YMMV / Looper

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • The Rainmaker. Cid as a child decides that he wants to stop bad people and that killing a guy is as good a way as any to do it. Fast-forward thirty years and he has all the Loopers still alive sent back to be killed. This could be argued as a good thing for society because the assassins in the past aren't killing people anymore and their future selves who had escaped judgment up to that point get their karmic due. On the other hand there are the mass murders he ordered, and several were innocent people.
    • It seems like he is destroying hospitals. Killing the future Loopers just seems to be his way of purging the ranks and if you want to get another Alternate Character Interpretation, possibly perpetuating his own Stable Time Loop, if he knows that Joe was a Looper and realised that he needed to send him back to make himself exist. But if he didn't know for certain who Joe was (or how he managed to escape), he decided to send them all back, just to be sure.
    • Which comes with the implication that he deliberately arranged the death of his own mother.
    • Or, alternatively, tried to prevent it... by inadvertently ensuring it would happen.
    • The Rainmaker was actually cleaning things up in the future - the news networks and word of mouth said it was bad and that "innocents" are dying because they were controlled by the very people who were trouble. The Loopers by extension were part of the problem. However, the problem with "cleaning up" the Loopers is that the Loopers are only a symptom of the problem... murder and time travel. They're enablers but closing their contracts won't actually stop anyone from using time travel for murder. Just make it more difficult, and require endlessly sending back old Loopers as new ones are recruited in the past, creating a self-perpetuating problem if not another Stable Time Loop.
  • Was young Joe's decision to perform a Heroic Suicide a rash decision? How It Should Have Ended postulated that Young Joe had less extreme opinions foil Old Joe's plan. Maybe Young Joe felt that since he was seeing old Joe still in existence and wanting to carry out the assassination, some other unforseen factors ensured that Young Joe would still follow the same path that Old Joe did and this was the only way to be sure.
• Award Snub: Failed to get an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay, despite the script receiving critical acclaim and receiving WGA and Critic's Choice Award nods.
• Awesome Music: The use of Jack Trammel's "Crushing Blow" in the trailers.
• Complete Monster: Abe is the leader of the Looper organization and a heartless criminal who happily tortures his own men by breaking and mutilating their hands at any hints of defiance. Having his Loopers kill numerous victims sent back by the victim, Abe views every Looper as disposable, putting them into the loop so that they will inevitably execute themselves. When any future self escapes, Abe has his elites abduct the younger Loopers and carve them apart, holding them in agony for decades while executing their older selves.
• Cry for the Devil: Jesse. Despite working for the bad guys, he's both stated and shown to be an honorable sort who Wouldn't Hurt a Child, takes hostages for convenience rather than leverage (and releases them unharmed after), and seems genuinely apologetic about having to apprehend Joe. Sadly, an enraged Cid doesn't play favorites.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: There's something a little odd about Cid. He's very mature and intelligent for his age in some ways, while also susceptible to age-inappropriate tantrums and meltdowns which, combined with his TK abilities, give him the ability to literally tear people he doesn't like to shreds. He also has a need for control over his environment, which suggests he may be somewhere on the autism spectrum.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The scenes of Old Joe describing his memory as "a cloud" and struggling to remember his wife's face play a little differently after Bruce Willis retired from acting due to memory issues caused by frontotemporal dementia.
• He Really Can Act: Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis play off each other perfectly, making it absolutely believable that they could be the same person. This trope is especially prevalent with Willis who is often accused of phoning it in (before it was revealed he was diagnosed with dementia) but clearly makes an effort here.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Sara would get more intimately involved with 'looping' later on.
  • Joseph Gordon-Levitt really does learn how to speak French for The Walk (2015).
  • The entire concept of TK now that Rian Johnson went on to make The Last Jedi.
• Jerkass Woobie: Kid Blue. Yeah, he's one of the bad guys, but just watch that scene where he's talking with Abe and saying he just wanted him to know he did good and try not to feel just a little sorry for him.
• Magnificent Bastard: Both versions of Joe from the present and future are brilliant schemers.
  • The "Young" Joe from the year 2044 is a "Looper": an assassin who executes victims sent to him from the future. Upon the arrival of his future self, Joe is pursued by his own organization who wish to torture him to get to his older self. On the run, Joe eludes his enemies and meets the love of his life, Sara whose son Cid will grow to become a monster known as the Rainmaker. Opting to protect them, Joe ends up defeating his future self by fatally shooting himself, allowing Cid to have a chance for a normal life and saving Sara.
  • The "Old" Joe from the year 2074 lost his wife to the mysterious Rainmaker and travels back in time to kill the villain as a child before he can take over the criminal underworld. Returning to the past, Old Joe finds the Rainmaker as a boy named Cid and comes to blows with his younger self who has fallen in love with Cid's mother Sara. Easily dismantling the Kansas City mob who come for him, Old Joe tries to pay off his younger counterpart to leave him alone before trying to kill Cid, only being stopped by his younger self committing suicide to erase Old Joe from existence.
• Moral Event Horizon: While not shown on screen, Old Joe killed one of the three kids he suspects might be the Rainmaker. He even had a My God, What Have I Done? moment afterward.
• Narm: It's kinda hard not to giggle a bit when an adorable little kid is making a pouty face as he unleashes his powers on others.
• Rooting for the Empire: Quite a few people think Old Joe was right and that Cid is an Anthony Fremont-esque monster, who good or bad, is simply too powerful to safely exist in our world.

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