Film / Looper

Joe: So do you know what's going to happen? You done all this already? As me?
Old Joe: I don't want to talk about time travel shit. Because if we talk about it, then we're gonna be here all day, drawing diagrams with straws.

Looper is a 2012 American Science Fiction thriller film written and directed by Rian Johnson, in which Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a man named Joseph Simmons, and Bruce Willis plays a future version of Joe.

The movie is set in the year 2044, thirty years before the invention of Time Travel. The technology is immediately outlawed, but the world's high-profile criminal syndicates begin putting it to practical use in secret. Because it is nearly impossible to discreetly dispose of a body in 2074 (due to advanced tracking and tagging technologies), the criminals send the target back in time, whereupon an assassin (called a "Looper") kills and disposes of the helpless victim before he technically ever existed.

Joe is one such Looper, and like all Loopers he has accepted the job knowing that if he's still alive in 2074, his employers will terminate his contract by sending his future self back to die at his younger self's hands ("closing the loop"). The problem is that when his future self does appear, he does so of his own free will, unbound and ready to fight. Older Joe easily subdues Young Joe and embarks on his own agenda in the past — and he will not let anyone stand in his way.

The film, which also stars Paul Dano, Jeff Daniels, and Emily Blunt, is the third from writer/director Rian Johnson, as well as Johnson's second collaboration with Levitt. Watch the trailer here.

Character tropes go on to the Characters Sheet.

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Tropes featured in Looper include:

• 20 Minutes into the Future: The film is set 32 years into the future from when it was released in 2012.
• Abnormal Ammo: Sara likes to use her shotgun for intimidation against drifters who happen upon the farm, but she's all talk when it comes to killing people. A blast of rock salt, however, she's ok with. It knocks Young Joe right on his ass.
• Actor Allusion:
  • Bruce Willis' outfit at the end of this film is identical to his outfit at the end of Pulp Fiction.
  • Early in the film, Young Joe is shown in several scenes wearing dress pants and a wifebeater.
  • This also isn't the first time Bruce Willis has played a time-traveller from a Bad Future who gets killed in the past, with his younger self just right there to see it happen.
• Actually Pretty Funny: Cid tells Joe he wants a blunderbuss just like his, and Joe replies by asking if he's gonna pole-vault with it because it's bigger than him. You can clearly see Cid suppressing a giggle.
• Aliens in Cardiff: A hardboiled, time-traveling hitman tale set in... Kansas.
• Always Accurate Attack: Loopers use a blunderbuss that is virtually impossible to miss with when the target is within 15 yards. Outside of that range, they're ineffective.
• Anachronism Stew: While being set in the future, the common shotgun is styled like a blunderbuss and the clothes mimic previous fashions. Also, those are clearly 2000s and 2010s model cars that are seen in 2044. The US economy has fallen apart, so older cars (retrofitted with some sort of battery or energy unit hooked up to their gas tanks from the outside) may be all that's available to the proletariat.
• Anticlimax: When Old Joe goes for Abe, who is entrenched in his room, the scene cuts away right before the shootout commences.
• Arc Words:
  • "Closing the loop."
  • "So I changed it."
• Artistic License – Gun Safety: Kid Blue juggles his loaded revolver right in Joe's face, and you can even see he almost drops it. Then he accidentally fires a shot when he gets hit upside the head by the opening of Abe's office door. As the movie progresses, it's made clear that Kid Blue is exactly the kind of "fuck-up turkey" he sees Joe and the other Loopers as being.
• Awesome Anachronistic Apparel: Most Loopers (Young Joe included) seem to be riding on a 20th Century nostalgia fad with their neckties and other "past" fashions. And if the world of 2074 is any indication, it apparently stuck with everyone.
• Bad Future: The "present" of 2044 is a Crapsack World. The US suffers from hyper-inflation of the dollar, rampant drug use, roving bands of violent vagrants, loads and loads and loads of shantytowns, and criminal syndicates controlling entire cities, though Europe and Asia are at least implied to be better off. The future of 2074 seems to be more pleasant (in China, at least), but society is still at the mercy of a fearsome criminal and terrorist mastermind.
  Abe: I'm from the future. You should go to China.
• Badass Boast: Kid Blue's comparative speech between the "Gats" and the "blunderbusses" is supposed to be this, but gets immediately undermined when he is established to be the mob's resident fuck-up/idiot, nobody respects him, and all of the gun twirling he had been doing throughout the speech had gotten him shot in the foot once already.
• Bad Guy Bar: Abe owns a club frequented by all the Loopers and Gat Men.
• Balcony Escape: Joe tries this and ends up falling a couple stories.
• Batman Gambit: Abe convincing Joe to rat out Seth by banking on his selfishness.
• Bellisario's Maxim: In-Universe. Old Joe basically says this when his younger self starts to try to dissect time travel.
• Big "NO!": Sara in the climax when Cid gets shot.
• Bilingual Bonus: A Chinese news report in an early 2074 scene sheds light on just how horrific the Rainmaker is.
• Binge Montage: Early on, we are treated to a montage of Joe being high on some designer drug.
• Bittersweet Ending: Young Joe kills himself to prevent Old Joe from murdering Cid's mother to get to the boy, an act which would have driven the boy to become the very Rainmaker Old Joe is trying to prevent. Though the future isn't certain, Cid possessing one parent instead of none (and all of Joe's silver, nearly 1,000 bars) at least makes it more likely he won't become the feared mob boss, while also, as Young Joe noted earlier in the film, saving Old Joe's wife from the circumstances that get her killed.
