This is a great post and I'll come back and read it again whenever I get the chance to rewatch Looper. Because I do think you have a point.
Looper (dir. Rian Johnson; Gordon-Levitt, Willis)
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Considering the potential for plot-ending paradoxes in this film (I mean, killing a future version of yourself is just a basic plot point, not even an unusual event), it's actually pretty impressive that there's nothing that I was unable to get over until the very end.
Perfect way of expressing what I was thinking Hawkian.
IMO, all movies create a set of rules by which the universe must work. Even if everything is just hand waved or ignore a basic set of laws always transpires. I can accept the rules not making sense, or the rules being inconsistent. Furthermore in many cases the rules are created to be broken (don't cross the streams) but the moment that happens and is treated like a trivial event and the consequences don't make sense in the established universe, then I just can't tolerate it.
IMO, all movies create a set of rules by which the universe must work. Even if everything is just hand waved or ignore a basic set of laws always transpires. I can accept the rules not making sense, or the rules being inconsistent. Furthermore in many cases the rules are created to be broken (don't cross the streams) but the moment that happens and is treated like a trivial event and the consequences don't make sense in the established universe, then I just can't tolerate it.
If Young Joe shoots himself to stop Old Joe, doesn't that mean that Old Joe never came back to "close the loop," which in turns means that Young Joe never went chasing Old Joe...which means that Young Joe never shot himself.
Fucking time travel movies!
Yep, we're of like mind. Basically I'm willing to suspend my disbelief to even totally extreme degrees (I mean... the mechanics of time travel to the past used in this movie really shallow), as long as the movie itself plays by its own rules and, like you said, a breaking of the rules is treated appropriately in-universe.
Inception, Minority Report, The Prestige and Primer are all movies with a "well but that can't happen in real life!" factor that I have no problem with in this regard because they're all quite good (sometimes meticulously so) about playing by their own rules.
Looper is one of the movies that comes really close and then falls short at the very end. It's funny, upon my first watch, I didn't even get why it didn't really satisfy me. Then after I saw Primer it clicked. Funny how that works.
Yeah, that's kinda what I'm saying. The paradox permutations are endless; everything should have changed the moment he killed himself as the timeline tried to tidy itself up.
The thing that I think gets to be most is: there was a missed opportunity for a great little montage showing that the other two kids Old Joe killed are still alive and playing happily now, unaware that a deranged Bruce Willis ever wanted to murder them. Young Joe would have "saved" them too in a sense though he didn't really care about them at all.
I don't think I could ever watch a movie with some of you guys. The character development, the emotional throughlines, the themes - that's 95% of what I care about. The other 5% would go partially to plot machinations and whether or not the internal logic is 100% sound, but its never the focus for me.
teruterubozu
Member
The problem with sci-fi is that people think they can make "better" world-logic.
With proper character development, the instant that Young Joe decides it's worth ending his life to avert disaster, Old Joe would've had the exact same epiphany and would've stopped shooting. The character development really wasn't that great. Young Joe is shown to be selfish. Old Joe is shown to be selfish. Whatever Young Joe learns is immediately inserted as memories in Old Joe. Yet apart from that the characters are treated as two separate entities. Old Joe is shown to be wiser than his young self, yet however only Young Joe is smart enough to realize that the 'creation' of the Rainmaker is his fault and sympathizes. The movie would've been much, much better if at the point that Young Joe foresees the future and decides the kill himself, Old Joe stops in his track, understanding that the death of his wife is all his own fault, repents, and instead he is the one who kills himself.
teruterubozu
Member
Hey, so the one thing I wonder is: why does Young Joe take cream in his coffee, while Old Joe asks the waitress for "black"? It seems to hint that they are "different".
