Looper (Hopefully) Represents the Future of Time Travel Movies

Time travel movies are essentially about the desire to fix the mistakes of the past.

Typically, they fall into two camps: one where such disappointments can be successfully prevented or suitably altered; one where regrets just seem to grow exponentially no matter how hard we try to make things better. 

Actually, in both scenarios, things tend to keep spiraling downward for most of the movie. The divergence usually comes right near the end. For example, Marty McFly (Back to the Future) threatens his own existence before he unites his parents just in time to travel back to a new, much-improved version of his life that he never truly earned (not to mention, he no longer really knows his parents since his actions caused them to fundamentally change their personalities).

On the other side of the spectrum, a classic film example is when long-suffering James Cole (12 Monkeys) questions his sanity and eventually fails in his mission to thwart the release of a deadly virus that will devastate the human race. Making matters worse, he even becomes the unwitting catalyst of a bleak scenario that has haunted him in his dreams for most of his life.

Oh, right. SPOILER ALERT. 

Yeah, that came a bit late. Don't you wish you could go back in time now if you haven’t seen either of those movies? Don’t bother. Time travel is like scratching an itch that itches more each time you scratch it. It's usually best never to start scratching it in the first place.

At any rate, my friend Caleob and I discussed some of these ideas and he pointed out to me that the difference between the aforementioned categories inherently lies in the application or absence of free will. 

Time travel movies where the past can be changed to fundamentally rewrite the present suggest that free will exists, that we are all capable of making choices unencumbered by certain constraints. However, if changing the past still leads us to the same result, or one that is tragic along the same vein, then the suggestion is that we are ultimately not the architects of our own destinies. Even with access to time travel, we lack the ability to change things in the past more to our present liking.

Occasionally, an excellent time travel movie comes along that attempts to tread into deeper philosophical territory. Such films suggest that maybe we do possess free will, but may lack the cognition necessary to recognize the ramifications of our choices.

The root of the problem is that, no matter what we do to try to revise events in the past, eventually our emotions or faulty internal logic will compel us to act on behalf of our best interests or the interests of those we care deeply about. Unfortunately, such actions can inadvertently lead us right back down the same path that caused the initial regret in the first place. 

Or, worse, we could discover that our past-changing maneuverings have now placed us on a different path that leads to a whole new set of regrets which, in turn, motivate us to go back in time once again, creating a new timeline where our same old emotions and faulty internal logic propel us down yet another unsatisfying path that guides us towards more pain and heartbreak so that we inevitably feel a need to go back and... well, you get the idea.

Looper certainly belongs in the excellent time travel movie category and it gives me hope that the future of the genre is indeed promising.

No matter how you slice it, Looper is still about fixing mistakes at its core, as well as the ensuing bedlam and bloodshed that stems from using time travel as a form of self-help... but it's about so much more than that. It's also a morality tale.

It's the type of movie where you see one man's old self try to convince his young self how to do things differently while his young self tells his old self that he’s an idiot as he tries to kill him. Both are partially right in their way of thinking and both are partially wrong. 

During the first half of the film, I tried to decide which Joe was the hero and which Joe was the villain. Then, I realized it was even more complicated than that.

Looper will leave you with more questions than answers, but they are really good questions, such as: If you could travel to the past and shoot Hitler (or the future’s equivalent of him) before he comes of age... would you? Or, would it still be the murder of an innocent boy? What if you had to kill two kids to be sure his legacy never came to be? Three? Does the end really justify the means?

For that matter, would you even be able to perform the deed? Would time somehow correct itself in spite of the anomaly created by your efforts? Would another monster fill the vacuum you created? Would anything you do ultimately matter because every time you change one past event to benefit somebody, somebody else usually suffers as a result of it? 

Or, in other words, if you keep scratching enough, soon EVERYBODY will itch and feel a need to start scratching.

Sometimes, there is no definitive right or wrong answer to a problem. Sometimes there are only actions and their consequences. Sometimes, there are just people doing whatever is necessary to stay alive and keep what's theirs.

Then again, sometimes your head hurts a hell of a lot from thinking about all of this crap. 

Keep in mind, this movie is best watched with someone who likes to ask difficult questions and then attempt to answer them. Just be sure to save time for a meal or beverage afterward.

The premise itself, though, seems simple enough. Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Inception, The Dark Knight Rises) is Joe, a hitman known as a “looper” who works in the year 2044, three decades before time travel is invented and subsequently outlawed. 

