I’ll be writing more about my publishing journey, but today I want to share something I created to help me make an important decision – how to get paid.

My ebook was exclusive to Amazon, but the paperback is available through Ingram, and the ebook is now available from Google Play Books, iBooks, B&N, Kobo and more. That potentially leads lots of small payments, which could quickly end up being eaten by fees. Luckily Ingram, Google, Apple all pay one amount in $AUD by EFT into my account – quick and easy. Unfortunately Amazon, KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) and Createspace, don’t make it quite so easy.

Being in Australia I have three options for being paid by Amazon: Check, Wire transfer, or a service like Payoneer, and two options for being paid by Createspace: Check or Payoneer. At my bank, overseas checks cost $15 for under $2,000, $50 for over $2,000, and can take up to 6 weeks to clear. That immediately puts checks at the bottom of the list. Wire transfer costs $15, regardless of amount, and takes up to 2 days to clear.

Payoneer has different charges depending on whether you sign up as an individual or company. An individual with a Master Card will pay $30/yr plus 1% of each deposit, and 2-2.75% to transfer into your bank account. A company doesn’t have a Master Card, and pays 1% of each deposit and 2-2.75% to transfer to your bank account. The added benefit to both is that you can wait until the exchange rate is favorable before transferring it to your bank account.

Since Payoneer works on a percentage, and wire transfers are a fixed price per deposit, I figured that Payoneer would be the best choice for smaller amounts, and wire transfers would be the best choice for larger amounts. To avoid checks altogether I’ll need a Payoneer account regardless, but for Amazon I wondered what was the tipping point? I wanted to know how much would I need to be earning for wire transfers to be the better option.

There isn’t a simple answer since there are so many variables. How much you’re being paid, from how many territories (each territory is a separate deposit or transfer), and the amount your bank charges can all vary.

I setup a spreadsheet to calculate roughly when wire transfers become a better option than Payoneer, and I found it so interesting and useful that I thought I’d include it here for you to test for your own circumstances.

To use it, let’s say your Amazon earnings are a total of $1,000 per month, from 4 different territories:

1. Enter $1,000 for the Amount per Month (keeping in mind that you can’t receive less than $100 per territory as that’s the payment threshold).

2. Enter 4 into the Number of Territories.

3. Enter the amount your bank charges for wire transfers into the Transfer Fee.

4. Compare the results.

Things always change, and I’m hopeful that Amazon and Createspace will eventually offer EFT from all territories to Australia. Until then I’ll probably stick with Payoneer for Createspace payments, but now I feel confident that I’ll know when to change Amazon payment options from Payoneer to wire transfer.

* As soon as you receive $100 in payments.

Looking for something to read to the kids? Check out my new book Fairy Tails: Little Red. It’ll give you 2 weeks of bedtime stories. Get the ebook free when you buy the paperback at Amazon.

In part 1 I talked about the logic problem of loopers having to kill their future selves. Part 2 dealt with the massive plot hole that derails the whole movie. Now I’m going to address some of the sub-plots, and ways they could come together at the end to increase the drama and catharsis of the ending. We’ll also look at some of the minor logic problems and some things that could have been fixed in the editing room.

Sara

There’s been a lot said about what a strong character Sara is, and on the surface I’d agree. However as we’ve discussed, there isn’t much depth to her. We don’t care for her anywhere near as much as Cid or old Joe because her story is relegated to the past, as exposition. Even in that final climax, Joe’s dilemma comes down to whether he thinks Cid’s life will be ruined or not, rather than whether Sara lives or dies. If Sara’s character had been stronger, maybe we could have also seen a glimmer of hope of a relationship between Sara and Joe. We could have had a real emotional conflict between young Joe and old Joe, together with a very healthy dose of dramatic irony. Picture that final stand-off between Sara, old Joe and young Joe and imagine if young Joe and Sara had a deeper connection.

That’s really powerful stuff, a true emotional dilemma. But we miss out on it because Joe is too cynical to feel anything for Sara, and Sara’s only real concern is for Cid. As Johnson explains in the commentary, he didn’t want any romance between Joe and Sara so he could focus the story on Cid. What a shame that we missed out on that dramatic and emotional complexity.

Old Joe

I like old Joe. I get what he’s doing and why he’s doing it. I totally empathise with him, and find him the most appealing character in the movie. I especially like that he doesn’t just want to just save his wife, but save their relationship. He’s also conflicted by a promise to his wife to give up violence, because violence is the only way he knows to save their relationship. It’s wonderful. It’s complex. But is it selfish? The movie seems to suggest that old Joe hasn’t really changed, and that only young Joe, through his self sacrifice, demonstrates true inner growth. But that’s only true if Joe doesn’t understand how time travel works. If Joe thinks that by killing the future Rainmaker, he will be returned to his future and live out the rest of his life with his wife, then granted it’s selfish. But we know that’s not how time travel works (as established in this movie). If Joe does understand time travel, then he knows that no matter what he does nothing will change for him. He can only affect young Joe’s future, therefore wanting to save his relationship with his wife for young Joe is selfless. He would be selfish in that instance if he only saved his wife, denying young Joe the relationship and the salvation he experienced through it.

There’s enough ambiguity that either could be the case, which isn’t good for emotional clarity. Johnson explains, that we’re supposed to think that old Joe is being selfish by wanting to save his relationship, even though it’s not logical. It’s established that lots of people understand the rules of time travel. Abe and Kid Blue do, because they use it to their advantage to get old Seth back. If Kid Blue does, then you’ve got to assume a few other gat men do. If they know, then a few loopers would. That’s not even taking into account what Joe might learn during the next 30 years.

How we perceive old Joe is also influenced by his reaction to his mission. Of course it’s difficult to kill a child, and a decent amount of soul searching before and after is expected, but how remorseful he is influences how we feel about him. After killing the child, if Joe steeled his jaw, holding his emotions in check as he went to find the next one, we’d feel less sympathy. Instead he becomes visibly upset, distraught even, and we feel sorry for the guy. Yeah he’s done a bad, bad thing, but he feels bad about it, so he can’t be all bad. I feel like at this point we should really be hating the guy, but it’s just not happening.