• Bizarre Baby Boom: It's stated that about 10% of the population has a mutation called "TK" (telekinesis) that allows them to move objects with their mind. However the effect is so weak it’s little more than a party trick. Later on, it becomes a Chekhov's Gun when it's revealed that the villain is powerful enough to use it as a deadly weapon.
• Black Comedy: In subtle and usually stealthy ways, but there is a lot of it.
  (A Gat Man sits on a chair, and the camera tilts to Young Joe, who's behind a couch, and then to Cid, who's on the stairs.)
  (Cid motions "Do you wanna shoot the guy?")
  (Joe motions "WHAT? NO!")
• The Blade Always Lands Pointy End In: Joe's thrown gat lands barrel-first into the ground, if only because he threw it straight down.
• Blown Across the Room: Almost every gun death punches the victim at least a foot away, since the guns are mostly either heavy calibre handguns chambered in .45-70 Gov't, or hi-tech blunderbuss shotguns.
• Body Horror: How Abe's goons convince Old Seth to surrender, with a hefty side order of Temporal Mutability.
• Break Them by Talking: Abe's preferred way of dealing with troublemaker.
  Abe: You're expecting that we're gonna break your fingers with a hammer or... something awful, but I'm gonna diffuse that tension right now. That's not gonna happen. What is gonna happen is that I'm gonna talk for a little, not even that long, then you're gonna give up your friend.
• Brick Joke: Abe hears Young Joe's plans to move to France and suggests, using his knowledge of the future, that Joe should instead move to China. Joe refuses. In the flash forward, we cut to Joe in China.
• Bulletproof Human Shield: Old Joe uses one of the Gat Men this way.
• Call-Back: Certain shots or actions happen several times.
  • The shots of Young Joe looking down on Seth hiding in his silver vault early in the film and then Cid hiding in the vagrant tunnel are virtually identical. Joe has a visible look of deja vu the second time.
  • Joe's hair. Early in the film, he inspects his receding hairline. He asks a prostitute to stroke his hair, saying it's something his mother used to do. In the end, Sara strokes his hair after his heroic sacrifice.
  • The first we see of Cid is his mother stroking his foot. In a flashback, Old Joe recalls his wife stroking his foot.
• Car Cushion: Young Joe's fall from the fire escape at his apartment is cushioned by roof of a car.
• Carved Mark:
  • In the event of "Running Loops" (a Looper failing to "close the loop" by killing his future self), the Gat Men employ a man known as "The Doc" to carve directions onto the arm of the "young" Looper, which then appear instantly on the "old" Looper as scars, as a means of crude communication. In the event that doesn't produce results fast enough, they start slowly dismembering the "young" Looper to cripple his "old" version.
  • Subverted later in the movie when Old Joe notices scars on his arm which appear to say the same thing ("Be at...") but turn out to spell the name "Beatrix", the name of a waitress at the diner Young Joe frequents. Old Joe points out that Young Joe could've just as easily got his attention with the name of another waitress whose name wasn't as long.
• Character Development: Young Joe starts the film as reckless, self-absorbed and pretty ruthless. He starts to soften after arriving at Sara's farm, and he comes to care for both her and Cid. When Jesse takes Sara hostage, Joe makes a point of prioritizing her safety before trying to save his own neck, and despite initially being horrified by Cid's wild power, he has gained enough compassion to understand that there is a difference between a scared child and a ruthless mob boss. By the time of the final showdown, Joe is trying to protect Cid and Sara, rather than to get his life back. He ultimately sacrifices himself to prevent Old Joe from murdering Sara and inadvertently ensuring that Cid always becomes the Rainmaker.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Telekinesis is introduced early and dismissed as not being that big of a deal besides cheap parlor tricks. Cid, the future Rainmaker, turns out to have the power to make people explode with it, crush vehicles, and flatten entire areas. Foreshadowed by his mother hiding in an old safe when Cid gets angry.
  • A literal one in the form of the blunderbuss. The range of the blunderbuss is so limited it's basically a close combat weapon, unlike the Gat Men's revolver. Which turns out to be a problem in the end when Young Joe is armed and dangerous, but too far away from Old Joe to stop him in time... so the only solution open to him is shooting himself.
  • A ball-peen hammer rests on Abe's desk in plain sight, but Abe assures Joe he won't break his fingers with it and will instead talk to him for a few minutes get him to give up Seth. When it comes to Kid Blue, however, Abe soon responds to his screw ups by smashing his hand.
  • Seth's barely working hovercycle, which is "borrowed" by a great many characters by the film's end.
• China Takes Over the World: China becomes a superpower in the future, with the United States resembling immediate post-breakup Soviet Union. Characters are shown using yuan rather than dollars, and a number of future characters talk about how great life in China is.
• Coin Walk Flexing: People with the TK mutation (a weak form of telekinesis) are often shown floating coins with their hands and it comes off looking similar to a knuckle roll. Sara shows greater control by levitating Joe's lighter effortlessly and admitting she used to hold other telekinetics' coins down to mess with them.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: What the mobsters do to Young Seth to get to Old Seth, as well as the 'logic' that it wasn't actually torture. They just start removing pieces of his body. If Abe can be kept at his word that killing a young Looper is bad for the timeline, then they're going to keep him alive without limbs, a nose, or a tongue for thirty years.
