See, to me it's not really about time-travel, that's just a gimmick. To me it's about escaping destiny, about the power of free will over predetermination.
Looper wrote:Then I saw it, ... , laid out in front of him, the bad path. I saw it and the path was a circle, round n' round. So I changed it.
Spoiler
We see it through out the movie, our hero is enmeshed in an organization where your fate is decided the moment you join, to break free of your destiny is to invite death, it is feared, rejected. You do your job, you close your loop, you live the remainder of your life. You accept death.
Joe is fully aware of what this means, he doesn't care. Indeed he is determined to close his loop and move on, and in another life that's exactly what he's done. It is only when, far into the future, he finds something that truly matters to him that he is first compelled to break the loop... his loss of cherished love sends him on a mad quest of revenge, a desperate grasp at redemption through a soulless act of murder. Ironically this would do nothing but precipitate fate, he would have changed the future yes, but to no better end... It is when he steps back from himself, and sees the cycle as whole, sees the consequence of his own selfish need to save what is his, that he is able to finally break the loop.
The question remains, did he break the loop? We don't really know, since the movie ends before Sid can grow up to finally become whatever he is going to become. But I like to think that Joe did have an impact, that he did change his fate.
Joe is fully aware of what this means, he doesn't care. Indeed he is determined to close his loop and move on, and in another life that's exactly what he's done. It is only when, far into the future, he finds something that truly matters to him that he is first compelled to break the loop... his loss of cherished love sends him on a mad quest of revenge, a desperate grasp at redemption through a soulless act of murder. Ironically this would do nothing but precipitate fate, he would have changed the future yes, but to no better end... It is when he steps back from himself, and sees the cycle as whole, sees the consequence of his own selfish need to save what is his, that he is able to finally break the loop.
The question remains, did he break the loop? We don't really know, since the movie ends before Sid can grow up to finally become whatever he is going to become. But I like to think that Joe did have an impact, that he did change his fate.
Viktor Frankl wrote:Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.