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Looper (dir. Rian Johnson; Gordon-Levitt, Willis)

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Ken K in the Fresh!!! said:
watched it last night. great film! so good that I actually dreamt about time travel lol

anyway, I know I shouldn't be too bothered by this but...
young joe writing "-> BEATRIX" in his arm in the same style as the mobsters did to his best friend, didn't sit too well w me. I know it was a cheap trick by the director to fool the audience into thinking young joe was caught by his pursuers but com' on!
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heh I mean, you're reaction to that is supposed to be
"come on!" so it worked. and they'd built it up so the only person young joe interacted with there was beatrix, really, so she'd be on his mind.
AniHawk said:
i liked the extra hinting that cid
would eventually become rainmaker in the sara-less scenario.

they say rainmaker has a synthetic jaw. cid gets shot in the face. earlier, sara tells joe it's easy for something to get infected and fall off out on the farm.
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ooh, did not catch that. Cool.
INDIGO_CYCLOPS said:
The trailers have me reminded of 12 Monkeys...still debating if I should check this out.
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the things they have in common are basically time travel and bruce willis. I mean, that's not wholly true, themes overlap and stuff but so do the inner workings of just about every time travel film and most sci-fi films, so. If it looking like a ripoff of 12 Monkeys (which was already a remake) is what's keeping you from going, you should go.
Alchemy said:
If we're talking multiple timelines, why does killing young Joe from Timeline B result in the death of old Joe from Timeline A? Why do they share memories? If timelines are connected enough that people still share the same fate, old Joe still died when young Joe did preventing old Joe from coming back in time and doing the whole movie thing.

Answers? Time travel is stupid.
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"time travel is stupid" is close to the answer I'd choose, but I'd probably phrase it as "time travel is impossible so the rules are whatever the hell we want." I do think Looper's lack of a fully articulated set of laws lends maybe too much ambiguity to the film, but the point is that in the future tt hasn't been experimented with enough for anyone to know the laws, so it has a diegetic reason. also, the film succeeds so well on a thematic level that i'm fine overlooking what is "impossible" under the time travel rules of other works of fiction.
anyway, the way I see it is that there aren't multiple timelines, just one mass timeline on which individual timelines overlap and interact, thereby causing reiterating series' of loops where different things happen but the past versions can still impact older versions.
 
Darknight said:
I saw this on Saturday. I liked the film but the ending was terrible. I hope the bluray has a decent Alt ending that would please us.

Anyways I thought that
even though both Joe's are stupid and selfish, Young Joe ruined everything.

For instance, why not let Old Joe kill off Cid/his mom and be done with it? Then Old Joe disappears and he lives his life? No! He is selfish and doesnt trust his future self. Why didnt he think of his future wife?? Yea they havent met but its his future wife!!!!
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because
cid is a fucking kid. a child. a completely innocent, pressured, hurt child. barely freaking five. and old joe wanted to put him through the same situation that joe had been put through: going through life without a mother. young joe, in his one moment of selflessness, realized he wouldn't want anyone else to go through that pain. young joe fixed everything by not being an asshole for once.

Now old Joe is a prick. I mean he goes back to basically kill off 3 kids. I mean yea its hard to be in his position but doing it randomly is worse as its affecting other innocent people. He should of done more research in the future if he knew he would be going back in time as he got older.

Oh and btw, what Joe has done is basically created a parallel universe. Like there is a Joe that lives his life to the fullest, knowing that he will kill himself later on. Then there is the one where his future self stops his death at his younger self's hand. Each universe having different consequences!

PS: One more thing, did the Future thug in the "past"(Joe's 'mentor') know that old Joe would be killed off in the future? Did he make Joe's death easier by telling him to move to China instead of France on purpose? What if there is a universe where Joe moved to France instead of China and was harder to track/kill off so then the Future thug is sent back to the past with this info to influence young Joe into moving to China instead to ease his future death thus creating another parallel universe?

Well thats all I got.
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well yeah old joe is a dick. that was pretty clear. also, it is "should have". not "should of".

Joe hasn't created a parallel universe the way I see, just an overlapping one. But the film leaves it up to interpretation.

Uh I guess that universe could exist as one of the loops but we don't see it. I assumed he was told to go to China just because they'd be the strongest nation in 30 years.
 
big ander said:
"time travel is stupid" is close to the answer I'd choose, but I'd probably phrase it as "time travel is impossible so the rules are whatever the hell we want." I do think Looper's lack of a fully articulated set of laws lends maybe too much ambiguity to the film, but the point is that in the future tt hasn't been experimented with enough for anyone to know the laws, so it has a diegetic reason. also, the film succeeds so well on a thematic level that i'm fine overlooking what is "impossible" under the time travel rules of other works of fiction.
anyway, the way I see it is that there aren't multiple timelines, just one mass timeline on which individual timelines overlap and interact, thereby causing reiterating series' of loops where different things happen but the past versions can still impact older versions.
Click to expand...

