I don't want to talk about time travel, because if we start talking about it then we're going to be here all day talking about it, making diagrams with straws.

10/2/2012 4:57:12 PM

hahaha i loved that part.


just saw it, great movie.

10/2/2012 9:45:04 PM

^^Awesome. Good movie as well. Really surprised me.

10/3/2012 9:36:37 AM

UNNECESSARY SPOILER, REALLY WHO GIVES A FUCK DON'T READ THE THREAD BEFORE THE MOVIE














I think his name is Abe---the best friend, right? The guy at the beginning of the movie that doesn't close his loop? The Mafia's "doctor" torture tactic was the BEST part of the whole film. Genuinely scary, fits the theme of mafia-controlled time-travel, and it has HORRIFYING consequences. Plus the way they executed it, with his limbs and body parts just gradually disappearing, edge of your seat shit right there.

10/4/2012 12:55:42 AM

I really enjoyed it. Would definitely watch again.

10/4/2012 3:47:31 PM

^^That's Seth. Abe was the boss (Jeff Daniels).

But yes, that whole scene was pretty crazy. When I realized what was happening...

That doctor (or whatever) was busting his ass to amputate 4 limbs in 15 minutes without killing the patient/victim.

10/4/2012 5:04:50 PM

^Yeah, that was a little OVER THE TOP. I think it would have made more sense if they toned it down a bit. I'm pretty sure they don't regularly have people ignore the instructions and carry on. You know dey gonna be haulin' ass to the location.

10/4/2012 9:26:02 PM

At first I thought he was just disappearing due to the fact that his younger self had been killed. I was like "holy shit" when I realized they were cutting him piece by piece while keeping him alive.

On an aside, why would they need to go through all that trouble? If they kill the younger Seth the older Seth just disappears.

[Edited on October 5, 2012 at 12:55 AM. Reason : .]

10/5/2012 12:55:16 AM

Probably to set an example. They're kind of not nice people you know? Plus you can't know how killing the younger version will impact the future.

10/5/2012 7:43:25 AM

SPOILER



Joe isn't from the future, from anything they indicated. It doesn't make sense that Joe is her son.

10/5/2012 8:04:50 AM

really enjoyed this.

10/5/2012 12:39:15 PM

^^^ yeah they covered that slightly, when Abe was trying to get Joe to give Seth's location up. Joe asked if they're gonna kill Seth, and Abe said that they can't just kill him cause it could mess things up or something.

But then cut to 1.5 hours later and Joe kills himself and old Joe just disappears. Seems pretty easy.

Makes me wonder if young Seth actually survived all that torture and went on to live another 30 years, or if they killed him shortly after.

10/5/2012 8:32:56 PM

i was more interested in the rainmaker storyline... i wish the movie had been about that.

10/8/2012 12:48:28 PM

^ I would have liked to have seen more about that as well. Although, I liked what the story was actually about.

The only thing that bothered me a bit was what ^^ mentioned. They said they couldn't just kill (present) Seth, but they really hacked him up in a short period of time for a guy they were trying to keep alive. And the doctor just walked away when they killed future Seth, which makes me question that they even tried to keep him alive. Also, I thought it was unnecessary to do all that they did to him. Cutting off fingers is one thing, taking is foot is kind of stupid. I mean, he's got to get there right? If he's just a bunch of nubs, you have to go look for him... which defeats the purpose.

FYI, I don't think they were in anyway "torturing" present Seth. They were just surgically removing his fingers and appendages. He was probably out cold (maybe not). I just didn't get that from it. I took away that they were doing it to scare future Seth into coming to them (not to punish/torture present Seth).

[Edited on October 8, 2012 at 9:32 PM. Reason : .]

10/8/2012 9:24:31 PM

So say instead of running off, Seth's future self just said "Hey. I'm gonna go disappear and live my life off the grid under a different name until I die of natural causes." What's stopping Seth from just telling Abe that his future self came through and he closed the loop? He gets his gold, as far as the mob is concerned, future Seth is dead (and knows that if he ever pops up again, he will be killed/tortured so he would be stupid to do so) and everyone is happy.

10/8/2012 10:41:53 PM

^

That could have happened in some iteration of the timeline, but in this one, he had to get hacked up.

It's difficult to have time travel movies with perfect models of time travel, but I'm guessing this is why they showed joe killing his loop, in order to even come back, the time line had to bifurcate at some point.

10/9/2012 3:02:46 AM

You couldn't kill the present Seth even after amputating all his apendages and killing his future self because he still needs to live that 30 years to get to the point to be sent back to close his loop..