• Complexity Addiction: One of the common complaints about the movie based on the trailer was that time travel plot seemed like a needlessly overcomplicated means of execution. However, this is actually averted in the film proper — advanced tracking and forensics in the future have made disposing of bodies nearly impossible, so they kidnap the targets and send them to the past for Loopers to kill. Though it could also be a "stealing wheelbarrows" gag; both the Loopers and any law enforcement personnel investigating them think it's "just" a means of Disposing of a Body, a purpose it serves excellently. However, the Loopers never think twice about the tons of precious metals strapped to the bodies when they're looking for disappearing witnesses and informants, so why should the cops? This neatly explains why Old Joe's wife is killed without a second thought; sure, it's a murder, but it's not one anyone's too concerned about investigating for organized criminal connections and thus not a Looper target.
• Contrived Coincidence: Both Time Travel and TK powers suddenly appear at the same point in history, which also happens to be 20 Minutes into the Future. The two are combined to generate the Rainmaker's story as it is written, which purportedly drives the plot of the movie. However, this is contrived and not the Anthropic Principle because the Rainmaker's TK powers are not pivotal to the rest of the story. It simply fed the Rule of Cool for the Cid / Rainmaker subplot.
• Cooldown Hug: Cid gets this after his TK powers spiral out of control.
• Create Your Own Villain: Old Joe would have inadvertently ensured Cid becomes the Rainmaker in every future loop if he killed Cid's mother to get to the boy.
• Crippling Overspecialization: As noted by Seth, the "Blunderbusses" are very powerful and guarantee a kill within fifteen yards— good for committing executions where the target's delivered near point-blank — but can't hit anything beyond that. They consistently fail to hit when used against anyone who isn't on their knees with a bag on their head.
• Cruel and Unusual Death:
  • Jesse, the only decent Gat Man in the movie, a man who seemingly wouldn't hurt an innocent person, gets the most gruesome and violent death of them all; telekinetically lifted into the air and torn apart from the inside out. Although most of it is hidden from view, what we do see only fuels our imagination for the worst.
  • Seth is also a contender for this trope. After he's ratted out by Joe and caught by the Gat Men, his fate is to have his limbs removed and his face mutilated until his future self shows up. While this is happening, we're treated to a disturbing scene in which Old Seth's limbs disappear in a rather creepy manner. By the time he finally shows up at his destination, there's hardly anything left.
• Cyberpunk: The film's genre; set twenty minutes into a Bad Future with heavy noir elements, China as the dominant superpower, and abundant Schizo Tech.
• Cycle of Revenge: Discussed in the ending monologue, as a matter of Vicious Cycle caused by time loops.
  Young Joe: Then I saw it: I saw a mom who would die for her son; a man who would kill for his wife; a boy, angry and alone. Laid out in front of him, the bad path, I saw it. And the path was a circle. Round and round. So I changed it.
• Days of Future Past: The US of 2044 is somewhat reminiscent of The Great Depression... only this time around, things got MUCH worse. Meanwhile, 2074 looks like a more futuristic mix of The '40s and The New '10s.
• Death Is the Only Option: Young Joe kills himself to stop Old Joe from killing Sara and ensuring Cid becomes the Rainmaker.
• Death of a Child: A kid is shot on his porch as he arrives home from school, (seemingly) randomly.
• Delayed Ripple Effect: Changes to the timeline affect future selves as soon as they happen, but have no effect on any event before the change. For example, when the mobsters cut Young Seth's legs off, his future self's legs instantly disappear. However, events continue as though Old Seth still had two perfectly good legs up until that point, which is why he could even escape in the first place.
• Diner Brawl: When the two Joes meet in the diner, the scene ends with Old Joe giving a Groin Attack to Young Joe, beating him down, then shooting his way out when back-up arrives.
• Disappeared Dad: No mention is made of Cid's father, or where he might be. It's possible that Cid's mother, Sara, doesn't know who or where he is herself.
• Down on the Farm: The film takes place mainly in (future) Kansas, with nearly everything outside the unnamed city being nothing but farmland.
• Dramatic Slip:
  • Sara backs away and falls down during her encounter with the mute kid on her property. She also slips and falls in the climax on the field.
  • Cid is startled and slips on the stairs of his home leading to a massive TK outburst.
• Empathic Environment: A large neon arrow pointing the direction of the stairs helpfully points which direction a Gat Man is coming from the shoot Old Joe.
• Enemy Mine: Young Joe briefly teams up with the Gat Men as they shoot at Old Joe. As soon as Old Joe escapes he realises how bad an idea it is and runs.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • Kid Blue accidentally firing his gun — and being asked if he shot off his other foot.
  • Abe jokes and talks with his subordinates like they're old friends, even chiding Joe on dressing up even though there isn't a dress code. And then you notice the hammer sitting on his desk...
  • Old Joe refuses to show Young Joe a picture of his wife, unwilling to sacrifice their relationship for a sure way of saving her life.
  • Cid, upon seeing Young Joe in the middle of a very painful withdrawal and begging for water, immediately gives him a water bottle. Then, while bombarding his mother with questions, he astutely notes that Joe can't be just another vagrant — his shoes are too shiny.
• Et Tu, Brute?: Joe betrays his friend, Seth, by handing him over to Abe and his men, albeit reluctantly.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: What drives this loop's Cid to become the Rainmaker — he loses his mother, his moral compass and the only person who can calm him down in a TK tantrum, and decides to take revenge on Loopers.
• Even Evil Has Standards: An instant after pointing his gun at Cid, Jesse turns it toward the ceiling and raises his hands to show he's not a threat. It doesn't help him. According to the deleted scenes, he says he has a wife and kids of his own.