Let’s compare that to young Joe. What’s he done? Hid at a farmhouse. Cid saved him from Jesse. He had sex with Cid’s mum, and keeps telling everyone he only cares about himself. What a jerk.

Looking beyond old Joe’s personal motivation, his selfishness is also influenced by the Rainmaker. As we’ve discussed, if Cid becomes a mass murdering force of destruction, then old Joe killing him is doing the world a service. If Cid was to become a good person, then Joe killing him seems more selfish, even if he’s doing it for young Joe. Since Cid can’t become the Rainmaker in old Joe’s timeline we’re left hanging again. Defining Cid’s future one way or the other would certainly help determine whether old Joe is acting selfishly or not.

Leaving it open for philosophical discussion isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It only becomes a bad thing if the theme of the movie relies on it being one way or the other. Unfortunately, since we know that young Joe’s suicide can’t affect Cid becoming the Rainmaker, then this question becomes more important to the theme than it might otherwise be. We want his suicide to have meaning. If it was made more clear it could have had great impact on the ending, on the theme, rather than just being a discussion point.

Let’s see if the original short story can shed any light on the situation. Old Joe’s wife was killed when he was captured, so he convinces young Joe to kill himself to save her life. In this scenario there’s less room for doubt. Old Joe is saving his wife by making sure he never meets her. It’s the equivalent of showing young Joe the photo. It’s nice and simple, but there just isn’t enough justification for young Joe to kill himself. What I like about it is that old Joe appears to be acting selflessly, sacrificing his younger self to save his wife, but at the same time he’s denying his younger self 30 years of life, which is kind of selfish since he’s had the benefit of living those 30 years. You could say manages to have his cake and eat it too. It doesn’t seem much help at first glance, but with a slight adjustment in perspective it might be just what’s needed.

I alluded to it earlier, but now I need to come out and say it. I think old Joe would have made a better protagonist than young Joe. With old Joe as protagonist, I have an ending in mind, inspired from the original short story. I don’t want to reveal it straight away, so bear with me.

Doesn’t that feel more powerful? It’s bitter sweet in a way that young Joe’s suicide isn’t. It’s essentially the same ending from a different perspective, but it provides catharsis that the original doesn’t (as long as there’s no mention of that damn synthetic jaw). The reason it’s cathartic is that the whole movie has been giving us reasons for old Joe to grow, by showing us his life with his wife, and the promise he made to her. When he finally learns that lesson, it’s a huge relief. Old Joe has completed his character arc in a completely unexpected way. Young Joe on the other hand, isn’t given any true means of growth, other than a vague premonition right at the end which may or may not turn out true. So his suicide, while noble, is underwhelming, and his character arc is more of a straight line with a hiccup at the end.

One of the problems I have with the Rainmaker, that I didn’t mention earlier, is how he came to have his powers. It’s suggested that Cid’s dad might be a TK which starts to make sense, two TK’s have a child, the child is likely to have stronger TK. What doesn’t make sense then, is why Cid is the only one, and if he isn’t the only one how he gets away with all that stuff in the future. I understand it’s supposed to be a TK mutation, but with so many TK’s around it’s highly unlikely that it’s an isolated mutation. It’s just another thing that doesn’t quite add up.

But remember that producer who loves Akira? He isn’t about to let us just write it out (ok really I’m talking about Johnson’s inner producer here, because he’s expressed his love for Akira). Just like time travel, instead of just giving it lip service, we need to write it in. We need to weave telekinesis more deeply into the story so it doesn’t feel like an afterthought. Telekinesis needs to become so integral to the story that it can’t be taken out. Only then can we justify it being there at all.

My first instict is to somehow make having telekinesis a liability. Maybe people hide it because the government detains telekinetics for some reason (because they know what it could lead to. That’s right, they’ve done their experiments. Haven’t you seen Akira? They’ve got kids in there man). But it also needs to be used to get out of a tricky situation, well, other than that whole Jesse thing, because that one’s for a whole different reason. That can explain how Cid is somewhat unique in the future, because he’s been hidden from the government, and allows the TK save to be a surprise, because we didn’t know that person was a TK because they were hiding it.

Maybe it’s not just a party trick. Going back to our earlier idea that young Joe saves Sara’s life, Sara is TK, and waiting to find that out doesn’t really add anything. Maybe Sara is using TK to hold up a piece of farm machinery to work under it. She trips, looses concentration and it falls on her. Being injured, she doesn’t have the strength to lift it again. Joe find her in this condition and rescues her. It’s not quite what I had in mind, because it’s at the farm instead of in the city, but it’s something.

The very best way to integrate it would be to somehow link telekinesis with time travel. Perhaps the time machine couldn’t have been invested without TK, or it requires a TK to use it (although at first glance that would stop old Joe using it). Just something to inextricably link the two worlds, where one can’t exist without the other. I’m sure with a bit more thought it would be possible, and would lend so much more credibility to the world of Looper.

France/China

I don’t mind the idea of Joe going to China, but it certainly introduces a lot of complications for getting him back to America – complications that aren’t addressed at all in the movie (please note that I completely understand the actual reason for going to China ($$) so my real complaint is that it wasn’t addressed).

Firstly, it seems like a bit of a stretch for the crime syndicate to track down Joe all the way to China. I mean what’s the likelihood of the authorities finding him there? And even if they did, it’s stretching the realms of believability that there would be any type of extradition treaty between China and the US. And what would be the point? It’s not like Joe knew any of his employers. He could attest to the existence of loopers, but he couldn’t exactly point fingers. Ok, that’s getting a bit close to the fragile logic holding the whole movie together, but you see my point.

Secondly, how does the time machine in China send him back to small town USA? Is it a teleporter too? Each looper seems to have their own “spot”. Do those spots correspond to different time machines, and all Joe’s victims have come from that time machine in China? That’s a pretty big coincidence that the crime syndicate Joe loops for is the same part of China that Joe decides to settle in. Or do the time machines have a programmable GPS? Or has teleportation also been invented, and they teleport Joe back to the US?

I mean, why doesn’t he just move to Vermont? He can still learn French and have it be just as useful as it was in the final movie. Or maybe he decides to bring his wife back to the US for a holiday, or they have to leave China to escape legal trouble (the guys a ganster after all). The crime syndicate’s hackers track customs obviously. They notice he’s back, so they get ‘im.

