He might not have been a Hall H veteran like Len Wiseman or Paul WS Anderson, but Rian Johnson had a few secret weapons up his sleeve when he arrived in San Diego to premiere some new footage from Looper. The footage was one big draw, but he cleverly also brought Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Emily Blunt to charm the crowd.

The Looper footage was a slickly edited montage culled from footage already available in the trailers and new material, including an extended look at Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s diner confrontation as the two sides of the “Looper”, Joe.

Johnson’s film, which takes place in the near future, follows Joe, who works for an organized crime ring that exists even further into the space-time continuum. There, time travel has been invented but outlawed, and the mob uses it to send victims back to be dealt with untraceably. But then, as Gordon-Levitt explains in the footage, his bosses decided to close his loop, and send his older self (Willis) back in time to be offed. Suffice to say, it doesn’t end up being that simple, and a mixture of some of the big action set pieces and great dramatic moments from the likes of Willis, JGL, Emily Blunt and Jeff Daniels followed.

After the footage screening, Johnson, Blunt and Gordon-Levitt worked the crowd, taking fan questions, revealing JGL’s dodgy British accent and talking about how the director views the time travel aspect much in the way James Cameron did in The Terminator – a way to get the characters together, but not the crux of the story.

We’ll have to wait until September 28 to see the whole film. After this glimpse, we’re more excited to finally watch it than ever.