Looper 1 Paragraph Review

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Freshbandito

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#51  Edited By Freshbandito

@FlarePhoenix said:

@Freshbandito said:

@TheHT: Damn! we should put together a team to broaden our research.

Time travel is just always such a per rendition contrivance and for a movie to explain it's brand of time travel down to the intricacies required by some people would take so absurdly long that it'd be to the detriment of the film. Whenever it's in a film you have to allow for a certain amount of give in what happens, a sort of "that crazy time travel!" state of mind. Until we discover time travel and it's rules are set in stone and when that happens we can go back in time and retroactively change all films involving time travel. Or can we???

Ninja edit: I'm not ridiculing the back and fore of the actually quite interesting debate you're having about the way time travel works in this movie. It's just kind of weird how movies often inspire thoughts far beyond the purview of the writer/director.

Well even if time travel was invented, it would quickly get erased. Let's say you made the time machine because you really wanted to see what Nintendo looked like when it first opened. If you invented time travel and did that, your past self would now have no reason to want to invent time travel and would never invent it. You could argue they would want to invent time travel for some other reason, but eventually they would run out of reasons.

The problem of following this logic of causality effecting a singular timeline that never shifts to alternate branches is that if we say that what you said is true and happened then I would travel back in time, fulfil my urge and then never have a reason to invent a time machine, thus I would not invent a time machine and thus not be able to go back in time and affect the action that would stop me from making a time machine so I would then want to create a time machine and the whole cycle would repeat ad nauseum.

You're failing to take into account that most accepted 'theories' on time travel have the act creating an offshoot of a section of space time (let's call it space time thread 2) that will be inhabited by you as an entity from space time thread 1. Your actions and causality will affect everything going on from there in space thread 2 because if they affect the future in space time thread 1 that future is technically the past and changes to it will affect your actions and thus invalidate anything you do in your time travelled state.

Short, non scienceyn non napkin diagram explanation: You're thinking of space as one immutable line of space time, a world where time travel exists renders that theory obsolete. So your cyclical causality argument relies on a theory of science that prevents time travel before it is even invented on base laws of time andspace and thus I'm ignoring it in favour of my argument which leads to us all riding dinosaurs to work.

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FlarePhoenix

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#52  Edited By FlarePhoenix

@bvilleneuve said:

Looper is a great movie. Anybody complaining about the particulars of the time travel is missing the fucking point. Orcs don't really exist, but I can still watch Lord of the Rings without immediately getting on Internet afterwards and airing my conniptions.

Also I'm guessing the guy complaining about the narrator has never seen another piece of film noir in his life, and is therefore ill-equipped to talk about Looper.

I believe it is you who has missed the point. My complaints have had absolutely nothing to do with time travel not being realistic or not really existing, but rather what I believe to be a complete breakdown in logic based on the rules given to us by the movie. If my complaint was about that, I wouldn't enjoy most works of fiction, but that is not the case. It's about what fits into the rules of the world based on what we know about it. The world of Lord of the Rings contains all sorts of different creatures so it makes sense for Orcs to exist. In the world of Looper, time travel has been invented so it makes sense for time travel to exist. Where my problem comes in, is the fact the plot creates multiple paradoxes that break apart the whole movie, and the movie's only response is "well... you're not supposed to think about it..."

As for the narrator, I believe movies should not have narration. I have never seen an instance of it being done well, and it definitely was done poorly here. I suppose that means I wouldn't enjoy any film noir movies, but I fail to see how, just because a whole genre of movies does it, I have to automatically like it in this movie. It didn't add anything to the atmosphere of the movie; it was used purely as an info-dump, because they obviously had no idea how to weave exposition into the story. Not to mention, maybe I wouldn't have noticed the narration as much as I did if anything on the screen kept me the slightest bit entertained.

@Freshbandito said:

@FlarePhoenix said:

@Freshbandito said:

@TheHT: Damn! we should put together a team to broaden our research.

Time travel is just always such a per rendition contrivance and for a movie to explain it's brand of time travel down to the intricacies required by some people would take so absurdly long that it'd be to the detriment of the film. Whenever it's in a film you have to allow for a certain amount of give in what happens, a sort of "that crazy time travel!" state of mind. Until we discover time travel and it's rules are set in stone and when that happens we can go back in time and retroactively change all films involving time travel. Or can we???

Ninja edit: I'm not ridiculing the back and fore of the actually quite interesting debate you're having about the way time travel works in this movie. It's just kind of weird how movies often inspire thoughts far beyond the purview of the writer/director.

Well even if time travel was invented, it would quickly get erased. Let's say you made the time machine because you really wanted to see what Nintendo looked like when it first opened. If you invented time travel and did that, your past self would now have no reason to want to invent time travel and would never invent it. You could argue they would want to invent time travel for some other reason, but eventually they would run out of reasons.

The problem of following this logic of causality effecting a singular timeline that never shifts to alternate branches is that if we say that what you said is true and happened then I would travel back in time, fulfil my urge and then never have a reason to invent a time machine, thus I would not invent a time machine and thus not be able to go back in time and affect the action that would stop me from making a time machine so I would then want to create a time machine and the whole cycle would repeat ad nauseum.

You're failing to take into account that most accepted 'theories' on time travel have the act creating an offshoot of a section of space time (let's call it space time thread 2) that will be inhabited by you as an entity from space time thread 1. Your actions and causality will affect everything going on from there in space thread 2 because if they affect the future in space time thread 1 that future is technically the past and changes to it will affect your actions and thus invalidate anything you do in your time travelled state.

Short, non scienceyn non napkin diagram explanation: You're thinking of space as one immutable line of space time, a world where time travel exists renders that theory obsolete. So your cyclical causality argument relies on a theory of science that prevents time travel before it is even invented on base laws of time andspace and thus I'm ignoring it in favour of my argument which leads to us all riding dinosaurs to work.

Well it depends on what rules of time travel you choose to go by:

- Looper/Back to the Future: Where changing the past alters the current timeline. If you event time travel, and use it, it would eventually erase itself as you'd eventually have no reason to create it.

- Dragon Ball Z: Where changing the past creates an entirely new timeline, but leaves the current timeline unchanged (i.e. Trunks travelled back in time to create a version of the future not destroyed by the Androids, but doing so had no effect on his own timeline). This means, even if you invented trained dinosaurs, you would get them but the version of you in the new timeline would.

Or it could operate by some completely new set of rules no one has ever thought of yet. So it is possible there could be a way time travel could be invented, and we all get dinosaurs to ride, but I don't see it happening any time soon.

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#53  Edited By TheHT

@FlarePhoenix said:

@TheHT said:

Yes, we can certainly agree on those two points. Where we currently split though is when it comes down to Young Joe killing himself.

First I should say that while there is a circular aspect to loopers, technically those thirty years are a loop, but that circularity isn't naturally occurring. Instead, that circularity is the result of both the time travel and the end of contract provision.

Young Joe killing himself stops Old Joe from existing, but there isn't a retroactive domino effect that undues everything Old Joe does. Since the loop is man-made, there is nothing to the timeline that requires that Young Joe survives so that he can return as Old Joe for the events of the movie to continue to unfold. The timeline simply continues onward. I can't believe I'm doing this, but to hell with it, I already dun did it:

No Caption Provided

You can see that when Old Joe loops back and isn't killed, Young Joe's history splits off from Old Joe's history. At that point the timeline is changed as well. Then, when Young Joe kills himself, it also causes Old Joe to disappear. The timeline however would still continue along its new path, regardless of their demise.

@FlarePhoenix said:


Alright, this is the bit that is really starting to confuse me. Your argument for how the Sid/Old Joe connection makes sense is based entirely on the premise the events happened in a different way the first time around (since Old Joe didn't come back in time, but Cid became the Rainmaker anyway). However, now you're telling me because Old Joe was stopped, there is no other way Cid could become the Rainmaker. If your saying Cid became the Rainmaker through some method other than Old Joe, than it has to still be a possibility even after Joe kills himself (ignoring the whole paradox, which makes killing himself impossible). Unless I'm really misunderstanding, you seem to keep going back and forth on this part.

