Thinking and Writing Assignment: Looper

Danny Hunt

TMA 185

Winter 2014

Thinking and Writing Assignment: Looper

Looper is a science-fiction film that takes place in Kansas in the year 2044. The future portrayed in the movie is a bleak one. In 2044, society has degraded considerably. The streets in the city are crowded with vagrants and littered with trash and makeshift shelters. Crime and violence run rampant. With this film, writer/director Rian Johnson wished to make a commentary on the importance of a nurturing mother-figure in the life of human beings by showing us a future in which society has crumbled due largely to the loss of the mother figure. He communicates this message using the life and behavior of the central character, and those around him as examples of what happens when one grows up without the guiding, loving influence of a mother.

The central character, Joe, is a career criminal. Joe’s life consists of murder, drug use, and parties in a constant loop. Although he lives in luxury when compared with the hordes of vagrants who inhabit the streets,  his life is far from fulfilling. He is forced to run from the mob for his life after his own future-self is sent back in time as a target, and he allows the target to escape.

As we learn about Joe’s past, we come to understand more about how he ended up in the position he is in at the start of the film. It is revealed that Joe was a vagrant child, abandoned by his drug-addict mother, and adopted into a life of crime by Abe, a mobster from 2074 who has been sent back to manage the loopers. It becomes apparent that a similar background is shared by the majority of the loopers. In one scene where Abe and Joe converse, Abe retells the story of how he found Joe as a young street urchin. “I saw the bad version of your life… How you’d turn bad. So I changed it.” This references the idea that a child in Joe’s position is almost certain to lead a miserable life, but the alternative offered by the cruel and unaffectionate Abe is clearly not a great improvement.

The mother-figure motif is repeated many times. In one scene, another looper named Seth threatens a man in the street who responds to the threat by saying “Your mother didn’t raise you right.” There is also a sequence in the film in which Joe tells a prostitute of how his mother used to run her hands through his hair. The prostitute tries to stimulate Joe sexually, but he rebuffs her. He offers to give her half of his money so she can “raise her boy right…” but she refuses, saying that she knows that “silver comes with strings.” She begins to run her fingers through Joe’s hair asking him if that is what he wants. He does, but it is clear that her doing so is only a pale imitation of real, nurturing affection.

We are shown the life of Joe’s future-self in an alternate timeline. We see that he continues his life of crime and drug abuse until as an older man he falls in love with and marries a woman that helps him to leave his former life behind. She cares for him as he goes through painful withdrawals, and she is portrayed as a nurturing, loving, almost motherly figure. A mysterious and powerful crime-boss known only as “The Rainmaker” has her killed, and Joe goes back in time to kill the Rainmaker as a child in order to save his wife.

We do meet The Rainmaker as a young boy, his name is Cid and we learn that he is a hyper-intelligent boy with powerful and dangerous telekinetic powers which he sometimes has difficulty controlling. He lives on a farm with his mother who loves him and struggles to help him control his violent outbursts. In a revealing sequence, Cid’s mother tells of her own troubled past, and how she had for a time abandoned Cid. She speaks of her desire to save him from the life led by the men she has seen in the city who she describes as “lost”, sharing the same look of abandonment in their eyes that she saw in her own son when she returned after having left him in the care of her sister for two years. “If I can raise him, take care of him, he’s never gonna get lost.” she says. Later, when young Joe realizes that Cid is destined to become The Rainmaker, he determines that he must kill the child. Sara protests asking “What if I he grew up with me raising him? If he grew up good?” At first young Joe is unconvinced, but he changes his mind when a young and frightened Cid hugs his leg.

The science-fiction genre is often used as a means for expressing anxieties about the situations and problems we face in the present day. Stories that deal with possible future scenarios are the perfect medium for speculating about what may happen if current issues continue unresolved. For this reason I believe that in using the aforementioned story elements in this film, Rian Johnson was making a conscious effort to address the issue of the degradation of the family unit, particularly in regard to the figure of the mother.

I recognize that as a member of the LDS Church, I have a strong opinion about the importance of strong families and mothers in the development of a child. It is possible that due to my own existing opinions, I latched onto the elements I have mentioned to the exclusion of other important themes and messages that may have been of greater importance to the film’s creator. I do believe however, though it may not have been Rian Johnson’s primary intent to communicate this particular message, the film communicates it, and does a good job of it.