Loki's first season has come to a close and with no set date for the second season. Fans of the show find themselves with some extra time on their hands while they wait for more time-hopping bureaucratic fun starring Thor's adopted brother. But how can fans fill all that time? What can possibly capture the frantic fun, action, and heart of the Disney+ series?
There may be no one answer to that question; only the further adventures of Loki, Sylvie, and Mobius can truly fill that hole in the world of entertainment, but there are a whole lot of movies that can at last help fans get their time travel or dimension-hopping fixes.
10 Looper Is All About Fighting A Version Of Yourself
Rian Johnson's third film, Looper, saw Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing 25-year-old Joe, an assassin for a Kansas City crime syndicate that sends people back in time to be executed. Things get shaky when Joe fails to kill one of his targets, and it gets even worse when that target happens to be a version of Joe from the future, played by Bruce Willis.
Looper has the fun of time travel elements and multiple versions of a single character just like Loki, but with the added bonus of wild action and Emily Blunt. While it won't hit all the Loki notes, it should please fans of the Trickster God's show.
9 Back to the Future Part II Is All About Maintaining The Future
The second of a classic trilogy, Back to the Future Part II sees Marty McFly and Doc Brown travel to the now-not-so-futuristic 2015 before heading to an alternate version of 1985 and finally ending up in the far past of 1955. All throughout the journey of the two heroes, audiences get to meet past, future, and variant versions of the characters from the first film.
The Back to the Future series stands tall as one of the best trilogies ever made, and it continues to build its fanbase to this day. But it is the second part that really shares a lot of concepts that can be seen in Loki.
8 Sliding Doors Is All About Variants
While the TVA may have been destroying time variants before Sylvie killed He Who Remains, they weren't around in 1998 to stop Gwyneth Paltrow from experiencing two different timelines in the film Sliding Doors.
In the movie, the actress who would go on to become Pepper Potts in the MCU plays Helen Quilley, a woman whose life goes down two different paths depending on if she catches a train on time or not. Sliding Doors alternates between the two timelines, letting the audience see how Helen's life changes based on a single moment.
7 Hot Tub Time Machine Is All About Second Chances
A major theme of the first season of Loki is people—especially Loki himself—learning to change. While Loki can't take back the things he did that led to his being picked up by the TVA, he can learn to be a better person, and he does that by seeing the path his life would have taken him on, and how there are better ways to go.
While Hot Tub Time Machine is, for the most part, a call back to the comedies of the 1980s, there is an important thread in the movie about learning from past mistakes to make the future better, especially for the character of Adam Yates, played by John Cusak.
6 Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure Is All About Time
When it comes to time travel fun, it's hard to beat Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. The 1989 time travel comedy that stars Keanu Reeves as Ted "Theodore" Logan and Alex Winter as Bill S. Preston, Esq. launched a comic, a cartoon, a video game, and two wonderful sequels, and for good reason.
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure is an endlessly hilarious comedy that plays with the concepts of time travel in ways rarely seen in film, and never loses sight of the inherent goodness of the two leads as they collect historical figures in order to pass their history class.
5 Catch Me If You Can Is All About Being On The Run
While it doesn't have any time travel antics or variant versions of characters from different realities, Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can has a lot in common with Loki. The film, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio as real-life con artist Frank Abagnale is all about staying one step ahead of a large bureaucratic organization while dealing with some mommy issues and questions of self-worth.
While it may not have Owen Wilson as the face of that organization, Catch Me If You Can does have Tom Hanks as FBI agent Carl Hanratty, the man hunting down Abagnale.
4 Timecop Is All About Keeping The Timeline Safe
For older fans of time travel stories, it could be hard to watch Loki and not think about Timecop. Based on the Mike Richardson, Mark Verheiden, and Ron Randall comic that appeared in Dark Horse Comics, Timecop is pretty well explained by its name—it's about a cop who protects the timeline.
In the movie, that cop is played by Jean-Claude Van Damme, who works for the Time Enforcement Commission, making sure that criminals don't use time travel to enrich themselves. Van Damme's Max Walker is a lot like Owen Wilson's Mobius, except he's more gun-happy and can do a split on a kitchen counter.
3 Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse Is All About Dimension Hopping
It's hard to talk about alternate reality variants in movies and not bring up Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. The animated movie didn't just bring Miles Morales to the attention of non-comic readers, but it also introduced them to the idea that there could be a multiverse in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, even if it did it in a roundabout way.
Along with being an amazing movie to look at, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is filled with laughs, action, and heart; all the things that make the MCU work so well. It may not be an official part of the MCU, but it stands tall as one of the best Marvel movies out there.
2 Brazil Is All About Weird Bureaucracies
Terry Gilliam's Brazil came out in 1985 but continues to stand out as one of the strangest and most inventive films ever made. A satire set in a dystopian world, Brazil is a dark look at overarching bureaucracy and the problems that can arise when someone blindly follows orders as well as the dangers that come from questioning the status quo.
It is hard to watch Loki and not see touches of Brazil in the way that the TVA is represented. Mobius and Hunter B-15 may not be as unquestioning as Spoor and Dowser are in Brazil, but they come close.
1 Defending Your Life Is All About Escaping Who You Were
Written, directed, and starring Albert Brooks, Defending Your Life is all about looking back on the life you've lived and wondering if there is still time to change. The film, a comedy that follows the afterlife of Daniel Miller as he has to make a case for why he should be admitted to Heaven, mixes the fantastic with the bureaucratic in a way similar to that of Loki.
Just like in Loki, Brooks' Miller is forced to rewatch parts of his life and try to explain his actions, leading to some great comedic moments that only someone like Albert Brooks could create.