I'm not saying that there is no other way Cid could become the Rainmaker. Given that Cid has accepted Sara as his mom (something that we have no reason to believe would have happened without Young Joe's interaction) and also that Old Joe was stopped from killing Sara (who now has a considerable amount of gold), the timeline is altered enough that I can't find anything from the movie that suggests Cid would still end up going down the 'bad path'. I can imagine a situation where Sara is killed later on, but I think that enough good has happened to Cid that he won't turn.

This of course can be denied more readily that the rules of time travel. You can, if you'd like, believe that Cid still ends of becoming the Rainmaker, but you would have to contest the developments of the ending (Cid accepting Sara and Sara finding the gold). Doing so would require making up more things not in the movie, such that believing that the good streak at the end of the movie (for Cid and Sara) continues ends up being better supported by the movie, and thus more likely.

So to clarify, in Old Joe's history, Cid became the Rainmaker from some other event (or possibly even the mere lack of Young Joes interaction). In the changed timeline, Cid is headed in a different direction. While it is possible that something could happen that sets Cid back on to the bad path, there isn't anything to suggest that would be the case. I suppose it would come down to whether you'd like to believe there's ultimately a happy ending or not, but that discussion doesn't have any bearing on the nature of time travel discussion.

It kind of does, actually. As I've said multiple times, the one thing we know for sure about the time travel in this movie is that events in the past have a direct effect on the future. If the past self decides to get a tattoo, said tattoo will automatically appear on the future self. If the past self is killed, it will remove the future self from existence because they are now dead. Therefore, Old Joe getting sent back in time is entirely dependent on Young Joe living long enough to get sent back in time. I'm not really sure how that point can be argued. Old Joe cannot be sent back in time if he is not alive to be sent back.

The reason Young Joe winds up killing himself is because of Old Joe's interference. Since Young Joe never would have killed himself without Old Joe being sent back, and because Old Joe cannot be sent back if Young Joe kills himself, it's really not possible for Young Joe to have killed himself. Since he did, it would alter the timeline to the point where he is alive, never meets Sara and Cid, and Cid grows up to be the Rainmaker.

It's entirely possible for Cid to still become the Rainmaker. Not THAT much good has happened. Say, for example, Sarah was shot by some random lunatic the very next day: Sid isn't going to go "well some good things happened to me yesterday, so this doesn't bother me", he's probably going to go "I want revenge: I got money, I got power, let's go fuck some shit up!"

Ah, I see. You're suggesting that the future, as a series of events, is affected by the past such that Young Joe killing himself means that one event, Old Joe coming back, is no longer possible, and thus the entire movie cannot take place. What basis for this imcumbency do you have though?

When Old Joe came back, the entire future becomes a possibility rather than an actuality (the dotted line on the diagram, rather than being a full line). The only connection between him and that now soluble future is Young Joe. He is an entity plucked out of one spot on the timeline and placed in another. His thirty year history is no longer affective in any way after travelling to a point backwards on the timeline. The future at that point becomes entirely succeptible to change.

Consider Seth. When he fails to close his loop and his hacked apart in order to lure his loop to the Kid, a part of the future may have changed, or all of it may have changed. The fact that Seth will not live through those thirty years means he'll never come back, but this altered future has no obligation to the events of Old Seth's thirty years. Time travel is an ultimate power in Looper, where you can go back and potentially change the entire future. There is no actual circularity that means that after travelling back through time, should the timeline be altered, the young version of the traveller must do everything the same otherwise any alteration would be undone by a failure to satisfy that circularity. There is no failsafe ensuring an entity doesn't go back and destroy the entire world, a risk surely factoring into the decision to immediately outlaw time travel at the point on the timeline where time travel is discovered.

The closing of a loooper's contract creates an apparent circularity, but that adopted circularity is incumbent upon two events: the young looper killing the old looper that travels back, and the old looper actually being sent back. Any discrepancy at those two points, and the loop may fall apart. There is no natural requirement from the mechanics of time in Looper, that Young Joe must grow old and come back in order for the Old Joe that that same Young Joe encountered to have existed.

Any interactions between Old Joe and Young Joe may change the whole future, the only through line being Young Joe to Old Joe. Being an entity from that future in flux, significant changes to Young Joe will affect Old Joe (most notably phsyical changes). So when Young Joe kills himself, the future changes. It may have been a little, it may have been a lot. But the only link between Old Joe from the former future and the current past is Young Joe. Thus Old Joe disappears. He however, until the end, still remained an entity plucked out of a later point on the timeline and his subsequent actions do not require that the events of his history (that have to led his coming back) actually take place.

That future no longer exists but his actions after travelling back still carry on the timeline, the solid red line in Old Joe's history on the timeline. Where the dotted line is his remebered history, now entirely just a memory rather than the actual past, the solid line after his return is his actual history, his actual past. Actual in the sense that it is all that is registered on the timeline, all that actually matters to it. Old Joe's actual existence from that point on is entirely isolated to that section of the timeline. A traveller from the future with no true past but the consequence of his presence and decisions was enough to potentially veer the entire timeline into another course.

I only say potentially because the movie doesn't have any epilogue that explicitly shows the consequences of the movie's events. You can believe that Cid still becomes the Rainmaker, but that requires the creation of an event completely outside of the movie. You would have to create a situation where something happens that specifically sets Cid back on 'the bad path'. For instance, your example of a lunatic coming and killing Sara, is a situation that is entirely fictional. As I've said, it's possible, but it's also entirely without basis beyond appealing to the natural phenomenon of 'shit happens'.

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Ares42

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#54  Edited By Ares42

Checked it out today. It was a decent movies, but (at the risk of joining the choir) it tries to do way too much without going into detail about anything. And for a movie about the future (and not a dystopian one) it was remarkably lacking in style. It just fell into this crack between future or present, making it just seem like this "theoretical" world that's not based on either fact nor fiction.

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Freshbandito

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#55  Edited By Freshbandito

@FlarePhoenix said:

Well it depends on what rules of time travel you choose to go by:

- Looper/Back to the Future: Where changing the past alters the current timeline. If you event time travel, and use it, it would eventually erase itself as you'd eventually have no reason to create it.

I'll try to explain the problem with this thinking a second time. If you follow this logic then time travel has to constantly have a solitary and personal reason to be invented and the singular act of travelling back in time so irrevocably changes the future/past that it has an instantaneous effect on an object that has been set apart from the timeline (the subject transported through time) that it immediately invalidates any future and makes an infinity of possibilities as each resolution of the timeline races to resolve and affects another change that resolves affecting another change and so on. This isn't how causality works, causality affects time going forward and the 'future you' that travelled back in time is from a future that is technically the past as far as causality is concerned and therefore is immune to the effects of causality.

At least that's how theory goes for such insane nonsense as time travel.

Summation: the future that you time travelled from that you think will be changed by causality becomes the past through the act of time travel itself and is set in the timeline, it has happened and you'd have to time travel back to that point to affect any change to it as causality/future echoes cannot affect it going forward.

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#56  Edited By Daneian

It was the telekinesis that brings that movie down for me. It's a conceit created solely to justify a single character having enough power to bring down all the Loopers and felt tacked onto an already fantastical plot.

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#57  Edited By FlarePhoenix

@TheHT said:

@FlarePhoenix said:

@TheHT said:

Yes, we can certainly agree on those two points. Where we currently split though is when it comes down to Young Joe killing himself.

First I should say that while there is a circular aspect to loopers, technically those thirty years are a loop, but that circularity isn't naturally occurring. Instead, that circularity is the result of both the time travel and the end of contract provision.

