Obviously, contains massive SPOILERS if you haven’t seen the
movie already.
So, this week I went to see Looper. Since it’s being billed
as the new Matrix and getting 5 star reviews across the board, I had high
hopes. Perhaps inevitably, I came away a little disappointed.
For a start, and I know I keep banging on about this (but
hey, I’m not going to stop) I found the portrayal of women pretty problematic.
Set in some mysterious future where feminism never happened, the only visible
women fit neatly into male fantasy stereotypes: the tart with a heart, the
selfless mother (a former party girl redeemed by motherhood, no less, although
still channelling that brave frontierswoman who is lonely and strong but still
just ripe for some lovin’ from that mysterious but manly stranger) and the
younger, passive, redemptive wife (tapping into some charming ‘Orientalist/Geisha
fantasies, too – Bruce Willis’ wife didn’t even get a line. I can’t help
feeling she’d have stuck in his memory a little more if he’d remembered a
single damn thing she said to him). Seriously, couldn’t we have had a handful
of female Loopers, even if they were just in the background?
The film was also massively derivative, and though it had
some great touches – the mix of widespread poverty and elite wealth, the
repurposing of the everyday (the battered old cars with solar panels, for
instance) – it felt like a patchwork of other movies, especially since much of
the action took place in the Generic Future Nightclub (clearly the one
franchise we should all be investing in now, since that’s where the money will
be, no matter what future you envisage).
But even leaving all that aside, the basic idea seemed riddled
with problems. Now, it very well may be that I simply missed key salient plot
points (I’m the first to admit I can be quite dim about these things) but I’d
be grateful if you could answer the following questions…
The whole Looper idea seems fraught with unnecessary risk –
if you can’t get rid of bodies in the future, why not at least kill them there
(where you can oversee it) and send the corpses back for disposal?
If you can materialise the victims in different locations –
Seth and Joe worked different spots, so presumably the other Loopers did – why not
just materialise them direct into a furnace, or river, or volcano? Why not send
them to a desert, or back to the age of the dinosaurs when they’d really be out
of your way?
Why get Loopers to close their own loop by killing their
future selves? Surely that had to be an idea that someone questioned as having inbuilt issues. Why not
send the future-self Looper back to a different Looper anonymously – no one
would ever know, you’d cut the pay offs, and you’d eliminate the whole ‘maybe I
don’t want to kill myself’ risk.
Back to body disposal: if it’s problematic, why so blasé about
killing Joe’s wife? How come the Rainmaker is wiping out whole neighbourhoods
with impunity – don’t tell me there’s no bodies left there?
What was with the central loop sequence where Bruce Willis
died?
Why let future Loopers live for 30 years? Why not 10? Why
not 15? Why not quietly off them the minute they retire rather than give them
time to plot?
When cutting up Seth to get his future Looper, why go so
far? Sure it made for a great sequence, but given that they can’t kill him
without messing with the future, haven’t they just committed to keeping what's left of him
alive for 30 years? Think of the medical bills! Couldn’t they just have cut off
a couple of fingers to send a message then locked him in a room?
Why was Kid Blue so keen to track down Joe n Joe? Surely, with
Abe and his crew dead the smart thing for an ambitious boy to do would be stay
in the club and take over the scene?
If Abe came from the future and took over the city, why,
when he was cornered by Joe in his room, was the only protection he had an
overturned table and a normal gun? Bad planning for a crime kingpin, surely,
especially one who could have sneaked at least a couple of pieces of future
tech back with him…
“I’m from the future. LTrust me, learn Mandarin.” – C’mon, people, that’s
a 2012 joke. You’re telling me by 2044 everyone won’t already know Mandarin?
So – do I have a point, or is it just me?
The whole Looper idea seems fraught with unnecessary risk – if you can’t get rid of bodies in the future, why not at least kill them there (where you can oversee it) and send the corpses back for disposal?
