[The Terminator]

Spoiler

They say he saw his mother die in front of him and had an artificial jaw. Two things Old Joe would have been responsible for, had Young Joe not changed the future. But it's true that it doesn't really add up unless he originally became the rainmaker without any involvement from Joe at all. The film is full of stuff you could niggle over like this if you let yourself.

[SlashNX]

Originally Posted by rombod

Ah, thanks, some of that makes sense to me. But:

Spoiler

The original Rainmaker's big M.O. is that he's obsessed with closing all the loops. I can't see how that trait would be fueled by growing poor. Wasn't it originally stated that a looper killed his mother? I can't remember. I definitely don't remember it being implied his issues were a result of poverty. If it was a different looper that killed his mum in the first timeline then the JGL/Bruce drama wouldn't really affect that original murder. I get what you're saying about there now being a chance... but nothing really changed for Rainmaker apart from Emily getting the money. Bruce caused that whole scenario/danger, and JGL closed it, but the kid's original development towards being the Rainmaker wasn't contingent on the threat of Bruce in the first place, so I can't see why it would change anything overall. I don't know. The whole noble sacrifice thing fell flat for me because the need for it arose in-film and was sorted in-film, whereas Rainmaker's true motivations appeared to result from far more than just that situation.

Spoiler

Yeh they make the judgement he's obsessed with killed all the loops but whether or not that's because a looper killed his mother debatable as it's never stated or really implied.
I think you have to look at it like this, the original reason why the Rainmaker becomes the Rainmaker is not known, in the Alt timeline all Young Joe knows is that unless he kills himself Cid's mother is definitely going to die and Cid is definitely going to have a cause to become the Rainmaker.

Unfortunately I dont think your going to be satisfied because I think really the answer is the one you don't want. Young Joe killing himself doesn't necessarily definitely stop the Rainmaker it only prevents a possible cause.

But also remember this whole thing is really Joe's story, despite the twist about Cid towards the second half. Young Joe is selfish, he sells his best mate out for Gold. Young Joe also sees he is still selfish in the future. Instead of Old Joe just telling Young Joe who his future wife is so he can not meet her and therefore save her life, he goes out to kill innocent children because he doesn't want to give his wife up. I think when Young Joe killed himself, the focus wasn't necessarily on the Rainmaker's narrative it was about that for the first time Joe had actually committed a selfless act. The Rainmaker's narative is just there to push him to that point. That might be a nicer way to look at it.

[SlashNX]

Originally Posted by The Terminator

Spoiler

They say he saw his mother die in front of him and had an artificial jaw. Two things Old Joe would have been responsible for, had Young Joe not changed the future. But it's true that it doesn't really add up unless he originally became the rainmaker without any involvement from Joe at all. The film is full of stuff you could niggle over like this if you let yourself.

Spoiler

Ah yes youve just brought up the point I kept forgetting. In that diner scene Old Joe explains to Young Joe his memories change depending on the route the new timeline is taking. The artificial jaw and his mother dieing in front of him I think is explained by the fact that Old Joe's memories are changing. So in the original timeline this doesn't happen and something else is the cause of the Rainmaker, but in the new timeline it does and Old Joe accidently predicts this by telling Young Joe how he remembers what cause the Rainmaker because the new timeline changed his memory.

[rombod]

Ah, yeah that was what I feared. Thanks, guys!

[bvmjain]

The director has recorded a commentary track, which is available for legal download.

The idea is, that you rip it to a Mp3 player & listen to it while watching the film again at the cinema.

Of course if you have watched the film recently - and it is still fresh in your memory -you can listen to it at home.

http://loopermovie.tumblr.com/post/3...-up-i-recorded


(Direct link to download below)

http://soundcloud.com/rcjohnso/loope...cal-commentary

[brangdon]

Originally Posted by MemphisJaxx

Are there alot of holes in this film?

It uses a model of time travel in which changes ripple through. I think this is less coherent than saying the past can't be changed, or that changing it creates new independant timelines. In my view it actually leads to holes, but some would say they are not holes so much as me having wrong expectations about how time travel works.

Originally Posted by rombod

Spoiler

Wasn't it originally stated that a looper killed his mother?

A few things are said about that.

Spoiler

The boy himself says his mother died because he wasn't strong enough to save her from some bad men. The woman says that she is his mother, and that it was his aunt he saw die. The boy doesn't believe her, and it may be that the version Old Joe knows is based on this confusion of identity.

Regardless, the boy is already well on the road to becoming the Reignmaker (note spelling) when Joe meets him. He's quite bitter, hates being weak, and thinks his mother is not his mother and is lying to him. She believes she can still save him, but it's not clear she can. Not until he sees she is willing to take a bullet for him.

