Looper: how does this time travel premise make sense?

[jagec]

Still doesn't make sense. So people can be tracked in 2074, great.

The mob abducts someone and puts a potato sack on their head and stuffs them into the trunk. What does it matter after that if the person is sent back in time or incinerated or fed to pigs? The person was still abducted and taken somewhere. Or are they exploiting a loophole in the law and only being arrested for assault & abduction instead of murder?

Can't convict without evidence. Hiding the body is a time-honored way to avoid prosecution.

 

[schelfho]

Now I am getting somewhere:

Another review states:

This is more productive. Questions on the physics of time travel probably arent productive because they have been explored elsewhere for decades. I think what most of us are wondering is what explanation they are going to give for their choice to send people only 30 years into the past. Most of you realized while watching the trailer that there are more efficient ways to use a time machine. This is a given. There will be some ridiculous reason for why this is the method they have chosen, and that is why most of us are here, not to complain about time loops or alternate realities. Thanks to JimKiler for actually adding something to the discussion. Here is another tidbit I found:

"The time-travel device in the movie, a clunky, illegal gadget that takes its looks from the first atom bomb, is set to only send people on a one-way 30-year trip into the past."
Link

It sounds like the devices are illegal, and the only one they could get their hands on was broken/rigged to only send people back 30 years.

 

[dank69]

Send them back in time 8 billion years or so. Those bones aren't getting found.

Send them forward in time 10 minutes, the earth will be 10 minutes further along in its orbit, and the victim will be floating in space.

 

[oznerol]

Send them back in time 8 billion years or so. Those bones aren't getting found.

I assume the whole thing revolves around the fact that nothing from the past can be changed so the future isn't altered.

Because of that, they need someone from the past, the Looper, who is in on the plan who will immediately kill the person sent back.

If they just sent someone back aimlessly into prehistoric times, they are leaving the possibility open that they can change something which would throw off the future.

 

[jhu]

The whole premise of the.movie is flawed because it assumes the Earth is stationary. In reality, if you send someone back in time, that person will be floating out in space because the Earth hasn't reached that area yet. Now if you can also send someone through time and space, why not just send that person into the sun?

 

[Phanuel]

The whole premise of the.movie is flawed because it assumes the Earth is stationary. In reality, if you send someone back in time, that person will be floating out in space because the Earth hasn't reached that area yet. Now if you can also send someone through time and space, why not just send that person into the sun?

Well, seeing as time travel violates the first law of thermodynamics... I think we have other issues to contend with.

 

[JimKiler]

The whole premise of the.movie is flawed because it assumes the Earth is stationary. In reality, if you send someone back in time, that person will be floating out in space because the Earth hasn't reached that area yet. Now if you can also send someone through time and space, why not just send that person into the sun?

Interesting, yes you are correct if you take into account place you need to take into account earths orbit and the spin of earth. I never thought about that before but that is a very valid point.

This is more productive. Questions on the physics of time travel probably arent productive because they have been explored elsewhere for decades. I think what most of us are wondering is what explanation they are going to give for their choice to send people only 30 years into the past. Most of you realized while watching the trailer that there are more efficient ways to use a time machine. This is a given. There will be some ridiculous reason for why this is the method they have chosen, and that is why most of us are here, not to complain about time loops or alternate realities. Thanks to JimKiler for actually adding something to the discussion. Here is another tidbit I found:

"The time-travel device in the movie, a clunky, illegal gadget that takes its looks from the first atom bomb, is set to only send people on a one-way 30-year trip into the past."
Link

It sounds like the devices are illegal, and the only one they could get their hands on was broken/rigged to only send people back 30 years.

I am guessing it could take more energy to go farther back in time thus sending them back 8 million years would be impossible to get enough energy but it does leave open the ability to go to different times. Sounds like this movie does not explain a lot. But that is probably the best bet instead of creating midi-chlorains like Star Wars.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Why wouldn't you just send your victim back 6,000 years when people and dinosaurs roamed the earth together. There is no way they would survive either the dinosaurs or the barbaric conditions and any evidence left in 2074 would be fossils.

