My brother and I watched Looper on Sunday and loved it. However, after I watched it, I was thinking about it (as is my wont) and it occurred to me that during the climax/resolution of the movie, there was a major logical plot hole that throws the whole ending into a state of doubt. Of necessity, I am going to talk about the plot of the film and especially the climax/twist, so if you haven't seen it and don't want to be spoiled, turn back now.
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The movie is about a "looper" named Joe. A "looper" is someone living in 2044 who acts as an assassin for the mob from 2076 (I think). Basically, the mob sends back people who are to be killed and the loopers kill them. At some point, the future self of the looper is sent back to be killed as a part of what is called "closing the loop". Joe fails to kill his future self (reasons to be explained later) and spends a good portion of the movie trying to rectify that failure.
Turns out that in the original timeline, Joe killed his future self and then years later met a woman and fell in love. A mobster named the Rainmaker came into power and decided to close all of the loops. His men captured Joe who was going to go quietly His wife startled the henchmen and was accidentally shot and killed. Once he got to the time travel facility, Joe freed himself, killed all of the men and went back in time in order to kill the Rainmaker as a kid to prevent his rise to power and thereby save his wife's life.
When old Joe came back, he initiated a new timeline by his actions. Young Joe was injured and taken by a woman to a farm where she took care of him. Young Joe met her son, a young boy named Cid. Old Joe, meanwhile, went around killing 2 possible Rainmakers. Turns out that Cid was the third possibility.
During the climax of the film, old Joe has Cid in his gunsights when Cid's mom steps in the way to allow Cid to escape. Young Joe realizes that what old Joe is doing would cause Cid to become the Rainmaker and thereby cause the very event old Joe was trying to prevent. So, young Joe killed himself to erase old Joe from the timeline and cause Cid to not become the Rainmaker.
Ok, that all makes sense on the surface. However, there is a gaping hole in this logic. In the first timeline, another event had to have occurred to cause Cid to become the Rainmaker. We know this because at that point young Joe closed the loop. Therefore, we can conclude that since the Rainmaker still came about, something else happened that led him to become the Rainmaker. Therefore, Joe killing himself would not *NECESSARILY* prevent the rise of the Rainmaker.
I will grant that there are potential answers to the problem, however they are never addressed. In fact, this plot hole is never mentioned. Instead, the filmmakers seem to assume that the viewers will not notice the plot hole or think about it. I think this bugs me mainly because of the fact that the rest of the story fills in major plot holes, but having this huge one at the climatic moment is enough to cause me to doubt the efficaciousness of Joe's sacrifice.
If anyone can show me that I am wrong, I would appreciate it. My brother and I discussed this for about 30 minutes last night and couldn't see anyway to avoid this plot hole. We could come up with possible solutions, but they all seemed to be a bit of a leap in logic, so we couldn't resolve the issue.
Thoughts?
