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jabby posted:This was discussed no end in the Looper thread, and overall the movie makes a surprising amount of sense if you are willing to make some assumptions that it doesn't spell out for you, like this one. Yes it doesn't provide an explanation of how time travel works or why it's necessary but it's not impossible to explain and at least the movie never contradicts itself. The whole 'don't think about it' scene underlines that the explanations aren't important so they weren't included but sad acts like me can fill in their own. Even of the people in the movie nobody really understands how it works, which can also serve as an explanation for why Loopers close their own loop. The people in charge really have no idea what they're messing around with and have an almost superstitious view of time travel, and to them having everybody close their own loop seems like a fitting way to avoid loving up the space-time continuum too much.
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Dec 20, 2013 20:02
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Medium Style posted:The movie doesn't really explain why it's so hard to get away with murder, but from the way it plays out I interpreted it like this: people in the future have some kind of technology inside them (or near them, or something) that sends an alarm and a bunch of data to police the instant the murder happens. Someone is killed and the authorities immediately know who, what, where, and how. The killer has to do more than just make the body not exist, they have to make the act of murder itself not exist. This is what I figured too, some sort of tracking so they know exactly when someone dies and some crazy future surveillance that lets them track alot of peoples movements. People were also beginning to develop telekinetic powers, it's not crazy to think some sort of psychic or Minority Report pre cog types might start developing soon. It was just that they made such a big deal about murdering people being hard, it was odd they killed the wife so fast.
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Dec 20, 2013 20:07
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Your Gay Uncle posted:This is what I figured too, some sort of tracking so they know exactly when someone dies and some crazy future surveillance that lets them track alot of peoples movements. People were also beginning to develop telekinetic powers, it's not crazy to think some sort of psychic or Minority Report pre cog types might start developing soon. Yeah, but they don't show them getting away with it, do they? I thought it was just the guys panicking and killing her, not a pre meditated part of the plan?
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Dec 20, 2013 20:23
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Slim Killington posted:It is: Chigurh allows himself to be arrested because he wants to prove to himself, essentially, that he can "will" his way out of it. He gets pulled over after leaving a victim in a parking lot. Goodness what a rapscallion.
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Dec 20, 2013 20:42
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Supreme Allah posted:In 'No Country for Old Men', is it explained in the book why Anton's caught in the beginning? Through the whole movie he's an unstoppable terminator, but when we first meet him, he's apparently been arrested by a single-handed deputy. I expect it was part of something he planned but they don't revisit it.
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Dec 20, 2013 23:14
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kinmik posted:100% sincere question because I've never seen it but: Are you saying he was caught by a lone policeman, or one missing a hand? I worded it badly. The deputy had two hands, he was by himself.
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Dec 20, 2013 23:36
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Gotcha.  Watched ParaNorman this week, and they kept going on about Aggie, the witch's, burial grounds. Back in her day, wasn't it the norm to burn or drown supposed witches?
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Dec 21, 2013 01:01
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That's what a lot of people believe, but most American witches were hanged rather than burned. Burnings were big in Europe during things like the Inquisition. And I don't think they left drowned witches in the water, either, but I'm less sure of that.
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Dec 21, 2013 01:10
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Perestroika posted:Even of the people in the movie nobody really understands how it works, which can also serve as an explanation for why Loopers close their own loop. The people in charge really have no idea what they're messing around with and have an almost superstitious view of time travel, and to them having everybody close their own loop seems like a fitting way to avoid loving up the space-time continuum too much. Yeah, I really liked Looper because they went out of their way early in the film to point out that none of the people making use of the time travel tech had a loving clue how it worked or what the implications were. Almost everything they did was based on their idea of what they THOUGHT the appropriate steps to take would be. There's also a line early in the film where JGL points out that the people in his business are NOT long-term thinkers, they basically react to things as they happen and live day-to-day without any real thought towards the future outside of vague things like,"I guess I'll retire to France or China or something if I'm still alive  "
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Dec 21, 2013 03:40
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Hobbit/Smaug could easily have lost 45 minutes or so without suffering. Every single scene was drawn out.kinmik posted:100% sincere question because I've never seen it but: Are you saying he was caught by a lone policeman, or one missing a hand? You should watch it, though. It's a very fine movie.
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Dec 22, 2013 01:55
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Your Gay Uncle posted:I do feel stupid nit picking Looper, because I loved it, especially the scene in the diner where Future Bruce basically said " don't nitpick this movie you loving nerds, just accept time travel as a metahphor and story telling device". "Don't nitpick this movie, you loving nerds. Just accept the water soluble aliens as a metaphor and story telling device."
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Dec 22, 2013 02:48
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OK Octopus posted:"Don't nitpick this movie, you loving nerds. Just accept the water soluble aliens as a metaphor and story telling device." If your problem with that movie is that the aliens are hurt by water, yeah sorry but you're hosed up.