Well it is an over simplification. Time travel works however the hell the film wants it to so the story works. Trying to rationalize the mechanics of time travel for Looper is just silly because it goes out of its way to avoid rationalizing it. The movie has two scenes that reinforce this.
 
Alchemy said:
Well it is an over simplification. Time travel works however the hell the film wants it to so the story works. Trying to rationalize the mechanics of time travel for Looper is just silly because it goes out of its way to avoid rationalizing it. The movie has two scenes that reinforce this.
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No of course, I agree that it's an oversimplification and that tt works however any film wants it to work. And I know Looper goes out of its way to avoid rationalizing it, I saw it. My thing is that I think those instances of backing away from rationalization are acceptable because they did keep me from questioning the internal logic of the film while it was on. Suspension of disbelief remained intact. Also, every tt film fails to fully rationalize its conceit because it's impossible to rationalize. as long as the device works within the film and allows a thematic message to be made, it's a success.
 
The part where they meet in the diner had me wondering if Young Joe was wearing lipstick or something. His makeup in that scene looked a little off.
 
big ander said:
No of course, I agree that it's an oversimplification and that tt works however any film wants it to work. And I know Looper goes out of its way to avoid rationalizing it, I saw it. My thing is that I think those instances of backing away from rationalization are acceptable because they did keep me from questioning the internal logic of the film while it was on. Suspension of disbelief remained intact. Also, every tt film fails to fully rationalize its conceit because it's impossible to rationalize. as long as the device works within the film and allows a thematic message to be made, it's a success.
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I'm totally agreeing with you. I meant my "time travel is stupid" is an oversimplification of describing it.
 
This was probably one of the greatest super hero origin stories of all time.

Wouldn't try to rationalize it, because even IRL trying to understand how time travel (would) work is a mind fuck (unless you're going into the future, which is technically possible and has sort of been done).

The second time you see Old Joe
escape was fucking hilarious.
 
maybe im just cranky cause i didnt sleep that well last night but i didnt think this was all that

i wasnt a fan of the whole "TK" angle.. the movie went from a cool time travel thriller to a movie about a boy with paranormal powers

i also thought the movie started off slow with a bunch of scenes that didnt flow very well


The Mana Legend said:
I was embarrassed for the movie during that entire 30 year montage part. It was so bad.
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yeah this was also really clunky
 
Why were there those scenes alluding to 'riding on a train after my mother died' and the scene at the end touching his hair? Is it even possible that Cid is Joe? It doesn't make sense... But I see no other reason to leave us with that impression.
 
Maxim726X said:
Why were there those scenes alluding to 'riding on a train after my mother died' and the scene at the end touching his hair? Is it even possible that Cid is Joe? It doesn't make sense... But I see no other reason to leave us with that impression.
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I got the impression that those scenes were meant to show that he related to the kid because of their similar circumstances, not that he actually was the kid. I think that her running her fingers through his hair was just a way to show she cared about him and recognized his sacrifice. He easily could have told her about his mom doing that when they slept together, just like he did with the stripper.
 
Alchemy said:
They showed that Joe was running out of money as his floor safe was emptying.
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Ah okay thanks, I think I missed that part as I kept getting distracted by this girl next to me who kept texting which took me out the movie.
Darknight said:
Now old Joe is a prick. I mean he goes back to basically kill off 3 kids. I mean yea its hard to be in his position but doing it randomly is worse as its affecting other innocent people. He should of done more research in the future if he knew he would be going back in time as he got older.
Click to expand...
There was no need to do research on time travel because as far as he was concerned, the Only reason he would travel back in time was to die and he already accepted his fate. It wasn't until they killed his wife, that he decided to change the past to create an alternate universe where his wife doesn't die.
 
Salvor.Hardin said:
It actually doesn't make sense why Young Joe thinks that.
There was no reason for him to think that Old Joe wouldn't kill the kid after killing Sara. Also, the Rainmaker was created from completely different circumstances in Old Joe's timeline. So there was actually zero reason for Young Joe to conclude that 1) Old Joe wouldn't kill him and 2)even if he got away, that he would become the Rainmaker.
Click to expand...

