Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Bathroom Monologue: In Defense of Looper



Foreword: I haven't actually seen the movie. Allegedly I'm watching it tonight.

“Anyone fighting them must cross a certain skepticism: how is it that the mob, rather than a government or major corporation, controls time travel? We don't associate mad science with bowler hats and tommyguns. We certainly don't associate them with theoretical physics and R&D.

“To this skepticism, appreciate that whoever time travels first will control it retroactively. History will be changed, and it was.

“What do we associate with mob organizations? Moles. Spies. Inside men. Bribes. Things disappearing off of trucks.

“The mob didn't invent time travel. It had two financial backers, and one covert sleeper, in a Pentagon project out in New Mexico. Or it did, in a timeline we'll never remember. What we record is that they pulled the time machine out of the ether, and always had exclusive access to it, and every scientist who ever had a hunch in the right direction has been missing for time unknown.

“That's the devil of it, because it was a such fringe project that before an oversight committee could take it seriously, it was rewritten into a line where it had always been and no one could ever touch it. That's how we remember it because every time we've thought different, they've changed our past. We live in a gerrymandered present.”

6 comments:

  1. See that's why I don't like time travel, because it allows everything else to stop making sense!

    It just generally doesn't work for me. Except when Ray Bradbury does it. Oh and Time Cop. That gets a special pardon.

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    1. I also tend to dislike time travel in general, though I give heralded stories I shot. Back to the Future and Steins;Gate panned out well for me.

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  2. Your argument sounds, um, sound! Let us all know what you think of the movie.

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  3. I think time travel works when it works, and doesn't when it doesn't. La Jetee (and its more action-packed "child", 12 Monkeys) are brilliant, and do make sense. One thing Looper and the aforementioned two have in common is that time travel is set up as something no-one in their right mind would want to do, and it tends to be a one-way trip.

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  4. I don't think that travel is gonna work for me in anyy .so I won't go for this

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  5. I watched the movie last week - um the argument sounds interesting. ^_^ Looper was interesting, and the ending was also good. Time travel can be dicy, it can change the past ^_^

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