Also...lets not break out the straw diagrams here

10/9/2012 7:22:08 AM

Now we can all watch it again with director commentary

http://www.iwatchstuff.com/2012/10/looper-director-rian-johnson-made-you-an.php

10/9/2012 8:56:08 AM

here is an audio interview with Rian Johnson also.

http://www.slashfilm.com/filmcast-ep-202-a-morning-with-rian-johnson-director-of-looper/#more-141951

10/9/2012 9:04:17 AM

quick version: I enjoyed it
Long version:I feel like this movie would have been better served as a mini-series on SYFY or something. You almost need a whole new plot line to explain the Rainmaker... especially when the kid turns into Akira. (when in the beginning they say all you can do is float coins) The montage where Angles in the Outfield becomes Die Hard I guess covered the point, but I thought they could have explained it a bit more.. certainly the relationship. Either way, it was worth my $6.00.. the comedic value of the time travel non-explinations made the plot omissions bearable.

10/10/2012 6:14:31 PM

Quote :

" You almost need a whole new plot line to explain the Rainmaker"

Why?

It would be cool, but it seems immaterial.

That aspect of the story reminded me A LOT of the Mule from Asimov's Foundation series. I think this is one of the reasons i liked this movie so much...

[Edited on October 10, 2012 at 6:44 PM. Reason : ]

10/10/2012 6:43:10 PM

Quote :

"UNNECESSARY SPOILER, REALLY WHO GIVES A FUCK DON'T READ THE THREAD BEFORE THE MOVIE I think his name is Abe---the best friend, right? The guy at the beginning of the movie that doesn't close his loop? The Mafia's "doctor" torture tactic was the BEST part of the whole film. Genuinely scary, fits the theme of mafia-controlled time-travel, and it has HORRIFYING consequences. Plus the way they executed it, with his limbs and body parts just gradually disappearing, edge of your seat shit right there. "

I TOTALLY agree. That part where he's running/stumbling down the street and he's kind of collapsing because more parts are getting cut off ...

10/10/2012 9:27:56 PM

Came away disappointed.

10/11/2012 12:26:03 PM

saw it tonight, pretty good... and maybe someone already asked this, but why didnt the mafia guys in the future just kill the person and use their time machine to send the body back? seems a lot "cleaner" and they could be sure that shit was taken care of without relying on people in the past.

10/12/2012 8:46:22 PM

I don't think they explained it in the movie. But I figured/assumed one of two things so I could get past it easily:

1) If someone dies, their tracking device thing goes off/sends a signal

2) Why kill someone and risk the murder charge if you can have someone else do it?

3)) Dead things can't time-travel --- which is probably not likely since they sent inanimate objects back....... So I'm going with 1 or 2, and moving on.

10/12/2012 11:13:36 PM

#2 I doubt they would care, since it seems like time travel was an ultra serious crime and they didnt care

#1 maybe... but I would also assume a tracking chip thing totally disappearing (due to the person being teleported in time) would set off alarms too

10/12/2012 11:22:42 PM

well for number 2, they pretty much said that in the movie. They said it was impossible to get rid of a body, so that's why they used time travel. So clearly, they were more concerned with getting away with murder (not getting caught for it via the body) than they were about using time machines. That doesn't address what you're saying though. Killing them on site leaves the possibility of DNA evidence. I can only assume that to them, it wasn't worth the risk. And that's good enough for me.

Let me elaborate on number 1. i had actually thought it out a little further than what I typed out (aka made shit up to make it work). I had two ideas there. Your point is based on the assumption that the people are being consistently monitored, and in turn, that someone would notice one "beacon" disappear. How many people are in the world? Nothing was said that made it seem like they were actively monitoring anyone's location with the tracking devices. For all we know, they don't even "activate" them until someone is reported missing. At which point, they turn it on and go find the person (dead or alive).

The other idea I had, which isn't mutually exclusive, was that the device simply signals when someone is dead. Perhaps by monitoring a pulse. If there's a pulse, the device does nothing. If the device doesn't sense a pulse, it sends a signal along with the coordinates. It would also be a good way to trigger first responders.

Now if they're just zapped back in time, that won't happen. The person is living, so the device has no reason to send a signal. The device will still function properly after they've gone back, but there is nothing to receive that signal because it doesn't exist yet.

So granted, it does disappear. And someone may notice that eventually. Perhaps during some routine ping test to make sure the device is working properly. But I think it's reasonable to think people were not being tracked at all times, and that the device may only be activated at certain times. Making it unlikely that they'd know anything other than "the device is not showing up any more", and possibly WAY after the murder/time-travel took place.

[Edited on October 13, 2012 at 2:16 AM. Reason : .]

