Looper

[danny_galaga]

Not taken by this. Judging by other reviews, I'm in the minority. I know time travel stories are always fraught with the impossibility of the premise, but this took it to another level in my mind. Everything as individual scenes was fine, even great, but I just couldn't look past the fact this totally doesn't make sense. Over and above the fact that time travel movies don't make sense. Although it has Bruce Willis in it, it's no 12 Monkeys.

3.5/5  (my companion gave it 2.5/5! But we mean different things by the scores. 2.5/5 to me means I want my money back. For her, 2.5/5 means it was ok. Hence the reason I have other scores below to relate to)

my score for recent movies you may have seen:

  5/5 - The Way Back, The Kings Speech, Michael Clayton, In Bruges, Gran Torino, Mary and Max, Moonrise Kingdom

4.5/5 - Taken, Iron Man, Reign Over Me, Watchmen, The girl with the dragon tattoo

  4/5 - True Grit, Traitor, Bedtime Stories, Sunshine, pineapple express

3.5/5 - 300, Max Payne, You dont mess with the Zohan, Yes Man

  3/5 - That new Indiana Jones flick, Disturbia, That new TMNT flick,

2.5/5 - Angels and Demons

  2/5 - The Love Guru. Note: My 2 is probably someone elses 1. Just leaving room for worse!

[Flip_Willie]

I liked it pretty well when I watched, but you are right. Looper sports some pretty blatant contradictions throughout the movie. I guess I am just somewhat accustomed to time travel movies being inconsistent and fuzzy. I still enjoyed it - especially for being a bit creative here and there.

One of the bigger contradictions that I noticed in the movie was when old-version Joe's Asian wife gets shot... in the future... when you have to transport people back in time to murder them. I mean, I know the movie is vague on why you can't murder people in the future, but if criminals are going to the trouble to transport people to the past to get shot, you have to imagine that there is a pretty good reason for all the fuss.

A little off topic, but I think one of the most consistent/realistic time travel movies I have ever seen is Time Crimes. It has been quite a while since I watched that movie, but I remember liking it well for its realism.

[selfie]

I saw it last night. I enjoyed it while watching it but after thinking about it, either I missed something or it just doesn't work...

Why did the sequence of old Joe being sent back get repeated when no other time sequence does? If old Joe came back in the bag, got shot, then young Joe gets paid,lives his life, fights back, comes back without the bag, then the story continues form there. Then it would work

If you want to see a good time travel movie try Primer but prepare for brain hurt...

[wp34]

I liked it but it didn't quite work for me as it seems to have for others.  I thought the time-travel sequences/discussions were pretty original.  I agree with Danny that the individual scenes were great.  The acting was great.   For some reason those little pieces didn't come together.  That being said I recommend seeing it.  I suspect this movie might grow on me more once I see it again.

I thought the scene where young Seth is being tortured off camera and you see the effects happening to old Seth were freaky scary.  That whole sequence was as disturbing as it was brilliant.  I also loved the scene were Old Joe is giving Young Joe a lecture in the diner.  The acting was particularly great.

If you want to see a good time travel movie try Primer but prepare for brain hurt...

I loved Primer and it did make my head hurt.

[shponglefan]

If you want to see a good time travel movie try Primer but prepare for brain hurt...

Primer was amazing.  I loved how nothing much happens for the first 30 minutes, but then it just goes into mindfuck territory...

Also Primer timeline chart.

[selfie]

WP34 The bit with young Seth/Old Seth was a highlight for me too.

[Vigo]

WP34 The bit with young Seth/Old Seth was a highlight for me too.

I thought the scene where young Seth is being tortured off camera and you see the effects happening to old Seth were freaky scary.  That whole sequence was as disturbing as it was brilliant.  I also loved the scene were Old Joe is giving Young Joe a lecture in the diner.  The acting was particularly great.

Fully agree, that single scene was one of the coolest/scariest things done with time travel in a very long time.

The Diner scene was really good too, and it reminded me why I think so highly of Bruce Willis. I think I will have to rewatch 12 monkeys soon for more Bruce Willis time travel goodness. 


Maybe someone can give me a hand with the a part that confused me. When Old Joe killed the little kid, then thought back to his memories of his wife, you could hear a baby crying in the background. I get that he thinks back to his memories of his wife to determine if he rewrote history, but what is up with the baby crying? In the diner scene i believe, he mentioned that he couldn't have kids, so I figure it is somehow significant. 

[wp34]

The writer/director has posted an MP3 in-theater commentary.   Kind of a neat deal if you are interested in seeing the movie twice.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2012/10/08/looper_in_theater_commentary_from_director_rian_johnson_download_or_stream_it_here_.html

Maybe someone can give me a hand with the a part that confused me. When Old Joe killed the little kid, then thought back to his memories of his wife, you could hear a baby crying in the background. I get that he thinks back to his memories of his wife to determine if he rewrote history, but what is up with the baby crying? In the diner scene i believe, he mentioned that he couldn't have kids, so I figure it is somehow significant. 