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teruterubozu
Member
Yeah, I guess "the boy" is sweeter.
teruterubozu
Member
The character development is implied. LOL
Stallion Free
Cock Encumbered
Joe's character arc was truly moving. The game changer for him was tapping that sweet piece of ass,
Emily Blunt
adamsappel
Member
I was really disappointed with The Prestige because the cloning came out of left field in the middle of the movie. There was nothing supernatural in the movie at all to that point. At least Looper establishes telekinesis from the beginning, despite all the complaints that it "changed" the movie.
And really, how unnecessary, stupid and detracting was the fact that he managed to sleep with her? What could've been a sincere character development about a guy who feels sorry for a scared and confused kid was turned into 'I can't let myself kill a woman with dat ass whom I've just banged.'
teruterubozu
Member
I was psyched to see her maybe touch herself, but instead she reached for the damn
frog button
You can make the argument that it's not supernatural, but science fiction.
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Cock Encumbered
He was just doing what any sane man would do if presented with that possibility.
Tathanen
Get Inside Her!
The only way Looper's time travel made sense to me is if you introduced a "things don't change until they change" rule. It's consistent with it throughout the whole film. Start by looking at the scars appearing on the arms. If we were really going to just assume that what happens to your past self will appear on your future self, these guys should already have the words/scars on their arms, and the presence of those scars would've prevented them from doing what they did. The fact that we SEE them appear means that Looper's time travel has some sort of buffering effect where the changes don't affect the future (or people from the future) until they happen in the present. And then they only affect those items moving FORWARDS from that point.
So when JGL shoots himself, the changes ripple out just like the scars, and the universe moving forwards reflects those changes. But everything that already happened stays. Bruce Willis and his future is erased, but only based upon an event that happened at a specific point in this new timeline, which can only affect the future of that timeline. Bruce Willis disappears from that point onwards, as the "nuke the future" effect ripples back to hit him. He's not removed from every scene he was in earlier in the movie.
I mean, it makes no real sense, but it's at least consistent.
So when JGL shoots himself, the changes ripple out just like the scars, and the universe moving forwards reflects those changes. But everything that already happened stays. Bruce Willis and his future is erased, but only based upon an event that happened at a specific point in this new timeline, which can only affect the future of that timeline. Bruce Willis disappears from that point onwards, as the "nuke the future" effect ripples back to hit him. He's not removed from every scene he was in earlier in the movie.
I mean, it makes no real sense, but it's at least consistent.
teruterubozu
Member
She's pregnant with his child for Looper 2.
Then just kill the young version if a loop ever escapes.
adamsappel
Member
"Supernatural" as in: not natural. And certainly not established in the film's world. Hell, they could have made it "magic is real" and it would have made more sense.
I'm going to be perfectly honest with you, the 95% of what you care about doesn't really play particularly well to this movie's strengths. I mean, it had some of each, and there was some compelling thematic material at its core, but generally it didn't really demand much of the audience in that regard. I mean, that stuff is what's most important to me too, I guess I just have higher percentages for what you've given 5% total, and that's particularly true of science fiction.
Well, it wasn't necessarily-
Right, I mean. It's Nikola Tesla, any time a fictional version of him is introduced into a story you should expect some crazy shit to go down. I didn't "see it coming" but I didn't think it was out of left field, either. In the universe of the movie it's explicitly not supernatural, just sufficiently advanced science.
But again, I don't really even have a problem with explicitly supernatural plot devices, as long as the plot plays by its established rules.
Yeah, that was... not particularly high-brow.
Tathanen
Get Inside Her!
Seems like the thing to do, doesn't it? I'm not entirely sure why they felt the need to torture that one guy into making his loop show up, instead of just putting a bullet in his brain.
This actually is not consistent with the rules of the movie. I mean, the characters of the movie clearly do expect that what happens to your past self to affect all iterations of your future self. The future timelines branching from the moment you cut something onto someone's arm are altered such that the future versions also experienced the same cuts in their past. When you say "the cuts should just already be there" you're just invoking a causality paradox the movie ignores, and I'm gonna let it do so. The "buffering effect" you've described, where we can "see them appear" in real-time isn't established as a plot point and I took it just as poetic license, in that it's cooler to watch letters be carved in than just a sudden jump cut to having the full message. As Zeppu notes, if everything that already "happened" (took place already, from the perspective of someone who can see all the way to the end, even if it's the future from JGL's perspective) stays, the people in the past/present from our perspective could just shoot the young version when a loop runs and call it a day.