ReplyDeleteThis is a bit of a retcon, but they mentioned tracking technology as the problem. Perhaps if you kill someone the tracker goes off and alerts the powers that be of the murder?
What was with the central loop sequence where Bruce Willis died?
The film presents it out of order for no good reason. What actually happens is the first time (JGL's pov), JGL kills BW and gets his 30 years. He ages into BW, who then goes back to the past to be murdered (BW's pov), and this time is ready and knocks out JGL and escapes.
Why let future Loopers live for 30 years? Why not 10? Why not 15? Why not quietly off them the minute they retire rather than give them time to plot?
Because they wouldn't recruit many people if word got out you'd get no payoff and be killed off? 30 seems like ages to a youngish person...
When cutting up Seth to get his future Looper, why go so far?
They didn't have to worry about medical bills because they planned to kill the older version PDQ. The more extreme torture got him to the address but also majorly incapacitated. Also, yeah, cool sequence.
That's all I've got.
Ah, splendid. But why then was the Rainmaker so blasé about wiping out neighbourhoods (seen on the news). And BW's wfe? Re: Seth, surely they still have to keep young Seth alive even if they kill old Seth?
ReplyDeleteMy take on some of these questions (I have my own questions, just attempting to put potentially plausible explanations to what I can)
ReplyDelete"The whole Looper idea seems fraught with unnecessary risk – if you can’t get rid of bodies in the future, why not at least kill them there (where you can oversee it) and send the corpses back for disposal?"
As someone stated above, its "explained" by a tracking system. While this sort of explains it, there are a few problems. First is BW Joe's wife gets shot (and presumably dies, did they quickly teleport her back in time?), and the second is that if the Rainmaker supposedly is so ridiculously powerful he can use time machine magic, how is it he can not get away with murder in the future
"If you can materialise the victims in different locations – Seth and Joe worked different spots, so presumably the other Loopers did – why not just materialise them direct into a furnace, or river, or volcano? Why not send them to a desert, or back to the age of the dinosaurs when they’d really be out of your way?"
Potential limits on the machine is the most plausible answer. Perhaps you can not send people back in time if they are dead, perhaps they have to appear on solid ground within a certain distance of the actual machine in the future. Maybe it can only send them a maximum of 40-50 years into the past.
"Why get Loopers to close their own loop by killing their future selves? Surely that had to be an idea that someone questioned as having inbuilt issues. Why not send the future-self Looper back to a different Looper anonymously – no one would ever know, you’d cut the pay offs, and you’d eliminate the whole ‘maybe I don’t want to kill myself’ risk."
It seems like its just a contract ending, so that you know you do it for a short amount of time then your contract is over. To be honest, this is never heavily explained, its just what is done. The premise is you should never know which body is going to be you and which is just randomly killing, and these people already accept killing random strangers on the authority of criminal organisations, so as long as they don't know which one is going to be theirs, there is little risk.
"What was with the central loop sequence where Bruce Willis died?"
That was to setup the life of what BW actually went through, he closed his loop, lived a life of drugs, went to shanghai, caused chaos, got married, smiled a few times, then they came for him after 30 years
"Why let future Loopers live for 30 years? Why not 10? Why not 15? Why not quietly off them the minute they retire rather than give them time to plot?"
From what I gathered, its not that the contract says specifically 30 years, its that in 30 years the rainmaker comes into force, and as we find out from the end, he wants to get rid of all loopers because one of them killed his mother. So when he came to power in 30 years, he rounded up every looper and sent them back to be dealt with. The short scene where BW gets the numbers from that random telephone call sets up that the rainmaker is chasing them all down.
Final note, anyone else notice that the only women in the movie were strippers, silent, or a mother who inexplicably decided to get with JGL with seemingly no attraction or interest between them prior to that one scene? For a world that will most likely still be about 50/50 men/women, surely some of them could have been in the gang, or loopers, or even just background (even in the background there is hardly any girls).
Thanks for this. And yes I TOTALLY agree with your point about the women.
ReplyDeleteTracey