referring to the removal of ""Shaggy Dog" Story"
"What the end of the movie shows is Joe preventing the events which led to Cid becoming the Rainmaker" - no, it doesn't. We do not know what events led to Cid becoming the Rainmaker, because it is never stated that his mother died in the original timeline, so her survival is not a promise Cid will not become the Rainmaker.
"Changing the course of the entire future society was never an objective." - I counter by quoting you again "This is one person's opinion", the mafia and Loopers were the focus of the film. Cid aside, we do not know how the future will play out with regards to those plotlines, even if Cid does not become the Rainmaker, there is nothing that tells us that time travel will still not be invented and the Loopers will not just be re-established by someone else sent back after Abe dies.
The trope is about, "A Shaggy Dog Story is a plot with a high level of build-up and complicating action, only to be resolved with an anti-climax or ironic reversal, usually one that makes the entire story meaningless". The film does fit this definition — the resolution of Young Joe killing himself is quite anti-climactic and irony, and nothing is resolved about stopping the Loopers or the mafia, and we're left with a question mark about Cid becoming the Rainmaker or not.
I'll also note this director interview where even they admit that Joe's suicide is not a promised redemption card and his suicide probably didn't solve much since he's just one person.
http://www.slashfilm.com/ten-mysteries-in-looper-explained-by-director-rian-johnson/
The story isn't about "stopping the loopers or the Mafia," and we're never given any indication that that's the goal of anyone in the entire film.
The movie is about Joe's personal redemption and, yes, preventing the Rainmaker from happening. We don't have confirmation, but among the things Old Joe says as being told about the Rainmaker is that his mother was killed in front of him and he has a prosthetic jaw. The end of the movie is pretty darn clear in mirroring that, and showing that Cid now has a good foundation to build from.
But again, it is only a possibility, there is no promise.
Okay, let's say that the Loopers and the mafia are not the intended focus of the film. Still means a good point of the story is pointless then, since their entire segments have no impact on the story and it's all about the two Joes, the actions of the Loopers and mafia amount to nothing since Old Joe easily massacres them in about five minutes.
Furthermore, with the plot being resolved by Young Joe shooting himself to kill Old Joe, frankly the resolution could have been had at literally any single moment of the film.
Again, the movie still fits the description - the story had a lot of build-up and complicated action, but ended up very anti-climactic with Old Joe wiping out the Loopers with no trouble and Young Joe shooting himself to stop old joe, and in doing it this way it makes a lot of the build-up and mystery of the film pointless.
The loopers and the mafia are the background and the context of the story—you are getting it confused for the main action. It's like saying that a short story set around A New Hope is a "Shaggy Dog" Story because they don't defeat the whole empire.
Just because it's "no promise" doesn't make it a "Shaggy Dog" Story. A "Shaggy Dog" Story would be if we knew that Cid was still going to be the Rainmaker with no changes. We don't know that, and the movie as shot very clearly implies there will be changes, regardless of what the director said.
After I watched this film a couple of months ago I came to the trope page and, among other things, deleted material under two tropes—Fake American and Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping—which suggested that Sara is faking a hillbilly accent and this is the reason why Emily Blunt's country accent dsappears over the course of the movie. It seems that this material was reinserted by user E Kono Mai a couple of days later with the challenge "Did you watch the movie?".
Well, I did watch the movie, and there is nothing in the movie that supports the notion that Sara is faking an accent on purpose. The "spoiler" material listed under Fake American states that "she's not really a farmgirl". Well yes she is, at least when the movie catches up to her, as it is shown to be a woking farm and she sends a robot off to irrigate the crops. Exposition tells us that she used to be a party girl, who deposited her son with her sister and came back after the sister died to take care of Cid and, obviously, run the farm. There is nothing in there to suggest that she has any need to fake a country accent.
The second bit of material, listed under Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping, states as a "spoiler" that Sara is "in chargge of protecting Cid under the guise of being a simple farmer taking care of her son in the boonies". Well, it isn't a guise. She is, in fact, a farmer taking care of her son in the boonies. She left the party lifestyle behiind to take care of her boy. Nothing in the movie supports the notion that Sara is using a fake accent or concealing her identity in any way. Nothing in the film supports the idea that she is hiding. There is no reason from watchng the movie to suppose that the accent deal is anything more than Emily Blunt, a Brit, struggling with an American South accent and then giving it up.
Enemy Mine: Not sure on this one. Joe works for the people that are trying to kill his future self despite them also wanting to kill him for not fulfilling his contract and killing his future self himself. So, they both shoot at Future Joe until he gets away. There's an Oh, Crap! moment as Joe realises that without this Enemy Mine, they're back to being enemies.
Thing is, it's not explicitly stated. Technically, the goons could've gone after Joe at any time. I guess that they were all just prioritising. Does it count when such an (uneasy) alliance is so short-lived?
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Wouldn't that be more of a Failed a Spot Check? Until a break in the action allows them to realise that Young!Joe was standing right there?
Pittsburghmuggle
There was a recently removed trope as follows:
* Squick: So duder has sex with his mom right? I don't care what rules time travel has, Sarah was Joe/Cid's mom and they had sex.
I agree with the removal, and just want to point out that there are a lot of similarities between Joe and the rainmaker, but they were not one and the same person. It's an understandable assumption, but no - Sarah was not Joes mother outside of Wild Mass Guessing.