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Dec 22, 2013 04:16
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Modern Day Hercules posted:If your problem with that movie is that the aliens are hurt by water, yeah sorry but you're hosed up. The foreshadowing is insufferable.
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Dec 22, 2013 04:23
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In american horror story : coven I hate that the character of Misty Day can revive people and heal incredibly hosed up things, and yet a woman is blind and another has cancer. . Maybe they'll explain this eventually, but it drives me nuts.
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Dec 22, 2013 04:46
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Non Serviam posted:In american horror story : coven I hate that the character of Misty Day can revive people and heal incredibly hosed up things, and yet a woman is blind and another has cancer. . Maybe she just doesn't like them that much.
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Dec 22, 2013 04:58
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She just met both of them. One is now healed and everybody wants the other one dead.
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Dec 22, 2013 05:03
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OK Octopus posted:"Don't nitpick this movie, you loving nerds. Just accept the water soluble aliens as a metaphor and story telling device." That's entirely reasonable but then Signs is still real bad.
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Dec 22, 2013 08:02
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Lotish posted:That's what a lot of people believe, but most American witches were hanged rather than burned. Burnings were big in Europe during things like the Inquisition. And I don't think they left drowned witches in the water, either, but I'm less sure of that. They were also crushed by big rocks.
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Dec 22, 2013 08:44
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The Aliens were Demons and it wasn't water that killed them. It was Holy Water.
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Dec 22, 2013 18:48
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bobkatt013 posted:They were also crushed by big rocks. "More weight." --Giles Corey
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Dec 22, 2013 23:01
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Regarding the Looper discussion, I figured the future just had really really good CSI tech, making it impossibly difficult to murder someone 'cleanly'. Sending people back in time was the best/only way to ensure that the victim simply vanishes.
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Dec 22, 2013 23:47
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MisterBibs posted:Regarding the Looper discussion, I figured the future just had really really good CSI tech, making it impossibly difficult to murder someone 'cleanly'. Sending people back in time was the best/only way to ensure that the victim simply vanishes. What would have made it really weird is if they'd just sent the victim back as far as they could. No murderer, you just go back to olden times. The precision of their time machine was only one of the many off putting things about the movie. I did like it, but having someone sent back to basically Jurassic Park and only having seconds to figure out that you only have seconds to live and if you want to go out like a champ just say "clever girl" might have been an improvement.
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Dec 22, 2013 23:51
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syscall girl posted:What would have made it really weird is if they'd just sent the victim back as far as they could. No murderer, you just go back to olden times. The precision of their time machine was only one of the many off putting things about the movie. The future criminals don't do this for the same reason they don't send hitmen back in time to kill the victim before he did whatever attracted their attention. What if you send someone back in time and they change things with their presence in a way that's bad for you? The simplest, safest way to do it is to keep absolute control over the process - the victim is sent back in such a way that they have no chance to affect the timeline.
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Dec 23, 2013 01:10
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Heres Hank posted:She just met both of them. One is now healed and everybody wants the other one dead. Then again, Misty revived the burned witch, and didn't think of saying "hey, i could help with those eyes, you know?"
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Dec 23, 2013 03:44
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But why even pay a guy to stand there and shoot him? They obviously had a way to control where they came out. You could dump them in a volcano or just warp them right into the furnace they were dumping the bodies in to skip the middle man. Also not a fan of the scene in the dinner. It came off to me more as laziness than being clever.
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Dec 23, 2013 03:57
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That's the whole point. There's no satisfying way to explain a time travel plot so you just have to accept it. I loved the diner discussion.
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Dec 23, 2013 04:00
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Dr_Amazing posted:But why even pay a guy to stand there and shoot him? They obviously had a way to control where they came out. You could dump them in a volcano or just warp them right into the furnace they were dumping the bodies in to skip the middle man. I didn't get that impression, to me it seemed like the places they landed were fixed, but still random in their placement.
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Dec 23, 2013 04:16
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Jedit posted:The future criminals don't do this for the same reason they don't send hitmen back in time to kill the victim before he did whatever attracted their attention. What if you send someone back in time and they change things with their presence in a way that's bad for you? The simplest, safest way to do it is to keep absolute control over the process - the victim is sent back in such a way that they have no chance to affect the timeline. Yeah, I agree that the chaos/butterfly effect would be in... uh effect, but Looper could have tried (and probably failed) to address poo poo that Back to the Future needed work on. I mean sure, temporally you're in 1985 or 2011 but the solar system has moved on, physically. Just moving between years would be tough because you'd have to take the leap year into account. I can confirm that there never has been a time machine because if it ever gained popularity I would have used it to pop back and kick my own rear end, and Bruce Willis would be there with me calling me a pedant for discussing it. tl;dr you can't go back in time and fart without it killing yourself or knocking up your own grandma and Jeff Goldblum will be there to tell you why
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Dec 23, 2013 05:09
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Who said 'as far back as they can' isn't 30 years exactly?
