It is a truth universally acknowledged that a sci-fi story in possession of a time travel plot will eventually bring up Hitler. More specifically, the question of whether you would kill baby Hitler if you could go back in time. It’s a deceptively simple idea that provokes a series of thorny moral dilemmas the longer you think about it. Would killing baby Hitler mean you eliminate a monster, preventing the deaths of millions, or does the murder of a child make you the monster? Is it fair to condemn an infant for the potential actions of their future self? What if you went through with it, only for someone worse to take his place?
The intricacies of this premise have long spurred Hollywood imaginations. The 2002 Twilight Zone episode Cradle of Darkness, in which a time traveler (Katherine Heigl) kills baby Hitler, ends with a bleak twist; the family’s terrified housemaid (Jillian Fargey) swaps out the infant with another, the implication being that he grows up to follow the exact same path. And while baby murder might not sound like obvious fodder for comedy, Avengers: Endgame took a shot at it in 2019, with Rhodey (Don Cheadle) bringing up the group’s newfound time-travel tech, then trailing off as he mimics strangling a baby Thanos. Even Tom Hanks has considered the conundrum, telling CNN in 2015, “I am going to vote the pro-going-back-in-time-killing-Hitler ticket.”
In contrast to the rot and grime of the world it’s set in, Rian Johnson’s Looper provides a thoughtful, clear-eyed answer. The 2012 sci-fi thriller is set in 2044, in a world where time travel will be invented 30 years later. A future crime syndicate sends its targets back in time to be executed by assassins hired in 2044 called “loopers.” Since time travel is illegal, the syndicate must eventually tie up all loose ends, or “close all loops,” sending any contract killers that survive until 2074 back to be killed by their younger selves, who are promised bountiful paydays in exchange for eventually having their retirements cut short by their own demise.
By day, looper Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) carries out his executions with seasoned efficiency. By night, he numbs himself with drink and drugs. It’s a regimented routine dictated to the dot by his pocket watch, with each repetitive day indistinguishable from the next. But one hell of a wrinkle in his orderly life appears when his older self (Bruce Willis), sent back in time to be killed, escapes. Joe must then track him down or be executed himself.
Over and over again, Looper points to the inevitability of fate, with repeated visuals of a ticking clock highlighting how it’s only a matter of time before yours runs out. We see old Joe’s history — when still young, he successfully killed his old self and attempted to start fresh in Shanghai — but he’s still susceptible to the siren call of drugs and violence.
Whether people can truly change becomes the film’s central theme. Old Joe eventually sobers up and gets married, only for his wife to be killed by men working for The Rainmaker, a “holy terror” of a mob boss. When old Joe is sent back in time and evades being killed by his younger self, he sets off to track down three targets. One of them will grow up to be the Rainmaker, rob him of the love of his life, and terrorize the whole country. But in 2044, they’re just children. It’s the Hitler dilemma, but rooted in personal loss rather than the greater good.
Young Joe’s vision is just as blinkered. He betrays a good friend (Paul Dano) to the syndicate when he realizes the alternative is losing half his life savings. He has no empathy for his future self, calling him an “old man” who’s already lived his life and needs to accept his fate. When he finds Cid (Pierce Gagnon), a young boy with telekinetic powers, he realizes he’s discovered The Rainmaker. He briefly contemplates killing him, but for a man with such single-minded focus, he wavers when he hears the pleas of Cid’s mother (Emily Blunt). What if the boy was raised to be good? What if the path laid out for us isn’t always a circle?
So again, the film thoughtfully considers if the future is set in stone or is just as wispy as the puff of smoke imagery it keeps returning to. Can people change? Young Joe’s life did when his manager Abe (Jeff Daniels) rescued him from a life of petty crime and hired him as a looper. “I could see it happen on TV — the bad version of your life, like a vision…so I changed it,” says Abe. And when Old Joe shows up to kill Cid, Young Joe realizes he can enact change, too.
In bringing Joe and his older version face to face, Looper points out how unrecognizably different we could be 30 years from now, and nudges us to believe Cid could turn out differently, too. For all its detailed sci-fi worldbuilding and convoluted timelines, it’s the film’s emotions that endure: empathy for the people we are today and hope for the people we might become tomorrow.
Looper is streaming on Paramount+.
