History Headscratchers / Looper

* I mean, the guy who gave Future!Joe the code might have been wrong. You can't take any information for granted. And as for Future!Joe's disappearance after Present!Joe kills himself, isn't it fundamentally because his past self is dead rather than having anything to do the Rainmaker's (non-)existence? After all, [[MindScrew the story]] [[UpToEleven would've been more complicated]] had the Rainmaker been Cid. If s/he really is Cid, then [[TimeCrash Future!Loopers wouldn't have been sent back, Present!Joe wouldn't have met Future!Joe, and all this wouldn't have happened]]. Then Cid wouldn't have met both Joes and probably lived as normally as possible, resulting in him not becoming evil,]] which would make Future!Joe's return to the present timeline improbable.

* Kinda an old movie by now, but didn't Joe have so many oppertunities to avert the future? He could've sworn off women entirely so he'd have no dead wife. Or avoided going to China so he couldn't possibly meet her. Or just decided not to try to kill the Rainmaker when he becomes Old Joe, so there's no motivation on his part.

* So how did the time loop start? [[spoiler: Clearly, Old Joe successfully closed his loop and lived 30 years of his life without meeting Cid and with no Older Joe attempting to kill Cid. How did the Rainmaker come into being in that timeline? Or did Cid become the Rainmaker without Joe killing his mother?]] There seems to be a bit of a TimeyWimeyBall.
** It's not technically a single loop. [[spoiler: Sara and Cid already has a very rough life. Cid can barely control his power and there is little Sara can do to comfort him, considering Cid does not believe Sara is his own mother. All it takes is just a sudden outburst of rage and Sara will suffer the same fate as her sister. That is not counting what kind of danger the two face living in the middle of nowhere. In the movie's main timeline, Joe's influence on Cid and Sarah plus the warning what he was to become might have been enough to get them on the path where Cid is raised properly. ]]
*** 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 effect on the timeline up to that point isn't undone.]]
** Maybe [[spoiler:Original Rainmaker's Sarah was killed by a ''different'' Looper.]]
*** I think it makes more sense to suggest that Joe is both the solution to and perpetuation of the Rainmaker situation: [[spoiler: Old Joe inadvertently causes Young Joe to save Cid, but if Old Joe isn't stopped he'll [[NiceJobBreakingItHero inadvertently screw that up again]] by killing Sarah.]]

** My assumption to this was [[spoiler: the timeline we see is the last one and breaks the loop. Young!Joe kills himself to stop Old!Joe from existing. If he hadn't then Old!Joe would have killed Sarah, Cid would have run away and gone on the path to becoming Rainmaker. Regardless of what happened to Old!Joe, Young!Joe still lives because killing himself now would be pointless; Sarah would still be dead and Cid will still become Rainmaker. In 30 years, he is either captured or voluntarily goes back into the past to be killed by the Joe that we see as Old!Joe in the timeline that the story is set in. He gets the gold and lives it up but it's inevitable that Cid will become Rainmaker in that timeline too and have the loopers killed. So when he's captured and his wife is killed, it sets forward the loop again. Old!Joe is sent back, Young!Joe hesitates and gets knocked out. These events keep happening until Young!Joe is able to see what's happening and kills himself before Sarah is killed by Old!Joe. When that happens, the loop is broken, Old!Joe ceases to exist and with Cid's acceptance that Sarah is his mother, he doesn't go down the Rainmaker path.]]

* So you can't kill people in the future due to forensics and identification methods - that's why the mob hires Loopers in the first place. [[spoiler: So how does the mob get away with just shooting Old Joe's wife shortly after they enter his place to abduct him? ]]
** That was in China. Presumably there's a different situation there than in America. [[spoiler: [[BellisariosMaxim The question becomes]] why didn't they just shoot him while they were in China since they were killing people anyway? ]]
** [[http://geektyrant.com/news/2012/9/29/10-looper-mysteries-explained-by-director-rian-johnson.html Director says]] [[spoiler:they didn't, not really. The tracking device can run for two years after someone died, but it only activates when someone dies. The burning the house down is their weak attempt to cover it up. Presumably, if they were found out to have committed a non-loop murder, they themselves would be killed by time travel in order to cover it up.]]

*** Since the mob probably dabbles in a wide range of crimes, it's inevitable that they'll have to fight off some cops; perhaps they carry lethal weapons not to attack people, but defend themselves in a pinch. This also adds up when you consider [[spoiler:Old Joe's wife was killed for holding a gardening trowel,]] meaning it was [[ShootHimHeHasAWallet just a mook panicking.]]

