Giggles to be had in Looper, apparently.

SuperBruce sprays us with guffaws.

I have never seen a Die Hard or any of its direct descendants, but I think I get the gist and broad references, as I do with others I have blasphemously not seen in the American movie canon (E.T, Titanic, even The Shining ("Heeeeere's Johnny")). So I believe that I do understand the Bruce Willis Action Hero deal. At least I hope I do, as it's the only way I can wrap my mind around the fact that more than one middle-aged man in the audience was giggling during Looper.

I assume that Die Hard Bruce is a comically (in several senses) indestructible fighter for Good, with superhuman fighting and weapons skills, an eyebrow-raising pain threshold, and stamina the envy of a man any age. There is a sequence near the end of Looper where this persona is lifted* and planted right into the narrative to great affect. Now this I can maybe see giving the more seasoned action movie watcher a thrill of recognition and a knowing smirk. Okay, maybe even a giggle.

But these giggles, and they were giggles---high-pitched and weird---came here and there before and after SuperBruce's main blast of sweaty destruction. 

It came when the weird little kid did the screamy thing that made people fly around and explode. Giggle.

It came with other stuff I don't want to give away but that were in no way funny. Giggle.

I am not trying, or wait, let's say I am trying to not be critical of a human's reaction to something. It makes even more sense to avoid personal condemnation of a behavior exhibited by several people in response to the same stimuli, so let's look at this a little more broadly. Are these guys so accustomed to action and/or violence that they see it strictly as a cartoon? I don't mean, necessarily, that they have become inured or desensitized to it, like some kid who has presumably spent jillions of hours taking it in on TV.  Maybe they are impressed by what the filmmakers pulled off and their reaction is the joy of being impressed and they express joy through a giggle. Assuming the giggle equals joy, maybe their joy comes from their recognition of this particular violence or action riff, a riff I have never seen, not having seen that many action movies.

By the way, Looper is fun and exciting and I went to see it because it was directed by Rian Johnson and stars Joseph-Gordon Levitt, both of whom had the same jobs for a movie I liked a lot, The Brick. It takes all of the cliches and inconsistencies  inherent in time travel movies and shoots them down with clever plotting and direct shots at the genre itself. When Young Joe asks Old Joe, (you'll have to see it) naturally, like in all time travel movies and as you would if it happened to you, how all this works, Old Joe pretty much just tells him that it's complicated so just shut the hell up. There. Dealt with.

Willis and Levitt match up well.

Excellent villain in Jeff Daniels. If I were a henchman, I'd like to hench for him.

*Another assumption about the persona, of course.