Honestly, I did question the distance factor while watching the movie but didn’t dwell on it at the time, there were too many other problems to worry about. But since there are so many simple ways to avoid the many problems this causes, it just seems worth spending some time on.

Tagging Techniques

A common complaint is that Joe’s wife is killed. I understand why. It conflicts with the logic of the movie while simultaneously trying to give it purpose, much like the Rainmaker. Let’s look a bit closer.

I’ve already mentioned it, but I think the real problem here is the convoluted justification for sending people back in time. The whole idea of tagging techniques making it more difficult to dispose of a body, while I’m happy to go along with it, seems unecessary. The original outline for Looper didn’t mention it, and I’m not sure why it was added. Without the advanced technology it makes perfect sense. Ritual killings are a knows feature of the mob ( even if it’s only in movies). We’ve all seen the old mob hitman taken out into the woods and two put in the back of his head by his replacement. Sending your hitman back in time to be killed by his younger self is a beautiful analogy of that same ritual. Having that ritual doesn’t mean that people aren’t killed by the mob through other methods, so Joe’s wife can still be killed in the process of carrying out his ritual killing without suspending belief. It works really well, especially if the movie equates looping with the ritual executions we’re familiar with, which could have been done in that opening voice over just as easily as slipping in “tagging techniques”.

But let’s go with the idea of tagging techniques. Lots of people think Joe’s wife being killed contradicts the idea of tagging technology. But Joe’s wife being killed is clearly an accident. It’s plausable that whoever shot her gets caught for it, even though it’s not shown. It’s easy to miss, but the movie does show the place has been set on fire after the event, perhaps in an attempt to hide the evidence.

But that’s not what happens in the script.

It’s revealing that in the shooting script, one of Joe’s kidnappers purposely and maliciously slits his wife’s throat. Obviously using the tagging techniques theory, that would directly contradict the purpose for sending people back in time in the first place. Since the original outline also describes Joe’s wife’s throat being slit, I imagine that the tagging techniques explanation could have been added fairly late in the game, and the full implications of it weren’t realised until later. To be honest, since there are so many other similar contradictions, I suspect the reason that it stayed that way right up to the shooting script and through the editing process was more due to a lack of understanding of the rules established by the movie.

Synthetic Jaw

If there was only one single change I could make to the movie, it would have been to remove the line about the Rainmaker having a synthetic jaw. If this one line had been omitted, it would have almost saved the movie. Without the synthetic jaw there is still a slight possibility that old Joe is just replicating something that may have occurred in the previous timeline.

I’ve already discussed it earlier so I’m not going to repeat myself. Suffice to say that adding the synthetic jaw comes across as too obvious a manipulation, a deception in an attempt to get the audience to believe something different to what the rest of the movie has established.

And speaking of deception…

The Final Voice Over

The final voice over tells us exactly what to believe, removing any chance of ambiguity, even though it doesn’t make any sense. Without the voice over, young Joe’s primary motivation for killing himself might have been to save Sara. That would have made more sense to me given, well, everything we’ve discussed. I would have been much more satisfied with the ending if I’d been allowed to make up my own mind.

Johnson mentions in the commentary that the final voice over was one of the last things added in the editing process. Apparently, not happy with the story the movie was telling by itself, Johnson added the voice over to manipulate the audience to believing something different. How disappointing.

I think the main reason people believe that final voice over is they were so confused by the contradictions throughout the movie, that they latched onto it.

It largely comes down to this. A movie makes a promise to the viewer. It says “I’m going to be this kind of movie, and give you this kind of experience”. It either lives up to, or even exceeds that promise or it doesn’t. Most people consider a movie is bad or good or great based on the delivery of that promise. This is similar to the genre a movie is categorised into, but is generally more subtle and complex because a movie is rarely just one thing. It’s this promise that allows me to enjoy so many different types of movies, from Transformers to The Shawshank Redemption. Transformers promised to be an all stops out action movie with big robots and lots of explosions, and it delivered. That’s why it made so much money. I can understand people being disappointed that it wasn’t more meaningful, but it didn’t pretend that it was going to be meaningful, even though it was life affirming in its own way (lucky I left the admission that I liked Transformers until the end so as not to taint the entire article).

When comparing something like Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure with Looper, although they’re both movies featuring time travel, one is a comedy and one is a serious drama. We’re willing to forgive much more in a comedy because, while hopefully it contains some meaning, its ultimate aim is to make us laugh. If something doesn’t quite make sense, as long as it’s funny then it’s ok. In a drama like Looper where events that occur are central to the drama, those events need to make sense or the drama is lost, together with the meaning.

Johnson, and those who love the movie, excuse the plot holes, suggesting they can’t be avoided, that you just have to forget them and go along with the drama. The implication is that the plot holes are necessary to telling this particular story, but as we’ve seen that’s far from the case.

Johnson said there are many time travel related things he could have explained or elaborated on, but he didn’t want to tie up the film with lots of unnecessary exposition. Completely understandable right? Well not really. I would contend that if the logic held together better, the movie could have gotten away with much less exposition than it actually ended up with.

Johnson also admitted that he rushed through the time travel aspect of the story so he could concentrate on the dramatic stuff, “How to get time travel to lay down so the audience isn’t having to process the rules of it the whole time”. As he explains it, taking example from The Terminator which apparently got all the time travel stuff out of the way as quickly as possible to spend time on the action. The difference is that while The Terminator didn’t dwell on the time travel aspect, Cameron made sure that the time travel was logically sound. Had a little more time been spent on the time travel logic in Looper, or had a re-write focussed on that aspect, the drama would have been elevated to far greater heights, and the movie would have had much more depth and meaning.

This story could have been a great tragedy. Instead, in a manipulated attempt to insert meaning that it didn’t earn, it forced a happy ending. There were so many things it wanted to say, but it missed the mark on pretty much all of them. If it had held back just a few things, it could have had a strong ending and message and all the slightly illogical elements could have been forgiven, if not forgotten. Too many questions were asked without being answered, as if Johnson had all these ideas but didn’t follow through with them.

The trouble is that Looper came so close to actually working, it just tried include too many “cool” ideas. It feels a bit like the first draft of a story where you throw in everything that might work before weeding out what doesn’t need to be there, and making what’s left stronger.