Young Joe killing himself stops Old Joe from existing, but there isn't a retroactive domino effect that undues everything Old Joe does. Since the loop is man-made, there is nothing to the timeline that requires that Young Joe survives so that he can return as Old Joe for the events of the movie to continue to unfold. The timeline simply continues onward. I can't believe I'm doing this, but to hell with it, I already dun did it:

No Caption Provided

You can see that when Old Joe loops back and isn't killed, Young Joe's history splits off from Old Joe's history. At that point the timeline is changed as well. Then, when Young Joe kills himself, it also causes Old Joe to disappear. The timeline however would still continue along its new path, regardless of their demise.

@FlarePhoenix said:


Alright, this is the bit that is really starting to confuse me. Your argument for how the Sid/Old Joe connection makes sense is based entirely on the premise the events happened in a different way the first time around (since Old Joe didn't come back in time, but Cid became the Rainmaker anyway). However, now you're telling me because Old Joe was stopped, there is no other way Cid could become the Rainmaker. If your saying Cid became the Rainmaker through some method other than Old Joe, than it has to still be a possibility even after Joe kills himself (ignoring the whole paradox, which makes killing himself impossible). Unless I'm really misunderstanding, you seem to keep going back and forth on this part.

I'm not saying that there is no other way Cid could become the Rainmaker. Given that Cid has accepted Sara as his mom (something that we have no reason to believe would have happened without Young Joe's interaction) and also that Old Joe was stopped from killing Sara (who now has a considerable amount of gold), the timeline is altered enough that I can't find anything from the movie that suggests Cid would still end up going down the 'bad path'. I can imagine a situation where Sara is killed later on, but I think that enough good has happened to Cid that he won't turn.

This of course can be denied more readily that the rules of time travel. You can, if you'd like, believe that Cid still ends of becoming the Rainmaker, but you would have to contest the developments of the ending (Cid accepting Sara and Sara finding the gold). Doing so would require making up more things not in the movie, such that believing that the good streak at the end of the movie (for Cid and Sara) continues ends up being better supported by the movie, and thus more likely.

So to clarify, in Old Joe's history, Cid became the Rainmaker from some other event (or possibly even the mere lack of Young Joes interaction). In the changed timeline, Cid is headed in a different direction. While it is possible that something could happen that sets Cid back on to the bad path, there isn't anything to suggest that would be the case. I suppose it would come down to whether you'd like to believe there's ultimately a happy ending or not, but that discussion doesn't have any bearing on the nature of time travel discussion.

It kind of does, actually. As I've said multiple times, the one thing we know for sure about the time travel in this movie is that events in the past have a direct effect on the future. If the past self decides to get a tattoo, said tattoo will automatically appear on the future self. If the past self is killed, it will remove the future self from existence because they are now dead. Therefore, Old Joe getting sent back in time is entirely dependent on Young Joe living long enough to get sent back in time. I'm not really sure how that point can be argued. Old Joe cannot be sent back in time if he is not alive to be sent back.

The reason Young Joe winds up killing himself is because of Old Joe's interference. Since Young Joe never would have killed himself without Old Joe being sent back, and because Old Joe cannot be sent back if Young Joe kills himself, it's really not possible for Young Joe to have killed himself. Since he did, it would alter the timeline to the point where he is alive, never meets Sara and Cid, and Cid grows up to be the Rainmaker.

It's entirely possible for Cid to still become the Rainmaker. Not THAT much good has happened. Say, for example, Sarah was shot by some random lunatic the very next day: Sid isn't going to go "well some good things happened to me yesterday, so this doesn't bother me", he's probably going to go "I want revenge: I got money, I got power, let's go fuck some shit up!"

Ah, I see. You're suggesting that the future, as a series of events, is affected by the past such that Young Joe killing himself means that one event, Old Joe coming back, is no longer possible, and thus the entire movie cannot take place. What basis for this imcumbency do you have though?

When Old Joe came back, the entire future becomes a possibility rather than an actuality (the dotted line on the diagram, rather than being a full line). The only connection between him and that now soluble future is Young Joe. He is an entity plucked out of one spot on the timeline and placed in another. His thirty year history is no longer affective in any way after travelling to a point backwards on the timeline. The future at that point becomes entirely succeptible to change.

Consider Seth. When he fails to close his loop and his hacked apart in order to lure his loop to the Kid, a part of the future may have changed, or all of it may have changed. The fact that Seth will not live through those thirty years means he'll never come back, but this altered future has no obligation to the events of Old Seth's thirty years. Time travel is an ultimate power in Looper, where you can go back and potentially change the entire future. There is no actual circularity that means that after travelling back through time, should the timeline be altered, the young version of the traveller must do everything the same otherwise any alteration would be undone by a failure to satisfy that circularity. There is no failsafe ensuring an entity doesn't go back and destroy the entire world, a risk surely factoring into the decision to immediately outlaw time travel at the point on the timeline where time travel is discovered.

The closing of a loooper's contract creates an apparent circularity, but that adopted circularity is incumbent upon two events: the young looper killing the old looper that travels back, and the old looper actually being sent back. Any discrepancy at those two points, and the loop may fall apart. There is no natural requirement from the mechanics of time in Looper, that Young Joe must grow old and come back in order for the Old Joe that that same Young Joe encountered to have existed.

Any interactions between Old Joe and Young Joe may change the whole future, the only through line being Young Joe to Old Joe. Being an entity from that future in flux, significant changes to Young Joe will affect Old Joe (most notably phsyical changes). So when Young Joe kills himself, the future changes. It may have been a little, it may have been a lot. But the only link between Old Joe from the former future and the current past is Young Joe. Thus Old Joe disappears. He however, until the end, still remained an entity plucked out of a later point on the timeline and his subsequent actions do not require that the events of his history (that have to led his coming back) actually take place.

That future no longer exists but his actions after travelling back still carry on the timeline, the solid red line in Old Joe's history on the timeline. Where the dotted line is his remebered history, now entirely just a memory rather than the actual past, the solid line after his return is his actual history, his actual past. Actual in the sense that it is all that is registered on the timeline, all that actually matters to it. Old Joe's actual existence from that point on is entirely isolated to that section of the timeline. A traveller from the future with no true past but the consequence of his presence and decisions was enough to potentially veer the entire timeline into another course.

I only say potentially because the movie doesn't have any epilogue that explicitly shows the consequences of the movie's events. You can believe that Cid still becomes the Rainmaker, but that requires the creation of an event completely outside of the movie. You would have to create a situation where something happens that specifically sets Cid back on 'the bad path'. For instance, your example of a lunatic coming and killing Sara, is a situation that is entirely fictional. As I've said, it's possible, but it's also entirely without basis beyond appealing to the natural phenomenon of 'shit happens'.

The basis for my belief is the entire movie. We clearly see that changes to the past affect the events of the future. When young Seth gets a limb cut off, his future self immediately loses the limb. When Young Joe kills himself, Old Joe immediately disappears. The movie quite clearly demonstrates, multiple times, that changes to the past have a direct and immediate effect on the future. However, changing one thing doesn't just change that one thing, but rather everything that happens because of that event. Nearly the entire movie occurs because Old Joe got sent back in time. It is the instigating action that sets off the events of the movie. Young Joe meeting Sara and Cid, helping Cid to accept his mother, and killing himself to stop his future self never would have happened if Old Joe wasn't sent back in time.

However, because Young Joe has killed himself, he no longer is able to be sent back in time and set off the events of the movie. So it means everything that happened in the movie, couldn't possible have happened because the instigating action can no longer happen. You, yourself, have said there is only one timeline so that means every change that is made, has to be made to that one timeline. Old Joe getting sent back in time is an event on that timeline, which would have eventually happened to Young Joe had he not changed the timeline by killing himself. Since him killing himself relies entirely on Old Joe getting sent back in time, we have a paradox where both events cannot happen in the same timeline (which we've already established there is only one). Young Joe needs to exist long enough to be sent back in time, so the events of the movie can take place. Therefore, him killing himself is an impossible event, and doing so would unravel the entire movie.

