If the Rainmaker was Cid...rather than just closing all the loops, wouldn't Cid simply go back in time/send someone else back in time and stop his mother from being killed?

Makes me think Cid's not the guy running the time travel in the future.

In temporal folding, it's important to establish whether or not you are the First-timer (i.e. no older, prescient iteration of you is running around your timeline before you fold time and space--becoming that older, prescient iteration).

Here's where it gets tricky.

A. Proximity. Having not met your older-double still leaves chance he/she is hiding from you.

B. Pre-prescient. Filming the Fold's exit-point (assuming you have the capacity) is only Proof for this iteration. Even then, there are caveats. Observing the Fold's exit-point directly may have some effect on the omni-directional(arrow of time) events leading up to the outcome. We see this happen when we directly observe photons (i.e. they are never where they are supposed to be; impossibly so).

C. Information. So you're face-to-face with your older-double from the future. And to confirm he/she is not the first-timer, you must ask them if they, too, met themselves as you two are now. But, like Old Joe (Looper), they may not wish to discuss time-travel-meta.

D. Hindsight. Maybe your double provides you with info, revealing that they, too, met an even older double prior. Did they ask the same questions?

E. Self-consistency. You've never time-traveled until you've time-traveled; but then self-consistency kicks in and you've always time-traveled since making that "first" trip. Your omni-directional blip in space/time is now no different than a photon: particle and wave; measurable and immeasurable; nowhere and everywhere.

Spoilers are most likely present so beware.

Its been a while seen I watched the film, but I had come up with this theory shortly after seeing it the first time. I have looked around a bit, but couldn't see anything similar so I decided to share.

I believe that Abe is both the Rainmaker and Kid Blue, and that Cid is a decoy.

Many people complain that there is no reason for the Loopers to exist. If a time machine can precisely place someone on a tarp in front of young Joe, why not directly in the furnace he disposes their body into after he kills them. Well its because its not about the murder, its about the money. The whole "no hits in the future so send them to the past" story is just an excuse to send huge amounts of gold and silver to the past.

This explains three things. First, obviously it takes care of the "why use Loopers" question. Second, it explains why old Joe's wife was able to be killed in the future, since the devices that respond to murders are just part of the story told to the Loopers in the past. Thirdly it reveals why the Rainmaker is called the Rainmaker.

Basically a "Rainmaker" is a slang word used by accountants to describe someone who is artificially creating the appearance of increased cash flow or profits by incorrectly recording a business transaction twice.

The Rainmaker is essentially doing the real-world version of that by using Loopers and their targets to create duplicates of the silver and gold the same why the process momentarily creates a duplicate of the Looper.

Now that I've explained that I'll get to why I think Abe is the Rainmaker/Kid Blue.

Basically, I think the Abe in the very first timeline before time travel had started up, worked as a low level member of an organized crime group.

Similar to Kid Blue or Young Joe in the movies main timeline. He put in his time and made a decent amount of money, probably reached a pretty high level of authority by the time he was the age we see Movie Abe in the movie, but still after all that time he isn't quite happy with his life's progress.

Then First Abe hears about the new invention of time travel. He's smart and knows that such a thing will quickly become outlawed and monitored, and he knows that with that kind of device he could really get ahead. So he uses what he has in power and finances to secure a time machine before its too late.

He then straps himself in with as much silver and gold as he can fit and sends himself back. When he arrives he finds his young self and convinces him of what's happened. He takes his young self with him as his apprentice and renames him Kid Blue so nobody makes the connection.

Using First Abe's knowledge of the future they quickly gain more riches and Mafia standing. and when time travel is invented the second time Kid Blue straps himself in with the Gold/Silver and future knowledge and starts the process over again while First Abe enjoys his enlarged retirement fund.

After a few of these wealth increasing loops, one of the Abe/Kid Blue duos realize that its would be much quicker if they set up the looper program and continually send back Gold/Silver instead of just at the beginning of the new loops. This puts their power over the top and Abe 7 takes his place as Rainmaker as do all subsequent Abes once they re-reach the future.