Great movies ask a number of questions, and develop a number of plots, but then bring them all to fruition in the climax – ideally a single decision and action that defines everyone’s journey and provides emotional catharsis for all of them. Looper could have been one of those movies, but instead ended up being a house of cards. If you question any part of it, the whole thing comes crashing down.

1) Stories evolve.

Sometimes the initial idea, the spark, ends up not being right for the story that it inspires. Killing that baby for the good of the story can mean the difference between a good story and a great one. And hey, you still have that cool concept that you can potentially use in a whole new story.

Sometimes stories evolve into a different type of story than you planned to tell. If your story becomes a tragedy, then let it be a tragedy. You can’t just tack on “and they lived happily ever after” to the end of a tragedy and call it a happy ending.

2) Don’t make your story more complicated than it needs to be.

Don’t introduce complex justifications for things that already have simple ones, and don’t use too many ideas. A simple premise allows you to really focus on the drama.

Speaking of complexity, something you might have noticed throughout this analysis is that my first solution was almost always more complex than it needed to be. After getting that idea out, I invariably came up with a much simpler way to accomplish the same goal. I hope you didn’t mind that I chose to keep all of it in so you could see my process, because it’s a great demonstration of just how useful re-writing really is.

3) You have to earn your ending.

Even Johnson talks at great length about how important it is to earn the ending, to give the audience emotional catharsis. You can’t just tell the audience what your movie is about at the end, especially if the rest of the movie doesn’t support it. The events of the movie have to support what you want the movie to say. If you suspect that a voice over might help explain the end of your movie, then the movie probably hasn’t done its job – much like a joke that needs to be explained. A voice over at the end of the movie should only ever be used to provide closure.

If you cheat, and the audiences catches you cheating, then you definitely won’t have earned your ending.

And of course the most important lesson:

4) A coherant and logical plot is vital for a movie to have any real meaning.

If the plot makes no sense, the ending loses its value. It’s so important to establish the rules of your universe, and then play within those rules. If you disregard the movie’s rules, or if you make giant leaps of logic, you will likely leave the audience behind, losing their interest and emotional investment.

In part 1 I talked about the logic problem of loopers having to kill their future selves. This time we’re going to look at the massive plot hole that derails the whole movie. Some of you know exactly what I’m talking about, but some may be asking “What plot hole? Looper was great”. It’s difficult to know where to start talking about this plot hole because it affects, and attempts to bring meaning to, so many aspects of the movie. So I’ll just come out and say it:

The Rainmaker

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great concept. A bad guy tears up the future, so a good guy goes back to the past to kill the bad guy before he can become the bad guy. Embedded within is the excellent ethical dilemma of whether it’s right to punish or kill someone before they’ve done bad things, compounded by the fact that the bad guy is probably a child at that point. When you add that the good guys past self becomes attached to the future bad guy child, you’ve got a recipe for some great external conflict and internal conflict as both versions of the good guy fight each other. That sounds like the makings of an awesome movie right there.

The question could be asked at this point, if it even needs the addition of assassins doing hits on people sent back from the future. It’s almost seems as if Looper is two different movies that have been shoehorned together, and we haven’t even mentioned telekinesis yet. I’m reminded of Good Will Hunting where apparently Weinstein looked at an early draft and realised there were two different stories competing. His advice was to focus on one story or the other. Damon and Affleck did, and ended up with a great movie.

Although the Rainmaker elements of the story could work by themselves, remember the idea of a looper was the initial inspiration. I wonder if that idea could sustain a movie without the Rainmaker? We have a looper who fails to assassinate his future self. If we remove the Rainmaker as motivation, surely old Joe would still be pissed at the crime syndicate that sent him back, or maybe his misplaced anger is directed to the authorities that took down the crime syndicate. His wife being killed could even remain as fuel on the fire. Old Joe then has two objectives. To take down the crime syndicate before it exists, or whoever took them down, and to save his wife. Young Joe has to decide whether to help old Joe or help himself. Young Joe could be given some connection to either the syndicate or the wife to add conflict. There seems to be plenty of scope to create a dramatic and intriguing story out of that alone.

It could even be set up so that events that occur in the looper movie end up creating the Rainmaker. Sara could be a minor character in the looper movie, still a junkie partying with Joe and his friends, who gets killed. Without Sara’s influence Cid becomes the Rainmaker, creating havok in the future and ruining Joe’s life. Joe decides to come back (again), this time to find out who the Rainmaker is and stop him, either by killing him or preventing Sara’s death.

So these ideas could work for two separate movies, or a movie and a sequel. Surely there’s a way to include them in the same movie. How did it all go so wrong?

The Plot Hole

I was willing to go along with the Rainmaker storyline for most of the movie even though, or perhaps because, I couldn’t quite make sense of it. Many great movies set up a mystery or question early on to keep the viewer invested, and in this case it was also the mystery that old Joe was trying to solve. I was eager to discover the answer to this mystery, confident that all would be revealed in the climax. Let’s revisit what we know leading up to that point.

Let’s revisit Johnsons answer when asked about it, “That’s the Terminator question… you can shoehorn it into making sense… but it’s magic logic”.

Firstly, The Terminator features a different kind of time travel to Looper which makes it very difficult to compare the two directly. There are generally two kinds of time travel in movies. One deals with fatalistic time travel, or causal loops, where everything that will happen has happened so nothing can change the future – everything is predestined. 12 Monkeys is a remarkable example of this. The Terminator is another example, which contains a cool paradox right at the end. The other kind of time travel features an uncertain future. The future is malleable so changes to the past can change the future. Back to the Future and Looper feature this kind of time travel.

Secondly, the paradox introduced right at the end of The Terminator is totally cool and elevates the movie to the classic that it is, but you know what? Take it out, and every element of the movie still works, logically, dramatically, and thematically. It’s icing on an already very tasty cake, but provides delicious irony that gives you a different perspective on everything that occurred in the movie. It’s a great example of an ontological paradox, but is in no way “magic logic”. There’s just no comparison to the Rainmaker in Looper which can’t be removed because it’s central to everything happening in the movie, and yet by Johnson’s own admission it doesn’t make any logical sense. It’s not any sort of paradox or time trope, it’s just a big old plot hole.