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Dec 23, 2013 05:36
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That's gonna suck when the present timeline advances to a point that the future CSI hatches. I got it: Looper 2: Splicer. Starting in 2072, they have to send their victim back to 2042. THEN, the guy they pay in 2042 sends the guy back to 2012, where they have a guy that kills him.
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Dec 23, 2013 08:44
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Pidmon posted:Who said 'as far back as they can' isn't 30 years exactly? They didn't specify, so it's up to your imagination. The part where Bruce "I was in the best time travelling movie in history" Willis told the audience to shut up about nitpicky details was one of the highlights of Looper and I can accept that. Didn't mean to go all SMZ about it, but it was an interesting movie with an interesting premise.
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Dec 23, 2013 08:55
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Coffee And Pie posted:I didn't get that impression, to me it seemed like the places they landed were fixed, but still random in their placement. I thought it was just the same spot 30 years prior? I mean we're given a limited look into the future, future. That Warehouse they send people back from might have been the cornfield 30 years earlier.
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Dec 23, 2013 09:45
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In Hobbit :Smaug, in the scene where they're going down the river in barrels, it occasionally cut to first person views where they plunged through the water which was incredibly low quality and unfinished, like a handheld water rapids camera. Oddly jarring.
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Dec 23, 2013 11:14
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RagnarokAngel posted:I thought it was just the same spot 30 years prior? I mean we're given a limited look into the future, future. That Warehouse they send people back from might have been the cornfield 30 years earlier. I figured that rather than some hard-limit to time travel (which wouldn't really fit with the films themes) it's just the best they could manage before giving up with a shrug and a "good enough!" They're gangsters, not engineers.
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Dec 23, 2013 11:27
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Your Gay Uncle posted:I do feel stupid nit picking Looper, because I loved it, especially the scene in the diner where Future Bruce basically said " don't nitpick this movie you loving nerds, just accept time travel as a metahphor and story telling device". If time travel wasn't an integral part of the story and plot then maybe it would be easier to stomach when the film's director goes "I have no idea what I'm talking about so that means you don't have to worry about it" Looper tried to be a good story but the conceits made it way too hard for me to enjoy it because it had so many more "this would have made much more sense but then there wouldn't have been a movie" moments than most films. Entertaining or not, going "oh don't worry about it" doesn't excuse flaws that DON'T have anything to do with the logical fallacy side of it. The time travel poo poo in Looper just doesn't make sense because it doesn't make sense, not because it's a conceit of time travel media. The literal solution to all problems the mafia could ever have: you have a time machine that is also a teleporter somehow, go back in time and do it again until you do it right and you win, the end. This is the exact same problem all time travel media has and is why it's never not going to be a flawed concept. Van Dis posted:That's the whole point. There's no satisfying way to explain a time travel plot so you just have to accept it. I loved the diner discussion. edit: Basically what I'm saying is, if the movie's main conceit is "we're not going to explain it and you shouldn't bother thinking about it because thinking about it in depth will get you nowhere", the movie should not have been made. CJacobs has a new favorite as of 11:42 on Dec 23, 2013 |
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Dec 23, 2013 11:34
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The guy who made Looper had the guy who made Primer acting as a consultant to the movie and he gave it his approval. If the dude who made Primer said that your movie's time travel is OK then that's pretty much the last word.
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Dec 23, 2013 11:40
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CJacobs posted:The time travel poo poo in Looper just doesn't make sense because it doesn't make sense, not because it's a conceit of time travel media. If you make some assumptions then it does make sense. The director just left it to you to fill in the rest of the world rather than spelling it out explicitly in the film. Probably because it would be boring and have nothing to do with the plot, not to mention that the main characters themselves don't actually know the facts. If you want to see looper explained by various time travel geeks, see the looper thread.
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Dec 23, 2013 15:05
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It seems like they sent people back to that specific point in time because it was rather lawless, see the fact that Jeff Daniels' character pretty much runs the city.
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Dec 23, 2013 15:36
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A new thing I've noticed - loosely related to the Looper chat - when the very essence of a tv show revolves around something being a certain way, and episode after episode they have to write the characters a very limited way in order to not reveal the various paths the rest of the episode might take. For instance, Person of Interest is a pretty okay show about a dude with a computer machine that spits out the national security numbers of people who are going to be involved in a murder. They might be the killer or the victim, but every single episode they ignore one of those options so that it can be brought up as a sudden '...oh my god...what if she's not the victim...what if she's the killer?' at about half-way through the episode. The guy is smart enough to build this amazing machine but not smart enough to go 'there are two options, let's assume either could be the case until we find out which it is'
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Dec 23, 2013 16:12
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Didn't the guy who made Looper actually have the time travel all worked out? It's just that the characters have no idea and just make poo poo up to try and sound like they do. In reality they're using tech they don't understand in the slightest.
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Dec 23, 2013 16:27
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