Apparently they had some sort of messaging system from the future to Abe, and thus Abe would tell the looper when to show up at their killing spot. Why bother with any sort of investigative work by the gat men to track the Joes? Just wait for the future guys to tell you where and when to find them.
Why couldn’t Young Joe “make it right” with Abe? Young Joe was perfectly fine with closing his loop, and if they cooperated, it could have been pretty simple to set up Old Joe. Abe seemed like a fairly reasonable and fair boss actually.
Like an earlier poster, I agree that the Rainmaker was not necessarily evil, but was perhaps making things better by cleaning up the mob.
Young Joe brings up an interesting point in the diner: show him the picture and he promises to marry somebody else, thus “saving” everybody. Conversely, the whole story could have ended right there if Young Joe promised not to move to China.
Somewhat of a nitpick, but in the timeline where Young Joe closes the loop and moves to China, wasn’t it already set that Old Joe didn’t escape from his captors? How did he break the timeline the 2nd time around? [/spoiler]
It appears that for each kill, the loopers got a kilo of silver. When the loop is closed, they appear to get 6 kilos of gold. How much is that worth? It seemed that China Joe had a box full of money, and I would guess that a substantial portion of that was from his silver savings. My guess is that the gold he received was maybe $300k (at today’s prices, one kilo is $50k.) It seems like that is bad deal to kill oneself and then try to live off it for 30 years.
The paradox problem with loopers who let their future selves run is simple:
If the Mob gets its hands on the younger self and mutilates him to bring the older self back in so he can be killed, they HAVE to babysit the mutilated body for 30 years. Otherwise, there is no older self for them to allow to run away in the first place, so the event never occurred. If you cut off the younger self’s feet, the older self can do no running. So that scene was way off base from the git-go.
I can see why they left the scene in, though, it was WAAAAAY powerful dramatically, and one of the neatest use of time travel ever, in a thoroughly evil sort of way.
The future people wouldn’t have the information unless they got it from somebody first. And the only people who could get that information would by the gat men in the present.
Abe was running a business and was only interested in results. He didn’t care what Joe’s intentions were - it didn’t matter whether Joe had let Old Joe escape deliberately or incompetently; the only thing that was important was he had failed.
I think there was a line about the Rainmaker conducting purges and mass murders.
Old Joe may have said his only motive was saving his wife. But in reality he probably was also looking for revenge.
The second time he was more motivated to fight back because he had more reason (saving his wife/avenging her death) to survive.
In the scene where Abe talks to Young Joe about giving up Seth, he knows exactly how the scene is going to play out, he already knows Seth went to Abe, and he knows exactly what to say to make Young Joe give up Seth. What’s kind of odd is that he doesn’t know the combination to Young Joe’s safe until Joe tells him, but if he knew everything already, why not the safe combination?
I don’t recall the exact dialogue. Wasn’t it more like Abe knowing the way Seth would act (he’d run to his friend for protection) and the way Joe would act (he’d betray a friend for money)?
Just saw this movie tonight, and both my husband and I really liked it. As has been noted, the “time travel dismemberment” scene was the most powerful torture scene I’ve ever encountered, especially considering its complete lack of gore. Reading here has helped me to handwave any residual paradox-phobia I might have initially had.
However, no one has discussed my main issue with the film. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a very popular actor these days, and I’ve loved him since Holy Matrimony. Why in god’s name would you cover up a big part of his extremely recognizable face with a barely-differentiating prosthesis? Establish through plot & dialogue that he & Willis are playing the same character, and leave everyone’s face alone! My husband and I spent the first third of the movie trying to figure out what the hell was going on with the lighting or whatever it was that made JGL’s face look so funny, and the rest of it talking about how annoying and terrible the makeup/ prosthesis was.
Another agree.
I knew the explanation for why he had the make-up on was so he looked like a young Bruce Willis but admit my reaction was a “really? he looks nothing like Bruce Willis much less a young Bruce Willis.”
My biggest issue with the movie was that the mob was sending loopers their future selves when there were plenty of other loopers available for the jobs. Wouldn’t it be much easier to avoid an open loop if you just didn’t let loopers kill their future selves?
Honestly, there were a lot of problems with the time travel consistency for it to be a great movie for me, but it certainly had high enterainment value.
I finally got round to seeing this recently too and thoroughly enjoyed it. Great acting (especially by Gordon Levitt) and a good story. I’ve got a fairly high tolerance of suspension of disbelief so aren’t going to go into to the discussion of plotholes/paradoxes. A couple of minor comments:
I loved the setting in the vast sugar cane fields of Kansas. A reference to climate change in the future perhaps?
Sarah’s chopping the stump - she didn’t seem to be displaying any mad axe skills to me, I thought it indicated her frustration and boredom at a situation with Cid. Chopping at a stump with an axe is pretty damn futile (seriously, try it some time - there’s a reason people blast stumps out).
Speaking of Cid - what a creepy looking kid, great work by the casting people there. And do we get any confirmation that Joe’s sacrifice is actually effective (it was late when the movie ended so I may have missed a bit)? I like the idea that the Rainmaker may actually be acting for good anyway - after all the vast majority of the characters we see are criminals.
Another plot hole that emerged when I watched the DVD was they confirmed that the future mob couldn’t control the time machine they had. They could only send people back one fixed amount of time, which was thirty years. That does cover some plot holes like why they didn’t use the time machine more for taking control rather than just as a body disposal system.
But it opens up a different question. The future mob had sent Abe back to the past to run their “present” operations. Then Abe sent loopers to go wait for and kill people as the future mob sent them back to the present day.
So how did Abe know when people were going to be sent back? The movie is set in 2044. Let’s say Abe’s been around since 2034 - that means he was sent back in 2064.
Now the future mob sends a guy from January 24, 2074 thirty years back to January 24, 2044. How does Abe know to have somebody waiting on January 24, 2044? The future mob can’t send him a message back thirty years and an extra week to January 17, 2044. Any messages the future mob sends back after they send the victim will arrive after the victim has already arrived.