[paperplanes_]

Saw this yesterday; liked it overall. Interesting concept, some of it left me scratching my head though

[MemphisJaxx]

Originally Posted by metanoia

I'm quite similar to you in this respect, but I didn't really see that many errors (at least in the way time travel works in the film) whilst viewing it. On reflection after the film I did wonder why the main character made certain choices towards the end, when he had other less drastic alternatives.

Great film all in all, very nice to see intelligent Sci-fi again.

Ok, thanks. From the comments i'm seeing here it looks like a very well thought out story. I don't like it when a character seems to make strange out-of-sorts decisions just for a pay off towards the end to make it appear clever and all tie together. I'm acually really looking forward to seeing this now.

Originally Posted by JasonWatkins

Saw it today and really enjoyed it. One of those films that was a teeny bit confusing to follow initially but as it went on, it all made more sense and in the end, it was spot on. very good indeed.

You can't beat a confusing movie done well. I enjoy watching these films a few times over and picking up on different things each time. There are few films out there that allow you this privilege.

Originally Posted by brangdon

It uses a model of time travel in which changes ripple through. I think this is less coherent than saying the past can't be changed, or that changing it creates new independant timelines. In my view it actually leads to holes, but some would say they are not holes so much as me having wrong expectations about how time travel works.


A few things are said about that.

Spoiler

The boy himself says his mother died because he wasn't strong enough to save her from some bad men. The woman says that she is his mother, and that it was his aunt he saw die. The boy doesn't believe her, and it may be that the version Old Joe knows is based on this confusion of identity.

Regardless, the boy is already well on the road to becoming the Reignmaker (note spelling) when Joe meets him. He's quite bitter, hates being weak, and thinks his mother is not his mother and is lying to him. She believes she can still save him, but it's not clear she can. Not until he sees she is willing to take a bullet for him.

Right ok, thanks for the info. I'll give you my view on time travel to see if it matches up with yours and you might be able to tell me if it syncs with the film.

I've highlighted 'the past can't be changed' as this to me is the first thing that should be questioned to first get your head round TT.

The present may already have been altered by future events.
There are mutliple realities that can be bridged by changing the past.

For me both of these statements must for true for TT to be possible. I hope I am making sense and not waffling! In terms of the film, do either one of these statements apply?

I'll be quiet now.

[theonlyweeman]

Originally Posted by MemphisJaxx

Ok, thanks. From the comments i'm seeing here it looks like a very well thought out story. I don't like it when a character seems to make strange out-of-sorts decisions just for a pay off towards the end to make it appear clever and all tie together. I'm acually really looking forward to seeing this now.




You can't beat a confusing movie done well. I enjoy watching these films a few times over and picking up on different things each time. There are few films out there that allow you this privilege.




Right ok, thanks for the info. I'll give you my view on time travel to see if it matches up with yours and you might be able to tell me if it syncs with the film.

I've highlighted 'the past can't be changed' as this to me is the first thing that should be questioned to first get your head round TT.

The present may already have been altered by future events.
There are mutliple realities that can be bridged by changing the past.

For me both of these statements must for true for TT to be possible. I hope I am making sense and not waffling! In terms of the film, do either one of these statements apply?

I'll be quiet now.

Rian Johnson has been saying that there are plot holes in all time travel movies, and that time travel isn't important it's just a backdrop...

@ravester_2 Definitely didn't explore the intricacies of TT, that just wasn't what it was about. But run of the mill action movie? Really?

In one essay, @charliejane has said nearly everything I've ever wanted to say regarding time travel's use in fiction. http://io9.com/5945991/why-time-trav...hould-be-messy …

@rcjohnso @charliejane I disagree. I think science-fiction needs to reflect real science. "Messy" time travel is pure fantasy, IMHO.


@mrTrivates All time travel is fantasy. There is no version of time travel (beyond sub-atomic) based in science.

@rcjohnso we still don't know exactly what dark matter and dark energy are. DE seems to operate inversely to gravity and DM is just weird.

@rcjohnso Therefore, countless possibilities for new discoveries lie on the horizon. Temporal paradoxes cannot be allowed, however.

@mrTrivates What time travel movies would you cite as "scientifically accurate"?

@rcjohnso The recent Time Machine movie, based on H.G Wells' classic was CLOSE. The manner in which she died should have been constant.

@mrTrivates @rcjohnso and there should have been several copies of the lunatic professor.

[MemphisJaxx]

Originally Posted by theonlyweeman

Rian Johnson has been saying that there are plot holes in all time travel movies, and that time travel isn't important it's just a backdrop...

Thanks for the reply but I couldn't disagree more with Rian Johnson. Film makers use the excuse that because TT isn't possible currently and may never be, that technically there is no such thing as an 'inaccurate' TT film.