In Young Joe's vision right before he shoots himself, he sees that Old Joe kills Sara, then runs into the field and couldn't find Cid. Cid then becomes an orphan, having killed his own mother and seen his biological mother die in front of his eyes, causing him to eventually take over the world and get rid of Loopers. Of course he is not psychic and this might not happen, however it is what he believes what would have happened, which leads to his decision to shoot himself. It's that simple.

Do we even know how the original Rainmaker was "born"? I dont think so. There is plenty of reason for Young Joe to think that all of these events would lead to a Rainmaker.
 
I felt that both Willis and JGL were awesome in this film, and I really enjoyed the direction, but the plot... Why?

Why did it have go off on that tangent?

Oh, well. It was still enjoyable... But it could've been so much more.
 
Was there any semblance of law enforcement in 2044? I'm foggy now but feels like the mob and law were one and the same. And yet, 30 years later, the mob can't dispose of a body.

Did they also have the slums on surveillance or was that a setup?
 
Grifter said:
Was there any semblance of law enforcement in 2044? I'm foggy now but feels like the mob and law were one and the same. And yet, 30 years later, the mob can't dispose of a body.

Did they also have the slums on surveillance or was that a setup?
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abe was in control of the city, but that wasn't any big deal since the city was a piece of shit. there are probably other places in the us where the government and law has a better foothold, and when better tech came around, the law was able to get the upperhand
 
Thanks.

I'm surprised at the hate for that alternate montage. Probably my most memorable part of the film next to the Inspector Gadget-style preservation montage that I expected to see more of in an ending team up.
 
Brazil said:
I felt that both Willis and JGL were awesome in this film, and I really enjoyed the direction, but the plot... Why?

Why did it have go off on that tangent?

Oh, well. It was still enjoyable... But it could've been so much more.
Click to expand...

This is pretty exactly how I felt. It was a good movie, but, I was expecting/hoping for else.
 
I thought the sequence at the end with
Joe flashing forward to Cid's evolution into the Rainmaker was a pretty direct callback to Abe's speech to him earlier in the movie--when younger Joe was brought in after the watch shop incident, and Abe could clearly see the 'bad path' in front of Joe. He gives Joe something uniquely "his", and saves him from the bad end. Nobody I saw the movie with picked up on it either, and were all confused re:is Cid youngest Joe, but I thought the whole speech from Abe was intentionally to set that flash-forward up. Cid wouldn't have even necessarily ended up on a train at any point, Joe was just projecting his own bad path onto the kid.

Also, I kind of wish I spoke Mandarin because I'm pretty sure the news report in future China during the old Joe backstory section shows some massive destruction and the newscaster says "Rainmaker" in English. Which I think indicates that a Sarah-less Cid essentially never gets control over his powers and continues to blow shit up when angry, making him a frequent murderer aside from the loop-closing.
 
I regret jumping into this thread. People getting too crazy with the time travel analysis. I thought the film was better than it was marketed to be (a late action flick?)
 
iammeiam said:
Also, I kind of wish I spoke Mandarin because I'm pretty sure the news report in future China during the old Joe backstory section shows some massive destruction and the newscaster says "Rainmaker" in English. Which I think indicates that a Sarah-less Cid essentially never gets control over his powers and continues to blow shit up when angry, making him a frequent murderer aside from the loop-closing.
Click to expand...

There was some serious hints to Cid becoming some kind of Apocalypse level mutant, along with that news cast, the call Old Joe gets with that number was coming from a guy seemingly in a warzone under what seemed like artillery fire, but we know the Rainmaker had no people / army, so that might all have been him just blowing buildings up with his mind.
 
Went to see this tonight. Beyond the cast, and the plot blurb, I didn't really know anything about it including the general buzz (positive or negative). It was nice to go in blind for once.

Overall, quite enjoyed it, and I think it's worth seeing at the cinema. It's got a good hook and a nice 12 Monkey's vibe in that it's liberal with its use of time travel in the sense that it's integral to the plot, and doesn't become to flowery or mind fucky for no good reason. It's kinda like "yeah this is time travel and this is how it works in the plot, so deal with it". The first third, maybe half of the film is better than the latter half, in terms of pacing and hook. Though it did manage to keep me interested throughout right until the end, the last half kinda chops about and maybe feels like it needed a bit more exposition, or a different cut, or had the wrong narrative flow or something. I can't put my finger on it because I was still interested, and that's a good thing, but the last half felt a bit fragmented from the first half. Something like that.

Ended well too I guess. I don't really want to spoil anything because I think it's one of those films best enjoyed going in knowing as little as possible. But it was nice to see a film that actually ends, you know? None of this BUT WHAT IF AND WHO AND THEN THE OH MY GOD stuff. Again, like 12 Monkeys, the film actually wraps things up pretty well. Feels like a full picture.