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bvilleneuve

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#58  Edited By bvilleneuve

I'll try to keep this concise to stand out from the megalong quote posts.

@FlarePhoenix said:

Where my problem comes in, is the fact the plot creates multiple paradoxes that break apart the whole movie, and the movie's only response is "well... you're not supposed to think about it..."

The point is that you don't have to have everything spelled out for you to be able to suspend your disbelief. Some people get hung up on the details and don't just trust that the situation is the situation and the facts are the facts in the context of the film. For those people, maybe film isn't the best hobby, because in any film (hell, any story) there are always little niggling details that we could go back and forth on all day.

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FlarePhoenix

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#59  Edited By FlarePhoenix

@bvilleneuve said:

I'll try to keep this concise to stand out from the megalong quote posts.

@FlarePhoenix said:

Where my problem comes in, is the fact the plot creates multiple paradoxes that break apart the whole movie, and the movie's only response is "well... you're not supposed to think about it..."

The point is that you don't have to have everything spelled out for you to be able to suspend your disbelief. Some people get hung up on the details and don't just trust that the situation is the situation and the facts are the facts in the context of the film. For those people, maybe film isn't the best hobby, because in any film (hell, any story) there are always little niggling details that we could go back and forth on all day.

That's true: you don't need to have everything spelled out for you to be able to enjoy a movie. For example, I have no problem believing time travel was invented in the world of Looper without needing to know exactly when it was created, how it was created, who created it, and why. I can just accept time travel exists in this universe. However, you're missing the point of my argument. The situations in the film clearly contradict each other, and the movie offers no explanation as to how it could work.

You're basing your claim on the assumption everyone enjoys movies for the same reason. There are people who can just go in, turn their brains off, and just enjoy the movie, but that's not me. I actually like finding little faults in movies (even ones I really enjoy), and I like discussing them with other people. I'm sorry but I don't see how "you should just not think about it" is a good defence for a movie. If that is how you enjoy movies, that's great, but that doesn't work for me and I don't really want it to.

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#60  Edited By bvilleneuve

@FlarePhoenix said:

That's true: you don't need to have everything spelled out for you to be able to enjoy a movie. For example, I have no problem believing time travel was invented in the world of Looper without needing to know exactly when it was created, how it was created, who created it, and why. I can just accept time travel exists in this universe. However, you're missing the point of my argument. The situations in the film clearly contradict each other, and the movie offers no explanation as to how it could work.

You're basing your claim on the assumption everyone enjoys movies for the same reason. There are people who can just go in, turn their brains off, and just enjoy the movie, but that's not me. I actually like finding little faults in movies (even ones I really enjoy), and I like discussing them with other people. I'm sorry but I don't see how "you should just not think about it" is a good defence for a movie. If that is how you enjoy movies, that's great, but that doesn't work for me and I don't really want it to.

Don't take my argument as that old anti-intellectual line of bull. I'm not somebody who goes to the movies looking to turn my brain off. My brain was on the whole time I was watching Looper. I was just thinking about the film as it is: the characters and their interactions, the uniquely reserved representation of the future, and the interesting mashup of genres. I was experiencing the film on its own terms instead of trying to poke holes in what amounts to a relatively minor part of the story.

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#61  Edited By dabe

@Daneian said:

It was the telekinesis that brings that movie down for me. It's a conceit created solely to justify a single character having enough power to bring down all the Loopers and felt tacked onto an already fantastical plot.

Yup. This and the hackneyed romance sent my opinion of Looper into a tail spin.

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#62  Edited By handlas

One sentence review:

Too much farm.

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#63  Edited By the_hiro_abides

Too much paradox for me. Causality is ignored or not explained. I have read through all the posts but I still strongly believe that this film doesn't make sense. To me, this is less about a time line and more about what sounds cool for a plot. One event that leads to another with no regard to everything actually piecing together like a puzzle. If it doesn't make sense from every angle than it's weak storytelling just for the sake of dramatic moments.

As far as time travel movies go, Time Crimes was way better.

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#64  Edited By TheHT

@FlarePhoenix said:

@TheHT said:

Ah, I see. You're suggesting that the future, as a series of events, is affected by the past such that Young Joe killing himself means that one event, Old Joe coming back, is no longer possible, and thus the entire movie cannot take place. What basis for this imcumbency do you have though?

When Old Joe came back, the entire future becomes a possibility rather than an actuality (the dotted line on the diagram, rather than being a full line). The only connection between him and that now soluble future is Young Joe. He is an entity plucked out of one spot on the timeline and placed in another. His thirty year history is no longer affective in any way after travelling to a point backwards on the timeline. The future at that point becomes entirely succeptible to change.

Consider Seth. When he fails to close his loop and his hacked apart in order to lure his loop to the Kid, a part of the future may have changed, or all of it may have changed. The fact that Seth will not live through those thirty years means he'll never come back, but this altered future has no obligation to the events of Old Seth's thirty years. Time travel is an ultimate power in Looper, where you can go back and potentially change the entire future. There is no actual circularity that means that after travelling back through time, should the timeline be altered, the young version of the traveller must do everything the same otherwise any alteration would be undone by a failure to satisfy that circularity. There is no failsafe ensuring an entity doesn't go back and destroy the entire world, a risk surely factoring into the decision to immediately outlaw time travel at the point on the timeline where time travel is discovered.

The closing of a loooper's contract creates an apparent circularity, but that adopted circularity is incumbent upon two events: the young looper killing the old looper that travels back, and the old looper actually being sent back. Any discrepancy at those two points, and the loop may fall apart. There is no natural requirement from the mechanics of time in Looper, that Young Joe must grow old and come back in order for the Old Joe that that same Young Joe encountered to have existed.

Any interactions between Old Joe and Young Joe may change the whole future, the only through line being Young Joe to Old Joe. Being an entity from that future in flux, significant changes to Young Joe will affect Old Joe (most notably phsyical changes). So when Young Joe kills himself, the future changes. It may have been a little, it may have been a lot. But the only link between Old Joe from the former future and the current past is Young Joe. Thus Old Joe disappears. He however, until the end, still remained an entity plucked out of a later point on the timeline and his subsequent actions do not require that the events of his history (that have to led his coming back) actually take place.

That future no longer exists but his actions after travelling back still carry on the timeline, the solid red line in Old Joe's history on the timeline. Where the dotted line is his remebered history, now entirely just a memory rather than the actual past, the solid line after his return is his actual history, his actual past. Actual in the sense that it is all that is registered on the timeline, all that actually matters to it. Old Joe's actual existence from that point on is entirely isolated to that section of the timeline. A traveller from the future with no true past but the consequence of his presence and decisions was enough to potentially veer the entire timeline into another course.

I only say potentially because the movie doesn't have any epilogue that explicitly shows the consequences of the movie's events. You can believe that Cid still becomes the Rainmaker, but that requires the creation of an event completely outside of the movie. You would have to create a situation where something happens that specifically sets Cid back on 'the bad path'. For instance, your example of a lunatic coming and killing Sara, is a situation that is entirely fictional. As I've said, it's possible, but it's also entirely without basis beyond appealing to the natural phenomenon of 'shit happens'.

The basis for my belief is the entire movie. We clearly see that changes to the past affect the events of the future. When young Seth gets a limb cut off, his future self immediately loses the limb. When Young Joe kills himself, Old Joe immediately disappears. The movie quite clearly demonstrates, multiple times, that changes to the past have a direct and immediate effect on the future. However, changing one thing doesn't just change that one thing, but rather everything that happens because of that event. Nearly the entire movie occurs because Old Joe got sent back in time. It is the instigating action that sets off the events of the movie. Young Joe meeting Sara and Cid, helping Cid to accept his mother, and killing himself to stop his future self never would have happened if Old Joe wasn't sent back in time.