I would hope that by choosing TT as the focus of the film, a writer/director would be true to the 'laws' in which they adopt. Flitting between laws to suit the story/charactors/plot is simply lazy and turns me off a film.

Just because I don't agree with a films' choosen rules doesn't mean I cannot enjoy the film. For example, The Butterfly Effect and TimeCops. Two very different films but both use the principle of TT causing a ripple through time and changing things when you return. Only the traveller would remember and recognise the change. Despite not subscribing to this myself, I still enjoy both films.

[theonlyweeman]

Originally Posted by MemphisJaxx

Thanks for the reply but I couldn't disagree more with Rian Johnson. Film makers use the excuse that because TT isn't possible currently and may never be, that technically there is no such thing as an 'inaccurate' TT film.

I would hope that by choosing TT as the focus of the film, a writer/director would be true to the 'laws' in which they adopt. Flitting between laws to suit the story/charactors/plot is simply lazy and turns me off a film.

Just because I don't agree with a films' choosen rules doesn't mean I cannot enjoy the film. For example, The Butterfly Effect and TimeCops. Two very different films but both use the principle of TT causing a ripple through time and changing things when you return. Only the traveller would remember and recognise the change. Despite not subscribing to this myself, I still enjoy both films.

He's the director, so I'd go with what he says, and I couldn't see that many plot holes in the film anyway, just bits that perhaps weren't explained very well (but then I don't deliberately go looking for them because I'm not an overly fussy kill joy....)

Time travel is only there to illustrate it's point, it's not a time travel movie, very little time travel is done, it would work equally as well without time travel, he just needs some way to get Old Joe and Young Joe together

[MemphisJaxx]

Originally Posted by theonlyweeman

He's the director, so I'd go with what he says, and I couldn't see that many plot holes in the film anyway, just bits that perhaps weren't explained very well (but then I don't deliberately go looking for them because I'm not an overly fussy kill joy....)

Time travel is only there to illustrate it's point, it's not a time travel movie, very little time travel is done, it would work equally as well without time travel, he just needs some way to get Old Joe and Young Joe together

Ah I see, so in THIS film its not the important part. I get it. Sorry I misunderstood. Brill, i'm sure I will enjoy this. Thanks for the info. I can't wait to see this film.

About the highlighted part, I don't go looking for holes in films but when things are done sloppily it frustrates me and I quickly get disinterested. Kill joy? Never. I spend the joy where ever I go, here you can have some. *sprinkles some joy*

[theonlyweeman]

Originally Posted by MemphisJaxx

Ah I see, so in THIS film its not the important part. I get it. Sorry I misunderstood. Brill, i'm sure I will enjoy this. Thanks for the info. I can't wait to see this film.

About the highlighted part, I don't go looking for holes in films but when things are done sloppily it frustrates me and I quickly get disinterested. Kill joy? Never. I spend the joy where ever I go, here you can have some. *sprinkles some joy*

I will admit I have occasionally notice errors that just killed the entire film for me. Inglorious Basterds, most of it had English subs, except the basic French was subbed in French, which I thought was weird (and made me question whether the more advanced French had actually been translated correctly)...

[brangdon]

Originally Posted by MemphisJaxx

I've highlighted 'the past can't be changed' as this to me is the first thing that should be questioned to first get your head round TT.

The present may already have been altered by future events.
There are mutliple realities that can be bridged by changing the past.

For me both of these statements must for true for TT to be possible. I hope I am making sense and not waffling! In terms of the film, do either one of these statements apply?

There are several possible models of time travel. In some, there is a single immutable time line. You can go back and change the past, but only if you already did that. Some events have their causes in the future, and some may even be causeless loops, but that doesn't make them paradoxical. So it can be a consistent model, albeit one in which all striving is futile.

The second model says that there are multiple timelines, and when you travel back in time, you effectively travel to, or start, a new timeline with a new version of the future. In this version, if old-you kills young-you that's fine; you don't wink out of existence because it's a different you. We get events whose cause is in a different timeline, and again it's consistent. Arguably striving is still futile, because although you can change the future of the timeline you travel to, the events in the timeline you left still happened and you can't change that.

Looper uses a third model. There is a single timeline and it's mutable. You can travel to the past and change it, and those events somehow ripple through to the future you left. The time traveller's memory of events that happen between his current time, and the future time he left, are more or less fuzzy depending on how certain those now-future events are. His memories of events that happened before his current time are concrete; so his memories get more concrete as time passes. There's no "butterfly effect"; small changes tend to heal themselves rather than magnify. There is potential for paradox. It's not clear what will happen if old-you kills young you. The bottom line in Looper is, what happened in the (current) past, happened, regardless of whether it makes sense.

Originally Posted by theonlyweeman

Rian Johnson has been saying that there are plot holes in all time travel movies, and that time travel isn't important it's just a backdrop...

