I don’t think that Sid invented the time machine. His damage all stems from a time traveller killing his mom. Seems unlikely that he’d go on to invent the machine that facilitated her death.
Not only that, but if the intention was to keep the looper alive for thirty years, the Mob is going to have to babysit them for all that time. Keeping them in a closet being spoon fed or on a feeding tube is going to have a similar effect on the time line as killing them would. It’s not like they’re going to be able to go out and influence the world (certainly not in the same way they were originally going to). I think the dismemberment was partially intended as a deterrent to loopers tempted to let their loop run. But it didn’t make sense from a paradox-prevention standpoint.
Time line and continuity question:
Did anyone else notice that for the time that Old Joe was captured (appriximately) that the band aid on Young Joe’s ear diappeared for a while (and the ear seemed whole)? Was that a continuity error, or did that imply a possible future/past?
Yup, that was it. 
Something to keep in mind is that the people operating the time machine aren’t scientists or engineers. They’re thugs and murderers. And a lot of them are clearly idiots. Hell, Joe himself is more than a little thick. They almost certainly stole the time machine(s) they’re using, and likely have virtually no idea how it works, or possibly even how to operate it - the apparent hard coded thirty year jump might just be down to the mob not knowing how to change the settings. Consequently, anything they say about paradoxes or the nature of time travel should be taken with a grain of salt.
I like how there was a flip/reversal in attitudes of old Joe and young Joe from the beginning to the end of the movie. In the beginning, O.J criticizes Y.J for being selfish and an asshole and Y.J pretty much doesn’t care about anyone but himself. By the end, you have O.J killing people left and right (and willing to kill kids!) just to get his own life back, nothing more. Y.J on the other hand sacrifices his own so that others don’t have such a terrible future.
I had this thought too. That scene, btw, was the best scene in the entire movie, because it was both chilling and dependent on the strange universe that the move had set up. Seeing your fingers disappear one by one and knowing that means that someone is having them brutally removed. Genius!
And they then took it way too far, chopping off feet and hands and shit. At that point, how is that different from just killing the young looper?
Anyway, aside from that one scene, the rest of the movie was pretty disappointing. They didn’t actually do much with the time travel aspect; 23 years later, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure is still untouchable in that regard. Looper seemed to be mostly about people shooting at each other with awkward guns, and then telekinesis for some reason. I was left wanting more.
Can’t think of a better place to share this–my lovely wife forced me to pull our car off to the side of the road to avoid wrecking it on our way home from this movie. As we were discussing various things we liked and didn’t like, I cracked wise about the misuse of the toy frogs that were rigged up as emergency signalling devices, and which ended up being used for Sara to get Joe to come help her out when she was feeling horny. I referred to it as the ‘emergency booty call frog’, which prompted my partner to ask if I knew what it said. “What?” I asked foolishly?
Rubbit, rubbit!
God, I love that woman. 
Indeed, that part I liked.
Overall, I was entertained by the movie, and as a futuristic-type western it worked okay … it is just that as science fiction it left somewhat to be desired.
About twenty minutes after we left the movie, it occurred to me that the reason YJoe removes OJoe (and himself) from the equation is that he realizes if he doesn’t, OJoe kills Cid’s mom, and Cid goes on to dedicate his life to killing the loopers (out of revenge). By killing himself he saves the boy’s mother and possibly keeps the Rainmaker from his destructive path. My guess then would be that the Rainmaker took out a lot of bystanders on his quest to get rid of the loopers (and had nothing to do with the mob and time travel, etc.)
At least that would answer the question upthread about why the Rainmaker has a grudge against the loopers.
Oh, and did anyone else hear Old Joe say “Yippee Ki Yay, Motherfuckers” when he was shooting up the mob boss’ office?
Be kind - longtime lurker, first post here.
Here’s my theory: the Rainmaker was never Cid, it was Piper’s kid, who we never see killed. Cid invents time travel.
Welcome to the SDMB! I’ll get the paddles!
Regarding my confusion about Cid’s grudge against loopers: that only applies to the original timeline (where YJ kills OJ and goes to China, meets wife, and gets “closed out” by the Rainmaker, who we know to be in prominence due to the Chinese newscast). If OJ didn’t kill Cid’s mother in that timeline, I don’t understand how he got the grudge against loopers, hence my fanwank.
I don’t know about that. The movie did mention that the Rainmaker was able to take out whole armies all by him/herself. I had assumed that it was Cid, simply using his TK power. But who knows, maybe Piper’s kid had it, too. I feel like they left Piper and her kid unaddressed. With the way they went with the movie, Piper’s kid didn’t seem to really add anything to the story.
Yeah, at some point you have to take a movie at its word; it provided no reason to think the other kid would be the Rainmaker and every reason to think it was Cid. It goes as far as the first time we see Cid do something beyond lay in bed. He brings Young Joe water. The other kid seems to just be a plot convenience to get Old Joe captured.
I haven’t done any research on this movie, but I wonder if the creators have mapped out a 2 or 3 movie arc. If that’s the case, they may have thought through that Cid is not the Rainmaker, etc., and that may explain why they start to flesh out parts of the story that don’t go anywhere.
The siginficance of Cid’s mechanical aptitude would be explored in the sequel, along with whether Piper’s kid is the Rainmaker, and why that one guy says, "“All I ever wanted, was for you to tell me I did good.”
Does that really need an explanation?
Not a plot hole but probably bad story telling.
The end of the movie certainly implies that Bruce Willis “created” the Rainmaker by shooting his mom creating a paradox similar to “I’m my own grandpa”. Here’s the problem:
There are two timelines. In T1, Joseph Gordon-Levitt closes his loop by shooting Willis. He runs through his savings and turns to petty crimes. He eventually meets his wife and decides to clean up. Problem is the Rainmaker decides to close all the loops and in closing this particular loop he kills Willis’ wife so that now Willis is committed to killing the Rainmaker as a child. He escapes the thugs and teleports back to
T2 where he escapes G-L and goes on a kid-killing mission which G-L goes to stop. Realizing that it was Willis that created the Rainmaker by shooting his mom, G-L offs himself to avoid that outcome i.e. preventing the Rainmaker from becoming an archcriminal.
Question: Who “created” the Rainmaker in T1? Can’t be Willis, he done got blunderblussed.
This is one of the details that led me to my theory above.
In T1 he was a child with the power to kill via thought. His mother had no ability to control this and from what we saw made no attempt to do so. It was only a matter of time before he “accidentally” killed her like he did his aunt. At that point he’d be as scared and alone as he is in T2 and will wind up using his powers to take over the criminal organizations.
From what we’re shown, we’ve reason to believe he won’t grow up evil after the end of the movie. In the conversation between Young Joe and Cid in the tunnel Joe talks about his own mother and in doing so displays compassion in a situation that has to hit pretty close to home for Cid. That coupled with Cid’s mom being forced to break through Cid’s rage when he was about to kill her and Old Joe gave him the first of the tools he needed to live a life where he doesn’t become the Rainmaker.
Well, certainly, the whole movie is rife with exactly such paradoxes. The issue of course is whether this is a bug, or a feature.