History Headscratchers / Looper

** The director says they're "keeping the casualty loop tight". If another Looper is supposed to kill Old them, they can kill or hinder the other Looper.

**** The way time-travel works in that universe seems to be that, aside from using a time machine, events effect the present and future, not the past. So when Young Seth is tortured, Old Seth is maimed and traumatized, but the fact that he escaped in the first place is unchanged. Likewise, [[spoiler: when Young Joe dies, Old Joe ceases to exist, but his affect on the timeline up to that point isn't undone.]]

** We're told there are complications involved with time paradoxes; hence why the mob doesn't just kill Young Seth in order to get rid of Old Seth. Presumably these vague consequences would start catching up with a Looper who tries to live past their deadline, hindering their ability to preserve themselves.

** Well, there are only a small number of loopers, and the mob is pretty powerful. Presumably if it's that much trouble to get to a Looper, they just wait. And remember, the Rainmaker has special powers, so if there's some sort of crisis, he could take care of them personally. We might've just been seeing the Loopers who got caught. It's not even clear when the mob comes for someone; in Joe's case, it just happened to be some point in the 30th year, while RM was closing ''all'' the loops. Loopers are presumably explicitly selected from people without much foresight or inclination for forward planning.

* What's to stop a looper who's just closed his contract from buying a fortress and an army of heavily-armed, well trained guards? Or better yet, live a spartan existence for 29 years and 11 months, and then buy a fortress and an army of heavily-armed, well trained guards? The fact is, giving somebody a lot of money (over 3.6 million at least, by my estimates) and then telling them, "Do whatever you want, because we're going to kill you in thirty years" is not a very good idea.

* Why do they send an old looper back in time to be killed by their younger selves? Why not send them to any other looper?

** They're known about in various circles, and may just be kind of that thing you don't discuss, like the mob in general. She may have just heard about it in passing, which could be part of the reason why she chose to move so far away from city life.

* How does Sara know about loopers?

** It may be that the machines are "locked" to a particular location, or Old Joe would've changed where he showed up. He certainly knows a lot about time travel compared to his younger self. Maybe he just didn't have time to alter it.

*** [[spoiler:Maybe the Chinese didn't have the same tracking and forensics America did. Maybe if Joe's in a database somewhere, like all Americans, they can find him. "Tracking and whatnot". Or maybe they were going to save her and then send her back as well.]]

** It may be that the machines are "locked" to a particular location, or Old Joe would've changed where he showed up. He certainly knows a lot about time travel compared to his younger self.

** It may be that the machines are "locked" to a particular location.

* The time machine can clearly transport across space as well as time, given that Joe gets sent from China to the US. With this in mind, why bother with the Loopers in the first place? Just beam your victims into space or to the bottom of the ocean.

** [[spoiler: The movie leaves it ambiguous if [[HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct Cid grows up into Rainmaker or not]]. It gives hope that he and his mother are still alive but obviously Old!Joe didn't initially kill Sara in the timeline he came from where he closes his loop. The movie seems based on the idea of time travelers making a AlternateTimeline when they arrive in the past becoming paradoxes who the new timeline immediately tries to correct via synching them to the changes made in the present timeline. Exactly like with Old!Seth, who only started to suffer issues after they began to mutilate Young!Seth to get him to give up. But it is classic TimeyWimeyBall.]]

** [[spoiler: The movie leaves it ambiguous if Cid grows up into Rainmaker or not. It gives hope that He is still alive and as is his mother but obviously Old!Joe didn't initially kill Sara in the timeline he came from where he closes his loop, so something can still happened to change him into Rainmaker, just not Sara dying because of Joe. Hence Rainmaker or the mob can still start closing loops and the plot of the movie still happens. ]]

* So how did the time loop start? [[spoiler: Clearly, there was a case where Joe was closed loop on the same day and time - how did that happen without the Rainmaker? Or did the Rainmaker get created without Joe killing his mother? Wouldn't that mean the ending is really just a huge Fridge Horror (it's still going to happen anyway)? Why would both paths result in Joe being sent to the present anyways? How did Joe kill the mother without young Joe preventing him?]] There seems to be a bit of a TimeyWhimyBall

*** [[GrandfatherParadox But Joe would never have met Sarah in the first place if Future!Joe hadn't come back to kill Cid, which he can't have if Present!Joe killed himself, and the Rainmaker didn't happen.]]

* [[GrandfatherParadox Ok, my problem with the movie is this. If Present!Joe kills himself to prevent Future!Joe from killing the Rainmaker's mother, then the Rainmaker will never become the rainmaker.]] [[TimeyWimeyBall He therefore cannot grow up to be a brutal overlord, and logically, cannot begin closing loops.]] [[TimeCrash Therefore, Future!Joe would not have been sent back to the past (neither would Future!Seth, so Seth would still be alive) in the first place, and thus the movie would not have happened.]] [[MindScrew The movie, however, needs to have happened because Present!Joe's silver is not retconned out of existence at the end of the movie, and also because the Rainmaker would have grown up to be a completely different person.....my brain hurts.]] Basically, the movie makes not a lick of sense because it requires a [[GrandfatherParadox Grandfather Paradox]] to have happened in order to set up a universe in which the Rainmaker doesn't turn out evil.

** They mention forensics being one of the reasons why they don't kill and dispose people in the future, better question why they don't paralyze them [[spoiler: as they did Joe in China]] right before sending them back so there is no chance of escape or communication with the looper in the present.

* So you can't kill people in the future - that's why the mob hires Loopers in the first place. So how does the mob get away with just shooting Joe's wife shortly after they enter his place?
** That was in China. Presumably there's a different situation there than in America. [[BellisariosMaxim The question becomes]] why didn't they just shoot him while they were in China since they were killing people anyway?
* Complications, while rare, do occur-- some targets can run, you've got to find guys willing to execute folks, ect, ect , ect. Why doesn't the Mob just have Loopers dispose of the bodies, but kill the guy before sending him through?

** That was in China. Presumably there's a different situation there than in America. [[BellisariosMaxim The question becomes]] why didn't they just shoot him while they were in China since they were killing people anyway?

* So you can't kill people in the future - that's why the mob hires Loopers in the first place. So how does the mob get away with just shooting Joe's wife shortly after they enter his place?