Looper - Grade, Review, Discuss, ect.
- Thread starter JD
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Yeah, I mention in my review post earlier in the thread that I kept expecting them to make that revelation. Kind of disappointed they didn't.
It's for unlikely happening for benevolent reasons.
1. Everytime they send some one back, the future is turned into a phantom and adjusted just slightly. The mob was too stupid to see that they were killing themselves. The Rainmaker wasn't. Change in leadership, change in business model.
2. They're only closing Jeff Daniel's loopers. Jeff might not be the only operation working for the only mob... The Rainmaker was probably going to send his own guy back to set up his own new loops. You can't trust the last guy in charges people. Questions of loyalty.
3. The Rainmaker can dispose of bodies with telekinesis. Pull them apart or toss them into orbit. It's cheaper and less messy.
4. It was a set up. The laughably just imprecise enough to create a comedy of errors rain makers birth records? How is that easier to uncover than the Rainmaker's name? The Rainmaker needed Joe? After Joe didn't complete his loop the first time and had no idea, they sent back a fake completed loop so that Joe would be able to live happily ever after for some unknown reason. Someone in the future was controlling/helping Joe the first time around who wasn't the next time or the time after that... Which might have been old Joe who shadowed young Joe for 30 years without a hitch?
Seriously? It's like they didn't even read their own script.
Me and the other half watched it with a couple of her friends and all four of us really liked it before going out last night.
The way the time travel element were used, the cutting of pieces of the younger first-escaped Looper affecting the older version was disturbing, but cool. It makes sense that something like that would happen. Plus the fogginess of memories described, it was almost like what happens to Gambon's character in the 2010 Who Christmas Special. To coin a phrase from Who, it was very timey whimy.
I rather enjoyed the universe created. The city, I'm guessing Kansas City was as if a Libertarian ruled America. I was also happy that nothing was really explained: the emergence of TK, the invention of time travel, those hoses coming out of the cars and the sheer shitiness of the city and the vagrant problem.
Joe, both old and young were superb characters. At points I didn't like them, but then at other points, I seriously felt for them. Although I was expecting young Joe to do something to stop himself, I didn't expect the option he choice. As for the rainmaker, with the existence of TK and the fact he wiped out whole armies on his own, I thought that maybe Cid would turn into him and it was a case of the ages old question, would you kill Hitler if you had the chance.
On the whole though, it was a character piece and Joe's story, the rest was just dressing.
The way the time travel element were used, the cutting of pieces of the younger first-escaped Looper affecting the older version was disturbing, but cool. It makes sense that something like that would happen. Plus the fogginess of memories described, it was almost like what happens to Gambon's character in the 2010 Who Christmas Special. To coin a phrase from Who, it was very timey whimy.
I rather enjoyed the universe created. The city, I'm guessing Kansas City was as if a Libertarian ruled America. I was also happy that nothing was really explained: the emergence of TK, the invention of time travel, those hoses coming out of the cars and the sheer shitiness of the city and the vagrant problem.
Joe, both old and young were superb characters. At points I didn't like them, but then at other points, I seriously felt for them. Although I was expecting young Joe to do something to stop himself, I didn't expect the option he choice. As for the rainmaker, with the existence of TK and the fact he wiped out whole armies on his own, I thought that maybe Cid would turn into him and it was a case of the ages old question, would you kill Hitler if you had the chance.
On the whole though, it was a character piece and Joe's story, the rest was just dressing.
I'm afraid I was disappointed with this movie. It was definitely well-written with a good premise, but I really didn't expect the main character to sit around in a farm house for 2/3 of the movie doing nothing... I was expecting more action and time travel complications, not a straightforward character drama.
It's not a bad movie but it has some flaws and it's certainly not this year's Matrix.
Question. In the original timeline of Bruce Willis's character he has no interaction with the kid yet the kid still becomes the Rain maker so in the end this is what will happen again. Right?
Question. In the original timeline of Bruce Willis's character he has no interaction with the kid yet the kid still becomes the Rain maker so in the end this is what will happen again. Right?
That's one possible interpretation; that he's destined to become the Rainmaker no matter what and Young Joe's sacrifice was ultimately for nothing (though as a side effect it did presumably save Old Joe's wife unless she died some other way), or that seeing that was in fact what made him become the Rainmaker a second time.
An alternate point to consider though is that Cid and Sara's interaction with Young and Old Joe (particularly the final confrontation) also inspired Cid to finally accept Sara as his real mother. Previously he expressed a great deal of anger and resentment toward her and considered her a liar, which might have kept their relationship more distant as time went on and still prompted him to grow up to become the Rainmaker. Without Joe's sacrifice that bonding moment might never have happened.
I enjoyed it. Sure there are plot holes big enough to drive a truck through but it doesn't matter because it pulls you along for the ride. Enjoyable film, disturbing in places, interesting ideas, so it gets a good from me.
Yeah, that would make a good bit of sense, I think.
Timeline 1: Cid never quite accepts Sara as his mother. He has a tumultuous upbringing. Maybe she abandons him at some point. He becomes the Rainmaker. In this timeline, Young Joe killed Old Joe immediately upon being sent back. Old Joe sees his wife die and resolves to go back and stop it by stopping the Rainmaker.
Timeline 2: Originates when Old Joe is sent back for the second loop (from our perspective). Old Joe knocks out young Joe, escapes, eventually tracks down Cid and kills Sara in front of him. Cid again grows up bitter and becomes the Rainmaker.
