Shut up and go see it right now.

Shut up and go see it right now.







[01:52] <~Nikumubeki> Because it's MBEGGAR BEGS LIKE A BEGONI.

See it right now and shut up.

see up and shut it right now

now, see, shut it right up and--

I'm looking forward to having already seen it.

That's how time travel works, right?

Whoa, looks like CM just went out of the loop.

Eh? EH?

Whoa, looks like CM just went out of the loop.

Eh? EH?

Whoa, looks like CM just went out of the loop.

Eh? EH?

Seeing it in 15 min.

and shut up

<3

This thread does not deliver.

Looper caught me completely off-guard. Phenomenal production design, well-written, original, with characters I grew to love and care for deeply. It felt REAL, unlike most visions of the future, and that made it far more unsettling. Bruce Willis has still got it. Joseph Gordon Levitt's career is going to skyrocket because of this (rightly so). His calm look, with that quiet intensity behind his eyes, reminded me of Alain Delon, for anyone who's ever seen Le Samourai. Emily Blunt blew me away, and the kid..... (the best child actor I can think of in recent years).

Blade Runner is one of my all-time favorite films. I love Sci-Fi, and I love noir/thrillers. There are a handful of really impressive, original sci-fi/thriller films that I know of that have been released in the last decade, and Looper is topping that list for me. It has the style and tension of Drive, and like that movie was in 2011, Looper's probably my favorite film experience of 2012 - incredibly cathartic, original story-telling.

So uh, yeah. See it.

Joseph Gordon Levitt is ****in' rad. I forget why I like him though.

I wish I could find my Blade Runner.

I saw this tonight with the ladyfriend. Both of us enjoyed it immensely, and discussed the paradoxical nature of the film at length afterward.

Any movie that can create actual civil discourse is great in my opinion.

I wasn't a fan of how they worked their time travel rules. It seemed like causality was propagated arbitrarily for the convenience of the plot.

You could go on a long debate about how it's just one of the timelines and whatever that lead to that ending, or you could just accept its a time travel movie and that's how it went.

shut now see up go right and it

Yeah. On one hand there really isn't any logical explanation, but on the other, if you violate causality, logic isn't really a thing anyway.

Let's go ahead and start the Joe is Cid discussion now.

Which would mean....he slept with his Mom?

Indeed it would.

More likely, I think Kid Blue is Abe.

I agree with that assertion.

In regard to Cid and Joe being the same person, though, take this into consideration:

Abe explains that time travel "fries your brain".
Joe barely remembers his mom, but recalls that she was killed when he was very young.
He doesn't remember his father at all.
He doesn't remember much about his past.
Abe seems to remember more about his past than he does.
In the future, no one has ever seen the Rainmaker, aside from Abe.
Joe says that one of the only things he remembers about his mom is her running her fingers through the hair above his ear.
Cid's mom runs her fingers through the hair above his ear.
I'm fairly sure that after Cid was grazed on the cheek by a bullet, a scar was shown on young Joe's face in the same location when they panned over his body. I would have to see it again to confirm this, though.

So the way I see it is this: In the future, being that he has access to a time travel machine and has dedicated his life to removing loopers from the world (because one killed his mom), he goes back in time to try to save his mom, but it screws up his memory. He then ends up ironically working as a looper for Abe (which would make sense, as Abe's livelihood depends on the operation of the loopers). Obviously Abe would not tell him about any of this, and it makes sense as to why Abe acts a little odd around him, as though he's afraid of him.

What makes this really great is that it creates the most amazing time paradox I have ever heard of. If he hadn't gone back in time to try to save his mom, he would have never grown up to be old Joe. Instead he would just be young Joe in the original future. So how does his mom die without him going back in time to try to save her? This will destroy your brain.

But are you kidding about Joe is Cid, or do you actually think there's some evidence for that theory? I'd be curious to hear it.

IT RE-READS THE EDITED POST OR IT GETS THE HOSE!

LOLZ. You totally earned that unicorn.

Really, really interesting thoughts, and yes, my brain is now fairly mushy.

1 potential issues with your theory (I had a second one, regarding Cid and JGL Joe being in the same chronological timeline, which obviously contradicts birth dates if they are the same person, but then realized (I think) that you're saying that there are TWO future Joes running around in 2042!!):

1) Why don't JGL Joe and Bruce Joe exhibit the same level of off-the-charts TK powers, if they are in fact the adult versions of Cid? Do you attribute this to amnesia? It's true that JGL Joe seems immediately dismissive and annoyed with Paul Dano's looper when he's using TK on a coin.

The more I think about this movie, the more it reminds me of Memento, in terms of the cyclical nature of the character's decisions once you understand the narrative. And like Memento, amnesia in JGL Joe could reason away a lot of impossibilities, even though it's never specifically mentioned. This movie might be even more brilliant than I originally gave it credit.

I was expecting this to be the big reveal at the end of the movie. I first thought of it when Cid got really, really mad- he looked a lot like Joseph Gorden Leavitt then, so much that I half suspected that they'd used makeup/computer trickery to make that resemblance. Plus the parallels of Joe talking about losing his mother/traveling on trains with Cid's future. It's possible that their stories were meant to be similar, not the same... but it's unclear. Perhaps it's intentionally left vague, so that the viewer can decide.

