much 'cause it has that completely kick-ass, action/thriller element to it, but yet there's a real complex story in there," Blunt agreed. "The movie is three steps ahead of you at every single turn, and I think it's rare to find a movie like that. I had to read [the script] three times before I really understood it. Even on the third time, I was like patting myself on the back for keeping up with it. I was like, 'I'm with it this time. I'm there.' I hadn't even come to my character yet, I was 30 pages in, and I called my agent. I said, 'Get me in the room with this guy now! This script is amazing.' "

Gordon-Levitt first collaborated with Johnson on the writer/director's first film, "Brick," which similarly blended genres. Hard-boiled crime-noir collided with high school in the 2005 movie, which inspired Roger Ebert to write of Johnson, "You're good. You're very good."

"He and I have been really good friends since we made 'Brick' together," Gordon-Levitt said. "He's literally one of my best friends in the world and has been for years now. It wasn't even that long after we finished shooting 'Brick' that he started talking to me about this time-travel idea that he had. And then years later, he finally showed me the script."

Where the genre-melding of "Looper" will ultimately place it in the DVD aisle remains to be determined, but Blunt had a great suggestion: "Carve out a new space for it," she declared. "It is a sci-fi/action movie — I think that's really what he wanted to make — but within it, there's an emotional drama happening too.

"I think its complexity is what will keep people seeing it again and again and again," she added. Making it a perfect movie for Comic-Con crowds.

"Because Rian has been thinking up this, this idea has manifested in his head for years," Gordon-Levitt chimed in. "So he's thought [of] every single thread. Every single reveal or twist or turn in the movie has been thought out perfectly. So I think there's a lot to nerd out over. "

Comic Con panel with Emily Blunt

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Little Shop Of Horrors Remake Connection is Bunk

Our brother site Crave Online got to the bottom of a report that initially broke in The Hollywood Reporter sometime in May. If you recall - and we reported this here on Shock, as well - news broke that Hesher and Inception's Joseph Gordon-Levitt was developing a remake of Little Shop of Horrors with Warner Bros. But the actor wants to clarify one thing about that report...

It's not true.

When asked about his attachment to the project, Gordon-Levitt responded, "Oh no, I'm not. Never was."

It's highly possible THR picked up on the remake rumblings and possibly learned Gordon-Levitt was part of a "wish list." It's possible. However, THR said that he not only stood to star in the film, but produce it as well.

Whatever the case was, he's not doin' it, folks. So, there you have.

Comic-Con: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt, and Director Rian Johnson Talk LOOPER and Turning Gordon-Levitt Into Bruce Willis with Prosthetics

While at Comic-Con for a big presentation in Hall H, writer/director Rian Johnson (Brick), along with co-stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Emily Blunt, spoke to the press at a conference for their highly anticipated sci-fi film

Looper. In 2072, when the mob wants to get rid of someone, the target is sent 30 years into the past, where a hired gun, such as Joe (Gordon-Levitt), waits to take them out. But, when Joe’s future self (Bruce Willis) is sent back in time as an assignment, he decides to let him go.

During this interview, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt and Rian Johnson talked about layering the performance between Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis, the complex themes of the film, finding great female characters, and what’s so appealing about the action genre. Gordon-Levitt also talked about his new-found appreciation for how difficult it is to direct a film (he just finished his first feature as a director, called Don Jon’s Addiction), how grateful he is that filmmakers gave him a chance when Third Rock From the Sun ended its TV run, and how everyone reacted when they saw him with the prosthetics he wore to transform into Bruce Willis. Check out what they had to say after the jump. Also, check out our

recap of the Looper Comic-Con panel.

Question: Rian, did you always have Joe in mind, when you were developing this movie?

RIAN JOHNSON: Yeah, I wrote the part for Joe. I wrote the script with Joe in mind. We had stayed friends, since we made Brick together, and we had just both been dying to work with each other again. Thank god, he said yes.

JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT: It’s worth adding that that’s a real honor. That’s never happened for me before – that a writer wrote something for me. It is really exciting, especially coming from [Rian].

Joe, what did you study or do, to play a younger Bruce Willis?

GORDON-LEVITT: I think the thing I focused on most was his voice. I find the voice is what I look for, first and foremost, with just about every character that I play. I don’t have an answer, as to why. And Bruce was really accommodating and open and collaborative, in helping me do that. He actually recorded himself reading some of my voice-over lines, so that I could hear how he would sound saying them, which I thought was really cool. But mostly, it was just about hanging out with him, getting to know him, having dinner with him, and talking about music or anything else. That was probably what was the most useful, in trying to get a sense of what I was then going to portray.

Emily, are you a science nerd, at all?

EMILY BLUNT: I’m definitely not a science nerd. That was not my forte at school. It’s funny, I read about 30 pages of the script, and I was already on the phone to my agent. I hadn’t even gotten to my character and I was like, “Get me this movie!,” because I loved it so much. And then, I read it a few times before I met Rian, so I could have some kind of fairly intelligent pitch for why I wanted to do the movie because it’s so rich in complexity, and conceptually it’s so exciting. I needed a few reads of it, for sure.