Joe’s job is to kill and dispose of people for the mob who send their victims 30 years back in time to him, bound and gagged with a payment strapped to their backs. Apparently, bodies are much harder to dispose of in the future, not to mention, it’s probably a hell of a lot cheaper to pay somebody without a few decades of inflation factored in. Then again, the mob doesn’t seem too imaginative because they aren’t using time travel to go steal Egyptian treasure or hunt dinosaurs for sport.

Regardless, it’s an easy job that any grunt can do and Joe is well-suited for it because the only thoughts he has of the future are learning French so he can one day move to France and keeping a steady flow of income so he can afford more mind-altering substances. 

Joe works under the subtle-yet-intimidating Abe (Jeff Daniels, Dumb and Dumber) who was sent from the future to oversee all loopers. Part of his job is to make sure they close their loops when the appropriate time comes. Closing a loop is when a looper shoots his older self from the future so that time travel remains a tidy endeavor. Those who refuse to do this will be hunted down and... well, it isn’t pretty.

Fortunately for the mob, Joe likes his job and the lifestyle that goes with it so he has no intention of straying from the agenda. However, one day a kill job arrives a few minutes late, untied, staring at him with all-too-familiar eyes. He recognizes his future self (played by Bruce Willis, 12 Monkeys) and a moment’s hesitation is all the older Joe needs to make his escape. 

Young Joe knows his life is on the line and he needs to hunt down his future self. His future self, however, has other ideas that include erasing a big regret from his life killing the young version of a mysterious criminal figurehead known as the “Rainmaker.” After all, the Rainmaker is the one who is directing the closing of all of the loops.

OK. Maybe the premise is not simple at all... not one damn bit. I haven’t even mentioned the fact that, in the future, about 10% of humans have developed mild telekinetic powers, just to make things even weirder. Looper is definitely strange, but in a good, unpredictable WTF? way.

Truth be told, I loved the movie even though its story does not always make sense to me. For example, I wondered: why not have loopers close out other loopers’ loops so there is no possibility they will hesitate when shooting their older selves? Or, better yet, why don't the criminals just kill the loopers and send their corpses back to the past where the loopers can ensure they disappear without a trace? But, time travel seems to create unforeseen messes so I can accept this aspect of the movie without having it detract from the story.

The same can be said of the paradoxes, and yes, there are a few paradoxes here and there (a time travel inevitability). However, I was OK with them because part of the enjoyment derived from a time travel movie is talking about how it does and does not make sense afterwards. Looper may leave you feeling a bit loopy at times, but that's a big reason why it is so much damn fun.

The rest of the fun comes from trying to predict what direction Looper will go next. It's brimming with elements of humor, action, suspense and drama, and there is enough surprise that will keep most viewers absorbed enough in the story to table some of the trickier time travel notions for the time being and just focus on the human struggles.

That particular sentiment is echoed succinctly when older Joe faces off with his younger self in a diner, saying: “I don’t want to talk about time travel because if we start talking about it then we’re going to be here all day talking about it, making diagrams with straws.”

Director Rian Johnson (Brick), a gifted storyteller, pays great attention to detail and giving a tangible texture to the characters and settings in his own private universe. 

He elicits strong performances from his actors and he offers up an appropriately dystopian view of Kansas City in the future that is just the right amount of wacky.

Sometime in the middle of the story, the movie takes an odd u-turn when younger Joe hides out at a farm where tough, over-protective Sara (Emily Blunt, The Five-Year Engagement) watches over her adorable ward Cid (Pierce Gagnon, The Crazies). He is exceptionally gifted and seems to be the most likely candidate to become the horrific Rainmaker. While their relationship is anything but stable, it is heartfelt and tender enough where you find yourself hoping their future can be changed for the better. 

But then, everybody in this film has just as much at stake, particularly young and old Joe who are pitted against each other on a collision course. Old Joe may be equipped with more wisdom, but he is a desperate man shaped by a lifetime of bad choices he keeps repeating. Young Joe, on the other hand, has spent most of his life feeling abandoned and lonely and has never been capable of making a real human connection. Neither are good candidates to be a hero. Yet, both stand to lose everything they hold dear and will stop at nothing to keep that from happening.

To reveal more about how this conundrum plays out would be a crime. One of the best strengths of Looper is the elegant solution to that problem and all the other problems that compound and multiply every time somebody tries to alter the course of the future. 

Ultimately, Looper ends in the only way that it makes sense and even then you'll find yourself looping the film's chain of events over and over again in your mind... trying to find a way to scratch an itch that will never quite go away.