The main thing that's bugging me is when old Seth comes back he mentions the Rainmaker seeing his mum killed and having a synthetic jaw, but this is all before Joe lives out his life, loops back, dies, lives out his life again, loops back again and then kills Cid's mum and shoots him in the jaw.

****ing causality loops.

Also, Kid Blue can't be Abe, otherwise everyone would disappear when Joe kills him, because then Abe wouldn't be around to make Joe a looper in the first place.

I don't understand how a movie with that many plot holes could have 93% on Rotten Tomatoes.

It started out with just being unsatisfied with the ending. Then when I took a step back to examine what I didn't like, the whole thing fell apart.

because 'ambiguity' doesn't always mean 'plot holes'

I'm really not one to be contrary about movie reviews, but come on. 93%? That's pretty damn high. I let time travel as garbage disposal go. They gave a quick answer and it's not the point, fair enough. Same goes for a lot of the "whys" that flow from the premise.

I thought it was an entertaining movie, but 12 Monkeys doesn't have 93%. That was, I think, more thought provoking, and the plot withstood a second glance.

That whole mutilating present-day Seth thing doesn't raise any questions for anyone? Like how much of what future Seth just did required the use of his feet? I'm trying here. I honestly checked this thread hoping to find out what I'm missing. Maybe I'll get some straws out.

Absolutely agree about the kid who played Cid, though. I don't know that I've ever seen a kid that young act that well. Acting overall was actually really good.

Rotten Tomatoes is a review aggregate website. 93% does not mean a movie is better. It means it received a larger percentage of positive reviews. It also doesn't mean the reviews were more positive. It just means more of them were positive. This is meant to give people an idea of the odds of liking a film, based on what percentage of reviewers liked it. Strictly speaking, a totally average movie that doesn't blow away, nor offend the cinematic sensibilities of any reviewers should have a higher tomatometer than a brilliant but divisive film. Why does this matter to you that it is higher than 12 Monkeys? Why does it need to be compared? Because both are time travel movies with Bruce Willis? Die Hard and Looper are both action movies starring Bruce Willis. Die hard is a 94%, and I'm pretty sure it's more than one percent better. This still doesn't bother me.

I would also like to point out that The Dark Knight (which is, as far as I'm concerned, the king of plot holes in a well liked movie) also has a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. The plot holes in that film do not hold it back from being great. The "plot holes" in Looper don't hold it back either. The difference is, The Dark Knight has actual plot holes, while Looper has ambiguity (as Zell said) and stretches of logic, which can easily be attributed to the idea that it's 1. A complicated time travel movie, and 2. Meant to be left to personal interpretation.

You seem to be displeased because the movie doesn't give you answers. Most others are pleased because it doesn't give you answers.

I'm also not sure what the problem is with the whole Old Seth and Young Seth thing is... They cut off his feet, nose, fingers, etc... They disappear. What's the issue here? I don't understand.

The issue with Seth is how the changes in the present propagate down the timeline. If present Seth's legs are amputated, why does that change propagate to future Seth without changing his ability to have done everything he did to get to that point? (Like, as BH4H said, climbing a fence, running, etc.). I didn't think of this until about 24 hours after watching the movie, and it's more of a shrug it off kind of thing for me. I'd rather watch a movie where, like you said, Antony, I can think about the dynamics of the system it sets up or the logic it works with, and discuss that with a friend, than the alternative. In this case I'm sorta just thinking that the effects of the actions in the present get a little muddled when the effected party (Old Seth) has traveled back in time to the present. (?)

I think that the main source of 'plot holes' is that issue of how the present day actions propagate into the future. Joe killing himself at the end prevents an action that happened several seconds before (Sarah getting shot) but doesn't prevent actions that happened several minutes before (The chase out into the cornfield) or days before, etc. etc. You can kinda hand wave that away, unless you're a stickler, I guess. I was impressed that the movie sold me on the emotional journey of Joe. His self-sacrifice could be a bit of a cliche, but I think they played it well, and it had the desired impact on me, I think.

I think that their execution of time travel, e.g. the "loop" is that it's a continuous process of timeflow, and that the effects of being sent to that particular time exist only in that particular time. I think that we've established that there are alternate timelines in this movie, but how far are you really wanting to go with the idea that Old Seth should have seen the effects of this stuff and had it stop him from getting there? Shouldn't Old Joe have noticed the stuff carved into his arm at some point? Shouldn't he have suddenly just not done half of the stuff he did in his life once his young self got over his drug addiction? My point is, the person sent back in time seems to experience the effects of things done to their younger self in a very direct way. When Young Seth gets his leg cut off, Old Seth's leg vanishes. When Young Joe shoots himself in the chest, Old Joe vanishes. I don't know if it undoes everything they've ever done, but I'm comfortable with it only having a physical effect on the person in the present, and not all throughout the future.

It's like Old Joe says about the things Young Joe does. Once Young Joe does something, Old Joe can remember it happening, but he can't suddenly tell what he's going to do next, because it hasn't happened yet. What the young version does, or has done to him, has a direct effect on the Old Version that exists at the same time, but doesn't build a bridge between the two points.

That's all fair, but this bit is the tricky part, because of Joe's suicide undoing Sarah's murder. If it were in line with the other stuff, Old Joe would have disappeared and Sarah would still have been shot.

**** you, saberopus.

gotcha ***** nnnn

WHAT OTHER LOOPER THINGS CAN WE TALK ABOUT this is fun