• Everything Is an Instrument: As explained in the DVD/BluRay extras, the non-orchestral side of the soundtrack that contains industrial-sounding techno stuff was actually made from sampling industrial material and machinery, then remixed into music. Even the recurring harpsichord-sounding music was created by building a custom instrument that Nathan Johnson dubbed "The Gat Piano."
• Everyone Is Armed: Due to the nature of the Crapsack World, causing a quite violent separation in social and economical classes, anyone can be killed for the sake of property or caprice with little to no consequence.
• Exactly Exty Years Ago: Loopers have 30 years to live after closing the loop.
• Fade to White: The film's ending leaves the future of Cid up in the air. Though it is heavily implied it will be better, since his mother survives (thus removing his revenge motive) and inherits a sizable fortune, and Young Joe had a decidedly positive impact both on Cid's life and his relationship with his mother.
• Fantastic Drug: An unnamed designer drug administered via eye drops.
• Feet-First Introduction: A rare example involving a minor. The first we see of Cid is his feet on the bed stroked by Sara. Even in his next scene he is only shown waist downwards as he gets Joe some water on the front porch.
• A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted: Explored in detail.
  • Loopers are technically "the lowest men on the totem pole" - men of minimal competence chosen for short-sighted hedonism so they will gleefully gun down their targets for the money they're paid, without ever thinking about how they've basically signed up to commit suicide (assuming they survive until 2074). Up until the events of the film, Young Joe has never killed a man who wasn't bound and helpless at his feet. He saves up half of his silver (which is viewed by Abe as a smart financial move), but blows the rest just like all the other Loopers.
  • As a result, in the timeline where Joe successfully closes his loop, he takes all of his money and goes to China, but within a decade, winds up wasting it all on partying and drugs. He ends up working as a hitman, only this time in broad daylight.
  • Based on Young Joe's egging, Seth's hoverbike cost a large chunk of money and he never managed to get it running before his death.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The Urban Legends about the Rainmaker. Hell, the term "Rainmaker" itself.
    Old Joe: There are stories he has a synthetic jaw, saw his mom shot, shit like that.
  • Sara uses a futuristic crop duster which essentially makes rain, foreshadowing her son Cid's moniker of "The Rainmaker".
  • Clouds symbolism.
  • Not to mention the double Chekhov's Gun. With Seth as an example, telekinesis is suggested to be worth basically nothing. Then we find that Sara is much stronger than Seth. And finally there's Cid, who is much stronger than her...
  • An In-Universe example is the posters, drawings and action figures of a man in black wearing a wide-brimmed hat in Cid's room, just like the outfits worn by the Rainmaker's mooks in the future.
  • Abe makes several references to future events that would happen in Joe's life. In fact, the entire conversation between Abe and Joe is very important.
• Film Noir: Rian Johnson's trademark love of noir comes through in certain spots, perhaps most noticeably in the retro outfits of the 2074 mobsters.
• Flyover Country: The film mostly takes place in Kansas City. Abe, the gangster who manages the Looper program in 2044, has a lot of down time and uses it to gather some Gat Men as muscle to take over the city; Joe remarks that in any other city this would be viewed as impressive^note Although Kansas City actually has a fairly robust history of organized crime.
• Furnace Body Disposal: A method used by Loopers to dispose of the bodies of time-traveling execution victims. With the body incinerated and no missing person in the present to be searched for, it’s a pretty fool-proof method.
• Future Me Scares Me: Old Joe is more dangerous and ruthless than Young Joe, who isn't exactly scared of him but is trying to kill him.
• Going Cold Turkey: We see Old Joe in the future being gently nursed through withdrawal symptoms by his wife. Young Joe is (much less gently) guided through his own withdrawal by Sara.
• Gold–Silver–Copper Standard: Loopers are usually paid in silver ingots, which are conveniently strapped to their targets. However, if they get gold instead, they know that they have "closed their loop" and killed their future selves. They are now free to enjoy their lives... for the next 30 years.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Several.
  • Right at the point where Old Joe goes Guns Akimbo, the camera angle casts his entire body in profile, with his targets conveniently out of frame.
  • Although we see some blood coming out when Cid starts to murder Jesse, we don't see anything significant before the camera cuts away. As Young Joe and Sara run back into the house to look for Cid, the camera pans by the house on the outside, with one set of curtains almost completely red. When Joe finds Cid, his face and shirt are drenched in blood.
  • All we see of Young Seth being tortured is its effects as scars on Old Seth — then body parts vanishing — and then its aftermath — a lump of something swathed in a bloody sheet next to a heart monitor. As for his future self, the camera cuts away as Kid Blue shoots him through what's left of his face.
• Go Through Me: In the climax, Sara uses her body to block Old Joe's line of fire on Cid.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The Rainmaker, the Big Bad of the near-future whose reign of terror-to-come colors the actions of everyone else in the film.
• Groin Attack: Old Joe does this to Young Joe.
• Gun Twirling: Kid Blue's Failed Attempt at Drama. The accidental discharge didn't help either.
• Guns Akimbo: Old Joe wields two FN-P90s in one scene. It's as ridiculous, and cool, as it sounds.
• Hand Cannon: The Gat Men carry Magnum Research B.F.R.'s ("Big Frame Revolver").
• The Hero Dies / Heroic Suicide: In the end, Young Joe kills himself to stop Old Joe from killing Cid's mother, averting the Cycle of Revenge and creating an Alternate Timeline where Cid still has his mother. There is still a non-zero chance that he will become the Rainmaker, but it's better than the original timeline, which was Cid's Start of Darkness.
• Hero Stole My Bike: Not really all that heroic, but Young Joe steals Seth's hoverbike at one point to escape into the fields.
• Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act: Old Joe is trying to kill The Rainmaker, the "Hitler" of his time... but, as Young Joe realizes, is merely the catalyst which will create him.
• Human Notepad: Carved directions on the arm are used as a way of communication between young and old time travellers.
• Humans Are Psychic in the Future: By 2044, 10% of the world will have minor telekinetic powers.
• I Hate Past Me: A Central Theme is the friction between a man at two different points in his life with incompatible goals for each of their futures. Joe's older self is particularly annoyed by Young Joe's actions, since everything Young Joe does affects him, and he keeps getting into trouble.
• I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: Kid Blue does a lot of fancy-but-dangerous spinning of his revolver, and at one point misfires it. It's all but stated that he shot one of his own feet off this way.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Kid Blue also notes that gat revolvers have accuracy that the blunderbuss lacks; despite this claim, Kid Blue and the Gat Men rarely hit anything with their badass pistols.
• Insert Cameo: Rian Johnson's hands appear in the scene where Seth's older version starts losing his fingers, nose and other extremeties as the younger version is being tortured.
• It's All About Me: Joe is incredibly selfish, willing to give up his best friend to protect his bank account. Even his future self is unwilling to make a profound personal sacrifice to save his wife's life, despite this being his supposed mission.
• It's All My Fault: Sara blames herself for her sister's accidental death, caused when Cid unintionally unleashed his telekinetic powers.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Young Joe (who at this point is still a fairly selfish Jerkass) bluntly tells Old Joe that if he truly wanted to save his wife, he could easily have Young Joe not marry her and thus her fate is averted, and Young Joe offers to promise just that right then. While very cold, he's still right.
• Job Title: Joe is a Looper, and he spends the opening scene explaining what that is.
• Junkie Parent: Joe mentions that his mother was a drug addict who sold him to a panhandler gang.
• Karmic Death: All the loopers. After making a life by killing people, they end up killed by themselves. On a more specific example Old Joe, and to a lesser extent, Young Joe.
• Keep It Foreign: In the French dub, Joe learns Italian to go to Florence.
• Killing Your Alternate Self: How often do you get a job, even as an assassin for hire, where killing your future self is considered normal? Young Joe pre-empts this in the end with a Heroic Suicide, killing his older self and stopping the Rainmaker from being created.
• Lampshade Hanging:
  • Old Joe's explanation to why they should NOT touch the fickle Time Travel subject. After they present such an eerie subject as Time Travel, they drop it for the most part — up until it starts slamming back into their faces. Word of God says Old Joe doesn't quite understand it himself, and doesn't really want to talk about it.
  • Also mentioned by Abe.
    Abe: This time travel shit just fries your brain like an egg.
• "Leave Your Quest" Test: A Deleted Scene has Old Joe balk at shooting a child, remembering that his wife wanted him to stop being a killer. He's about to throw his gat in a rubbish bin when a vision of his wife disappearing makes him reconsider. A rare example where leaving the quest would be the right thing to do.
  "If I picked up this gun...life, my life, given back to me, just like it was before. And she would never know what I did."
• Lens Flare: All over the place. The creators seem to have a special liking for horizontal-blue-line flares.
• Lost in the Maize: Joe manages to lose the Gat Men in a field of maize.
• Lost in Translation: The Spanish dub translates the "Rainmaker"'s name as the "Founder," as "rainmaker" has no equivalent in Spanish. This means that all of the rain metaphors get lost in translation.
• Love at First Sight: Old Joe was completely head over heels with his wife when he met her the first time.
• Love Redeems:
  • Subverted and inverted. At first, it seems that Old Joe's main motivation is to save his wife's life. But when Young Joe offers to memorize her picture and walk away when he meets her in the future, ensuring that she'll live without him, he refuses. Old Joe wants the life he had with his wife back, and he is willing to kill three children to get it. Love has made him more selfish, not less; he wants to have his cake and eat it too.
  • Double subverted when Sara's love for her son and his memories of his own mother inspires Young Joe's Heroic Sacrifice, setting things right.
• Meaningful Echo:
  • When Abe tells Joe why he hired him in the first place, he tells him that, when they first met, he could see how his entire future life was going to go. He says that things were going to end badly, "so I changed it." At the end, Joe uses almost the same words.
  • Joe asks Suzie to stroke his hair like his mother did. After his heroic sacrifice, Sara strokes his hair in the same way.
• Meaningful Name: The Rainmaker, named for his "Reign of Terror." Or the fact that he makes it rain blood as evidenced by his countenance after Jesse's death.
• Meanwhile, in the Future…: Any change to the timeline instantly updates the future self from the point of its occurrence.
• Mind over Matter: Telekinesis has been discovered by 2044, with 10% of humanity born with the potential for it. However, most people can't do much more than clumsily levitate quarters, with varying degrees of focus and effort required. Sara can easily levitate a metal cigarette lighter and casually spin it around in smooth circles. Cid can levitate all the furniture in a room, apply enough force to flip a moving vehicle, send out a shockwave that knocks over everything within a hundred yards, and make people explode. And that's before he learns to focus his abilities.
• Misapplied Phlebotinum:
  • The mafia uses time travel for executions and corpse disposal.
  • Telekinesis is also stated to have amounted to basically nothing, since there are no known humans who have a dose of it that's strong enough to accomplish anything meaningful.
• Missing Mom: Revealed to be the Rainmaker's Start of Darkness if the loop Old Joe inadvertently started continued: Cid, enraged and in grief over his mother's death, decides to become the Rainmaker and kill all Loopers.