Why did you love the character so much?

BLUNT: Well, to be honest, I think it’s the same for a lot of actresses. You look for female roles that aren’t objectified, that aren’t simplified, and that aren’t simply the reactionary role to a fantastic male role. I think that it’s harder to find that, in these more sci-fi movies, but this had such a singular voice. This character had a really rich past, for me to delve into. She’s a really tough cookie, and a tough nut to crack. I enjoyed the nuances and the complexity of the part. It was a challenge to me because I do look for that now. I try and mix it up, as much as possible. I really asked myself, “Oh, my god, how am I going to do this?” That’s what I aspire to, every time I take on a new role.

Joe and Emily, if you could go back in the past, like in the movie, is there an event in your life that you would like to erase?

GORDON-LEVITT: The answer is no, I would not want to erase anything.

BLUNT: I’m going to agree with [Joe]. It’s very hard to pinpoint something because then that would have a ripple effect to everything else. Things happen in the way they usually should. I’m a pretty fatalistic person.

Joe, it seems like you’re in an action movie phase of your career. Is that a genre that appeals to you, and was it overwhelming to do so many action films in a row?

GORDON-LEVITT: Well, there was 50/50, which has some pretty thrilling action sequences as well. No. I have a pretty eclectic taste in the movies that I like to watch, and also in the movies that I’m inspired to work on. I don’t think action for action’s sake is so fun, but when it helps tell the story, I love doing a good fight scene. Some of my favorite fight scenes that I’ve ever done are actually in Brick, which had no money, but was just really cleverly thought through and executed by Rian. I also had a great time doing the action on Looper. I think the action sequences are really fun to watch.

Rian, the theme of this film, about getting rid of the deviants and bad people in the world, is really interesting. What about that interests you so much?

JOHNSON: Part of the pleasure of science fiction, in general, and time travel movies, specifically, always seems to come back to the big moral questions of, “Would you kill Hitler?” They’re very good at making you confront questions like that. So, I guess my answer to that would be the movie itself. I can’t articulate my answer better, about some of those moral questions, then I did in the movie.

GORDON-LEVITT: I think violence begets violence. I don’t think a way to solve any sort of conflict is with violence because nothing ever ends up solved, that way.

JOHNSON: A big part of the movie is the notion that, in many ways, the movie is about this thing you see in action movies, that you can solve a problem by finding the right person and killing them. The very title of the movie – Looper – is the notion that that thinking creates a self-perpetuating loop, and what can we do as human beings to break that. This sounds very highfalutin, but these are some of the things that we wrestle with a little bit, in the movie.

Emily, did you draw on anything from The Adjustment Bureau for this performance?

BLUNT: I feel like The Adjustment Bureau is a very different movie and was a different experience, so I wouldn’t necessarily say that I drew anything from that to work on this. The characters were vastly different. I usually start from the person I’m playing, and not the concept. But, I do feel that, even though I didn’t grow up being a big sci-fi, comic book or superhero fan, I definitely gravitated towards these movies that have a high concept, and yet they’re giving you a moral dilemma within that. I think it’s interesting to see real people contend with a very high concept. That’s what I’m drawn to.

Emily and Joe, what was the one question each of you had, after reading the screenplay?

BLUNT: When I first met Rian, one of the first things that we talked about, because my character has a certain amount of mystique and ambiguity to her, was the backstory and where she came from and why she behaves in the way that she does. That stuff is the first interest to me, when I take on a part.

GORDON-LEVITT: I think this might sound really typical and actor-y, but the first thing I remember asking about was, “How did he grow up?” Because his situation in his present life is very well-illustrated in the screenplay itself, and he does talk a bit about his past, I remember wanting to get a better sense of who he is and where he comes from and what his life was like before we meet him.

Joe, what were the differences in working with Rian Johnson with Brick and with Looper? How has he changed, as a filmmaker?

GORDON-LEVITT: Good question. I think everything was just easier. He had quite a confident hand, directingBrick. I’ve seen a lot of the shorts that he made proceeding Brick, that allowed him to do that. After Brick, and after The Brothers Bloom, and now doing Looper, I was working with a seasoned filmmaker. I’m an enormous fan of his. I think that this movie is the one on which he had the lightest touch, which isn’t to say that he was, in any way, uninvolved or aloof. It’s like judo. If you know which way the current is going, you can use it to your advantage. This might be a weird comparison, but Jackie Brown, to me, is the Quentin Tarantino movie in which he has the lightest touch. I love Jackie Brown. I also love Kill Bill, where it’s saturated with Tarantino, but there’s a difference there. And I think you can definitely very much tell that Looper is a Rian Johnson movie, just like you can tell Jackie Brown is a Quentin Tarantino movie. But, it feels like he knew how to really let it all blossom as it does.

Joe, has your appreciation for how difficult it is to be a director changed recently?