** 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.

* [[spoiler: [[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. ]]
** [[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.]]
** It seems to make sense when you consider [[spoiler: both Seth's temporal mutilation and Old!Joe's explanation of his memories in the diner. When you send something or someone back in time, it becomes a quantum possibility in the past; it's what could happen if things are allowed to progress as they did before. Problems arise when this possibility affects its own origins and creates a paradox, which is probably why time travel is banned in the first place, and why Old!Loopers need to be disposed of as quickly as possible.]] As far as the Rainmaker is concerned, [[spoiler: There's nothing to say the loop actually began with Old!Joe, especially given that Old!Joe killed his own future self, and thus never interacted with Cid, who became the Rainmaker anyway.]]
** Based on what we're told, it seems to be an infinite worlds scenario. Time travel is a one way ticket; in the original timeline the traveler is erased from his point of travel forward. When he lands in the past, a new timeline branches off. [[spoiler:We can see this with Abe, who was sent into the past to oversee Loopers and ends up running the city, and Old!Joe, who kills his older self but then ends up in a timeline where he himself is not killed by his younger version. The time traveler becomes a collection of possibilities--he can create new timelines by interacting with his past and is changed by that interaction to reflect the new reality. To bring this back to the Rainmaker; Cid was set on the path to become the Rainmaker, and in one timeline that happened. In that timeline, Old!Joe killed Older!Joe and then went on to live his life. When Old!Joe was sent back, he escaped, creating a new timeline where his younger self took a different path. Because his insertion to the timeline was after the events that set Cid on the path to become the Rainmaker, Cid is still on that path, but the change to the timeline presents Joe the Younger with the opportunity to create (or fulfill) a new timeline where Cid does not become the Rainmaker. In theory, all of those previous timelines still exist, but because we are following a specific set of characters and their specific actions, what we perceive as multiple timelines clashing is really just one timeline out of a host of possible ones.]]
** [[spoiler: But if the multiple worlds theory is correct, then the characters are still completely different people, so the timeline should not alter the future versions of them with changes made to their past selves. If I travel to a parallel world and kill myself at a young age, I logically shouldn't dissapear, because it's not really me, just an alternate version of me. This is one of those rare, insane movies [[MindScrew that both depends on parallel universes and depends on NOT having them]].]]

** [[spoiler: The movie goes out of its way to say that time travelers represent their current selves possible future. In their own timeline, that future was set in stone by actually having happened, but in the new timeline that future is only the initial starting point--differences between the new and original timelines change the course of the younger self's future and thus the person that he may become ends up fluctuating. So in a sense, a time traveler gives up being a completely separate person, instead becoming dependent on the choices his younger self makes. In a completely unaltered timeline, that would end up being the same life (more or less.) But when the younger ends up getting caught in diverging events, the older changes to reflect that. In this way, it still works as a many worlds scenario.]]
** I think I may have figured this one out. I've spent the past hour thinking about it, so I hope so..... [[spoiler: If Young!Joe kills himself, he negates everything that Old!Joe might do, meaning that the Rainmaker never comes into existence. If the Rainmaker never comes into existence, then Old!Joe wouldn't have been sent back and thus, Young!Joe would have just carried on with his life being a Looper. He would have grown old, gotten married, and died normally (maybe). Cid's mother also wouldn't be killed by Old!Joe because Old!Joe wouldn't be sent back, so he never grows up evil, and the lives of Cid and the Loopers are completely separate.]] Am I missing something?

** Maybe the looper just doesn't close his own loop. It's never stated that ''all'' loopers get that privilege. So you become a looper, spend all your money on drugs, die of an overdose in a back alley somewhere... No one needs to off you at that point, since it's already done. [[spoiler: It doesn't seem to bother the story or the universe that Joe's looped is closed early due to his suicide.]] Closing the loop only seems to be important for those loopers that the future mob wants or needs to eliminate for some reason. [[spoiler: Joe's work with some sort of Rainmaker resistance movement, for example.]]

* In the above string, a poster suggests the Mob has a way of ensuring that the target gets disposed of; I ask; how? The only check I can readily assume that Abe or his mob knows or thinks a Looper didn't close his loop is if they failed to return to cash in their king's ransom of gold in the expected timeframe. I excuse Seth for reasons I don't think I need to detail. But Joe's a different story. Joe's killpoint is a cornfield adjacent to an incinerator where it seems very much like it would have been an easy task to con his death out there. Maybe at the most from my estimations requiring a body or a mass of something combustible to dress up like one to fool a camera that might have been near the dump chute. All Joe would need to do to seal the con is get his older self to fork over the gold, trade it in, quit, then fly, run, or jump off to wherever-the-hell like it was established he was going to once he closed his loop with no one other than himselves being the wiser. What really sticks out to me in the whole mess is that no one accompanies either Joe or Seth on their Closing. This big, possibly future-afflicting rigamarole, the prevention of which seems like Abe's primary or most serious reason for being in the past. I don't think that's an oversight. Abe didn't seem like he had all that great of an organization going. Young Joe introduces him sniding about how impressive it wasn't he took over the city. It took a day for a single guy to show up at the farm house that was apparently on the other side of the field Joe was last seen at to look for him. Bruce Willis's Joe makes the claim to have [[spoiler:killed everyone working for Abe, clearly some of it was offscreen, but if they were all really mobilizing from Abe's stronghold? How many scores of men could that have really been?]] It's a cinch to say Abe doesn't have all that much manpower, resources, or talent in his employ.