• Motif
  • Clocks, loops and circles: Loopers' careers involve time loops. Characters are frequently seen checking analog clocks, with hands that move in a circle. Sara spins her lighter in a circle using her TK. Abe notes the cyclical nature of fashions. When Old Joe returns to Abe's hide-out, Abe notes that they've come full circle, like the fashion for neckties.
  • Rain: Clouds in the sky. A crop-dusting drone on the farm. The mysterious "Rainmaker" of the underworld.
• My Car Hates Me: At one point, Joe has to use Seth's incredibly unreliable hoverbike to escape, and only just manages to start it up in time.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Old Joe has one of these after killing a child suspected of being the Rainmaker. When nothing reverts back to the way it was, and Old Joe is still in the past, he comes to the brutal realisation that he has just murdered an innocent child, and breaks down in tears.
• Mutilation Interrogation: What happens to Seth's younger self, leading to his future self having his body parts disappearing one by one.
• Never Trust a Trailer: Certain adverts make it seem that Young Joe was on the run from Abe due to being rather unwilling to kill Old Joe, and that the two would end up grudgingly cooperating with each other. Sara and Cid are barely mentioned.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Old Joe tries to kill Cid, only to ensure he becomes the Rainmaker in the process.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Kid Blue captures Joe and brings him back to Abe's club, only for Old Joe to wipe out Abe and his henchmen once there.
• No Honor Among Thieves: Common theme throughout the film.
• No Kill like Overkill: The ex-Looper who passes on the Rainmaker's location in the past to Old Joe is shown to be under siege from a couple of armored personnel carriers manned by the Rainmaker's mooks.
• No New Fashions in the Future: Discussed as part of the "time loop" motif. Clothes of 2044 recycle 20th century fashions, which annoys Abe. He tells Young Joe to wear "something new." From what people see of the world leading up to 2074, fashions continue to trend backwards, to the point that by 2074, the Gat Men are wearing 1940s-style fedoras, overcoats and Casablanca-ish dresses.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Abe, cracking on Kid Blue's clumsiness, asks him if he's shot off his other foot now. We never hear any more details about what happened the first time.
  • When Abe learns Joe plans to live in France when his loop closes, he advises that Joe go to China instead. We never find out why visiting France is a bad idea in the future.
• Note to Self: First, Old Joe pins a paper note on an unconscious Young Joe's jacket, warning him to skip town before the mob figures out he didn't kill his older self. Later, Young Joe carves the name of his favorite waitress into his arm. Old Joe reads the scars that appear on his arm and meets his younger self at the diner.
• Nothing Is Scarier: We never see Young Seth's mutilation in detail, just a brief shot of a bloody cloth on the operating table. But with what happens to Old Seth...
• Oh, Crap!: More like Oh, I just remembered I shoot myself 30 years ago. All the more priceless.
• Only in It for the Money: Pretty much the entire motivation of any given Looper. They kill their targets, cash in the bars of silver strapped to their victims as payment, spend the money on women and partying, lather, rinse, repeat until killed or loop is closed. Comes through especially clearly when Abe gives Joe the choice of turning Seth in or giving up half his silver; he quickly chooses the former option.
• Opening Monologue: Young Joe gives one, introducing the Looper concept.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Sara has a very noticeable Southern accent when she first 'meets' Joe. It disappears as the movie goes on.
• Our Time Travel Is Different: Displaced persons appear with no fanfare — they just... appear and disappear, though traveling back into the past is a dramatic build-up of heat and wind. And what affects the past affects the future: this is used to dispose of those who escape their own Loops by chopping off parts, as well as scrawling messages via scars. Seth gets executed this way, and Old Joe simply disappears. In addition, traveling to the past screws your brain up and tears away chunks of important memory, especially when events that may-or-may-not-have-happened appear to happen, either restoring their memory or showing what "really" happened in the new timeline.
• Posthumous Narration: Joe narrates the movie before his suicide.
• Prematurely Bald: When looking himself over in the mirror before a night out, Joe gives a brief but critical glance at his widow's peak hairline. As we later see in the montage of his next 30 years, his hair doesn't last long and his older version is played by famously bald Bruce Willis.
• Psychic Nose Bleed: Sara recalls how one would-be suitor burst a blood vessel in his eye trying to lift a quarter using his TK while Sara was keeping it down.
• Punch-Clock Villain:
  • Jesse is polite in his mandatory search of Sara's farmhouse. Joe says that he's a good guy and will leave once he's finished without hurting Sara. When Jesse realizes that he's pointing a gun at Cid, he immediately raises his hands to show that he's not a threat.
  • Joe himself, who is a hitman for an organized crime syndicate but only seems to be in it for the money and loyalty to Abe for rescuing him from the streets and giving him a sense of purpose.
• Ransacked Room: When Joe returns home after bungling to close his loop, he finds his apartment turned over by the Gat Men.
• Regional Riff: The soundtrack is a mix of jarring industrial themes and powerful orchestral pieces, with the former taking precedent during the more violent sequences and city scenes, and the latter taking over for the more dramatic and rural parts. A prime example of the transitioning exists in the "A Life In A Day" sequence (spoilers). The piece starts with pianos and percussion as Young Joe travels to Shanghai, then immediately gives way to industrial noise when it cuts to him partying, abusing drugs, and committing crimes. The noises briefly die as the character transitions to Old Joe, then return for a shot of a needle and the bar fight, before finally dying fully as Old Joe spots his future wife and then settles down with her for the sequence end.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: This is Kid Blue's claim; while the Loopers do the grunt work of killing targets and use crude blunderbusses, the elite Gat Men carry long-barreled, large-caliber revolvers. However, when Old Joe gets his hands on some automatic weaponry, he is able to massacre dozens of the Gat Men with relative ease.
• Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: In the alternate timeline where Joe closes his loop, he cashes in both the gold he gets for the job and the silver he's been saving up, and moves to Shanghai. Within six years, he's blown all his money on drugs and partying and started working as a mercenary to support himself.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Kid Blue manages to capture Old Joe by staking out the apartment of a sex worker that Joe was fond of, assuming he might come see her. Joe does show up, but he didn't even know that the woman lived there; he's only there because her child was coincidentally one of the three that he had identified as potentially growing up to be the Rainmaker.
• Rousseau Was Right: The Rainmaker was rumored to have lost his mother at one point. In present time, the Rainmaker is just a boy named Cid who isn't able to control his powers and like any other child requires parenting.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy is doubled up to create the titular causal loop: Young Joe finally realizes that Old Joe attempting to kill Cid in 2044 (before he as the Rainmaker can kill Joe's wife) and the resulting death of Cid's mother is what turns him into the Rainmaker in the first place, in turn leading to Joe's loop being closed and the death of his wife in 2074. The Rainmaker himself is similarly implied to have closed the loops in an attempt to save his mother, which is how Joe ended up running his loop in the past in the first place.
• Self-Made Orphan: Subverted. The woman who Cid killed wasn't his mother, even though he thought she was.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Old Joe's goal, in his own mind at least.
• Screw Destiny: Young Joe's final act in the film, after trying to ensure a Stable Time Loop through the rest of the story.
  Joe: Then I saw it. I saw a mom who would die for her son, a man who would kill for his wife, a boy angry and alone, laid out in front of him the bad path. I saw it, and the path was a circle, round and round. So I changed it.
• Shades of Conflict: Hoo boy. Either Gray vs. Gray or Gray vs. Black, though the former has the edge.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: While the film ends with the Loopers wiped out and Cid's mother alive, there is nothing to suggest that time travel will not be invented still and the mafia in the future cannot re-establish the Loopers, and there is no promise that Cid will not become the Rainmaker. Word of God even admits that Joe is just one person, and it's unknown how large or small an impact his actions could make in the grand scheme of the time travel plot.
• Shoot Him, He Has a Wallet!: Joe's Chinese wife is shot by a Gat Man who mistakes her ergonomic garden trowel for a gun.
• Short-Range Shotgun: The "blunderbuss" is an extremely short range weapon. It is impossible to miss anything closer than 15 yards, but beyond that range, it's effectively worthless. All a Looper needs to do is stand close to the spot where their target is going to appear and pull the trigger to ensure a kill.
• Shout-Out:
  • Director Rian Johnson has stated that his film has references to among other things 12 Monkeys, Terminator, Back to the Future, Primer, Timecrimes, Witness, Casablanca, Domu and AKIRA.
  • Johnson also said the time-travel device was inspired by the Infocom game Trinity.
  • Abe's club is named "La Belle Aurore", the French bar Rick and Ilsa were at during the German invasion in Casablanca. Joe's Character Development was also loosely based on Rick's own growth from a selfish man into a hero who would sacrifice his happiness to ensure another's. The scene in which Seth pleads with Joe to hide him is extremely similar to a scene between Ugarte and Rick. The message Joe carves in his arm is "Beatrix": the name of the waitress at the diner ... but it's also "Be at Rick's".
  • Joe's use of the Finger Gun and narcotic eyedrops are also borrowed from various French New Wave films. Both also appear in Cowboy Bebop.
  • Early in the film, Young Joe is shown in several scenes wearing dress pants and a wifebeater like John McClane, somewhat alluding to Willis playing his older counterpart.
  • A scene where Young Joe lays injured in the middle of the road, struggling with his shotgun while Kid Blue races toward him on his bike, is reminiscent of a climactic scene from Mad Max.
• Show, Don't Tell: The effects of future drugs, how Temporal Mutability works, and the Rainmaker's power are all shown in often horrifying ways before any explanation of them is given.
• Shown Their Work: To a ludicrous degree. Numerous questions about the movie can often be sated by simply watching through again and paying very close attention.
• Simultaneous Arcs: The scene where Joe finds the Gat Men looking for him after failing to kill his future self is seen from the younger and future selves' point of views.
• Snowy Screen of Death: When Joe shoots his way into the hit men's headquarters, blasting security cameras as he goes.
• Smoking Hot Sex: Sara has her first cigarette in a long while after she and Joe have sex.
• Something Only They Would Say: Seth screws up closing his loop because his future self arrives singing a familiar song, making Seth hesitate long enough to confirm his identity. From there, Seth didn't have the nerve to follow through.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: An alternate montage of Joe's future in China is set to "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" as we see Joe committing shakedowns, firebombings and murders for his future employers.
• Stealth Pun: Kid Blue shooting himself in the foot, and then proceeding to fuck up just about everything he tries to do in the film.
• Stable Time Loop: Averted. You can mutilate or kill somebody's past self and their older self will be affected. Old Joe also nearly creates one by trying to kill Cid, thereby ensuring the Rainmaker will exist in all future loops, only for Young Joe to destroy the loop at the last second.
  • Though most of the intents are to create Stable Time Loops. It's even alluded to with the job title "Looper:" execute everyone the Mob sends back for you until you kill your future self, get a big payday, and are free to live the good life... until you're kidnapped by the Mob and sent back in time so your past self can "close their loop." The implication seems to be, under the film's rules of time travel, Stable Time Loops are the norm, and breaking out of one requires extranormal effort.