I took it that he had changed some history at that point and they ended up having baby---his memories were changing.  I'm not sure I follow the Director's logic here though.

I saw it last night. I enjoyed it while watching it but after thinking about it, either I missed something or it just doesn't work...

Why did the sequence of old Joe being sent back get repeated when no other time sequence does? If old Joe came back in the bag, got shot, then young Joe gets paid,lives his life, fights back, comes back without the bag, then the story continues form there. Then it would work

I listed to part of the commentary and the director admitted that if you diagram out the time-travel on paper you should have seen young Joe shoot old Joe first.   He edited it the way he did to make sure the audience understood that young Joe is really the main character.

[Gray_Area]

The only sensible temporality flick off the top of my head is 12 Monkeys, because there's no paradox. I'm not saying it hasn't been done well, but not in movies. Look back to the 50s and 60s in SF and you'll see some ardent attempts. Maybe some successes, I forget.

More recent successes are Gregory Benford's TIMESCAPE (think bifurcation), and Stephen Baxter's EXULTANT (wherein the story that results from the 'incident' stands on its own).

Temporality is just a gimmick these days to make people think there's a story.

[danny_galaga]

I liked it but it didn't quite work for me as it seems to have for others.  I thought the time-travel sequences/discussions were pretty original.  I agree with Danny that the individual scenes were great.  The acting was great.   For some reason those little pieces didn't come together.  That being said I recommend seeing it.  I suspect this movie might grow on me more once I see it again.

I thought the scene where young Seth is being tortured off camera and you see the effects happening to old Seth were freaky scary.  That whole sequence was as disturbing as it was brilliant.  I also loved the scene were Old Joe is giving Young Joe a lecture in the diner.  The acting was particularly great.

If you want to see a good time travel movie try Primer but prepare for brain hurt...

I loved Primer and it did make my head hurt.

Yes, Seth scene was brilliant (",)

[danny_galaga]

The only sensible temporality flick off the top of my head is 12 Monkeys, because there's no paradox. I'm not saying it hasn't been done well, but not in movies. Look back to the 50s and 60s in SF and you'll see some ardent attempts. Maybe some successes, I forget.

More recent successes are Gregory Benford's TIMESCAPE (think bifurcation), and Stephen Baxter's EXULTANT (wherein the story that results from the 'incident' stands on its own).

Temporality is just a gimmick these days to make people think there's a story.

Loved Timescape. read that when I was in primary school. M ust read it agai because I'm sure I would appreciate various nuances better...

[danny_galaga]

Oh, and am I the only one who, anytime they hear the name of this movie, thinks of this?

[selfie]

I listed to part of the commentary and the director admitted that if you diagram out the time-travel on paper you should have seen young Joe shoot old Joe first.   He edited it the way he did to make sure the audience understood that young Joe is really the main character.

That is such a cop out. He is basically saying "I got it wrong on purpose because I think my audience is stupid..."

[Vigo]

At the end, was I the only one thinking that young Joe was a dumbass for not just shooting his hand/trigger finger off? He knows old Joe will instantly gain his memories, and so he just needed to buy enough time for old Joe to understand that he would be creating the rainmaker. Beats being dead.

[danny_galaga]

At the end, was I the only one thinking that young Joe was a dumbass for not just shooting his hand/trigger finger off? He knows old Joe will instantly gain his memories, and so he just needed to buy enough time for old Joe to understand that he would be creating the rainmaker. Beats being dead.

I'm probably being dense, but why would that make him realise that? Isn't he just going to suddenly remember that that jackass young Joe shot his own finger off and let that frikkin' Rainmaker escape? I doin't see that he would suddenly remember himself as a kid jumping on a train, seeing as how young Joe himself didn't remember he was the Rainmaker

Another hindrance:

We know how Old Joe came to be in that era. But why is Young Joe in the same era as Kid Joe? Did he get sent back in time with the Looper Boss (Jeff Daniels)? It seemed to be implied that it was quite an exceptional thing to have someone sent back to work, as opposed to being sent back to be assassinated. How come neither of them seem to be aware of their awesome power? Since Old Joe is the Rainmaker, I don't understand any of this. Unless the kid who grows up to be the Rainmaker does so in parallel with Young/Old Joe? The director himself says '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'. But I just can't get past the fact it really doesn't make sense. As WP34 mentioned, getting the order of time jumps back to front for Old Joe screwed it up even more. It would make more sense the other way round. But the rules seem a bit too 'magical' for me. Magic is fine in The Lord of the Rings, but not here 

[Vigo]

I agree, it is a great plot for someone like my wife who will take in a good character story, and be willing to not think through the details. For people like me who enjoy seeing how the plot details make sense, there are a lot of roadblocks with this one.