* [[spoiler: At the conclusion, Past!Joe kills himself to prevent his future self from killing the Rainmaker by not existing, obviously. But we've already seen that you can physically change the future self by changing the past self. Why doesn't Joe just shoot his own trigger finger or hand off, preventing Future!Joe from being able to shoot a gun? It's not exactly a good way to live, but at least he remains alive. Even better, since he and Cid clearly have a connection, he can stay with Cid and Sarah and make sure Cid does not grow up as Rainmaker.]]

*** All Joe had was a blunderbuss; a super-shotgun which never fails when fired withing range. There is no conceivable way he could have rendered himself unable to shoot other than suicide. Even assuming he put his hand over the barrel, he would have to be able to handle a gun with the other one, leaving it possible. anything silly like bracing the gun so it would fire while both hands were in the way would probably have left him looking like Seth, so a dignified heroic sacrifice was preferable.

* What future does Abe come from and does it actually matter? It seems to me that there are at least three futures: [[spoiler: the future of the Joe who is killed WITH a bag on his head by the Joe who goes to China afterwards; the future from the montage where Joe goes to China, gets married and gets sent back WITHOUT a bag on his head; and the future that happens after the main body of the movie.]] So did he come from one of these futures? Or did he just come back resigned to the fact that he would be changing that future irrevocably simply BY coming back?

* On a similar note to the above, what about Seth and [[spoiler: Rainmaker]]? I feel like we know all the possible futures for these characters, e.g. [[spoiler:Cid either grows up to become the scary Rainmaker guy or he turns out okay, in one timeline Seth MUST have killed his future self and survived to go back again but in another he lets him go and ends up tortured disgustingly]] but I can't figure out how the futures overlap. Are the futures where [[spoiler: Young Seth and Joe complete their loops in the same timeline? Did the old versions of themselves who they killed come from the same timeline? It seems like the Rainmaker is the factor that makes both Old Loopers come back and escape, rather than completing the loop normally, but we never see the timeline that the other Old Loopers (the ones who got killed) come from.]] No one who comes from the future says anything much about the other characters in their futures. Wow, this is a difficult film to describe.

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* Did it seem to anyone else like the scene where Abe asks for half of Joe's silver was supposed to be more cerebral than it actually played out being in every point it's referenced? [[spoiler: Abe suspects Joe's hiding Seth. Abe asks for Joe's silver in exchange for letting Seth run. It's seemingly a bluff since everything about a running loop sounds like Abe can't let shit like that fly. But even if Joe wanted to call the bluff, or honestly sacrifice his silver for the sake of Seth; he can't. He can't because Seth was hiding in Joe's silver safe. Joe is incapable of accessing his silver, and still having Seth hidden. So Abe either divined that Joe hid Seth with his silver; or just underestimated him, assumed Joe was a dirtbag without any sense of comradery, and lucked into a lockout.]] I polled my group of friends watching the movie; and they didn't consider any of this. They just assumed Joe was a greedy dirtbag, and that the finale was an asspull of a character moment citing this scene as proof of it.

* I mean, the guy who gave Future!Joe the code might have been wrong. You can't take any information for granted. And as for [[spoiler: Future!Joe's disappearance after Present!Joe kills himself]], isn't it fundamentally because his past self is [[spoiler: dead rather than having anything to do the Rainmaker's (non-)existence]]? After all, [[MindScrew the story]] [[UpToEleven would've been more complicated]] had the [[spoiler: Rainmaker been Cid. If s/he really is Cid, then [[TimeCrash Future!Loopers wouldn't have been sent back, Present!Joe wouldn't have met Future!Joe, and all this wouldn't have happened]]. Then Cid wouldn't have met both Joes and probably lived as normally as possible, resulting in him not becoming evil,]] which would make Future!Joe's return to the present timeline improbable.
** Cid not being [[spoiler:the Rainmaker]] more or less invalidates the whole movie and makes the whole exercise pointless, so yes, he really was.

[[folder:Why not shoot his own hands off?]]
* Couldn't Young Joe just have [[spoiler: blown his hands off to stop Old Joe from killing Cid in the climax? It worked in the scene with Old Seth losing body parts when his past self was being amputated by the mob.]]
** Commented on by the director. Blowing off one hand leaves Young Joe bleeding out and Old Joe to just pick up his gun in the offhand. Shooting off both hands would require his teeth which, while cool, wouldn't be practical.
** Already discussed further up, please read the headscratchers pages before adding new ones.
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* If murder in the future is so impossible that they have to send people back in time to avoid the consequences, then what about [[spoiler: Old!Joe's wife?]]

* Old!Joe kills his future self (let's call him Older!Joe), lives for 30 years, marries, then he gets caught and [[spoiler:his wife is killed]], prompting him to fight off the mob goons and go to the past by himself, knocking out Young!Joe before he kills him. Fine. But why didn't Older!Joe resist, too? [[spoiler:Was his wife not killed?]] And if so, what made things different for him in his timeline?

** Young Joe brought up in the diner that he could just refuse to meet his future wife, therefore preventing her death. Old Joe rejects his and refuses to help Young Joe identify her, because he wants his old life with her back and won't accept any other option.