However, because Young Joe has killed himself, he no longer is able to be sent back in time and set off the events of the movie. So it means everything that happened in the movie, couldn't possible have happened because the instigating action can no longer happen. You, yourself, have said there is only one timeline so that means every change that is made, has to be made to that one timeline. Old Joe getting sent back in time is an event on that timeline, which would have eventually happened to Young Joe had he not changed the timeline by killing himself. Since him killing himself relies entirely on Old Joe getting sent back in time, we have a paradox where both events cannot happen in the same timeline (which we've already established there is only one). Young Joe needs to exist long enough to be sent back in time, so the events of the movie can take place. Therefore, him killing himself is an impossible event, and doing so would unravel the entire movie.

We're in agreement that the past affects the future. What I am asking you to explain the basis for is the suggestion that Young Joe has to grow old and get sent back in order for the events of the movie to maintain. The timeline only moves forward. When Old Joe returns to the past, it's not a matter of the future directly affecting the past. It's a matter of an entity from the future going to the past, and then changing the future from the past.

The instigating action no longer exists, because the moment Old Joe came back, that history became mere possibility, and the more his actions changed, the more the timeline changed. But the history he left behind, the instigating action, no longer has any relevance to that timeline since he has already made the jump. Old Joe is both a cause of change in the timeline and a consequence of the change he causes, but the reason he exists on the timeline no longer actually exists.

So obviously I don't see the timeline including the event of Old Joe looping back as forward progress, it's simply him jumping back to a prior point in the timeline as my first diagram showed. But if it were to be included as forward progress (resulting in a fragmented timeline with thirty year chunks missing or spent in regression) the instigating action would still be included on the timeline, eliminating any potential for paradox.

No Caption Provided

Time continues and the events of the movie maintain.

It's only when you think of time as circular or moving forwards and backward simultaneously indefinitely that the idea of a root cause disappearing becomes a problem. It's fine to believe time is circular or what have you, but that conception of time doesn't fit with the universe in the movie. And this discussion is after all to determine how time travel works, and thus the manner of time itself, in the context of the movie's universe.

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#65  Edited By FlarePhoenix

@TheHT said:

No Caption Provided

@FlarePhoenix said:

@TheHT said:

Ah, I see. You're suggesting that the future, as a series of events, is affected by the past such that Young Joe killing himself means that one event, Old Joe coming back, is no longer possible, and thus the entire movie cannot take place. What basis for this imcumbency do you have though?

When Old Joe came back, the entire future becomes a possibility rather than an actuality (the dotted line on the diagram, rather than being a full line). The only connection between him and that now soluble future is Young Joe. He is an entity plucked out of one spot on the timeline and placed in another. His thirty year history is no longer affective in any way after travelling to a point backwards on the timeline. The future at that point becomes entirely succeptible to change.

Consider Seth. When he fails to close his loop and his hacked apart in order to lure his loop to the Kid, a part of the future may have changed, or all of it may have changed. The fact that Seth will not live through those thirty years means he'll never come back, but this altered future has no obligation to the events of Old Seth's thirty years. Time travel is an ultimate power in Looper, where you can go back and potentially change the entire future. There is no actual circularity that means that after travelling back through time, should the timeline be altered, the young version of the traveller must do everything the same otherwise any alteration would be undone by a failure to satisfy that circularity. There is no failsafe ensuring an entity doesn't go back and destroy the entire world, a risk surely factoring into the decision to immediately outlaw time travel at the point on the timeline where time travel is discovered.

The closing of a loooper's contract creates an apparent circularity, but that adopted circularity is incumbent upon two events: the young looper killing the old looper that travels back, and the old looper actually being sent back. Any discrepancy at those two points, and the loop may fall apart. There is no natural requirement from the mechanics of time in Looper, that Young Joe must grow old and come back in order for the Old Joe that that same Young Joe encountered to have existed.

Any interactions between Old Joe and Young Joe may change the whole future, the only through line being Young Joe to Old Joe. Being an entity from that future in flux, significant changes to Young Joe will affect Old Joe (most notably phsyical changes). So when Young Joe kills himself, the future changes. It may have been a little, it may have been a lot. But the only link between Old Joe from the former future and the current past is Young Joe. Thus Old Joe disappears. He however, until the end, still remained an entity plucked out of a later point on the timeline and his subsequent actions do not require that the events of his history (that have to led his coming back) actually take place.

That future no longer exists but his actions after travelling back still carry on the timeline, the solid red line in Old Joe's history on the timeline. Where the dotted line is his remebered history, now entirely just a memory rather than the actual past, the solid line after his return is his actual history, his actual past. Actual in the sense that it is all that is registered on the timeline, all that actually matters to it. Old Joe's actual existence from that point on is entirely isolated to that section of the timeline. A traveller from the future with no true past but the consequence of his presence and decisions was enough to potentially veer the entire timeline into another course.

I only say potentially because the movie doesn't have any epilogue that explicitly shows the consequences of the movie's events. You can believe that Cid still becomes the Rainmaker, but that requires the creation of an event completely outside of the movie. You would have to create a situation where something happens that specifically sets Cid back on 'the bad path'. For instance, your example of a lunatic coming and killing Sara, is a situation that is entirely fictional. As I've said, it's possible, but it's also entirely without basis beyond appealing to the natural phenomenon of 'shit happens'.

The basis for my belief is the entire movie. We clearly see that changes to the past affect the events of the future. When young Seth gets a limb cut off, his future self immediately loses the limb. When Young Joe kills himself, Old Joe immediately disappears. The movie quite clearly demonstrates, multiple times, that changes to the past have a direct and immediate effect on the future. However, changing one thing doesn't just change that one thing, but rather everything that happens because of that event. Nearly the entire movie occurs because Old Joe got sent back in time. It is the instigating action that sets off the events of the movie. Young Joe meeting Sara and Cid, helping Cid to accept his mother, and killing himself to stop his future self never would have happened if Old Joe wasn't sent back in time.

However, because Young Joe has killed himself, he no longer is able to be sent back in time and set off the events of the movie. So it means everything that happened in the movie, couldn't possible have happened because the instigating action can no longer happen. You, yourself, have said there is only one timeline so that means every change that is made, has to be made to that one timeline. Old Joe getting sent back in time is an event on that timeline, which would have eventually happened to Young Joe had he not changed the timeline by killing himself. Since him killing himself relies entirely on Old Joe getting sent back in time, we have a paradox where both events cannot happen in the same timeline (which we've already established there is only one). Young Joe needs to exist long enough to be sent back in time, so the events of the movie can take place. Therefore, him killing himself is an impossible event, and doing so would unravel the entire movie.

We're in agreement that the past affects the future. What I am asking you to explain the basis for is the suggestion that Young Joe has to grow old and get sent back in order for the events of the movie to maintain. The timeline only moves forward. When Old Joe returns to the past, it's not a matter of the future directly affecting the past. It's a matter of an entity from the future going to the past, and then changing the future from the past.

The instigating action no longer exists, because the moment Old Joe came back, that history became mere possibility, and the more his actions changed, the more the timeline changed. But the history he left behind, the instigating action, no longer has any relevance to that timeline since he has already made the jump. Old Joe is both a cause of change in the timeline and a consequence of the change he causes, but the reason he exists on the timeline no longer actually exists.

So obviously I don't see the timeline including the event of Old Joe looping back as forward progress, it's simply him jumping back to a prior point in the timeline as my first diagram showed. But if it were to be included as forward progress (resulting in a fragmented timeline with thirty year chunks missing or spent in regression) the instigating action would still be included on the timeline, eliminating any potential for paradox.

Time continues and the events of the movie maintain.