"Freedom is not a license for chaos" -Norton Juster's The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics Hide / Show Replies
You have to give people a little leeway if they only saw the film once, if they weren't feeling well when they did, if they were in the bathroom for an important part. During the movie, even I was entertaining the notion that they were the same person until the end when I realized they couldn't be.
Plus, being polite about it saves us from a discussion war.
Edited by pittsburghmuggle "Freedom is not a license for chaos" -Norton Juster's The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics
That's not really an excuse for completely misunderstanding a plot point. We talk about the movie as it is on these pages—not the movie as it might be if you stop paying attention to the movie and never bother to watch it the whole way through.
Do we put on the Empire Strikes Back's page that Luke and Leia's kiss isn't really squicky if you happened to be in the bathroom during the scenes that Luke says they're brother and sister?
I really, seriously don't see any indication that Sarah ever might have been Joe's mother. There's nothing ever so much as vaguely hinting that it's ever a consideration or a possibility, and even thinking about it for ten seconds causes the idea to completely fall apart into nonsense.
I don't think he was agreeing with him, but thanks for proving his point.
Indeed.
"Freedom is not a license for chaos" -Norton Juster's The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics
I don't see how. You're not excused for misunderstanding the movie because you weren't paying attention, any more than you're excused for complaining about a movie you didn't watch.
And I am genuinely not seeing how anyone could come to the conclusion that Sarah was supposed to be Joe's mother—I saw the movie, and saw nothing hinting at the possibility at all. So I ask, what is it that even leads one to that conclusion?
What is meant is being polite saves us from having repeated justifications back-and-forth for things - like you've been posting. You've been going on about how ridiculous you think the idea is and by extension how silly you think I am for cutting the person a break by invoking The Rule Of Cautious Editing Judgement.
Please go read that page.
Edited by pittsburghmuggle "Freedom is not a license for chaos" -Norton Juster's The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics
I don't think a character can be both an Anti-Hero and and an Anti-Villain - shoudn't we decide on one? Personally, I'd put Future!Joe as Anti-Villain and Past!Joe as a very dark (Type V) Anti-Hero, since Anti-Villain is described as "villain with good/heroic motivations"; Future!Joe has this (wants to save his wife and prevent a terrible crime boss) while Past!Joe really shows minimal indications of caring for anyone but himself until the end of the movie, and is quite content to have a job murdering people he knows nothing about for a future-mob.
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That seems reasonable, do it.
I'm on Youtube Reviewing Things Cause I can.
Why can't a character be both an Anti-Hero and an Anti-Villain at the same time?
The way I see it is that an Anti-Hero does heroic things in villanous ways and an Anti-Villain does villanous things in heroic ways. Young Joe is prepared to kill whoever threatens Sara and Cid and is a bit of an arse. Old Joe wants to save the future by killing a child and shows that he's not happy with what must be done.
I came up with a possible theory
◊ on how The Rainmaker was created in the loop where Joe kills his older self. I concluded there was a Time Paradox created in the loop we see in the film which creates an alternate future So I had two different versions of the one Joe comes from. I concluded he comes from one where a Paradox was created after he kills his older self. The events from the movie play out except that Old Joe kills Sara thus creating the future that Old Joe comes from. Now the Paradox it self becomes a loop. Asking how this gets started is like asking which came first the chicken or the egg.
EDIT I heavily revised it Including a theory from Man of 100 Words Involving Abe not telling Joe to go to China. it took me a couple of hours to rework it.
A possibly infinite number of times where Joe kills his older self, accepts his fate, goes to China, gets caught etc. is the loop. The Rainmaker grows up believing that his mother (in reality, his aunt) was killed because he wasn't strong enough and this messes him up. Tragic childhood incident + genius intellect = Rainmaker. When this loop is broken and Old Joe gets free, Young Joe goes to the farm and this eventually ends up with Cid accepting that Sara is really his mother. However, if Sara is killed because the would-be future Rainmaker wasn't strong enough, the Rainmaker would still exist because it'd basically be Rubber-Band History. Old Joe's attempt at breaking the rubber band in fact reinforces it. The paradox of Young Joe killing himself to remove the chance of him killing or creating the Rainmaker (past or present) snaps the rubber band. He's The Hero and therefore The Only One Allowed to Defeat You by Anthropic Principle, I guess.
EDIT: Word of God (according to the interview here http://io9.com/5949973/) says that in relation to how the Rainmaker came to be in the 'Old Joe Dies' loop, that "I'd just say take a look at two things: where Sara/Cid's relationship is at when Joe finds them on the farm, and the positive effect Joe and the events caused by Joe's presence has on both Cid directly and on that relationship." Which I'm interpreting to mean that I'm sort-of right. Ish. Partly. In a way.
Is there any trope that is basically "You went back in time to fix this, and it was you going back that caused it all along"? The film certainly implies that it may have been _because_ Old Joe killed Cid's mother that Cid turned into the Rainmaker, at least in one trouser of time. I'm thinking this might be an existing trope because I've seen it at least once before, in the story Let's Go To Golgotha, where it's the people going back to Jesus's death that cause Jesus to be killed in the first place.
I think that's just a time travel-specific version of Nice Job Breaking It, Hero...
It's called You Already Changed the Past.
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
No, because it's explicitly shown that in the first timeline Joe killed his future self, and therefor the first old Joe couldn't possibly have created the Rainmaker.
People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually — from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint — it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly... timey-wimey... stuff...
You fell victim to one of the classic blunders!
I am gonna move character tropes (around 30 examples) from the main work page to the characters sheet. Those are not supposed to be in two places.