• Start of Darkness: This would have been Cid's if Old Joe killed his mother. Fortunately Young Joe was there to turn the situation around.
• Strolling Through the Chaos: This is how Old Joe catches sight of his future wife, calmly walking through a Bar Brawl in a hotel lobby; Joe stops fighting to stare at her and make an (unheard) pass. She responds by Flipping the Bird.
• Tap on the Head: During their first encounter, Old Joe punches Young Joe in the jaw, knocking him out so long that the sun has changed positions when he awakens.
• Telekinesis: For unexplained reasons, in 2044 roughly 10% of the population is telekinetic. While most are weak enough that it's little more than a parlor trick, there is one character who is slightly stronger and another significantly so.
• Team Mercy vs. Team Murder: Old Joe time travels to the past to kill children who have the possibility of growing up to become a powerful future crime lord known as The Rainmaker. His past self protects the child Cid from Old Joe's hunt, but quits when he witnesses Cid's powerful telekinesis and realizes why the Rainmaker is so dangerous. Ultimately he realizes that Old Joe's effort to murder Cid will fail but kill the boy's mother Sara in the process, creating a Stable Time Loop that will give Cid the motive to become the Rainmaker. Thus Joe shoots himself to eliminate his future self from existence, preventing the loop.
• Temporal Mutability: History can be altered, but the timeline actively tries to correct itself to absurd degrees. For instance, Old Joe almost ensures a Stable Time Loop that will create the Rainmaker in his attempt to destroy him.
• Temporal Suicide: How every Looper's life is supposed to end.
• Terminator Twosome: Old Joe and Young Joe, who are technically the same person.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich: Young and old Joe order steak, egg and fries at the diner but never touch their tasty meals. Old Joe sips both his beverages and plays with the plate, but never eats.
• Time Machine: The Mafia uses it to cleanly kill off those they have marked for death.
• Time Travel for Fun and Profit: Since time travel was outlawed as soon as it was invented, only powerful criminal syndicates have the capability to time travel. They use it to effectively perform hits and discard bodies, but it's never fully explained why they don't use their knowledge of the future to make guaranteed investments or bet on sporting events, which would legally and safely make them obscene amounts of money.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: Time travel works on some form of the Delayed Ripple Effect... most of the time. But while this lets characters Screw Destiny, create a Grandfather Paradox or ruin the future, history will try very hard to self-correct into a Stable Time Loop. Director Rian Johnson noted this is how Old Joe killing Cid's mother would prompt Cid to become the Rainmaker in all future loops.
• Too Dumb to Live: Seth. First, for signing up to be a Looper in the first place. Then, for letting his Loop run. Doubly invoked by Old Seth, who isn't any smarter than Young Seth, for trying to run in the first place. Young Seth ends up dismembered and placed in a coma for the rest of his life. Old Seth is consequently relieved of his limbs and shot.
• Troll: Sara, back before she settled down, mentions that she used to mess with the "party trick" TK users by using her own TK to completely short-circuit the tricks they did.
• Used Future: Related to Bad Future above, in the 2044 American Midwest a lot of physical infrastructure shows signs of decay, neglect and simple age: old cars patched up with solar panels, rampant poverty and lowered quality of life in urban settings and so on.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: One result of the drug withdrawal is young Joe getting sick and vomiting in front of the farm house.
• Weapon for Intimidation: Sara's shotgun. Joe quickly deduces that she has no intention of killing anyone with it. He's right, but when he mentions Cid, she shoots him with rock salt.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: While he doesn't seem to be Abe's biological son, Kid Blue has this relationship with his boss. Abe actually seems to encourage this to a certain degree, taking in boys and making them part of his organization young in hopes they'll view him as a father figure. His whole Affably Evil demeanor is built around it.
  "All I wanted... all I ever wanted... was for you to tell me I done good."
• White Shirt of Death: Old Joe's wife wears a white dress when she's shot.
• Would Hurt a Child: Old Joe plans to kill three, knowing one of them will become the mass murdering Rainmaker. He still has a breakdown after doing it.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: When Cid startles him, Jesse aims at him with his gun, but the moment he realizes its a kid, he raises his hands in the air to show he's not gonna hurt Cid. Not that it saves him from getting exploded by Cid's mind seconds later.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Old Joe hits a leaping DDT during his escape from the Rainmaker's goons.
• Write Back to the Future: Messages can be sent in real-time to a future version of someone by “writing” messages on their skin… with a knife.
• You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: Cid insists on calling Sara by her first name until one crisis too many; she talks him down when able. At which point he calls her "Mom."
• You're Not My Mother: Played with. The truth is that Sara is Cid's birth mother, but she abandoned him for the party life, so he was raised by Sara's sister, and called her mom instead. He killed his aunt with his TK and feels guilty about it. That comes out as anger and resentment at his mother for having created the situation by abandoning him. Cid eventually recants having said it.
• You Wouldn't Shoot Me:
  • When Sara tries to intimidate Joe with her shotgun, he's not impressed.
  Joe: You point a gun at me, I'm not scared, so you describe the gun to me? It's not the gun I'm not afraid of.
  • Subverted when she does shoot him — with a load of rock salt.
  Sara: You're right, I'm not a killer. But I'm okay with what rock salt will do to your face.
• Your Days Are Numbered: Any Looper who survives until 2074 is sent back to be killed by his younger self, terminating his contract. The Looper doesn't find this out until he recovers his payment from the body — gold bars instead of the usual silver. He now knows that he has exactly 30 years left to live.

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