Johnson also says in the commentary, “…getting it to the point where it makes sense, which it really doesn’t. No time travel in any movie ever makes sense. It’s complete balderdash. It’s just a matter of tricking the audience into believing that it makes sense”.

There is an element of truth in that, because we know that time travel doesn’t exist, but essentially it’s a total cop out. It’s so important when creating any kind of fantasy story, to establish the rules of your story world and make sure every event, every character, and every motivation sticks to those rules. For time travel stories to make sense you just need to set up the rules for time travel that best serve your story, and stick to them. Within those two basic types of time travel, every movie has slightly different rules, but that’s fine so long as each movie abides by its established rules. Back to the Future, 12 Monkeys and The Terminator all abide by their respective time travel rules. That’s one of the reasons they’re all classics. Within their own internal logic they make complete sense, so they don’t need to trick the audience. Sure, as we’ve discussed, some of the elements within Looper’s rules don’t make sense, but that’s forgivable. The reason Looper doesn’t work is that it spends the entire movie establishing the rules, and then breaks those rules at the last minute to manipulate us into believing its message.

Let’s look at an example of those rules being broken. To explain old Joe’s mention of the Rainmakers synthetic jaw, Johnson comments “His memories are already melding to the current timeline, so the current version of events that are setting themselves up are already informing his memories of the future”.

Well, no wonder the movie doesn’t hold together. It’s just been established that old Joe’s memories only change after young Joe does something different – something that’s reinforced multiple times in the movie. Anything could happen at this point, because everything that occurs changes the future. To say that Joe’s memories are conforming to something that is going to happen, suggests there’s a predestined timeline, which goes against the rules of time travel established by the movie.

But despite all this, I’m still hoping that the movie might redeem itself. I can see what’s coming, but I’m desperately hoping it doesn’t go there. There’s still a chance for a final twist, a surprise ending that I didn’t see coming that explains and provides meaning for all of this. Let’s see…

Let’s review. Under the rules of a changeable future, established and necessary to the story of Looper, if old Joe’s actions are the cause for Cid to become the Rainmaker as the movie wants us to believe, then Cid couldn’t have become the Rainmaker in the timeline that Joe came from. Since we know that the Rainmaker did exist in the timeline that Joe came from, old Joe’s actions can’t be the only cause for Cid to become the Rainmaker. So whether he succeeds or fails, Cid is still likely to become the Rainmaker, and if Cid is likely to become the Rainmaker either way, then young Joe killing himself is pointless.

None of this is a bad in itself, in fact it has all the makings of a great tragedy – different to, but equally as good as 12 Monkeys. But even though it’s full of wonderful dramatic irony, that isn’t the ending that was chosen.

In order for young Joe’s suicide to be meaningful in a positive way, we need to have a happy ending. So Joe’s suicide has to somehow save Cid from becoming the Rainmaker. But if Cid is saved from becoming the Rainmaker, it removes the dramatic irony inherent in the situation. Since, apparently, every good time travel movie has to have a dramatically ironic ending or some cool paradox, the movie tries to convince us that old Joe’s actions are what cause the Rainmaker which, because we know that isn’t possible, completely ruins the ending…

and the beginning…

because Old Joe creating the Rainmaker is the only reason provided for us to explain why the Rainmaker targets loopers in the future. Since Joe couldn’t have created the Rainmaker, the Rainmaker targeting loopers makes no sense. What other reason could the Rainmaker have for targeting loopers in the first place?

Why Does The Rainmaker Target Loopers?

The back story (or future story in this case) of the Rainmaker is that he’s taken over the mob through force and is closing all the loops. Ooh, it sounds exciting. The trouble is that the movie has already gone to great lengths to explain that most loops end up closed anyway. If the authorities bust a syndicate, the first thing they do is to close the loops to eliminate witnesses. Loopers generally expect that their loop will be closed. So why have the Rainmaker at all? We don’t need another reason to close a loop. After going to all that exposition, I mean effort providing a reason for old Joe to be sent back, it’s not used. Instead a whole different reason is created which requires a whole lot more exposition, er… explanation, and makes a lot less sense.

To investigate the Rainmaker’s future exploits we need to look more closely at the reason provided for sending people back from the future in the first place. Apparently there’s some sort of tracking technology in the future which makes it difficult to dispose of a body without alerting the authorities so victims are sent back in time to be killed before the authorities had such technology. Alright, I buy that. I don’t need to understand the details. Just knowing the authorities make it difficult is enough. But really, do we even need a reason to dispose of a body? Being told that the mob uses time travel to dispose of bodies is enough for me because I’ve seen enough Soprano’s to be able to identify with the difficulty of disposing of a body. Fabricating a technical reason for it like tracking technology just gives us more things that need justification, more exposition, and more potential logic problems (like Joe’s Wife). But let’s go with the tracking technology for now.

We’re shown that the Rainmaker is called the Rainmaker because he explodes bodies while holding them suspended in the air through the power of telekinesis, creating a shower of blood. It’s implied that it’s this power that has enabled him to take over the future crime syndicates. That suggests that he’s used his power to assert his dominance, killing people in a future we’re told people don’t get away with killing. The wreckage we’re shown in the news footage suggests that he’s killed many people. Maybe he’s the only one able to get away with it, but still why doesn’t he just explode the loopers in the future? That’s a whole lot neater than sending them back in time, allowing for the possibility they’ll get away and kill his juvenile self. Perhaps a more important question though, is why close the loops at all? If he’s so powerful why does he care about them? It must be because he doesn’t like them.

What does he have against loopers anyway? Oh yeah, it was a looper who killed his mother, gave him this synthetic jaw, and caused him to become evil. No wait, that was just a daydream young Joe had. No, there’s no reason we’re given for him to hate loopers. Can’t be that important. No wait, it is important because it’s this vendetta against loopers that’s supposedly what causes him to send old Joe back in time setting off all the events of the movie.

Again I just have to ask, why include the Rainmaker at all? I’m just not buying any of the back story at this point. Yeah it’s an interesting idea, but a super telekinetic who uses his powers for evil is one of those ideas that could support a whole movie in itself (that’s 3 so far). It’s like making a WWII movie that’s advertised as a gritty WWII movie, but having Captain America swoop in to save the day right at the end. Captain America might be a cool character, but he just doesn’t fit in that movie, and most people expecting a war movie would be disappointed.