10/13/2012 2:11:25 AM

Quote :

"Talking about Looper and time travel in film, Johnson said: even though it's a time-travel movie, the pleasure of it doesn't come from the mass of time travel. It's not a film like Primer, for instance, where the big part of the enjoyment is kind of working out all the intricacies of it. For Looper, I very much wanted it to be a more character-based movie that is more about how these characters dealt with the situation time travel has brought about. So the biggest challenge was figuring out how to not spend the whole movie explaining the rules and figure out how to put it out there in a way that made sense on some intuitive level for the audience; then get past it and deal with the real meat of the story."

It shows. It's a great character driven film. Interesting vision of the future. But the time travel aspects don't make much sense.

SPOILERS

-Amputation scene. Derp. If they chop off young Seth's finger, old Seth wouldn't remember recently having the finger (it's been missing for 30 years) and he wouldn't be shocked. He'd have driving directions on his arms for 30 years and it wouldn't be very pressing.
-Also, why not just shoot the motherfucker? With young Seth dead, the entire problem is taken care of.
-This film can't decide if it wants to follow a single timeline or a parallel timeline model (http://bit.ly/To8Pgk). In the end, young Joe kills himself making it so old Joe doesn't exist and can't kill Cid. But wait. If old Joe never existed, why the fuck has any of this shit happened? Why does Cid still have a bullet hole in his face?
-I'm afraid the "cloudy memory" part has just completely lost me.

Some less time travel specific, but still annoying plot holes:
-"Closing your loop" is part of the deal. It's agreed upon. So.... the entire motivation for Joe to go murder all these children is that the Rainkmaker is closing loops exactly when it was supposed to get done (year 30)?
-Why do loopers have to close their own loops and not swap?
-There are two "kill Old Joe" scenes, presumably part of some casual loop. Ok. But we know Joe is going to beat up his captors, take off the hood, and get away. Are we supposed to assume there is a timeline where he didn't try to beat up his captors?

END SPOILERS

10/13/2012 9:28:22 AM

Those are all great points. Especially about Old seth not being shocked by the removal of fingers and suck.

Regarding the two old joe death scenes: Yes, there was a time-line in which he didn't fight. What I took from the two old joe death (attempt) scenes was this: There's one time-line in which young joe kills old joe (bag on his head, joe sees the gold). They then show that time-line play out through a montage. Joe kills his older self. He is no longer a looper, moves to china, becomes a serious addict, burns through his savings, becomes a straight up hitman, meets the asian chick, gets clean, gets married, etc. That joe knows they'll be coming for him soon to send him back to be killed. He doesn't want to die, obviously, so he tries to get away. That is the time-line we watch the rest of the movie.

[Edited on October 13, 2012 at 12:50 PM. Reason : .]

10/13/2012 12:48:32 PM

Future Joe supposedly would have created the Rainmaker, but didn't because young Joe died...right?

So explain to me how the Rainmaker already existed in Joe's future timeline and was responsible for the death of his wife?

Also, give me a future world where 10% of humanity has become telekinetic. Sure, it's been done before (X-Men, Jumper, other such "mutation" stories). Give me time travel, done even more frequently. But both was just too much. The TK part of the plot took away from the movie as a whole. If it was just a time-travel gangster story it would have been better.

[Edited on October 27, 2012 at 6:40 AM. Reason : -]

10/27/2012 6:37:19 AM

^I tend to agree that the TK was over the top. The Rainmaker could have just been incredibly intelligent, which we saw early on that the kid is (he's working with circuitry, thinks the adults around him aren't very smart), and the plot would have worked without him being fucking godly. It still would have had the moral consequence theme, et cetera.

10/27/2012 12:27:37 PM

Quote :

"So explain to me how the Rainmaker already existed in Joe's future timeline and was responsible for the death of his wife?"

The only way it would work is if Joe coming back to try to kill the boy/accidentally killing his mother is not the actual cause for him becoming the Rainmaker. Leaving the question of whether or not he still becomes the rainmaker in the time-line we watched.

It doesn't mean it doesn't work as far as the story goes. But it begs the question; Is that what Rian Johnson intended or is it a HUGE hole in the story?

10/27/2012 2:05:41 PM

One thing that drove me nuts (okay there were quite a few things but this was the big one):

Getting away with murder in the future is supposedly so incredibly difficult that they have established this extremely convoluted, expensive and highly illegal time travel system so that they can send people back 30 years to be murdered.

Yet, the entire film is driven by the fact that these mobsters roll into Joe's house, see his wife standing outside posing no threat at all, and without hesitation cap her in the chest.

11/9/2012 10:51:36 AM

I think you're misinterpreting that seen. IIRC, they didn't know she was out there. They were in the room with Joe, she was outside of the house. She walked up suddenly and made a sound, and then the guy reacted and shot her.

