When the internal logic goes awry

[crocoduck_hunter]

Honestly, given the level of destruction Cid tended to inflict and his general lack of control, I thought that killing him actually was the right decision (though I knew the movie was absolutely not going to go there).

[1958Fury]

The Looper complaints remind me of the Butterfly Effect. (It's been a while since I've seen it, so forgive me if I don't have all the details right.) Through most of the movie, the time travel's cause & effect works about like I would expect: if he changes the past, then the present acts as if it's been that way ever since. For example, if he changes it so that younger self's arms get blown off, his present self's arms don't suddenly disappear. His entire life is different, and he's living as if he's been missing his arms for years.

But then there's the stigmata scene. In order to gain the trust of a religious cellmate, he jumps back in time, and has his younger self stab metal spikes through his palms. Back in the present, his older self's palms suddenly start bleeding, convincing his new friend that it's a sign from God.

In the interest of earning myself a No-Prize, I've tried to come up with an explanation that works with the rest of the movie. Like maybe the injury gave him a permanent weak spot on his palms, and now he can scratch through that spot with his fingernails whenever he wants. But I really don't think the movie is written that way. It just feels like that one scene was written by a different person than the rest of the movie.

[Mickey Blue]

Yea I was thinking of posting that same thing, it doesn't jive with the rest of the film where he's the only one who remembers his 'other lives', so far as everybody else knows things have always been this way. So he should have had those marks on his hands the entire time he was in prison.


Another thing in that movie is the more-perfect future (he's a frat rat but rich, has lots of friends, girl of his dreams, etc) where he is sent to prison (noted above) for the murder.. I mean I get that he went a little overboard but could he seriously not afford a lawyer good enough to get him off the murder of an unbalanced sociopath who threatened and attacked him earlier?

As above it's been a while since I've seen it too, maybe there is more I'm missing, but it seemed like he should have been able to beat that charge.

[ASL]

Originally Posted by Darth Credence

The movie tries to have it both ways. In one instance (scars on the arm), they don't appear until someone has changed the past and it causes them to appear. In another instance, the prosthetic jaw is in place before the time changing impetus causes that to occur. The internal logic has gone awry.

One possibility: the rainmaker isn't such a bad dude after all, never has been. With or without a jaw, he decides to use his powers for good. And what could be more good than taking down the entire criminal underworld, including the loopers? Perhaps in the first loop he is naturally equipped, starts taking out the crime syndicates of his own accord, and in the process sets in motion an effort by the loopers to kill him. And so we have the conditions for the jawless rainmaker to emerge the first time Old Joe loops back to kill him.

I think it's important to consider that Old Joe, being a mob assassin and a baby killer (and incredibly selfish), is hardly someone whose interpretation of events we'd want to take as gospel. He's a man who has made a living killing and is obviously quite happy to kill children to suit his own selfish ends. He doesn't care about his wife so much as he cares about what she does for him. He is unwilling to give her up at any cost, even his own soul and the lives of several children. He is NOT someone to be admired. He has grown into a man with a poisoned soul, rotten to the core.

ETA: How do you imagine your average henchman views supermn or batman, interfering with his livelihood?

[fitz1980]

Originally Posted by 1958Fury

But then there's the stigmata scene. In order to gain the trust of a religious cellmate, he jumps back in time, and has his younger self stab metal spikes through his palms. Back in the present, his older self's palms suddenly start bleeding, convincing his new friend that it's a sign from God.

The film Frequency had a similar problem. The main plot of the film is that some strange atmospheric disturbance allows a modern day cop to talk to his long dead father 30 years ago. Most of the film goes with the idea that if you change the past, than you change history. There is even a scene where the son (a homicide detective) wants his father to hide some evidence so that he can analyze it in a modern crime lab and tells the father that he needs to hide it "where nobody will find it for the next 30 years," which turns out to be beneath the floor boards of the house.

But during the climax the killer is tussling with both father and son 30 years apart. When the young version of the killer gets his hand blown off in the 30 years ago fight with the father suddenly his hand shrivels and disappears during the fight 30 years later fight with the son. If the killer's hand got shot off 30 years ago than he should have been a one handed guy for 30 years rather than his hand magically disappearing when a movie editor is crosscutting.

[crocoduck_hunter]

Did either character have any problem with the fact that they were interfering with a police investigation and deliberately hiding evidence?

[Twankydillo]

I love(d) Merlin, one of my favourite TV series, but I realised that there was absolutely nothing to be lost if Merlin had told Morgana that he had magic, when he started to realise she did too. She would hardly turn him in, Uthers ward or not, seeing as how she had it too and she openly had sympathy for magic users. He knew this, he knew she would have done anything to help Mordred. She needed a mentor, like Merlin had, and true Merlin did see this at first, but when the mentors he found her got hunted, did he not stop to think "this is going to turn her loony, isn't it?". He then should have stepped up, all big (little?) brotherly, and give her some support himself. Like he did for Gilli, so he obviously didn't mind revealing his magic to other magic users, and Gilli could have proven just as dangerous to him if he was caught.