It does have that same problem pretty much every single time travel film has, where if you start really thinking about the what ifs and maybes of the past impacting the future, and this happened to that guy so that means that but wait why did oh no that shouldn't because future man did the past thing bla bla bla. Best not to over think the logistics of something as free of logistics as time travel, and just enjoy the ride.

So yeah, solid movie, worth seeing. Don't think it was anything OH MY GOD GAME OVER HOLLYWOOD YOUR NEW SAVIOUR IS HERE, but I didn't expect it to be.

Oh, and damn Emily Blunt looked great.
 
Grifter said:
Was there any semblance of law enforcement in 2044? I'm foggy now but feels like the mob and law were one and the same. And yet, 30 years later, the mob can't dispose of a body.

Did they also have the slums on surveillance or was that a setup?
Click to expand...

I think that was the Detroit of the future.
 
Salvor.Hardin said:
It actually doesn't make sense why Young Joe thinks that.
There was no reason for him to think that Old Joe wouldn't kill the kid after killing Sara. Also, the Rainmaker was created from completely different circumstances in Old Joe's timeline. So there was actually zero reason for Young Joe to conclude that 1) Old Joe wouldn't kill him and 2)even if he got away, that he would become the Rainmaker.
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Just because Old Joe might try to kill Cid doesn't mean he'd succeed--we've seen what happened to the last guy to come around with a gun. Also, while I agree that it doesn't make sense that Old Joe must be the cause of the Rainmaker since he showed up even in the "dead Old Joe" version of events, there are two things to keep in mind: 1) We're better informed about Old Joe's history than Young Joe gets a chance to be. 2) Even if he was, Young Joe might not be as good at making decisions about time travel as we are, so he's doing what he thinks is a good idea.
Arnie said:
Probably been posted, but just incase:

dT74g.gif
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Coming from the other direction, I made this history of movie Bruces.
20120917brucebruce.jpg
 
The make up was the most impressive aspect. I could believe they were playing the same guy.

The time travel logic was too fussy for my taste.

It got boring as hell on the farm and when it got there the narrative went to places I didn't find interesting.

TK should have stayed as a neat background detail and not have the ending depend on it.

How did the Gat men know when a looper missed their target?

There should have been more city stuff/on the road stuff. Global travel with young Joe.

The kid and Blunt should have been set up sooner, so I gave a damn about them.

There were also too many characters that did too little. The idiot gat man served no purpose If he has been a young Jeff Daniels I could see him needing to be there but he wasn't so he shouldn't have been.

Levitt was very good as a young Bruce - crazy good at times.

Liked the alternate future stuff.

Neat concept, mediocre delivery. Not much rewatch value.
 
iammeiam said:
I thought the sequence at the end with
Joe flashing forward to Cid's evolution into the Rainmaker was a pretty direct callback to Abe's speech to him earlier in the movie--when younger Joe was brought in after the watch shop incident, and Abe could clearly see the 'bad path' in front of Joe. He gives Joe something uniquely "his", and saves him from the bad end. Nobody I saw the movie with picked up on it either, and were all confused re:is Cid youngest Joe, but I thought the whole speech from Abe was intentionally to set that flash-forward up. Cid wouldn't have even necessarily ended up on a train at any point, Joe was just projecting his own bad path onto the kid.

Also, I kind of wish I spoke Mandarin because I'm pretty sure the news report in future China during the old Joe backstory section shows some massive destruction and the newscaster says "Rainmaker" in English. Which I think indicates that a Sarah-less Cid essentially never gets control over his powers and continues to blow shit up when angry, making him a frequent murderer aside from the loop-closing.
Click to expand...

About the
Newscaster in the future. I too heard the name Rainmaker. Seemed to imply massive destruction in cities.
 
Saw it today...at the matinee...by myself.

It was really cool.

I think the TK stuff fell short for me. It felt wildly out of place to be such a small deal and end up being the biggest part of the film. Did it look awesome? Fuck yea. But it kind of supplanted the time travel in importance.

The kid was awesome, though. Freaky as shit.
 
oatmeal said:
Saw it today...at the matinee...by myself.

It was really cool.

I think the TK stuff fell short for me. It felt wildly out of place to be such a small deal and end up being the biggest part of the film. Did it look awesome? Fuck yea. But it kind of supplanted the time travel in importance.

The kid was awesome, though. Freaky as shit.
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I thought it tied together when Joe said something earlier in the film to the effect of
why aren't there any super heroes?
 
So many people are getting hung up on how the gats know someone missed a target.

It's a movie about time travel. They get information from the future.