I know the movie as displayed indicates that Bruce Willis isn't removed from the "past" scenes before JGL kills himself. I'm saying this just doesn't make sense. Without him ever having... been going to.. exist, there was/would be no version of him that came back into the past in the first place.
Well, yeah. In your interpretation there's no reason. While watching from my perspective, I just assumed they were attempting to minimize the causality paradoxes that would result from doing so; the kind of thing I expected to see at the climax.
Can you clarify this a little bit...? Nothing man-made is natural.
Tathanen
Get Inside Her!
I dunno, it seems pretty consistent to me. Throughout the whole film, we see future people being affected by past events ONLY once those past events actually happen in the film's present. The scars, obviously. Bruce disappearing at the end. And then the way his memory works throughout the film. As JGL does things at the house, only then does Bruce know about them. His future self only changes once the precipitating events occur in the present. And this movie's rules imply that you can't change the past without time-travel forking it. After it's forked, the only weird time travel stuff that will happen pertains to the time traveler himself. You can change the present and the future, but never the past, without forking into it again, and branching a new timeline.
Consider: Bruce traveling back in time changed the timeline. As the future product of this timeline, he should already know which is the right kid, because JGL finds it out on the way to becoming bruce. But no, this film builds the nature of its future in realtime in the present, and a time-displaced individual ends up feeling very odd effects from it.
That's probably the best way to think about it, really, that by being "time-displaced," Bruce has some sort of weird temporal bubble around him. He's not from that timeline, but he still integrates into it, and bonds to his past self. Changes to the future affect him, but not into the present's past. See: Marty McFly "fading" in back to the future, despite belonging to a different timeline.
I mean, it's weird, and I don't really like it. But I don't see where it's inconsistent.
Just saw this, so to dogpile:
Telekinesis plot is pointless and goes nowhere.
What do future criminals need to murder people for? They could simply send precious metals back in time and cash out, bank the cash and watch it grow. Or more realistically, send worthless cash back in exchange for undervalued precious metals and bank those.
But no, murders are more profitable.
Was irritated by the end.
Telekinesis plot is pointless and goes nowhere.
What do future criminals need to murder people for? They could simply send precious metals back in time and cash out, bank the cash and watch it grow. Or more realistically, send worthless cash back in exchange for undervalued precious metals and bank those.
But no, murders are more profitable.
Was irritated by the end.
I don't think the movie is internally inconsistent at all. I think it's only inconsistent to some people's ideas of how time travel should work.
Making up rules that the movie doesn't establish. We don't know how going back in time affects the future, only how it affects an individual who has traveled back in time.
It bugs me that only physical traits and memories get passed over. The empathy exhibited by Young Joe never translates to Old Joe.
The paradox pertaining Joe himself doesn't bother me the slightest because the laws of cause and effect for them aren't really it the 'right' order. That's fine. That's part of the suspension of belief which comes with any time travel story.
But if Joe's actions caused the rainmaker to never be created then that breaks down the entire timeline, including the whole story with Seth.
Even so, the detriments on killing the young version of a looper aren't demonstrated. It's all displayed to be simplistic and really just affect the looper in question.
Finally, the Rainmaker, as a kid, is already incredibly smart. He will surely have realized that a looper, sent back in time is what killed his mother. Why would he purposefully do that in his future then? Why does he send the guy that killed his mother in the past instead of finding a better solution to it. He can mentally break people apart into a a sludge, good luck finding that body. He could've just waited outside Old Joe's home and waited for him to go to a public place and just splattered him across some wall and one one would ever be able to link it back to him.