GORDON-LEVITT: Oh, yeah! I just directed a movie that I wrote, called Don Jon’s Addiction. We just finished shooting about two weeks ago, and we’re starting to cut it. I do think that having a 2011 where I worked with Rian, and then Chris Nolan, and then Steven Spielberg, I couldn’t have asked for a better year, leading up to directing a movie, for the first time. Those three directors actually do have a lot in common. Rian is obviously less known than Chris and Steven, at this point, but I think, when all is said and done, they’ll actually be three directors that are regarded in a very similar fashion.

It’s been great watching your career unfold, from Third Rock From the Sun to Mysterious Skin to now. How do you see your path, as an actor?

GORDON-LEVITT: Well, when I first finished doing Third Rock From the Sun and wanted to do movies, no one wanted to put me in their movies, which is understandable enough. I can understand how that might be distracting, to have the kid fromThird Rock From the Sun in your movie. So, there are three movies, and therefore three directors, that I really think I owe a lot for taking a chance on me, when I was trying to make that transition – one is Jordan Melamed, who made Manic, one is Gregg Araki, who made Mysterious Skin, and the third is Rian, who made Brick. Those are the three movies that, when other filmmakers saw them, they started thinking, “Okay, maybe he’s not only the kid from Third Rock From the Sun.”

What was it like when you first saw yourself with Bruce Willis’ face, and how did everyone else react?

GORDON-LEVITT: One of the highlights of the whole thing was Bruce seeing me, for the first time, and tripping out a little bit. He’s a sweetheart. It’s hard to rattle him because he’s seen a lot. He’s an understated man, so to get any reaction out of him is pretty exciting. I remember him doing a double take, and I was so thrilled about it. There was also one point where we were shooting one of our scenes together and, in between takes, he got really quiet and was like, “You sound like me.” I was like, “You’re fucking right, I do!” I didn’t let him see me do that.

BLUNT: When I first met Joe, I arrived on set and no one told me he was wearing prosthetics, or maybe I’d been told and I hadn’t remembered. It was my first day and they said, “Would you like to meet Joe?,” and I was like, “Yeah, sure.” So, we went to his trailer and I was staring at him, probably oddly, because I couldn’t figure out why he looked nothing like how I imagined. I was like, “I know what Joe Levitt looks like, and that is not it.” And then, I started to have a brain melting experience, thinking, “Oh, my god, I am not speaking to Joe Gordon-Levitt. I’m speaking to his stunt man. Someone put me in the wrong trailer. I’m telling this guy all about my character.” It was very strange. And I came out and was like, “He looks really different,” and they were like, “He’s wearing prosthetics.” I think it’s a great credit to the prosthetics guys for coming up with something so realistic. He looked disarmingly different, and not fake. It was amazing, really.

JOHNSON: My favorite was when Joe’s parents were on set, and they were even freaked out by it.

GORDON-LEVITT: It was interesting. My mom said, “When you stand next to me and I don’t look at you, you’re like yourself. You’re who I know. But then, as soon as I look at you, you’re not my son anymore.” She was a little disconcerted.

Some new Looper stills and poster:

HD Clip

More comic Con

Joseph Gordon-Levitt In 'Looper': Actor Reveals How He Became Bruce Willis For The Film

SAN DIEGO -- The big time-travel paradox of the sci-fi thriller "Looper" is whether Joseph Gordon-Levitt is playing a young Bruce Willis or whether Bruce Willis is playing an old Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Gordon-Levitt, co-star Emily Blunt and writer-director Rian Johnson gave the Comic-Con fan convention Friday a sneak peek at footage from "Looper," which centers on a hit man who's supposed to kill his future self.

To play the young assassin, Gordon-Levitt, 31, spent three hours in makeup every day to have a prosthetic nose and other cosmetic tweaks applied to make him look more like the 57-year-old Willis.

But much of the transformation comes from Gordon-Levitt's mimicking skills. He says he watched Willis' movies over and over and listened to the actor's dialogue again and again on an iPod.

Much of what he aimed for, however, was capturing the cool essence of Willis, Gordon-Levitt said.

"I'm not a good mimic, to be honest. I don't do good impressions," said Gordon-Levitt, who also co-stars in next week's Batman finale "The Dark Knight Rises." "I didn't think an impersonation would be appropriate, anyway. It would just be distracting. So I just tried to internalize and do something that made sense to me. ...

"The most I learned from him is just hanging out with him," Gordon-Levitt said. "He's a sweetheart and he loved this job. He was clearly there to play."

The movie opens Sept. 28.

"Looper" is set late in the 21st century, when murder has become difficult to carry out. Time travel allows the mob to get rid of people by sending them into the past, where a hit man awaits and victims can be disposed of with no questions asked.

Johnson had previously directed Gordon-Levitt in the 2005 low-budget drama "Brick," when the filmmaker first raised the idea of the time-travel story. He wound up writing the script specifically with Gordon-Levitt in mind, even naming the character Joe.

"We've just been dying to work with each other again," Johnson said. "It's always best to make movies with your friends."