It's only when you think of time as circular or moving forwards and backward simultaneously indefinitely that the idea of a root cause disappearing becomes a problem. It's fine to believe time is circular or what have you, but that conception of time doesn't fit with the universe in the movie. And this discussion is after all to determine how time travel works, and thus the manner of time itself, in the context of the movie's universe.

Alright, let's see if I can explain this a little clearer. From what I understand, we're in agreement there is only one timeline in this universe, and any changes made in the timeline will affect it from that point on. We see this in the movie when Old Joe is sent back and killed immediately, Young Joe grows up, gets married and cleans up his act (he becomes Old Joe who we follow in the movie). However, because, this time, Old Joe managed to escape before getting killed, it drastically changed how Young Joe's life turned out (he meets Sara and Cid, and ultimately kills himself). So I believe we can agree, someone who gets sent back in time can have a drastic impact and alter the timeline (since that's exactly what happens in the movie). Joe getting sent back in time may not be forward progress in it of itself, but any actions he takes in the past definitely are.

Now, because Joe's loop has been closed, his life is now stuck in an infinite loop: he will kill his future self, and then grow up to that point where he is sent back in time to be killed by his past self. The process will repeat again and again. However, Young Joe changed that: he killed himself before he was sent back, breaking the loop. My problem is, that event happens entirely because Old Joe was sent back in time. If Old Joe wasn't sent back in time, Young Joe never would have met Cid or Sara, and wouldn't have been in a position where he needed to kill himself. Because Joe no longer exists to grow old and get sent back in time, it means all the events that happened because he was sent back in time won't happen, including Joe killing himself.

As I said, we know altering the past changes the future, and the movie shows us someone getting sent back in time can heavily alter the timeline. Think about Joe getting sent back in time as a moment in the timeline. When Old Joe gets sent back to that moment, but is immediately killed, his younger self grows up, and gets married. When Old Joe gets sent back to that moment, but escapes, his younger self chases him, meets Cid and Sara, and ultimately kills himself. There are two divergent paths based on what happens after Joe gets sent back (whether he escapes or is immediately killed). However, because Joe is now dead, we're currently in a timeline where Joe won't get sent back to that moment at all.

This means Joe won't have to chase his future self, he won't meet Cid and Sara, and he won't kill himself to stop his future self (because his future self won't be around to be stopped). Since those events won't happen, he'll probably stay a drug-dealing murderer with mother issues (unless something else happens to change his life, but that's besides the point).

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#66  Edited By Legion_

@EVO: False, The Brothers Bloom was his first. Plural.

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#67  Edited By EVO
@Legion_: Whoops.
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#68  Edited By TheHT

@FlarePhoenix said:


Alright, let's see if I can explain this a little clearer. From what I understand, we're in agreement there is only one timeline in this universe, and any changes made in the timeline will affect it from that point on. We see this in the movie when Old Joe is sent back and killed immediately, Young Joe grows up, gets married and cleans up his act (he becomes Old Joe who we follow in the movie). However, because, this time, Old Joe managed to escape before getting killed, it drastically changed how Young Joe's life turned out (he meets Sara and Cid, and ultimately kills himself). So I believe we can agree, someone who gets sent back in time can have a drastic impact and alter the timeline (since that's exactly what happens in the movie). Joe getting sent back in time may not be forward progress in it of itself, but any actions he takes in the past definitely are.

Now, because Joe's loop has been closed, his life is now stuck in an infinite loop: he will kill his future self, and then grow up to that point where he is sent back in time to be killed by his past self. The process will repeat again and again. However, Young Joe changed that: he killed himself before he was sent back, breaking the loop. My problem is, that event happens entirely because Old Joe was sent back in time. If Old Joe wasn't sent back in time, Young Joe never would have met Cid or Sara, and wouldn't have been in a position where he needed to kill himself. Because Joe no longer exists to grow old and get sent back in time, it means all the events that happened because he was sent back in time won't happen, including Joe killing himself.

His life isn't stuck in an infinite loop, but yes, the existence of the loop is from human design. 'Closing the loop' is just getting to the point at the end of your contract where you kill your future self, self-entering and self-maintaining the loop. If Young Joe fails to kill Old Joe, the loop fails to exist. If Old Joe doesn't come back, the loop fails to exist. But the 'loop' itself they are referring to is strictly regarding the contract they've agreed to.

Here comes the disconnect between us. After Old Joe is sent back in time, Young Joe killing himself does not undue everything that Old Joe has done after Old Joe came back. Old Joe's history (the future that he leaves behind) will not become reality after that point. Young Joe will not grow old and be sent back, but that doesn't retroactively undue what Old Joe has done after he came back.

Imagine all humans came from one human, and you were to travel back to its time and kill that one human. You would completely change the future, but as a piece of that future your existence is incumbent upon the things that happen in your perceived present (which would be your historical past). So when that first human dies, you *instantly* cease to exist. When the timeline reaches the point where you would have gone back, it simply moves onward without any regard for your existence. The timeline is, from the point of the first human dying, completely changed. And your existence on that changed timeline is only as an isolated entity that, during its presence on the changed timeline, came literally from nowhere and disappeared once you killed the first human.

@FlarePhoenix said:


As I said, we know altering the past changes the future, and the movie shows us someone getting sent back in time can heavily alter the timeline. Think about Joe getting sent back in time as a moment in the timeline. When Old Joe gets sent back to that moment, but is immediately killed, his younger self grows up, and gets married. When Old Joe gets sent back to that moment, but escapes, his younger self chases him, meets Cid and Sara, and ultimately kills himself. There are two divergent paths based on what happens after Joe gets sent back (whether he escapes or is immediately killed). However, because Joe is now dead, we're currently in a timeline where Joe won't get sent back to that moment at all.

This means Joe won't have to chase his future self, he won't meet Cid and Sara, and he won't kill himself to stop his future self (because his future self won't be around to be stopped). Since those events won't happen, he'll probably stay a drug-dealing murderer with mother issues (unless something else happens to change his life, but that's besides the point).

No, what it means is that the timeline will continue for thirty years plus. Just without Joe and also unlike the former (now hypothetical and known only to the viewer) path of the timeline. The only way what you're saying would truly be a problem is if the events of the movie were constantly repeating with each Old Joe time travelling back to another instance of the timeline, the result being that the next instance of the timeline after Young Joe kills himself would not have an Old Joe to go to and change things, meaning that that timeline would end up the same. But such a scenario is more exemplary of circular time, and is not a straight and singular forward-moving timeline.

If this makes more sense to you, you could consider that the former path of the timeline still exists, but just as another section of the timeline as the second diagram shows. Thus when Young Joe killed himself, there would be no paradox because the instigating action in question (Old Joe coming back) already happened during the former section of the timeline I've referred to as the 'former path' of the timeline. That is of course if you find my explanation where the future simply ceases to exist difficult to accept but don't mind having to account for potential time gaps or moments of regression to facilitate the act of time travel itself.

I find my first explanation (and associated diagram) to be simpler and more sensical, but either way seems to explain time and time travel alongside the events of the movie.

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#69  Edited By FlarePhoenix

@TheHT said:

@FlarePhoenix said:


Alright, let's see if I can explain this a little clearer. From what I understand, we're in agreement there is only one timeline in this universe, and any changes made in the timeline will affect it from that point on. We see this in the movie when Old Joe is sent back and killed immediately, Young Joe grows up, gets married and cleans up his act (he becomes Old Joe who we follow in the movie). However, because, this time, Old Joe managed to escape before getting killed, it drastically changed how Young Joe's life turned out (he meets Sara and Cid, and ultimately kills himself). So I believe we can agree, someone who gets sent back in time can have a drastic impact and alter the timeline (since that's exactly what happens in the movie). Joe getting sent back in time may not be forward progress in it of itself, but any actions he takes in the past definitely are.