The paradox pertaining Joe himself doesn't bother me the slightest because the laws of cause and effect for them aren't really it the 'right' order. That's fine. That's part of the suspension of belief which comes with any time travel story.
But if Joe's actions caused the rainmaker to never be created then that breaks down the entire timeline, including the whole story with Seth.
Even so, the detriments on killing the young version of a looper aren't demonstrated. It's all displayed to be simplistic and really just affect the looper in question.
Finally, the Rainmaker, as a kid, is already incredibly smart. He will surely have realized that a looper, sent back in time is what killed his mother. Why would he purposefully do that in his future then? Why does he send the guy that killed his mother in the past instead of finding a better solution to it. He can mentally break people apart into a a sludge, good luck finding that body. He could've just waited outside Old Joe's home and waited for him to go to a public place and just splattered him across some wall and one one would ever be able to link it back to him.
Learn to read, jett.
I wasn't actually talking about Looper, but about movies and viewing habits in general:
What I'm saying is what Looper is about family and redemption, not zany time travel antics. And that's the lense I view it through: does the story work? Do I feel the thematic elements at play? Is the character's journey compelling and satisfying? Not "do the exact specifics of time travel as depicted in the film work?".
I'd say in that situation, it's logical to view them as seperate entities. As old Joe says in the diner, 30 years in the future, is yesterday for him. His wife's death is only days old for him, and will probably take priority over any revelation he can remember from 30 years ago.
I also feel the opposite is in effect for young Joe. The memories of his mother and him being sold off, would be stronger for him, since he's 30 years younger. Which is why he feels more passionate, about Sara raising her child.
Even before the cornfield, it's shown old Joe is willing to kill children and there's a reaction shot of Young Joe being appalled by this, when he figures it out. I also wonder if the early scene of young Joe nearly running over the kid, has any relevance. Or if that was just to show how out of control he'd become, on drugs.
It prevents it from happening again. It already happened. It already happened in the future that old Joe came from. But it won't happen in the current timeline that was created when old Joe went back in time.
MaddenNFL64
Member
Would have loved to see an alternate end where the kid gets killed by Willis. Would he even have the same life after killing the baby Rainmaker? Too many changes I think for him to wander into his future wife again.
I'll take solo's statement further: I definitely couldn't watch a movie with 99% of you
how does the telekinesis plot "go nowhere"? how is it pointless? it's a sort of macguffin power to be sure, but it's just there to make cid simultaneously more vulnerable and more dangerous, so the stakes are high. being volatile is vital to cid's character because his entire arc is needing to be soothed and constructively brought up by a mother figure. so it's central to his character. also– it looks cool?
for the second part...just– what? like, the real mob could "simply" quit killing and make smart financial investments, maybe diversify into a few industries and run solid businesses...asking why they DON'T use the time machine to predict baseball scores or kill hitler isn't...anything. how would them doing those things make the movie better? is the concept "mob uses a new technology to kill people" really that logic-breaking to you
edit: also the way you suggested is sort of concretely not how time travel works in the movie you watched. Hawkian outlined the casual influence concept pretty well, read that.
edit 2: and I can't just let this go, I have to say more. like...the fact that a movie doesn't do something that is feasible within a concept doesn't make the movie less than. stories are about creating and mining conflict. assassination is a pretty goddamn big conflict. complaining that they maybe could just send money through the time machine is like watching a screwball comedy and saying "well why don't they just pause a second and talk this over?! All the mix-ups would disappear!" it's fundamentally misunderstanding conflict in storytelling.
how does the telekinesis plot "go nowhere"? how is it pointless? it's a sort of macguffin power to be sure, but it's just there to make cid simultaneously more vulnerable and more dangerous, so the stakes are high. being volatile is vital to cid's character because his entire arc is needing to be soothed and constructively brought up by a mother figure. so it's central to his character. also– it looks cool?