What could we do instead? Let’s start with the obvious – the reason we’ve already been given:

But what if the producer has decided the Rainmaker character has to stay. Maybe adding telekinesis was his idea, because he loves Akira and his kid loves X-Men, and superhuman powers are “in” right now. How can we include the Rainmaker in the story without causing problems?

But coming back to the problem, old Joe can’t be the cause of Cid becoming the Rainmaker, because we know the Rainmaker existed in his timeline. This ruins the ending by making young Joe’s suicide largely meaningless, and ruins the beginning by removing the Rainmakers motivation for targeting loopers. But wait, that’s not all.

It also ruins the future.

Why does Cid go bad?

If old Joe doesn’t cause Cid to become the Rainmaker, what does? The simple answer is we don’t know. Everything has been set up so nicely for him to grow up good, it just doesn’t make sense that he wouldn’t.

We’ve looked at a couple of scenarios where Cid doesn’t need to go bad, but can still be old Joe’s target. He might become the cop who takes down the crime syndicate, or the inventor of the time machine. If he doesn’t go bad, it creates a different dynamic to the climax where old Joe wants to kill a good kid purely for his own gain. This provides even more of an ethical dilemma, and ultimately comes across as much more selfish because there are no other redeeming factors to Cid’s death.

If Cid grows up bad, then old Joe is saving the world from a mass murdering force of destruction, which presents much less of an ethical dilemma. Killing one kid to save thousands of people is a much easier choice than killing a kid to save just one person, your wife, who you can save more easily without killing anyone. Add to this the possibility of Cid being good and having an accident, just a victim of his power, and you’ve got an even stronger dilemma.

No matter how we look at it, Cid growing up good strengthens the dilemma, and therefore the dramatic potential of the situation. The only upside to Cid growing up bad is being able to include a message about the power of parenting. We can contrast the way he grew up bad in the first timeline with how he will grow up good in the second, through the love of a nurturing parent. But where is that contrast in the movie? There’s no difference in Cid and Sara’s back story between the first timeline and the second. The way their back story is presented in Looper explains perfectly why Cid grows up to be a good guy in the first timeline even though we’re told he doesn’t.

There is a scene just after Cid kills Jesse where Sara begs Joe not to go after Cid. She asks him to imagine if Cid grew up with her raising him, if he grew up good. But without Joe’s intervention, that did happen in the first timeline, so it’s confusing. I guess this scene is suggesting that Joe’s actions create the only specific circumstances which enable Sara to talk Cid down, giving Cid the control he needs to avoid becoming the Rainmaker. That’s a nice idea, but if Sara is able to talk Cid down from a major telekinetic tantrum in this instance, it stands to reason that she could have also talked him down in the previous Rainmaker timeline when her life depended on it. Perhaps she didn’t though, or she wasn’t there when he had another life altering meltdown. But that’s a lot of if’s and coincidences (and if we could find meaning in coincidence we wouldn’t have religion). It completely releases all the built up tension in the scene. More importantly if we believe that Joe’s actions create the only specific circumstances which enable Sara to talk Cid down, but we factor in that the movie has already told us that those actions are what created the Rainmaker, then it just all negates itself.

I read where someone pointed out that the notable difference between the previous timeline and the new one is that Sara and Cid become rich. I didn’t catch that originally, and while it kind of makes sense, I just can’t believe that’s the message we’re supposed to walk away with — that being rich instead of poor enables Cid to become good instead of evil. That money is the root of all… good? If anyone came away with that impression I’d take the money out of the movie altogether, or show Sara and Cid leaving it behind. They don’t need to be wealthy if they’ve got each other right?

Note: The movie deviates from the script just after Sara shoots young Joe. In the script Joe explains time travel to her, we cut away to old Joe, and then return as young Joe finishes his explanation. Sarah admits she’s heard stories about loopers. It indicates something in her past that feels like it could be important, but isn’t elaborated on. In the movie as soon as Joe starts to explain time travel, Sara jumps in with “You’re a looper”, indicating a much stronger connection that feels like it should be more important, but likewise is never elaborated on. It seems like a waste to have that and not use it, especially when we’re looking for a reason for her son to hate loopers.

We’re given a story about a kid who’s gonna turn out ok, wait… his mother nearly died… no she’s ok, they’re both ok. It’s an emotional straight line with a bit of a hiccup. I want to see a story about a kid who’s damaged beyond repair and clearly vengeful with the power to follow through, wait… this woman gets through to him, she’s his mother?…Oh no she’s about to be killed… no she’s ok, they’re both ok. He’s saved. Wow, what a rollercoaster.

It’s seems that if the parenting message is to have more impact, Sara’s back story will have to undergo some changes. We need to give Cid motivation to become the Rainmaker and provide a way to save him in the end to make sense of the story. To reinforce the parenting message, Sara needs to be the unequivocal instrument of both Cid’s destruction and salvation.

This just highlights one of the problems with down playing time travel in the movie. Its full potential wasn’t reached. We barely see any impact of old Joe changing the past, even though the changes he makes are significant. Time travel becomes more of a theoretical element instead of a dramatic device. Here we see more immediate consequences of the changes that Joe instigates which serve the story better and couldn’t occur without time travel.

To really push it I thought about going a step further and have old Joe directly save Sara’s life, either resuscitating her from the overdose soon after he arrives, or later on at the club, saving her from a gat man who was about to kill her, but I was concerned that both of those seemed a bit too contrived. Perhaps one of them could work though…

If that’s all a bit too coincidental, there is a way to keep the back story as it is. It still doesn’t explain how or why Sara knows about loopers, but it’s less complex, and would probably just require a quick re-shoot. Everything up to the farm is the same…

If you believe that Sara talking Cid down is both the moment of Cid’s salvation and an isolated incident, you could make an argument that the same dramatic irony is there in the existing climax. The trouble with this is it occurs immediately before the climax so we barely have enough time to register it, let alone be emotionally invested in it. More importantly the fact that old Joe sees it happen, and doesn’t believe it saves Cid or else he wouldn’t still threaten him, takes the dramatic right out of the irony.

