Looper

[Slammr (imported)]

I saw the movie, Looper, today (Friday). I have mixed feelings about it. It's a time travel movie, and as always, much of the time travel scenario doesn't quite work. Loopers, as you'll find out in the first few minutes of the movie, murder and dispose of people sent back from 30 years in the future, because as they say, it's not easy to dispose of bodies in the future, so they send them back 30 years for the loopers to dispose of them.

They need that premise for the story to work, since as you would see, if you'd seen the previews, our looper hero's future self is sent back for him to dispose of, so the story is built around that premise and the young looper trying to kill his older self, while the older self has to protect his younger self, who is trying to kill him. If the younger self dies, he never existed.

That they would use time travel to dispose of a few bodies makes no sense, because in the views we're given of the future, they don't seem to have any problems killing people. They do it all the time. If there's a reason for sending them back in time to dispose of them, despite the excuse they give in the movie, I didn't see it. That part of the movie makes no sense.

All the time travel paradoxes would probably stretch the Universe to the breaking point, but if you suspend disbelief, the movies is full of action, and isn't too bad.

[Paolo]

Parallel timelines, you know. As Janeway said in "Voyager," don't try to make sense of temporal paradoxes.

[curious_guy (imported)]

Parallel timelines, you know. As Janeway said in "Voyager," don't try to make sense of temporal paradoxes.

I have watched several science programs about time travel. I think they talked about time travel in episodes of: Through the Wormhole, How the Universe Works and The universe. They all said that if time travel was possible then either the time traveler could not change the past or if he/she could change the past, he/she would create a parallel universe which would leave the original universe unchanged. The time traveler would be in the new universe in which he killed Hitler as a child and would be unable to get back to this universe.

[moi621 (imported)]

I figured it was a Bruce Willis vehicle and not a "movie".

Am I wrong?

Moi

[Slammr (imported)]

I have watched several science programs about time travel. I think they talked about time travel in episodes of: Through the Wormhole, How the Universe Works and The universe. They all said that if time travel was possible then either the time traveler could not change the past or if he/she could change the past, he/she would create a parallel universe which would leave the original universe unchanged. The time traveler would be in the new universe in which he killed Hitler as a child and would be unable to get back to this universe.

In this case, Willis, come back from thirty years into the future, is trying to change the future. We get glimpses during the movie of something in the future being changed by what happens in the movie. There is no suggestion of parallel universes, although our looper somehow sees different outcomes of his actions or non-actions. I like movies that explore time travel, but this movie's time travel premise has so many holes in it that thinking about all of them afterward just about ruins the movie for me.

[bobover3 (imported)]

Willis gets top billing, but the star is Joseph Gordon-Levitt, he of the squinty twinkling eyes.

Critics swoon over Looper, which is well made, clever, and occasionally moving. It belongs to the new genre of puzzle movies about altered perception/dreams nesting in dreams/impaired memory/etc. It takes an otherwise straightforward story and complicates it with shifting uncertain realities. These films make some people hug themselves over their ability to parse the plot; they baffle others, and often bore me.

The story is about a greedy ruthless drug addicted young hit man who has humanizing experiences and eventually surprises us with a selfless act which satisfactorily resolves the plot. The future has been terrorized by someone called the Rainmaker. The Rainmaker is "closing the loops" of the loopers by having them kill their older selves. Bruce Willis, who plays Gordon-Levitt's older self, is trying to find and kill the Rainmaker as a child. In the sort of paradox which works only in a Hollywood movie, Willis is devoted to his wife and an advocate of humane values, even while he is also a killing machine. Gordon-Levitt failed to kill Willis, which has made him a target of the gang organizing the loopers. So Gordon-Levitt and Willis are both hunted, even as they duel one another. They both wind up at a farm where Emily Blunt and her young son, who may or may not be the young Rainmaker, live.

[Dave (imported)]

I haven't seen this yet so I'll keep my comments to a minimum but the director was interviewed on "AIN'T IT COOL NEWS" and he said that his conception of time travel and the effects of changing the past was like BACK TO THE FUTURE parts 1 & 2 where for a few seconds everything changed including memories and people appeared and disappeared... Then time stabilized and things seemed normal once again.

I might make it to the theater but if not, I'll catch this on Cable TV.

[Slammr (imported)]

I won't say what they are, not wanting to give away the story, but at the end, there are many things that shouldn't still exist, if time was changed by Gordon-Levitt's actions.

[Cainanite (imported)]

I have not seen the move at all, and probably won't until it comes out on DVD, but the trailer already had me asking a question.

If Bruce Willis Succeeds in changing his past, won't it also succeed in changing the past of his younger self? I mean, his younger self has already been working for the future time travel killing bad guys for a while. If Bruce alters things even a little bit for the future won't his younger self's past change too? Maybe he didn't kill a guy? Maybe he was never enlisted? Bruce's present would be changing for both younger and older selves.

Bruce Willis isn't going back to the beginning of the time travel story. He is going back to the middle of the time travel story. (People were sent back before the time he shows up.) Trying to change the timeline from that point would be impossible, he could only muck it up even more. In order to really change things, he would have to go back to BEFORE his younger self started working for the time travel guys.

Do they address this in the film, or just ignore it and pretend no one notices?

[Paolo]

You're not supposed to notice things like this in time travel stories!