for the second part...just– what? like, the real mob could "simply" quit killing and make smart financial investments, maybe diversify into a few industries and run solid businesses...asking why they DON'T use the time machine to predict baseball scores or kill hitler isn't...anything. how would them doing those things make the movie better? is the concept "mob uses a new technology to kill people" really that logic-breaking to you
edit: also the way you suggested is sort of concretely not how time travel works in the movie you watched. Hawkian outlined the casual influence concept pretty well, read that.
edit 2: and I can't just let this go, I have to say more. like...the fact that a movie doesn't do something that is feasible within a concept doesn't make the movie less than. stories are about creating and mining conflict. assassination is a pretty goddamn big conflict. complaining that they maybe could just send money through the time machine is like watching a screwball comedy and saying "well why don't they just pause a second and talk this over?! All the mix-ups would disappear!" it's fundamentally misunderstanding conflict in storytelling.
Tathanen, tt seems like you're bending over backwards to make it consistent (which is something I do all the time too, admittedly) but maybe it would help you if you thought of time as less linear. Once you can literally abandon the future for the past (i.e.: there is no Joe of any sort in the future anymore, right after Bruce is sent back) all bets are off, so to speak. No one has any idea what would happen (and Asimov for one just believe it to be naturally impossible). It's up to the movie to supply a consistent vision of what comes next even if it's not a realistic one.
I took this to mean that you can avoid causality paradoxes if you're just generally careful, and while you may be influencing the future timeline in small ways (maybe a few sports games go the other way in 30 years because of Jeff Daniels getting eggs for breakfast), you can maintain causal control over the important stuff. There's also apparently no younger version of him running around in his past either which makes things simple.
The evidence we do have of future people and events being influenced by action in the past are:
Both of these things show a direct influence on the future version of the younger character. And while carving a message into someone's arm might not completely skew the course of their life, killing them would cause the rest of their life to not occur.
I absolutely disagree. We are in fact barely shown future people at all. I think the best evidence you have for your argument is something you didn't mention: Jeff Daniels' character seems sort of immune to causality even though he's from the future and constantly influencing the past from his perspective.
I took this to mean that you can avoid causality paradoxes if you're just generally careful, and while you may be influencing the future timeline in small ways (maybe a few sports games go the other way in 30 years because of Jeff Daniels getting eggs for breakfast), you can maintain causal control over the important stuff. There's also apparently no younger version of him running around in his past either which makes things simple.
The evidence we do have of future people and events being influenced by action in the past are:
That's it. Right? We have no other evidence to work with.
Both of these things show a direct influence on the future version of the younger character. And while carving a message into someone's arm might not completely skew the course of their life, killing them would cause the rest of their life to not occur.
I find all of this to be evidence for my interpretation rather than yours, which is funny. JGL's actions in the past have the effect of clouding or corrupting Bruce's memories of distant, totally unrelated events in the future (like whether or not he'd meet his wife).
JGL didn't figure it out on the way to becoming that Bruce, and ultimately the one who figured it out would ever turn into Bruce Willis at all. He had no reason to start looking for those kids until time travel came into play.
The problem with this otherwise reasonable theory (time travel causation paradoxes only affect the individual time traveler, not other aspects of the timeline) is that it means the kid will still probably grow up into the Rainmaker. QUOTE]
I don't think that's true at all. Certainly, this movie's version of time travel is completely inconsistent with how I'd expect time travel to work. But that's not a problem for me. I found its internal logic to be consistent up until the very end.
Agreed. We are never shown the resultant impact of causal action in the past on the future, only the present and individuals who themselves are from the future.
Stallion Free
Cock Encumbered
I just didn't find those aspects of the film compelling enough to distract me from the other elements. In a better film they absolutely would.