Come to think of it, if young Joe was the one to talk Cid down instead of Sara (immediately after Jesse explodes perhaps), that would provide justification for Cid becoming the Rainmaker in the first timeline (because Joe wasn’t there) and explain how Cid is saved. It further demonstrates the bond between young Joe and Cid, and gives the climax the added dramatic irony that old Joe has already saved Cid’s future without knowing it. It would also provide an opportunity to show Cid become enraged at young Joe’s death/suicide, and then calm down, demonstrating his new found control to show the audience that he’s not going to become the Rainmaker. At least… not today.

All of these scenarios provide a way for Cid to become the Rainmaker, but leave open the possibility that he’s good or bad – helpless victim or vengeful criminal. Whichever option provides the greatest drama in the climax can be chosen.

Next Time

Next time we’ll look at some of the sub-plots, and ways they could come together at the end to increase the drama and catharsis of the ending. I’ll also talk about some of the minor logic problems and some things that could have been fixed in the editing room.
 

I noticed minor problems in the first two acts of Looper, but nothing that couldn’t be excused if the ending nailed it. There were many things to like, including the fluid and messy way of how the future changes. Unfortunately when it came to the final conflict, not only did it introduce a massive plot hole, but the plot hole obliterated everything that had come before it, as well as any meaning the movie might have had. Suddenly all of those earlier problems seemed much more pertinent, like warning bells that I’d ignored at my own peril. It was so close though. It almost worked, which somehow made it even worse. I could feel its potential like when a word is on the tip of your tongue and well, it bugged me.

After watching the movie, I wanted to find some meaning in what I just saw. My first thought was to see if Johnson answered any of my questions in his interviews. I was hoping that Johnson would have a simple explanation to the plot hole, that just didn’t happen to make it into the film. If that was the case I would have walked away happily, my curiosity sated, and I wouldn’t be writing this article. Instead I found this interview where Johnson was asked about it point blank, and was gutted by his answer.

Really? Magic?

Saying it’s magic is the equivalent of “he woke up and it was all a dream”? It’s just plain cheating. I mean, he offers legitimate and logical answers for some of the other questions, just not that most important one – the one that justifies everything that occurs in the movie. A switch inside my head was triggered and I heard my inner voice say “Challenge accepted”.

I wanted to see if others had the same questions so I jumped online and read a whole bunch of reviews and discussions. People had noticed all sorts of problems, but not many people brought up that one massive plot hole, although those that did seemed to have the same reaction.

Most reviews agreed there were logic problems or plot holes and either liked the movie despite of them, or didn’t like the movie because of them. None seemed to offer any significant insight beyond that, which is fair enough since most were avoiding spoilers.

Still puzzled, I read the original treatment and the screenplay to see if they contained any answers that just hadn’t made it to the screen. In fact some questions were answered, but more questions raised, so I watched the movie again with Johnson’s commentary. Finally I watched and listened to a bunch of interviews with Johnson. I’ve done my homework.

One thing worth mentioning before I start, is that Johnson seems to be completely happy with the movie, the plot, and the ending. He’s curiously apologetic for many action/shoot-em-up elements, but he’s entirely unapologetic for the logic problems and plot holes, to the point that they’re completely ignored in the commentaries. So I know I’m not doing him any favours by writing this, but I’ve done my best to understand what Johnson was attempting to achieve. I’ve found the answers to as many questions as I can to make this analysis as meaningful as possible.

There are three kinds of plot hole or logic problems with movies. The worst kind take you out of the story while you’re watching it, and can easily ruin a movie, or at least affect your enjoyment of the movie. Then there are problems you only notice after the movie’s finished and you’re thinking about it later – commonly known as “fridge logic” because you notice it after you’ve gone home and are raiding the fridge. These can be major or minor plot holes or inconsistencies, but the film maker has been clever enough to distract you from them. These problems can affect the longevity of a film but since they largely go unnoticed on first viewing, they don’t tend to affect its immediate enjoyment or box office. The last kind of problem is a misunderstanding, which is sometimes mistaken for one of the other two kinds of problems. Either the viewer wasn’t paying attention, or the film maker didn’t explain something well enough, and the viewer thinks there’s a problem that isn’t really there. These can be just as bad as the other two problems because, although they can be justified, they still affect the enjoyment of the movie.

The problems I have with Looper were those I noticed on first viewing, that took me out of the story while I was watching it and detracted from the overall experience. Since everyone’s experience is different, I realise that many people overlooked some of those problems or didn’t care, and found the meaning they desired. Others were bothered by even more problems. So I’ll talk about some of the different types of problems with the movie, and some of the problems other people have written about, to see if there was maybe a way those can be explained or maybe could have been avoided.

Why do Loopers kill themselves?

This was the first question that really distracted me, and it followed me through the whole movie. I like the idea that loopers have to kill themselves. It presents an interesting ethical dilemma and has great dramatic impact, so it’s understandable that this idea is the genesis of the whole movie. But it doesn’t make sense within the context of the movie. The whole operation the future mob have going is pretty complex, but well contained because they’re getting away with it, which means they’re not dumb. So within this supposedly airtight operation, how are there so many opportunities for things to go wrong?

Loopers killing their future selves allows for ethical problems, exactly as the film showed. Those can’t be the only two times loopers didn’t kill themselves, granted Joe’s escape appeared to be a unique occurrence (but if you think about it, maybe not so unique). But still, why not send an ex-looper back to a different looper so you’re fully covered? These looper guys don’t seem to be the brightest sparks on the planet, and if any of them enjoy what they’re doing a bit too much maybe they wouldn’t always shoot first. Maybe they’d play with their victims first. Look into their eyes while they shoot them. Maybe they wouldn’t just shoot them, maybe they’d kill them slowly with a knife. There doesn’t seem to be any checks and balances on exactly how victim dies. Maybe an enterprising looper might blackmail their victims into providing information in exchange for the looper killing them quickly instead of slowly, or find out who the victim is and threaten to kill them and/or their family in the present erasing 30 years of their lives. Maybe an enterprising looper might do deals with their victims. Information about the future in exchange for making sure the victims family is safe and/or looked after in the present “Hey I can tell your present self exactly when the mob gets you” which as we saw could make quite a difference in that persons future. I mean there are so many possibilities, that assuming they all shoot first and ask questions later seems a bit naive.