Now, because Joe's loop has been closed, his life is now stuck in an infinite loop: he will kill his future self, and then grow up to that point where he is sent back in time to be killed by his past self. The process will repeat again and again. However, Young Joe changed that: he killed himself before he was sent back, breaking the loop. My problem is, that event happens entirely because Old Joe was sent back in time. If Old Joe wasn't sent back in time, Young Joe never would have met Cid or Sara, and wouldn't have been in a position where he needed to kill himself. Because Joe no longer exists to grow old and get sent back in time, it means all the events that happened because he was sent back in time won't happen, including Joe killing himself.

His life isn't stuck in an infinite loop, but yes, the existence of the loop is from human design. 'Closing the loop' is just getting to the point at the end of your contract where you kill your future self, self-entering and self-maintaining the loop. If Young Joe fails to kill Old Joe, the loop fails to exist. If Old Joe doesn't come back, the loop fails to exist. But the 'loop' itself they are referring to is strictly regarding the contract they've agreed to.

Here comes the disconnect between us. After Old Joe is sent back in time, Young Joe killing himself does not undue everything that Old Joe has done after Old Joe came back. Old Joe's history (the future that he leaves behind) will not become reality after that point. Young Joe will not grow old and be sent back, but that doesn't retroactively undue what Old Joe has done after he came back.

Imagine all humans came from one human, and you were to travel back to its time and kill that one human. You would completely change the future, but as a piece of that future your existence is incumbent upon the things that happen in your perceived present (which would be your historical past). So when that first human dies, you *instantly* cease to exist. When the timeline reaches the point where you would have gone back, it simply moves onward without any regard for your existence. The timeline is, from the point of the first human dying, completely changed. And your existence on that changed timeline is only as an isolated entity that, during its presence on the changed timeline, came literally from nowhere and disappeared once you killed the first human.

@FlarePhoenix said:


As I said, we know altering the past changes the future, and the movie shows us someone getting sent back in time can heavily alter the timeline. Think about Joe getting sent back in time as a moment in the timeline. When Old Joe gets sent back to that moment, but is immediately killed, his younger self grows up, and gets married. When Old Joe gets sent back to that moment, but escapes, his younger self chases him, meets Cid and Sara, and ultimately kills himself. There are two divergent paths based on what happens after Joe gets sent back (whether he escapes or is immediately killed). However, because Joe is now dead, we're currently in a timeline where Joe won't get sent back to that moment at all.

This means Joe won't have to chase his future self, he won't meet Cid and Sara, and he won't kill himself to stop his future self (because his future self won't be around to be stopped). Since those events won't happen, he'll probably stay a drug-dealing murderer with mother issues (unless something else happens to change his life, but that's besides the point).

No, what it means is that the timeline will continue for thirty years plus. Just without Joe and also unlike the former (now hypothetical and known only to the viewer) path of the timeline. The only way what you're saying would truly be a problem is if the events of the movie were constantly repeating with each Old Joe time travelling back to another instance of the timeline, the result being that the next instance of the timeline after Young Joe kills himself would not have an Old Joe to go to and change things, meaning that that timeline would end up the same. But such a scenario is more exemplary of circular time, and is not a straight and singular forward-moving timeline.

If this makes more sense to you, you could consider that the former path of the timeline still exists, but just as another section of the timeline as the second diagram shows. Thus when Young Joe killed himself, there would be no paradox because the instigating action in question (Old Joe coming back) already happened during the former section of the timeline I've referred to as the 'former path' of the timeline. That is of course if you find my explanation where the future simply ceases to exist difficult to accept but don't mind having to account for potential time gaps or moments of regression to facilitate the act of time travel itself.

I find my first explanation (and associated diagram) to be simpler and more sensical, but either way seems to explain time and time travel alongside the events of the movie.

The movie quite clearly demonstrates that what happens after Joe gets sent back in time has a huge impact of the events of his life. The events of Joe's life were set to repeat themselves before Joe killed himself. He would grow up, get sent back in time, be killed by his younger self, and his younger self would grow up to have the same thing happen to him. The only reason that cycle was broken was because Old Joe managed to escape and change the timeline. However, he changed it in such a way that caused his existence to be erased.

Because Joe killed himself before he got sent back, and because him killing himself relies on him getting sent back, it means he couldn't have killed himself. He needs to be alive at the point where gets sent back in time to set up the events that happen in the movie. It is simply not possible if he kills himself before he gets sent back. Him killing himself is a direct result of him getting sent back from the future. The only way what you're saying makes any sense is if you start going into multiple timelines.

Timeline 1: Joe grows up, gets sent back, and killed by his younger self. The future of this timeline would continue on, but Young Joe would now be a part of Timeline 2.

Timeline 2: Because Young Joe now knows he has thirty years to live, he makes drastic changes to his life. He meets a woman, she helps him clean up his act, they get married, she gets killed and he, fuelled by revenge, manages to escape his captors and sets up the events of the movie. However, this also causes Joe to kill himself, so it would set up a third timeline.

Timeline 3: Because Joe no longer exists, it means he is never sent back in time, meaning the events of the movie never took place. Because Young Joe never meets his older counterpart, his life will probably turn out like the first Joe's.

but as you've quite adamantly stated: there is only one timeline, which means each timeline is erasing the previous one instead of creating an offshoot. Events don't just happen in a vacuum: you can't change one event, and expect everything else to still happen the exact same way. If you change Joe getting sent back in time, it changes every event that occurred because he was sent back in time. The events in the movie are constantly repeating themselves. If they weren't, people wouldn't be able to travel back in time. You would have a situation like the Langoliers where the past was constantly getting erased, but that is not the case. We quite clearly see the events of Joe's life play out multiple times in different ways.

We quite clearly see how the timeline is altered because of what happens to Old Joe after he is sent back in time, so you can't say the timeline cannot be altered. Otherwise the entire movie becomes completely pointless. We very clearly see the events that occur in the timeline determines how the timeline turns out, but the lack of a certain event can be just as important as the event itself. Joe being dead before he gets sent back means everything that happened because he was sent back no longer happens. You cannot say "well it already happened, so that means it doesn't matter" because that would mean the entire movie couldn't have happened. If everything that happens is set in stone, as you're saying, it means Old Joe couldn't have alluded his captors and get sent back untied, because he already failed to do so once.

If Old Joe can change the timeline by escaping, it means Young Joe can change the timeline by killing himself. Part of that change involves him never getting sent back in time, and therefore the events that occur because he was sent back in time, including killing himself, never happen.

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TheHT

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#70  Edited By TheHT

@FlarePhoenix said:

but as you've quite adamantly stated: there is only one timeline, which means each timeline is erasing the previous one instead of creating an offshoot.

No, it just means that the time travelled, in this case thirty years, no longer has to occur as it did before. Old Joe acknowledges this himself when he describes what has become of his future after having come back. And we know that not everything ever has to occur since Old Joe was able to overpower his kidnappers after previously failing to. So rather than an entire timeline being erased, it is only that the future after the point in which Old Joe travels back enters a state of flux, and at such a point the timeline may be changed just as Old Joe was able to change the timeline when he overpowered his kidnappers.

Time travel is going back to a previous point on the timeline, and changing known history is to alter the course of the timeline. No full erasing, and no offshoots.

@FlarePhoenix said:

Events don't just happen in a vacuum: you can't change one event, and expect everything else to still happen the exact same way.

But that's precisely what I do not expect. Old Joe disappearing is testament to the fact that just this does not happen.

@FlarePhoenix said:

If you change Joe getting sent back in time, it changes every event that occurred because he was sent back in time.

That is precisely what is inaccurate about your assessment of the universe of the movie. There is absolutely no reason for that to be the case. The idea that Old Joe must always go back in time appeals to a fatalistic cyclical timeline. That would not be the case in a singular and straight forward-moving time, as has been shown to be the case in the movie.