Well, I didn't say Looper was a great film by any stretch. I certainly enjoyed it a lot, but there were a number of shortcomings. I just don't get hung up on the logistics of a movie's framing device (like Looper's time travel or Inception's dream video game levels). All that stuff is nothing but the backdrop for the movie. It's not what the movie is about. Calling Looper a movie about time travel or Inception a movie about dreams is like calling Rocky or Raging Bull movies about boxing.
and that's fine (though I disagree) but look at how every post comes in with the basic structure of "I didn't like the movie because why not drop in ocean?" That's putting plot mechanics before everything else.
instead you just get joe giving a child the gift of a mother, something he missed, and finally receiving the maternal calm he'd been lacking for years.
Forsaken82
Member
Yes, I hate paradoxal theories. The whole way the movie was presented is one giant paradox. I guess the explanation is that each life is tied to a series of time loops "which is why they need to "close" the loop.
But it all boils down to 3 unique time loops all taking place AFTER we find out the rainmaker is closing all the loops (and here lies the problem)
So we have Time loop A which is Bruce Willis Lives his life, gets captured, and then JGL takes up that life for the next 30 years which leads to B: living his life up until his capture and the murder of his wife, and we see that this is a different outcome because BW now gets sent back without the mask on his face which leads us to C: JGL protects the rainmakers mother and sacrifices himself to prevent the actions of the future in the first place
are we to believe that the Rainmaker was destined to do this no matter what? His fate is to close all the loops in the future?
Paradoxal theories are fun to watch, just not very fun to think about. Perhaps there was a rule in the movie that I missed that makes it make more sense... and i would love someone to fill me in.
Tathanen
Get Inside Her!
I'm typically frustrated by Time Travel movies that don't make sense, and am a huge fan of those that do. So yeah, I make an effort when I can. But really, in this case, I'm just describing what I see.
I wouldn't say that at all. Obviously the whole future is changing, since someone time traveled into it. The second the timeline is split by backwards time travel, the future is totally unset, and can be anything.
The key is that Bruce traveled into a timeline. He is the only foreign element. The only paradoxes that could conceivably arrive are those that involve the nature of his existence. Traditionally you'll see a time travel story like this where the traveler goes to another timeline, and is isolated from it, he's in a temporal bubble of immunity since it's not actually his timeline. This movie though (and Back to the Future to a point) suggests that the time traveler manages to bond to the new timeline in some capacity. Thus the scars, the memories, disappearing at the end.
Really there are only two kinds of time travel that I think are air tight. 1) Split timelines where the visitor is unaffected by what he does to the timeline, and 2) single timelines where you can't change the past because if you travel into it, you were already there the first time, and probably caused the thing you're trying to prevent in the first place (Lost, 12 Monkeys). Looper can't be the second one there, since we see that the past is absolutely being changed by Bruce traveling to it (we see his version of those events as he lives through them, pre-travel). So we're left to wrangle with option one.
Back to the future has always bugged me, since it seemed to belong to the first type there, but then you have shit like Marty fading. Looper seems to have the same problem, where the time traveler is affected by the changes he makes in a distinct timeline. It's far more pronounced in this film, though, with "ripples" of his changes affecting him throughout the process.
The only way I can make either movie make sense is by assuming a time traveler visiting a new timeline is still affected by it somehow. That he finds himself halfway between timelines, hailing from one, but still governed by the new one somehow. It's only him, though. If, in Back to the Future, Marty's parents hadn't gotten together and he faded away, everyone in the past there would have still remembered him, and been affected by what he did. (That's the way I see it, at least.)
To me you can't just "try really hard to avoid creating a paradox" by the actions you take in a time travel movie, as you suggest that maybe Jeff Daniels did. Rather, the time travel rules need to make paradoxes completely impossible. If you have to twist shit around to make that feasible, so be it, but a paradox is just that: a paradox. I won't allow them!!!
bigboss370
Member
i saw the telekinesis thing coming a mile away because of that one billboard at the beginning of the movie.
Forsaken82
Member
You are of course assuming that they aren't time jumping but rather jumping to an alternate reality, which was the whole purpose of Back to the Future. The changes that were made in the past didn't affect Marty's real present. That obviously makes things a little more digestable in Looper, however the rules aren't set up for us to think that way, and sort of defeats the purpose of closing a loop if the loop still exists in another reality.
