FlarePhoenix

@mellotronrules said:

i'll probably get booed off this thread (and i don't blame you if you do), but let's recontextualize the situation. this being a video game enthusiast website, and presuming we all have an invested interest in staying abreast of good gaming:

let's say bioshock infinite launches tomorrow in extremely short supply (ridiculous hypothetical, but bear with me). and let's say for whatever reason, i found a retailer selling steam codes for $20 in a limited supply. wouldn't you rather i share the love and let the duders in on the deal, as opposed to buying a ton of codes and then reselling them on ebay or the forums for $50 (if such a thing were allowed)?

If it is on Steam, how is there a limit on how many can be bought?

I live by the rule: if you have to ask, you already know the answer, and you're just looking to random strangers to make you feel less of a douche. You exploited people, who are probably struggling just to make ends meet (I couldn't count how many times in university I came across someone who couldn't afford the textbooks because they had to pay for luxuries like food and rent), for your own personal gain.

God I would love it if one or more of your classmates were also on this site and saw this.

I would like to think that if someone liked my game enough to tell their friends to buy it, they would eventually buy a copy of it themselves considering most indie games tend to go for no more than fifteen dollars. I mean money obviously isn't an issue, and they obviously like it enough if they're willing to take the risk of stealing it and recommending it to other people, so they really have no excuse not to be a thief (not that lack of money or not liking it enough have ever been a good excuse).

@crusader8463 said:

There are perfectly justifiable reasons people pirate

Not really... I mean maybe when you legitimately cannot find a copy of the game anywhere (including places like eBay), but other than that there is no real justifiable reason to pirate something.

Remember when the biggest problem we had in games was "How do I beat the level without dying?" I really miss those days...

No, but I've only played one game which had any sort of romancing (Persona 3) and same-sex relationships aren't an option in that game. I tend to play as females in games that give me a choice, so I'm not entirely sure what it would mean if I had them pursue another female.

@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.

@TheHT said:

@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).

A little context, please.

See this is why I can't stand certain customers. You do realize the videos aren't just made exclusively for you right? They're made for everyone who comes to the site, and you're never going to be able to please everyone. If you didn't think the videos were funny, that's a shame, but that's not really a reason to have a tantrum about it.

@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.