Johnson explains that they have to kill themselves to close the loop, to keep it tidy. But if anything it’s messier. Killing themselves, and knowing they’ve killed themselves by receiving a big fat retirement payout, means that each looper knows exactly when he’s sent back and can plan for it the next time around (although old Joe seems to have been caught completely by surprise). That doesn’t sound like a closed loop to me. If it was me I’d be pissed, and spend much of those 30 years trying to get revenge, or at least doing everything I could to avoid it. I’d turn states evidence, or get myself locked up. Maybe I’d become a cop and join a task force charged with taking down the mob. Again, so many possibilities for things to go wrong. Sending ex-loopers back to be killed by different loopers means the looper doesn’t know his future self is dead. He doesn’t know when the mob sends him back, or even if they send him back. Surely that looper is less of a threat than one who knows they have exactly 30 years to plan revenge and save his own life.

Johnson’s other explanation is that if another looper killed your future self it would be messy because you could get revenge by killing that other looper. While it’s difficult for me to believe that the future mob cares if one looper kills another (they seem to be pretty expendable), if I killed your future self and I somehow figured out that it was your future self (because I’m one of those sadistic loopers that tortures before killing), what kind of idiot would I be if I told you that I’d just killed your future self? And even if you then killed me out of some misplaced sense of revenge, it would be too late because I’d already closed your loop by killing your future self. So why would it matter if you killed me? It’s not like killing folks is a big deal in this semi-dystopian future where it’s well established that anyone with a gun can kill vagrants willy-nilly.

The movie explains the reason loopers are sent back at all. If something happens to the mob in the future and they have to erase any trace of their time travelling hijinks, they’ll send back the loopers to tie up all the loose ends (This explanation severely undermines the dramatic impact of the Rainmakers actions, but more on that later). That means that as soon as one looper is sent back, the others know they’re going to follow soon. This could easily lead to a strike or even a revolt as soon as the first looper gets his golden handshake. If they all refuse to kill their future selves, maybe Abe gets the gat men to do it. But then the gat men are future loose ends, and it only takes one smart one of them to realise they’re next. So they revolt, kill Abe, and suddenly the future mob realises they should have just sent victims back straight into a meat grinder or incinerator (or volcano or the middle of the ocean as has been suggested). But of course then we wouldn’t have a movie. But if the loopers are unaware that their future self has been terminated by a different looper, then there’s no striking or revolting, just blissful, ignorant compliance.

Just like my blissful ignorant compliance when I usually watch a movie. Unfortunately most of these thoughts are going through my head in some form or other while I’m watching Looper, so it’s no wonder it wasn’t connecting emotionally.

One explanation that I read (more than once) is how else would the mob pay the looper their retirement money? Because apparently the future mob’s main objective is to make sure they can pay these guys as much money as they can, out of the goodness of their hearts. The future mob wouldn’t even consider an alternate way of operating where they can just pay normal hit money instead of a retirement goldmine. I’m sorry, I’m being sarcastic. Of course that’s completely illogical.

Ok, so it’s a logic problem. Not the end of the world, but a distracting and fairly common complaint. There are two ways to solve this problem. Either provide a more logical reason for loopers having to kill their future selves, or change the premise so ex-loopers are sent back to different loopers.

Providing a plausible explanation for loopers having to kill themselves is a tricky one. Maybe a looper killing his future self is the initiation to becoming a gat man. That could maybe work if gat men had greater job security and higher pay, but it still doesn’t account for the disgruntled ones using the next 30 years to get even. Maybe loopers are made to kill their future selves as part of some initiation ritual. This I would expect from a ruthless future mob. When someone first becomes a looper, they have to kill their future self to prove they have what it takes. The first time they’re caught and sent back, they hadn’t been loopers in the present. The act of becoming a looper changes their future, which allows for the possibility that they aren’t sent back at that time any more, in the same way that old Joe was killed by young joe one time, but not the next. But then if they’re not sent back at the same time any more who do they kill in the initiation?

Wow, this changeable future time travel does get tricky. Let’s refresh ourselves on the established rules of Loopers time travel. Changing things in the present/past only changes things from that point on, thus old Seth stayed in the present even after his arms and legs had been cut off, even though there was no way that he could have got there in that condition. So changing something in the present/past can’t undo anything that has happened before that point in time, including remnants of the previous timeline. For example, we should assume the kid that old Joe killed remains dead even though young Joe killed himself, because he was killed before young Joe killed himself.

So the loopers who’ve killed their future selves during initiation could still have to face killing themselves again. This is somewhat of a paradox, but reasonable given the rules. But then we get back to the original problem, why kill themselves when sending each one back to a different looper makes more sense. I think this solution is becoming way too complicated, so I’m going to put the straws away and look our other option.

How could the story have accommodated a change where ex-loopers are sent back to other loopers instead of themselves? Two events are impacted by this change. The first is old Seth needs to escape to establish the rules of how the future can be changed by present events and to present Joe with the dilemma of choosing his money over his friend. The second is that old Joe needs to escape.

In the movie this event leads to an important sequence where Joe betrays his friend for money. In this version Joe knows he’s done the wrong thing.

It strikes me that killing your best friend might be even harder than killing yourself. It certainly would carry more guilt. So the first scene could be just as dramatic. Seth’s torture is a bit more brutal than the movie, as Seth is completely innocent, but still tortured to ensure the death of his future self, but I like how that increases the stakes. Being the only looper helps to emphasise how alone Joe is when he’s on the run which makes the dilemma of whether to join or hunt old Joe that much more enticing, leading to additional inner conflict. This works so well, I wonder why Johnson changed it?

Being at the start of the movie, and being so important to the plot, this logic problem starts those seeds of doubt in the viewers mind, which is never a good thing. The viewer starts looking for an answer, perhaps analysing the plot more thoroughly than they would have otherwise. With the added scrutiny the film maker can’t get away with as much. But ultimately it’s a problem that could be overlooked if the rest of the movie works, which in this case it doesn’t.

Next Time

Next time I’ll talk about that massive plot hole that derails the whole movie.
 

Continue reading: The Importance of Plot – Part 2