I know how you feel Tathanen. I too love these sorts of movies and keep on thinking until I manage to wrangle some sense out of them.
I don't usually even have any trouble following or anything. I got inception the first time and I managed to understand and retroactively pick up on Stutter Island even though I missed the first quarter of the movie.
I get really annoyed when something just 'breaks' and I play the devil's advocate because I want to find a solution with satisfies me and gives me closure, which I haven't been able to with this one.
An idiot friend of mine told me SuckerPunch was a great movie and I ended up spending hours trying to grasp some meaning from it, to no avail. But that was a shitty movie with shitty reviews. Looper has been almost universally acclaimed and still, I find it to be overly simplistic, both in terms of writing, the plot, the pacing as well as the character development. It's fun to watch, but in a mindless/thoughtless fashion like some Vin Diesel movie. Unfortunately it doesn't even have quite as much action or explosions either.
Regarding BTTF, I always assume it worked in a sort of 'probability' fashion. The less chance his parents had of hooking up, the more he fades. Until the dance, it was all up for grabs, which is why he didn't disappear the second he saved his dad. His parents always said that the dance at the festival was what brought them together, so as long as that moment happened, then reality would still progress normally. The whole 'fading' thing also makes me believe that there is one single timeline going all the way through. The whole Biff alternate timeline issue is portrayed in a manner that, while there were two different versions of reality, one of them ceased to exist as soon as Biff returned Back to the Future.
I don't usually even have any trouble following or anything. I got inception the first time and I managed to understand and retroactively pick up on Stutter Island even though I missed the first quarter of the movie.
I get really annoyed when something just 'breaks' and I play the devil's advocate because I want to find a solution with satisfies me and gives me closure, which I haven't been able to with this one.
An idiot friend of mine told me SuckerPunch was a great movie and I ended up spending hours trying to grasp some meaning from it, to no avail. But that was a shitty movie with shitty reviews. Looper has been almost universally acclaimed and still, I find it to be overly simplistic, both in terms of writing, the plot, the pacing as well as the character development. It's fun to watch, but in a mindless/thoughtless fashion like some Vin Diesel movie. Unfortunately it doesn't even have quite as much action or explosions either.
Regarding BTTF, I always assume it worked in a sort of 'probability' fashion. The less chance his parents had of hooking up, the more he fades. Until the dance, it was all up for grabs, which is why he didn't disappear the second he saved his dad. His parents always said that the dance at the festival was what brought them together, so as long as that moment happened, then reality would still progress normally. The whole 'fading' thing also makes me believe that there is one single timeline going all the way through. The whole Biff alternate timeline issue is portrayed in a manner that, while there were two different versions of reality, one of them ceased to exist as soon as Biff returned Back to the Future.
That would certainly have clarified Jeff Daniels' role as a character in the movie to me a bit. That they were trying out, in secret, having an old loop guide his undisciplined younger version.
This is such a fascinating post. First off, it's funny, because I feel like your point, with regard to science fiction films, is stronger the weaker the science fiction elements are in any given film.
It's odd, because, yes- the more you try to decipher the internal logic of time travel in this movie, the less cause there is to pay attention to it
But for other movies, analyzing these components can be very rewarding! Rocky is totally about boxing btw. -_-
Exactly, this was what I was getting at when I mentioned the necessity of a "prime timeline" in my first big post here.
Edit: Sucker Punch blows. I was beyond ready to love it, too. Even after reading the reviews.
It's poorly explained and he could just as well have been a math genius and it wouldn't affect the overall story.
What? Cid was going to use his body exploding TK to take over the criminal world in the future and unite all the organizations under his rule, basically to rule the world. He was cleaning house with loopers because he blamed them for his mother's death and also because he needed to eliminate time travel because it made his young self vulnerable before he became unstoppable. I don't think the story would be the same at all if he was just good at math.
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