There is simply nothing to support the idea that Young Joe killing himself should revert everything back to some previous state. A singular and straight forward-moving timeline accounts for all events in the movie without paradox.

@FlarePhoenix said:

The events in the movie are constantly repeating themselves. If they weren't, people wouldn't be able to travel back in time. You would have a situation like the Langoliers where the past was constantly getting erased, but that is not the case. We quite clearly see the events of Joe's life play out multiple times in different ways.

Why do you believe that this is the case? Could someone not travel along a straight, singular forward-moving timeline to a point where time travel is invented and then travel back to a previous point on the timeline? We see the events of Old Joes life, and then we see the events of Young Joes life. Why does our insight into Old Joe's history lead to time as cycle? There is nothing to suggest the entire movie is constantly repeating itself. The only thing that is repetitive is the thirty year loop where the old looper is sent back and the young looper kills him. That is purely by human design and maintenance. It is not the requirement of the Looper universe that things constantly repeat themselves.

I am unfamiliar with this Langoliers situation, but I would hesitate to investigate as bringing in another works concepts of time and time travel could do more harm than good.

@FlarePhoenix said:


We quite clearly see how the timeline is altered because of what happens to Old Joe after he is sent back in time, so you can't say the timeline cannot be altered. Otherwise the entire movie becomes completely pointless. We very clearly see the events that occur in the timeline determines how the timeline turns out, but the lack of a certain event can be just as important as the event itself. Joe being dead before he gets sent back means everything that happened because he was sent back no longer happens. You cannot say "well it already happened, so that means it doesn't matter" because that would mean the entire movie couldn't have happened. If everything that happens is set in stone, as you're saying, it means Old Joe couldn't have alluded his captors and get sent back untied, because he already failed to do so once.

I am not sure which responses you are reading, but I have never said that the timeline is set in stone.

The consequence of Young Joe killing himself and thus not being able to grow old and travel back through time comes to pass when Old Joe disappears from existence. Old Joe is there because the future that he remember is still a possibility. When Young Joe kills himself and that future can no longer possibly exist, Old Joe disappears. That is the consequence of Young Joe not growing old and coming back, not an automatic reversal of the timeline to a previous state.

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soulfulsoul

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#71  Edited By soulfulsoul

@dabobsta:

Just watched it. It was over complicated and silly in some places, but interesting. It would have been way better if they just focused on the Looper story, which was good enough on its own. They didn't need all

that mutant stuff in there as well.

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granderojo

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#72  Edited By granderojo

@dabe said:

@Daneian said:

It was the telekinesis that brings that movie down for me. It's a conceit created solely to justify a single character having enough power to bring down all the Loopers and felt tacked onto an already fantastical plot.

Yup. This and the hackneyed romance sent my opinion of Looper into a tail spin.

Looper is a spectacle. Hackneyed romances and fourth walls are the fucking point.

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#73  Edited By dabe

@thabigred: Settle down lad, have a cold shower or something.

As to your point, I disagree, that wasn't what I felt the point of the film was. We're all different and have lovely, vibrant and wholly unique opinions and stances on things. I personally felt Looper floundered as a pastiche of tired filmic archetypes of 90s action films stitched together by stilted dialogue and unconvincing contrivance. Also, I was expecting more directorial flair from Rian Johnson given his work in Brick (though The Brothers Bloom didn't excite me).

Also, I'd personally say a spectacle shouldn't hold itself to the standards you appreciate, if indeed Looper was classed as a spectacle.

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granderojo

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#74  Edited By granderojo

@dabe: I will humour you. What 90's action films is looper a pastiche of? I don't see it.

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MarkWahlberg

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#75  Edited By MarkWahlberg

@TheHT said:

@FlarePhoenix said:


We quite clearly see how the timeline is altered because of what happens to Old Joe after he is sent back in time, so you can't say the timeline cannot be altered. Otherwise the entire movie becomes completely pointless. We very clearly see the events that occur in the timeline determines how the timeline turns out, but the lack of a certain event can be just as important as the event itself. Joe being dead before he gets sent back means everything that happened because he was sent back no longer happens. You cannot say "well it already happened, so that means it doesn't matter" because that would mean the entire movie couldn't have happened. If everything that happens is set in stone, as you're saying, it means Old Joe couldn't have alluded his captors and get sent back untied, because he already failed to do so once.

I am not sure which responses you are reading, but I have never said that the timeline is set in stone.

The consequence of Young Joe killing himself and thus not being able to grow old and travel back through time comes to pass when Old Joe disappears from existence. Old Joe is there because the future that he remember is still a possibility. When Young Joe kills himself and that future can no longer possibly exist, Old Joe disappears. That is the consequence of Young Joe not growing old and coming back, not an automatic reversal of the timeline to a previous state.

You two seem to have made your arguments already, but If I could just interject here:

Consequences in Looper seem to operate concurrently in regards to past/future selves, and the past become fact immediately upon happening, and only then. When Joe's friend Seth is losing his limbs, his older version does not lose them until they happen in the timeline we are watching. If the torture retroactively changed the future Seth's past, - if events are changed between it happening and the alteration of the future version as he is in the movie's present- then he would never have been able to escape at all because he would have traveled back as a limbless mute. Because the Old Seth had already existed in the current timeline prior to his Young self being tortured, his actions up until that point were already solid fact, and thus unchangeable.

Thus, the conditions that led to Young Joe killing himself could not inherently be undone by him killing himself, because they already happened. You have to exist in the past to change the future, and so preventing the events that led to Young Joe meeting Cid would require someone traveling back and killing Old Joe when he appears in the past.

Why Old Joe was able to change his future - his 30 years post self-killing - is possible for a couple of reasons, and guessing that is tricky because we have to know things about the timeline of Dead Old Joe (the one Old Joe killed) as well. But ultimately it's because he did something different, the implication being that it was meeting his wife, but for whatever reason he altered his time stream from that of the future version he killed. Otherwise he couldn't have escaped. For what we saw of his time to be unaltered, then Old Joe's final 30 years would require that he hadn't killed DOJ, because a time-travelled Old Joe would be needed to create the Rain Maker, who already exists in Regular Old Joe's time and is the impetus for his escaping instead of being executed. But if the Rain Maker exists in Regular Old Joe's world, then he exists in a world where Joe closed his loop, which means the past does not require certain events, past or future, to occur. His existence is not dependent on an escaped Old Joe.

This is where Seth becomes critical. His escape resulted not in death but in loss of limb. Old Seth knew of the Rainmaker, and it was because of the Rainmaker that he was able to escape (telling Young Seth about him bought him time). If the future version was whole, than we must assume that he had closed his loop, and if he closed his loop, we must assume either A) he ignored Dead Old Seth's singing, or B) there was no singing, and thus no Rainmaker in Dead Old Seth's timeline. If A is true, then choices made, including those after a loop is closed, are not predetermined, meaning we have relatively infinite wiggle room with a (supposedly) set end point. If B is true, something occurred in Regular Old Joe/Seth's timeline to create the Rainmaker that didn't occur in Dead Old Joe/Seth's timeline, which is way too hypothetical for us to bother with.

So if we accept the absence of predetermination, then that explains Old Joe's actions not being wiped away by Young Joe's death. If Joe's suicide is a set event, strictly caused by Old Joe's appearance, an event that alters not only his future self but his future self's past, then it would wipe away the events that led to it happening at all, which would prevent it from happening, which means he lives and grows old, which would lead to it happening. Constant cycle. If it was not a set, pre-determined event, then right up until the second it happened, it hasn't happened, so Old Joe can still run around killing kiddies because there's no reason for him not to.

If you don't care for this interpretation, that's totally cool, but I think the movie is actually relatively consistent with its internal logic, if not 'real' logic.

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paulwade1984

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#76  Edited By paulwade1984

The part where the guys body was vanishing gave me the heeby jeebies. Apart from that. Movie was a bit shit.