Timeline 2 could have repeated any number of times as a self-contained causality loop in which Old Joe keeps perpetuating the loop by going back to kill the Rainmaker and ends up killing Sara instead. We must assume Young Joe manages to kill Old Joe shortly after this each time, otherwise Old Joe would continue to hunt Cid (and almost certainly kill him.)
The cycle is broken in timeline n, in which Young Joe makes the decision to sacrifice himself so that Sara doesn't die. Because he's bonded with Cid, and Cid has accepted Sara as his mother, Cid does not grow up to become the Rainmaker. There is also no Old Joe to go back in time and repeat the cycle.
One part of this you just have to accept is that paradoxes do not propagate backward into the current timeline. What I mean by this is that because Old Joe triggered this whole situation culminating in Young Joe's suicide, that should have unraveled the timeline so that Old Joe never went into the past, which means Young Joe never had to make that choice, which means Young Joe should be alive and have never met Cid, resulting in Timeline 1 again. Instead, it appears that time in this universe flows only one-way, so changes in the past immediately propagate to the future, but only in a limited way, and if an agent from the future causes events in the past, those events are not immediately undone should anything causally eliminate the future-originated agent (such as his younger self committing suicide 30 years earlier.) It affects him directly by removing him from the timeline, but it does not seem to affect anything else.
Obviously, this doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense, but that's how it apparently works. Either the paradox resets everything to Timeline 1, or Young Joe broke it for good. There is no way to be sure based on how the film ended, but from a narrative standpoint, we should assume the final timeline worked out "for the best" and Cid didn't become evil.
Aren't temporal mechanics fun? 
Personally, I try to avoid a sense of fixed causality when possible, to avoid headaches and because I think the circumstances flow better that way. History is the interaction of dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, of unique circumstances, and they can interact in any conceivable variety of ways. So I don't tend to buy the argument that it's generally "impossible" to alter the future by modifying the past and that any attempts will ultimately bring about the same future (or a similar one to the traveler's recollection).
Personally, I try to avoid a sense of fixed causality when possible, to avoid headaches and because I think the circumstances flow better that way. History is the interaction of dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, of unique circumstances, and they can interact in any conceivable variety of ways. So I don't tend to buy the argument that it's generally "impossible" to alter the future by modifying the past and that any attempts will ultimately bring about the same future (or a similar one to the traveler's recollection).
I thought that was so obvious I was surprised they didn't go there. The kid being the Rainmaker was obvious from the first moment he was introduced. I kept hoping for some other twist, the kid gets killed and Emily Blunt becomes the Rainmaker or something...no such luck.
Only if it's fast paced enough to stop wayward thoughts from creeping in...if it's so hard to dispose of a body in the future, what are they going to do with Bruce Willis' Chinese wife? Killing her creates this terrible problem so why don't they have weapons that stun people to avoid them having to deal with tagged corpses that are impossible to dispose of for some vague reason? Oh they could put her in the time machine...but why can't they kill Willis and put him in the time machine too...and why assign his past self to kill him? Wouldn't it be a lot smarter to enact a strict policy against doing that, due to it being extremely stupid and likely to cause trouble and then they'd have no movie...
I found this movie far too slow paced and padded to keep my mind from wandering into places that made me increasingly disgruntled. Contrast this with Minority Report, which really was fast paced enough to squelch such thoughts until the movie was over. This movie could have used an editor and also a director who realized that trying to turn this nonsense into some artsy fartsy character study was the worst approach. Better to just acknowledge that the material is good mindless action fodder, nothing more.
That's why the Loopers simply pull the trigger as soon as the target appears. You aren't supposed to know that you killed your future self until you're examining the body.
In any case, closing the loops is what makes the whole system work. Each assassin is responsible for his own death. Nice and neat. The way they dealt with the kid who couldn't kill his future self struck me more as one of those things that they just thought would be cool to do in a movie, rather than something that makes any sense. Why would you systematically mutilate the present self in order to draw the future self to a specific location? How is that present self supposed to keep on existing to become his future self? Is he really just going to be tied to a bed for 30 years? Or will they kill his future self, then kill him in the present? That whole angle made no sense at all.
I agree with you about Looper. There was only enough material here for a short film. They made it seem more artsy-fartsy by having it feel like an independent film rather than a studio film, as if to somehow divert us from the thin writing and problematic story, as well as the complete shift where the story goes.
I do have bigger with Minority Report. That is nice-looking but truly awful film. What Pre-Crime does in that movie is so ludicrous that I will barely go into it here. Arresting someone for a "future murder" is ridiculous beyond comprehension. To use the rolling wooden ball used in the film to illustrate predestination, PreCrime is, essentially, charging people for damages to the floor caused by the wooden ball hitting it even if the Tom Cruise catches the ball in the air prior to it hitting the floor.
Of course it is. It used the concept, right? I haven't read the PKD story, but I would say that regardless, MR used the preCime concept badly, right?
You can't say that just because an idea originates somewhere else that you can absolve a film of responsibility.
I don't get your point....
Yet the filmmakers have us believe that PreCRime would be credible enough to go unchecked in Washington for six years before the DoJ would send someone to even have a look and see how absurd it all is. It's an absurd premise, done badly. Somehow because it's Spielberg, and because of the FX, it seems to get a pass. People forget to look at how bad the screenplay is... or how trite the action is. A bunch of guys fighting on jetpacks in an alleyway makes for a trite action scene. Even worse is the hero in a car factory and having the machines build the car around him so he can escape in it. Absurd. Worse yet, the hero falling into a room in an awkward position that matches the odd yoga positions of everyone in there... is this a serious film or is it the Naked Gun??
And what is up with that old woman's garden of attacking vines??
And what is up with that old woman's garden of attacking vines??