I don't think there need to be, but movies made using the first two models I describe above can be dramatically tricky because they tend to make striving futile. That said, in the first model it can be satisfying to have fate work itself out and to have things pan out like you always knew they would, albeit in an unexpected way. The Lost TV show, and arguably the first Terminator movie, worked like that. (I'm not claiming those don't have plot holes.)

[egghead1]

Best Sc-Fi film Ive seen for a while and Bruce Willis never disappoints Ive subtitled the film Die Hard 5 :its The Future

Some quite eerie scenes where the older version of the Looper ,who escapes ,dismembers bit by bit.Emily Blunt and the kid well acted too.

[outatime]

Originally Posted by egghead1

Some quite eerie scenes where the older version of the Looper ,who escapes ,dismembers bit by bit.

I like to think it takes a lot to weird me out, but that sequence really disturbed me! Some things just play on my mind like that.

Great movie.

[MemphisJaxx]

Originally Posted by brangdon

There are several possible models of time travel. In some, there is a single immutable time line. You can go back and change the past, but only if you already did that. Some events have their causes in the future, and some may even be causeless loops, but that doesn't make them paradoxical. So it can be a consistent model, albeit one in which all striving is futile.

The second model says that there are multiple timelines, and when you travel back in time, you effectively travel to, or start, a new timeline with a new version of the future. In this version, if old-you kills young-you that's fine; you don't wink out of existence because it's a different you. We get events whose cause is in a different timeline, and again it's consistent. Arguably striving is still futile, because although you can change the future of the timeline you travel to, the events in the timeline you left still happened and you can't change that.

Looper uses a third model. There is a single timeline and it's mutable. You can travel to the past and change it, and those events somehow ripple through to the future you left. The time traveller's memory of events that happen between his current time, and the future time he left, are more or less fuzzy depending on how certain those now-future events are. His memories of events that happened before his current time are concrete; so his memories get more concrete as time passes. There's no "butterfly effect"; small changes tend to heal themselves rather than magnify. There is potential for paradox. It's not clear what will happen if old-you kills young you. The bottom line in Looper is, what happened in the (current) past, happened, regardless of whether it makes sense.

Brilliant mate, thanks for taking the time to type all that. It fasinates the hell out of me. As do all things space-y, time-y and continuum-y. I love the idea that information can be passed through the ages to set events into motion and that knowledge of your future/past actions could either change the timeline (your 2nd and 3rd) or are needed to keep it the same (your first immutable) and its the latter that sugguests it's all pre-determind, scary. Its certainly theoretically possible to travel forward in time but with no return. Until we understand time or the lack of it, we are no closer to an answer. Still, fasinating.

Have you seen Primer? What did you think?

[Erlang]

I really enjoyed the film, but I did spot a couple of plot points that had me wondering.

Spoiler

Why be honest and send gold back for closing the loop?

Spoiler

In the case of Abe if you ran a city and have a reasonable knowledge of future finanical events why run it from a converted cellar?

[brangdon]

Originally Posted by MemphisJaxx

Have you seen Primer? What did you think?

It does several things very well, including a good portrayal of a high-tech start-up, and good portrayal of how scientific discoveries are sometimes made, and a good take on time-travel. Essential viewing for the latter. It's also an interesting example of a very low budget film, and that sometimes shows. It doesn't go out of its way to make things easy for its audience.

[theonlyweeman]

Originally Posted by Erlang

I really enjoyed the film, but I did spot a couple of plot points that had me wondering.

Spoiler

Why be honest and send gold back for closing the loop?

Spoiler

In the case of Abe if you ran a city and have a reasonable knowledge of future finanical events why run it from a converted cellar?

Spoiler

To be nice, the person has just committed suicide at your request of course...

Spoiler

They can't choose where they send people back to, hence them killing the victims in public places, presumably the basement is just the most secret place they can link to

[Markieb]

How easy is it to follow?

[welwynrose]

Saw this tonight really enjoyed it well written & well acted

[brangdon]

Originally Posted by Markieb

How easy is it to follow?

Pretty straightforward, apart from the time-travel bits which you don't need to bother about. It's not like Primer.

[paperplanes_]

Originally Posted by Markieb

How easy is it to follow?

Pretty easy to follow unless you start thinking about the in depth time travel in detail.

[Ghost World]

Enjoyed the film, but I didn't think it was as good as Inception or Source Code as far as modern "mainstream" sci-fi films go. The time travel paradoxes didn't bother me and I don't have a problem with the process being left suitably vague, but I had the same question as brangdon:

Originally Posted by brangdon

Spoiler

Why wouldn't the gangster kill their victims before sending the bodies to the past, and so avoid the risk of a victim escaping?

Seems like a pretty big oversight, unless it was answered in the film and I just missed it.