Figure it out
 
I love this movie :-p I took my date and when he
shot the first kid
, my inner 4chan got out and I said "Well that made this movie worth it" :-\ *le sigh*
 
Just got back from the movie. I fuckin loved it. Kept me interested the whole way and kept my mind racing. I did have an issue, or rather a question but it was cleared up already at the top of this page. It was about how
Joe ended up figuring it all out. How he knew that Cid becomes the Rainmaker because Sarah dies.
 
SapientWolf said:
I thought it tied together when Joe said something earlier in the film to the effect of
why aren't there any super heroes?
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Sure. I just mean...it's a film about time travel, but the 'main villain' is a super TK freak.

It's just blending two different ideas and combining them. It works...it just felt off to me.

Like if the Rainmaker was the one to invent time travel and used said time travel to cheat-mode his way through life. He would know everything that everyone was about to do so he could take down these people by himself.

Flash Forward (I know, I know) did something similar to that...with that creepy dude having a log of all events and was able to do whatever he wanted within that framework.


brianjones said:
i wasnt a fan of the whole "TK" angle.. the movie went from a cool time travel thriller to a movie about a boy with paranormal powers
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's how i feel.
 
Great, amazing film but
Why does the mob send people back to be killed by themselves? Why not have different loopers kill them? Like JGL should have been ordered to kill his best friends future self and vice versa.
 
How did
the Rainmaker become the Rainmaker in old Joe's world? just before young Joe shoots himself he sees that this is what creates the Rainmaker, but obviously this did not happen in old Joe's life (see the 30 year clip). Yet old Joe talks about the kid seeing his mother die, I am to take it that this kid is going to grow up the be the Rainmaker anyway? and that he just grew up that way regardless
?

Also how does it make sense
to shoot and kill old Joe's wife in the future when disposing of bodies is so hard?
 
Lion Heart said:
Great, amazing film but
Why does the mob send people back to be killed by themselves? Why not have different loopers kill them? Like JGL should have been ordered to kill his best friends future self and vice versa.
Click to expand...

Because they
want the gold bars to reach their final destination, I guess.
 
CoffeeExpress said:
How did
the Rainmaker become the Rainmaker in old Joe's world? just before young Joe shoots himself he sees that this is what creates the Rainmaker, but obviously this did not happen in old Joe's life (see the 30 year clip). Yet old Joe talks about the kid seeing his mother die, I am to take it that this kid is going to grow up the be the Rainmaker anyway? and that he just grew up that way regardless
?

Also how does it make sense
to shoot and kill old Joe's wife in the future when disposing of bodies is so hard?
Click to expand...

They fucked up during the murder of Old Joe's wife. That was never suppose to happen. It was Joe getting captured and then sent back in time. When they fucked up, they burned down the place to cover up the fuckup. Also, that fuckup is the reason why Old Joe retaliates and decides to change the past.

Also, no one knows exactly how Cid becomes the Rainmaker in Old Joe's world but he did see his stepmother die. Not sure, but its safe to assume that within the realm of the movie he becomes Rainmaker no matter what, and the only way to stop him being one is to ensure his mother doesn't die. If Old Joe wouldn't have showed up, Cid wouldn't have accepted her real mother as mom.
 
Lion Heart said:
Great, amazing film but
Why does the mob send people back to be killed by themselves? Why not have different loopers kill them? Like JGL should have been ordered to kill his best friends future self and vice versa.
Click to expand...
because they know very little about time travel and want to keep loops as tight and personal as possible. plus, imagine person A kills the future version of you. you now have to live alongside person A for 30 years knowing they killed you. you might not be happy.
CoffeeExpress said:
Also how does it make sense
to shoot and kill old Joe's wife in the future when disposing of bodies is so hard?
Click to expand...
it doesn't. a stupid henchman did it on accident and Joe went on a rampage because of it.
 
Just got back from a viewing, and it was p. good. Not mind-blowingly amazing, but better than the garbage that comes out nowadays. The futuristic ideas/setting/ideas were great in general, though the execution wasn't all the way there. Still definitely worth the watch.

Amazingly though, having seen End of Watch yesterday, I think I enjoyed that a little more than this.
 
Just saw it for the second time, and really enjoyed it even more this time. There is an emotional core that I didn't really fully appreciate the first time through, and all the big moments work just as great the second time.
 
I loved just about everything about this movie except the X-Men 3: The Last Stand moments near the end. Thought it kind of made the effective drama before it cheaper.

Really good movie though.
 
Solo said:
Just saw it for the second time, and really enjoyed it even more this time. There is an emotional core that I didn't really fully appreciate the first time through, and all the big moments work just as great the second time.
Click to expand...

Did you think the ending was still bad?
 
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