Also in Merlin, when Mordred's girlfriend was captured and Merlin couldn't think of any way to help the situation without making Mordred turn on Camelot and so fulfill the prophecy ... I could! The same method he's used many times before! Help Mordred himself, break the girl out of prison (as he's broken people out many times before) and then have a sharp word with Mordred to remember that somebody in Camelot helped him, that he was Arthur's right hand man (sort of) and knows Arthur, and that he'd do whatever to make things different for them. Mordred would then be indebted to Merlin, and so perhaps might have returned the favour one day ... by not turning on Arthur!

I suppose that last one was because Kilgarah was an idiot of a dragon and kept going on how Merlin should be suspicious of Mordred and Morgana, so naturally he was and made them turn on him, when they otherwise wouldn't have done so if he'd been his usual self around them.

[fitz1980]

Originally Posted by crocoduck_hunter

Did either character have any problem with the fact that they were interfering with a police investigation and deliberately hiding evidence?

The only reason they know a murder will happen is because the son in the future knows it happened. The father points out that he can't really go to the police and tell them that he's talking to his son 30 years in the future over a ham radio because they would never believe him.

******[spoiler]******

The killer was actually a corrupt police officer so you had the standard "we can't go to the cops" plot point that so many Hollywood movies are known for.

*****[/spoiler]*******

[Mickey Blue]

Yea the problem was that most if not all of the evidence was based on "my cop son from the future told me..", the fact that the killer was a police officer made it more complicated but I thought they had a fair reason (as far as movies go) to go the 'no cops' route. The plan was to try to catch the guy in the act and get him convicted.. Of course being a movie things didn't go quite to plan.

I agree the hand thing broke their own rules.

[Darth Credence]

The Joe's definitely cannot be trusted - they were killers their entire lives. But, it wasn't that the Rainmaker was wiping out the underworld. He had taken over the underworld and was using it for his own ends. He was described as a monster repeatedly, and as having ruthlessly consolidated all of the criminal families.

It also was not only Joe who reported this. His story jibes with that of Joe's friend.

[Mickey Blue]

True, and perhaps this belongs in the 'fan theories' thread, but both were career criminals so it's entirely possible they are unreliable. It's also possible the Rainmaker is not so much 'evil' as a well intentioned extremist who is trying to hurt those who had harmed them (the vagrants who attacked their families, the loopers, etc).

[crocoduck_hunter]

That wouldn't make him a well-intentioned extremist, it would just make him a revenge seeker with a Freudian excuse.

[Mickey Blue]

Sorry I more meant he was trying to stamp out the elements of society that he viewed as harmful due in part to his childhood trauma.. Or honestly perhaps even reality, we know very little about the 'future' except that violent crime is common, and a breakdown of society could easily result in violent vagrants.

He could be trying to do away with these things but in an overkill kind of way.

Or who knows, all just a guess since we have almost nothing to go on.

[JoeBentley]

In the Harry Potter universe everyone practically every wizard has practically no understanding or even awareness of modern technology, weaponry, medicine and that powerful technology and real world abilites are never seen.

I get that the whole faux-medievel motiff is a big part of these stories, but why do all magical fantasy worlds that take place in modern times still take place in some timelocked world before television and online gambling?

Do you really think that if magic existed children, even wizard children, would be interested in only that and wouldn't want internet and cell phones and Xboxes and stuff?

From Cracked.com After Hours
Katie: The entire school is messed up. They start there when they are, what 8? And they just learn magic. No math, no science.
Michael: They learn to time travel and look through people's clothes. It's the two Rs.
Katie: Imagine someone with access to time travel and an 8 year old's understanding of how history works. Now imagine that person times a thousand. Now imagine that forth of them are evil.

In other words, why didn't anyone just shoot Voltermort in the head with a sniper rifle? And don't tell me he'd hear it coming and use some sort of spell to stop it, that's what supersonic ammo is for.

It's built up as this epic battle between good and evil and everyone just stands in straight lines trading shots like it's the Revolutionary War. No one takes cover or using flanking maneuvers or even the most basic tactical considerations

For all of it's power the magic wands in the Harry Potter Universe are still just basically projectile weapons and they are used in the most inefficient ways. Slap a scope on one of those bad boys. Where's the magical commando unit that has their wands slung under the barrels of AR-15s. Where's the wizards that high in the shadows ninja-ing the bad wizards with lightning bolts before they even know they are there?