Just a fair warning that I am not gonna use spoiler bars anymore. I figure everyone who has not watched the film yet has not made it this far down in the thread.

As far as my hand shoot theory goes, I assumed that powerful enough memories that were newly created would be soon after remembered and take by the person sent back. That's why old Joe remembered that hot steamy farm house lovin' young joe had. Other things like smashing the watch and going back into town pop in as well. My thought is, Joe shooting his hand would lead to the gun dropping, old Joe going "WTF happend to my hand??", and hopefully in that time, Sara would pick up the gun. Then the memory of young Joe realizing how the rainmaker came to be would surface on old joe and he would give up the chase at that point.

I could be wrong though. I was making assumptions. I assumed young joe wanted to see the picture of old joe's wife as an attempt to overwrite his memories on him, and that is the same reason old Joe wouldn't let him see it.

[selfie]

Yeah, no more spoiler bars....

Old Joe/Young Joe was not the rainmaker, if he was it is just more errors that the director is hiding as "I just want to make it easier for the audience" There were "clues" hinting towards that but then there were other things that made it not really possible.

[danny_galaga]

Yeah, no more spoiler bars....

Old Joe/Young Joe was not the rainmaker, if he was it is just more errors that the director is hiding as "I just want to make it easier for the audience" There were "clues" hinting towards that but then there were other things that made it not really possible.

That doesn't make sense, but I'm assuming this is the case, otherwise he made sweet lovin' to his mother 

Not happy with that scenario though, since that would only make sense in your 'multiple universe' branching theme, with all it's different futures and pasts. If that was the case, who cares about someone else's future 

And not a plot mistake, but just something that occurred to me during the film- if only criminal gangs are using time machines, wouldn't the main thing they would use them for is to go back in time an hour and put stacks of cash on long shots at the races? The killings would be incidental.

[Vigo]

Here's one to mull over. In the end of the movie, we saw killing young joe make old joe Vanish. Why did the mafia bother getting a surgeon to chop up young seth to lure old seth back to a warehouse to kill him? Why didn't they just kill young seth? Sadism is the only reason I can think of.

Here is another one. If the future mafia has such a hard time killing people, that they have to send them back 30 years in order to do the job, why just did they get trigger happy and kill Joe's wife?

[danny_galaga]

Good points. For Seth, for sure it was just to ---fudgesicle--- with him, sadism is the answer.

I'm willing to let the accidental shooting of Joes wife slide. Accidental deaths can happen, even by criminals!

More food for thought, but not a plot failure as such. If only criminals are using time machines, then surely the best use is for making money, that's what criminal organisations are about. Killing is an unfortunate side effect of making stacks of illicit cash. Wouldn't they be sending people back an hour in time to bet big on long shots at the races etc? That's not a flaw of the movie as such, but I'd have shown a small part of that industry to show the audience that is the main use of the machines. Then the Loopers would be an intriguing side story.

[kahlid74]

I enjoyed the movie, I thought it was entertaining.  As for trying to rationalize time travel movies lol, it's kind of a crap shoot.

While young Joe shooting his hand off is a thought, the point of what young Joe had done up to that point should show you how nothing short of killing old Joe would stop him.  Old Joe was too far gone to realize the error of his ways.

As for the Mafia not wanting to kill young Seth before old Seth, I would have to assume it deals with how we see time travel, as in whether we view it as a tree and branches created off every incident within a timeline or as one continuous line that rights itself as events occur.  The idea would be that if you kill young while the old is still around, an entirely new branch of time is created and everything before that is invalidated.  Kind of like going back in time and killing your grandfather.  It's a paradox because you couldn't have killed your grandfather because you wouldn't exist but then because you didn't exist you grandfather lived.  To simplify that paradox they just said it was messy and left it at that.

As far as old Joe's wife being killed.  It was a huge inconsistency and I would expect that as the Rainbow Maker changed the timeline by him being created he was changing the future from a Government run world to a Mob run world.

[AtomSmasher]

I really wanted to enjoy the movie and almost did, but the inconsistent time travel rules and various plot holes keep nagging at me.
One obvious problem is that the Rainmaker will likely still exist in the future.  In the original timeline, old Joe is killed immediately, which means the Rainmaker was still created when raised by his mother.
Another one is what caused the time stream to change, which allowed old Joe to do things differently the second time and survive getting sent back?  Assuming the original old joe (the one killed immediately after getting sent back) lived the same life that we saw young Joe live (we have no reason to assume otherwise), then why would things suddenly be different at the end of the 30 years?  We know the Rainmaker is still created in this timeline since his friends future self mentioned the Rainmaker, so why would anything be different?  There must have been some time travel event which changed the course of time during the 30 years after the original old joe was killed, but nothing like that was even hinted at (at least not as far as I remember).

I could go on, but in the end it's a fun movie as long as you don't think too much about it.