Looper

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

Finally sat down to watch this after being beaten over the head by all the hype.
I was hesitant, but who wouldn't be if you were told it was a time-travel movie starring Bruce Willis.

I was blown away. Looper rocks.


Better than that brain cancer inducing piece of shit, Prometheus. That was fucking brutal.

[Jay in Phoenix]

Yeah Marty, agree on "Looper". Went to see it going with some trepidations, left very pleasantly surprised. Clever use of time travel (though some obvious paradox loops were missed) technique and an intelligent script. Good cast and a great ambiguous ending. I love it when movies are brave enough to leave the audience to figure out the story conclusion on thier own. John Sayles released a movie in 1999 called "Limbo". A majority of the audience who saw it, including some critics, were pissed off by the unresolved, open ending. I thought it was brilliant. If you follow the movie closely, it really breaks down into two seperate films. The first half deals with the relationships between people who are down on their luck in Alaska. The second half shifts into the Alaskan wilderness, where the truest sense of limbo comes to pass. That's what makes the ending so perfect, as it represents the entire metaphor of life in limbo.

If you haven't seen it, look for it. Well worth the viewing.

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

Good cast and a great ambiguous ending. I love it when movies are brave enough to leave the audience to figure out the story conclusion on thier own.

Why would you say the ending of Looper was ambiguous?


The guy closes his own "loop" and it's inferred that the kid won't grow up to be a monster.

[Jay in Phoenix]

Why would you say the ending of Looper was ambiguous?


The guy closes his own "loop" and it's inferred that the kid won't grow up to be a monster.

SPOILER ALERT IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN LOOPER

That isn't the way I saw it. If you watch it again, that isn't exactly a look of 'peace' on the kids face as the camera views him from above. The child is asleep, but his expression is inwardly intense. There was no inferral of anything specific, and given the nature of the story and the time travel paradoxes, the future is anything but certain. Yes, the Bruce Willis character did have his "loop" closed, so in essence he ceases to have existed. But the child is still "gifted" or cursed with freakish psychokinesis and a propensity to explode in anger. Nothing about that was altered, even though the kids focus was diffused by the death of the Looper. As it is, the movie is rife with paradox. Think about this for instance...in the final moments of "Looper," Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) prevents his older self (Bruce Willis) from killing Sara (Emily Blunt) by committing suicide. (Sara is in the process of protecting her son -- who winds up being responsible for some fairly nasty things in the future -- and young Joe realizes that killing Sara will set off that terrible series of events.) As young Joe dies, old Joe simply disappears because, now, he never existed at that age. But, if old Joe never existed, why does Sara still remember him? Why does Sara's son, the future kingpin known as the Rainmaker, still have a gunshot wound that was inflicted by Old Joe?

Also, given at the end of the movie when Young Joe takes his own life, he does not prevent Cid from becoming the rainmaker as he hopes - rather, he ensures that Cid will become the Rainmaker. The only question that remains is, will Cid use his powers to fight evil, or does his very nature of anger and retribution come to full fruition? Consider this:

1. The Rainmaker took over the 5 crime syndicates.
2. He did so without firing a shot.
3. He is closing all the loops.
4. No one knows what he looks like but there is some speculation about the Jaw etc.
5. The only people that deliver any information about the Rainmaker are bad people.

Since Cid, or as he is called in the future, The Rainmaker is essentially fighting bad guys in a future populated by killers, or Loopers and in turn is closing those Loops. Isn't there an implication that since the future has now been altered, Cid is now free to grow up into his role as a full-fledged psychokinetic Hitler with no one to stop him?

There's a final important wrinkle to iron out. Cid is described as having a prosthetic jaw (and we see him get shot in the face towards the end of the film) and is taking revenge against Loopers by closing all of the loops, but how does this happen in the primary timeline if Old Joe wasn't the one that shot him? If that means that another Looper went back in time and tried to kill Cid, in the words of Ned, "Why are we watching Joe's story and not the other guy's?"

The entire film is kind of an interesting take on the idea of, "What would happen if you went back in time and tried to kill Hitler?" Would doing so have prevented the Holocaust and World War II? Some have argued that it wouldn't have made a bit of difference, as the political and social climate would have just had someone else take his place and it would all happen the same way. It's possible that you can say the exact same thing about Cid and his transformation into The Rainmaker: it's a simple inevitability.

[King Crimson]

decent sci fi dystopia flick. i liked Rian Johnson's earlier one Brick better. FIlm Noir Ray Chandler at the high school.

at the end Emily Blunt sees the same scar on the kid as on Joe as on Bruce Willis. they are all the rainmaker. but she gets to raise them different (in the new hypothetical future) after Joe's suicide. Joe's final narration is "i saw it all in one loop....a kid with resentment....who was willing to kill to get his wife back....etc".

it's like a metaphor for psychological catharsis. Joe made all the loops back into a kid with the abilities.

resolve the crises of the past to get freedom in new life. unresolved crises make you a killer monster. look at the big brain on Brad.

[King Crimson]

now what isn't resolved is how joe gets to do his mom in the middle time. but there are three greek plays by sophocles and a bunch of books by sigg freud about that one.

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

but there are three greek plays by sophocles and a bunch of books by sigg freud about that one.

...and a forum at T1B dedicated to one of this predilection's adherents.