It wouldn't have taken Seal Team Six a lot less then 7 movies to deal with Mr. No Nose. He'd get about as far as the "A" in Avada Kedavra before 3 or 4 full clips of FMJ 5.56 turned his body into a piece of leaky meat.

Micheal: So if Voltermort wins the whole world is destroyed. Everyone gets killed. But instead of sharing that information with their international allies, the wizard community just finds a wounded orphan boy and goes "Yeah I'm sure that's gonna take of it.
Soren: Because you fight fire with fire. Wizards are supernatural. What help is a Muggle gonna be?
Michael: Uh...there's a bunch of us and we have hellicarriers and assault rifles. We killed Hitler, Hussein, and Houdini. You think we can't nuke Volter-man into next week?
Katie: He has limitless dark power.
Michael: That he has to aim through a wand. We can shoot people with a thousand rockets. From space. With iPhones.

[crocoduck_hunter]

I always wondered why there were never any sort of barrier, absorption, or other type of magic that prevented a hostile spell from hitting you. Also, I wondered why there never seemed to be any sort of offensive spells that could zap more than one target at a time.

But what I really wondered about was the near total lack of concern for student safety displayed at Hogwarts: seriously, a pair of first year students are assigned to go into a werewolf infested forest to try and find the thing that's been killing unicorns as detention?

[Twankydillo]

With Harry Potter, I think the main answer is that witches and wizards have far too much pride. Even most of the kindest ones tended to be quite patronising towards Muggles (look at Mr Weasley), and they're seen as odd. They don't like using Muggles or Muggle technology, seeing their own as superior. That wasn't just a bad wizard thing, they just tended to be more extreme about it. What they do have either they begrudingly use (cars) or were from before The International Statue of Secrecy, which helped keep wizards in the dark as much as it did Muggles, and helped the bad feeling about Muggles fester.

They have a lack of understanding about Muggle things coupled with an unwillingness to understand, which is why Muggle Studies was a bit of a joke at Hogwarts and why Mr Weasley was a bit of a joke at work.

The other answer is that they're not very sensible. I can't bring up the right quote, but Hermione also mentioned it in passing in book one (with the logic puzzle) that wizards on the whole aren't very logical, and they aren't very sensible. That's why they do things that seem alarming and strange to us. Perhaps that's an effect of magic? Perhaps that's why they have a reckless disregard for the safety of the pupils of Hogwarts.

I know magical people can't be killed by many of the things that kill us, when it comes to illnesses and disease. I don't know about bullets. In Voldemort's case, he was immortal - he had Horcruxes that kept him living even when he should have died. He couldn't have been killed with a gun alone, and a gun couldn't destroy his Horcruxes. Which doesn't explain why the Ministry (who didn't know that) didn't try alternative weapons, though perhaps the above paragraphs does. Mr Weasley once wrote a report on firearms, he mentioned it, but who listened to Mr Weasley?

I didn't watch that Cracked, but they start Hogwarts at 11, not 8 . Before that they're home schooled - or went to Primary School, if Muggle born.

[mags]

Witches and wizards are very immune to conventional physical attacks. Magic seems to be the only thing that can really hurt or kill them.

When he was a small boy, Neville Longbottom's relative (uncle maybe?) threw him out of a second or third story window to get his magic to show itself (much like the "tradition" of teaching someone to swim by throwing them in a lake). Until then, everyone was thinking he was possibly a squib (non-magical person born to a wizarding line, sort of the opposite of Hermione, a witch born to muggles). Fortunately Neville was a wizard, and he bounced. I'm horrified there was the possibility he had been a squib, and this was still done to him. I suppose they could have magically healed him, if he didn't die instantaneously, but it would have hurt like hell in the meantime.

[damian]

Where did the witches and wizards fromn other countries go to school? They mention 2 other schools (German and French IIRC) but no mention of the other 90% of the world.

[mags]

The wizarding schools are cagey about their actual locations (I believe it was suggested Hogwarts might be somewhere in Scotland), but there was a Salem Witches Institute mentioned in Goblet of Fire, presumably one of the North American schools.

http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Sa...#39;_Institute

See also http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Wizarding_schools

[Spud Sabre]

Originally Posted by Twankydillo

I know magical people can't be killed by many of the things that kill us, when it comes to illnesses and disease. I don't know about bullets. In Voldemort's case, he was immortal - he had Horcruxes that kept him living even when he should have died. He couldn't have been killed with a gun alone, and a gun couldn't destroy his Horcruxes. Which doesn't explain why the Ministry (who didn't know that) didn't try alternative weapons, though perhaps the above paragraphs does. Mr Weasley once wrote a report on firearms, he mentioned it, but who listened to Mr Weasley?

There's this quote: "In a fight between a Muggle with a shotgun and a wizard with a wand, the Muggle will win.”-JK Rowling

But I can't find a cite for it, so I don't know if it's legitimate.