Noah and Mosses would save them and stay alive an extra couple thousand years just to bring justice to the murderers

 

[Fern]

Why wouldn't you just send your victim back 6,000 years when people and dinosaurs roamed the earth together. There is no way they would survive either the dinosaurs or the barbaric conditions and any evidence left in 2074 would be fossils.

Wait!

And I missed this the first go around - but somebody believes dinosaurs roamed the earth 6,000 yrs ago?

Canadian public education?



Fern

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

John Titor would know.

 

[Fern]

1. 2074 person sent by mob to 2044 to be killed.
2. 2044 younger version is alive and well, not knowing what the future holds.
3. If he survives to 2074 (if timeline not affected), mobs again sends him back to 2044 to be killed (to them it's the first time).
4. Sames as #2.

Shouldn't that be then an endless Loop?
-snip-

I see it as a closed loop.

One closed loop. Not a repeating loop.

You're imagining the guy living from '44 to '74 multiple times. He would only do it once.

The issue here is our perception of how time moves. We see it progress in a certain order, moving forward unless interrupted by time travel backward. If we see the '74 guy come back, we must see the '44 guy still existing and going forward, and when he gets to '77 it all starts over again. Rinse, repeat.

I see no reason it must be so. In fact, it makes much more sense to me that it isn't.

Assuming the '74 guy dies quickly upon arrival in '44 (I haven't seen the movie etc.) the 'loop' going back exists only once, and only briefly. The regular timeline would be intact and move forward unaffected. If Mr. '74 lives longer after traveling back the loop exists longer, but ends upon the death of Mr. '74.

Fern

 

[sdifox]

One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem in becoming your own father or mother that a broad-minded and well-adjusted family can't cope with. There is no problem with changing the course of history—the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end.

The major problem is simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you, for instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be descibed differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is futher complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations while you are actually traveling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own mother or father.

Most readers get as far as the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up; and in fact in later aditions of the book all pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy skips lightly over this tangle of academic abstraction, pausing only to note that the term "Future Perfect" has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be.

 

[Imported]

So.. did anyone watch the movie? I saw it last night and thought it was great.

 

[Anubis]

So.. did anyone watch the movie? I saw it last night and thought it was great.

ill prob see it this weekend

 

[gorcorps]

Ah AT... trying to rationalize fictional plots in a fictional world involving fictional people using fictional technology

Just watch the movie and shut up

 

[Gibsons]

Interesting, yes you are correct if you take into account place you need to take into account earths orbit and the spin of earth. I never thought about that before but that is a very valid point.

You tie the time traveling to gravity, using Earth's field as your reference point. Then, mumble mumble presto, no problem.

 

[Ricochet]

So.. did anyone watch the movie? I saw it last night and thought it was great.

I thought it was a good movie too. There's other element to the film that no one even discussed in this thread. I wouldn't mention it as it plays a huge role (as I correctly suspected when I first saw it early in the movie).

I think 12 Monkeys was better though.

 

[EagleKeeper]

Saw the movie this weekend.

Parts very very very dry.
A one hour movie with fillers

 

[Red Storm]

I have yet to see time travel ever actually improve a story or make it interesting.

 

[EagleKeeper]

I have yet to see time travel ever actually improve a story or make it interesting.

Ever driven a DeLauren?
:whiste:

 

[Phanuel]

Ever driven a DeLauren?
:whiste:

Fail

 

[EagleKeeper]

Fail

Would the story have worked without time travel?

 

[NFS4]

I can't believe I read this entire thread

 

[gorcorps]

I have yet to see time travel ever actually improve a story or make it interesting.

I don't think Back to the Future would be very entertaining if Marty just chilled out in 1985 and went to his own HS dance.

*shrugs*

edit: I actually wrote that without reading this whole page.

*high fives EK* (and I think he was failing your spelling of a DeLorean)

 

[surfsatwerk]

I have yet to see time travel ever actually improve a story or make it interesting.

12 Monkeys