I could be off, but I don't think they just shot at her for no reason.

11/9/2012 12:11:29 PM

Well either way, the fact that they were so quick to shoot someone didn't sit well with me.

Also, the second half of the film is Terminator.

11/9/2012 12:24:09 PM

ok so time travel is totally possible: put very many strap-ons ion engines so that you can accelerate at around 1G for months. then time would have gone for millions of years back on earth when you get back.

11/13/2012 7:16:54 PM

Decent flick. Can't get bogged down on time travel details

1/1/2013 9:21:53 PM

rented this on demand today ... It was alright, but I was expecting a lot better

1/1/2013 9:27:17 PM

Quote :

"So explain to me how the Rainmaker already existed in Joe's future timeline and was responsible for the death of his wife? "

Old Joe stated that he was in one of many different possible universes briefly to young Joe in the diner, but wouldn't go into it. Which is a cop out for saying you can change the future.

The rainmaker must have a recollection that an old looper came back to kill his mom, and decided that he could save his mom by killing off all of the loopers, which would be a time changing event. Old joe then changed the future by deliberately going back to kill the rainman. So, IMO, the rainman sparks all of the changes in time travel.

What was really interesting here is how they use Old Abe to be your barometer on what is being changed or not. Because when he gets surprised/shocked then you know that things have changed. It was brilliant.

I must regurgitate that the biggest flaw in this film is that they do not go to show you anything about the Rainmaker. Now, is this an unnecessary story-line similar to Zion in The Matrix? No, because with the rainmaker they show you this beautiful weapon but don't tell you how it is used in the alternate future. Would have been nice to give some detail, maybe he brought peace or ended the drop drugs?

[Edited on January 2, 2013 at 12:24 AM. Reason : a]

1/2/2013 12:23:11 AM

I dont think that she was his mother, nothing really supports that and I think that it was just a sign of affection since they were fucking an all. It looks like back then, the society had degraded to where the majority of people prolly had messed up parents.

I think that JGL will one day down the road win an oscar for this role. He not only had to play the character, he also had to play the character as Bruce Willis, which I felt like he nailed.

1/2/2013 1:03:06 AM

- He can only win the oscar this year
- Since les mis, flight, lincoln, etc. all came out this year, he's not going to win it
- You are way off in thinking that was a really good acting job. Watch more movies or something

1/2/2013 1:53:17 AM

ehh, while I disagree with BanjoMan on the idea that JGL will win an Oscar for this role, I disagree with you that he can only win it for this role this year.

Technically, yes. But realistically, it's been suggested often enough that actors have "won" oscars at times not so much for the role for which they were nominated, but for the roles they've played in the past.

[Edited on January 2, 2013 at 2:54 AM. Reason : ser]

1/2/2013 2:54:28 AM

Bingo.

1/2/2013 3:20:37 AM

I listed those points in reverse order of importance

1/2/2013 3:55:14 AM

I enjoyed the movie. Joseph Gordon-Levitt did a great impression of Bruce Willis.

1/2/2013 4:53:18 AM

Killing his wife that casually also took me out of the movie. There were some issues with the time travel of course but there always are with time travel movies, so I can look past that.

But killing his wife in cold blood without a second thought made me think this whole looping thing must be no big deal.

Other than that and a few other nitpicks it was a great movie.

Quote :

" edit post - He can only win the oscar this year - Since les mis, flight, lincoln, etc. all came out this year, he's not going to win it - You are way off in thinking that was a really good acting job. Watch more movies or something "

Young JGL can only win an Oscar this year, but you're forgetting about the time travel.

2/15/2013 12:50:00 AM

Just watched it last night, enjoyed it

As far as the rainmaker becoming who they fear him to be (bad): I think originally he thought the sister was his mother and he saw her get killed (by him iirc) leading to him being evil. JGL was hoping to change that by having him realize that Sara was his mother. He saw the scenario with Bruce shooting Sara ending with him again seeing his mother shot (The real one) and leaving on the train to become evil. Idk, that is how I saw it though.

I agree with the shooting the wife in the future thing. Didn't think about it while it was happening. Wasn't Bruce a hitman too though?

5/1/2013 11:36:56 AM

how does the boss know when the looper fails?

the only explaination that starts to make sense, is that Abe somehow can tap into
the "tracker"signal, and knows when the person didnt die. otherwise, the loop can
just give the gold to the younger guy, and then walk off into the sunset

5/4/2013 9:56:23 PM

I think it is because Abe is actually from the future so his memory would be altered. Sort of like how Bruce's memory of his wife started to fade at times due to "present time" activities.

5/8/2013 11:25:07 AM

the more you think about it, the worse it gets

5/8/2013 8:35:10 PM