Looper - in more detail
Jan. 27th, 2013 10:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyficLooper did not work for me, and it took me a day or so of chewing on it to figure out why. Because there are some very intelligent, very interesting things going on in that movie. It has a scene of true science fiction horror that will stick with you--the type of horror that can only happen in sci fi for how it violates the integrity of the self in a way that is not actually possible, but the mere idea of which is deeply disturbing. It is a very, very dark movie.
But, as it is a time travel movie, I expected all the little bits to be folded in on themselves. I expected everything about it to connect. And it didn't. And this is why I think it didn't work.
I have to start out by just pointing toglvalentine's post about how the movie is about magical momginas. It is deeply, deeply sexist in its portrayal of women. But I'll leave you to read that post to elaborate on that.
My problem was that the plot about the Rainmaker and TK felt tacked on. I expected it to tie back to time travel and it didn't. I expected the Rainmaker to tie back to Joe, and he didn't. TK was not explained in anything more than "this thing exists" and seemed to be in the plot only as a way of distinguishing the Rainmaker as a child.
This felt like an enormous cop out to me. What is so chilling about older Joe murdering children is that there is no way to know which child will grow up to be the Rainmaker. There's no way to test them at this point in time, and there's no way to know even after he pulls the trigger. Older Joe thinks that will fix his future, but it's not clear from the time travel mechanics that he would snap back or whatever. He's taking it on faith that if he murders three children his wife will live. He may never find out if that's true.
So to have one of the kids be definitively identifiable? And already a killer? Lessens older Joe's culpability. Because it proves that he's right that one of these kids is dangerous.
I mostly felt, though, that time travel was enough for worldbuilding in this movie. You don't even need TK. Can't it be that someone in the future could orchestrate a sudden rise to power using time travel? Couldn't that technology mean a person could loop until they'd set all the dominoes up just right?
There are all these questions about the future criminal syndicate. I mean, why should we believe the Rainmaker is particularly bad in the first place, since the syndicate pre-Rainmaker was already killing the Loopers? Just as part of what it did? And the justification given for Loopers implies that the government is quite powerful in the future, to require criminals to use time travel to dispose of bodies. In the present, in whatever city this is set in, the government is manifestly not powerful. Abe has set himself up as ruler of the city, but even before that, the references to vagrant raids imply the government hasn't had a handle on things for a while. There's never an explanation given for how that flipped.
And if criminals have time travel, it seems like disposing of bodies is the least of what they could do with it. I expected there to be a reveal of some deeper manipulation going on. You've sent Abe into the past to run the Loopers. Couldn't you send more agents into the past to try to set the future up the way you want it? And if you did, isn't there great possibility for losing control of what they were doing, of having them pursue their own agendas. This is what I expected the Rainmaker to be. A pawn the syndicate tried to use, maybe Joe, who instead pursued his own agenda with the benefit of time travel technology.
Then there's the magical Oriental wife of older Joe. First, my guess as to why the completely silent, mystical dream woman is Oriental is to prevent any speculation as to Joe being his own grandpa or something similar. But I expected her to be part of some plot. Maybe even the Rainmaker herself, since older Joe did say they don't know for sure it's a man. (To then have it be a man is such a cop out--don't dangle the possibility of it being a woman and then ignore it.) But know, she turns out to be there just to be fridged.
So what I'm saying is, my focus throughout the movie was on the implications of the time travel. I did not care about TK or the magic send-them-to-the-cornfields kid. As soon as the movie shifted to them, it became incredibly predictable, uninteresting, and besides the point. Since the ending depends on me caring about that kid (who did a great job, don't get me wrong) rather than on Joe...it didn't feel like a resolution to me.
This movie lacked that feeling of everything snapping together. And given that it is a dystopic time travel movie from the maker of Brick, that feeling is why I watched it. It didn't dig deep enough into its premise to really face the questions it raised and instead dodged into a predictable Twilight Zone episode side quest and abandoned the focus of its first third. So though there are some really interesting things going on, I have to judge it a failure.
But, as it is a time travel movie, I expected all the little bits to be folded in on themselves. I expected everything about it to connect. And it didn't. And this is why I think it didn't work.
I have to start out by just pointing to
glvalentine's post about how the movie is about magical momginas. It is deeply, deeply sexist in its portrayal of women. But I'll leave you to read that post to elaborate on that.My problem was that the plot about the Rainmaker and TK felt tacked on. I expected it to tie back to time travel and it didn't. I expected the Rainmaker to tie back to Joe, and he didn't. TK was not explained in anything more than "this thing exists" and seemed to be in the plot only as a way of distinguishing the Rainmaker as a child.
This felt like an enormous cop out to me. What is so chilling about older Joe murdering children is that there is no way to know which child will grow up to be the Rainmaker. There's no way to test them at this point in time, and there's no way to know even after he pulls the trigger. Older Joe thinks that will fix his future, but it's not clear from the time travel mechanics that he would snap back or whatever. He's taking it on faith that if he murders three children his wife will live. He may never find out if that's true.
So to have one of the kids be definitively identifiable? And already a killer? Lessens older Joe's culpability. Because it proves that he's right that one of these kids is dangerous.
I mostly felt, though, that time travel was enough for worldbuilding in this movie. You don't even need TK. Can't it be that someone in the future could orchestrate a sudden rise to power using time travel? Couldn't that technology mean a person could loop until they'd set all the dominoes up just right?
There are all these questions about the future criminal syndicate. I mean, why should we believe the Rainmaker is particularly bad in the first place, since the syndicate pre-Rainmaker was already killing the Loopers? Just as part of what it did? And the justification given for Loopers implies that the government is quite powerful in the future, to require criminals to use time travel to dispose of bodies. In the present, in whatever city this is set in, the government is manifestly not powerful. Abe has set himself up as ruler of the city, but even before that, the references to vagrant raids imply the government hasn't had a handle on things for a while. There's never an explanation given for how that flipped.
And if criminals have time travel, it seems like disposing of bodies is the least of what they could do with it. I expected there to be a reveal of some deeper manipulation going on. You've sent Abe into the past to run the Loopers. Couldn't you send more agents into the past to try to set the future up the way you want it? And if you did, isn't there great possibility for losing control of what they were doing, of having them pursue their own agendas. This is what I expected the Rainmaker to be. A pawn the syndicate tried to use, maybe Joe, who instead pursued his own agenda with the benefit of time travel technology.
Then there's the magical Oriental wife of older Joe. First, my guess as to why the completely silent, mystical dream woman is Oriental is to prevent any speculation as to Joe being his own grandpa or something similar. But I expected her to be part of some plot. Maybe even the Rainmaker herself, since older Joe did say they don't know for sure it's a man. (To then have it be a man is such a cop out--don't dangle the possibility of it being a woman and then ignore it.) But know, she turns out to be there just to be fridged.
So what I'm saying is, my focus throughout the movie was on the implications of the time travel. I did not care about TK or the magic send-them-to-the-cornfields kid. As soon as the movie shifted to them, it became incredibly predictable, uninteresting, and besides the point. Since the ending depends on me caring about that kid (who did a great job, don't get me wrong) rather than on Joe...it didn't feel like a resolution to me.
This movie lacked that feeling of everything snapping together. And given that it is a dystopic time travel movie from the maker of Brick, that feeling is why I watched it. It didn't dig deep enough into its premise to really face the questions it raised and instead dodged into a predictable Twilight Zone episode side quest and abandoned the focus of its first third. So though there are some really interesting things going on, I have to judge it a failure.