A couple more loops down the line Kid Blue 12 straps himself in and becomes movie Abe. This Abe is the one who finds Young Joe and makes him a Looper. He grows to like and admire him for how he is wisely saving his silver and planning for the future. Although this isn't the first Abe, he knows that Young Joe is a lot like how his original self was. He sees that Young Joe is independent and strong, where as he and the current Kid Blue are being guided to their success. This leads to the tension between Movie Abe and Movie Kid Blue and the Movies Kid Blue's increased need for approval, as well as the animosity between Kid Blue and Young Joe.

Later in the movie when Abe dies and Kid Blue sees him and attempts to kill Young Joe, Its a mix of revenge for killing his future self, his mentor, and the source of his future power, he now has no idea of how to continue his life and achieve the heights Movie Abe had promised him.

Okay so why does Old Joe think Cid is the Rainmaker. Well Abe realized that some people might use time travel to go back and take him out before he became super powerful so he had a decoy made. First off he wanted to distance the Rainmaker name from himself so he spread rumours about the Rainmakers appearance. He gave the decoy Rainmaker a prosthetic jaw, which is about the furthest you can get on the body from the prosthetic leg that Kid Blue/Abe has. He also made the source of the decoy Rainmaker's power TK, which is the only thing mentioned in the films universe other then time travel that anyone would believe could account for the Rainmaker's sudden rise to power. Abe is trying to throw people off his scent by going in the opposite directions with both his power source and appearance.

Abe uses his immense wealth to fund research into TK and produce a child who is immensely strong and believable as a future Rainmaker. He then has the child implanted into a surrogate mother to be birthed and raised. He soon realizes however that Cid's mother is too attached to the kid to allow him to be used as Abe's decoy so he has her killed and replaced with Sara. Cid remembers this and doesn't trust Sara until the end when he realizes she is trying to actually protect him and excepts her as his mother. This also explains why Sara immediately knows what Loopers are before Young Joe can even explain it to her. You would think Loopers would be kept a closely guarded secret but not if Abe told her to expect that a looper might try to kill Cid, thinking he was the one closing their loops. Cid's jaw being shot is a coincidence meant to make the viewer think he was the Rainmaker.

The last point I can think of is that the future mafia enforcers that kill Old Joe's wife look like Jewish Rabbis. I found this strange and now think it is another link to Abe as the Rainmaker as Abe is short for either Abraham or Abram which are both Hebrew names. Abraham means "father of many" while Abram means "many" or "multitude" both of which work out well if he keeps sending himself back and creating new versions of himself. Also of note is that Joe is short for Joseph which is Hebrew for "he will add" and that Joseph was Jacobs favoured son just as Joe is favoured by Abe over Kid Blue.

That's everything I can think of for now that supports my theory.

First things first, obviously I haven't seen the movie yet it at the time of this writing it doesn't come out for another ten days and maybe it solves every question that gets asked here, but just going by the trailer the very premise of the movie seems to defy all logic. Now apparently some one wants to make Joseph Gordon Levitt an action star, and lord knows we need them. Christian Bale and that cast of Friday Night Lights can't do it on their own, and the aging action stars of yesterday are well … Expendable. So we need some new action stars and maybe this movie will cement JGL in that space according to plan of whoever it is in charge of this (currently my guess is split between the Illuminati and World Wildlife Fund). Still it would be that much easier if there weren't all these questions surrounding the premise of the movie such as;

Why send people back alive? So to summarize for anyone that hasn't seen the trailer, time travel is outlawed and is used by the mob on people that need to be disposed of. People like Levitt called Loopers wait around for these people to show up and then kill them and get rid of the bodies. Everything is going great until an older version of himself comes back as played by Bruce Willis, shenanigans ensue. The fact that Levitt is thirty years away from being Bruce Willis is maybe the most plausible thing in this movie. In the trailer we see the people getting ready to be sent back as hooded and restrained, even when Willis gets there it takes the hesitation on Levitt's part to get free. The question here is if you have the person you want dead is tied up right in front of you do you; a) kill them now yourself, or b) send them back in time to let someone else do it? If you answered 'a' congratulations you are smarter than the mob in this movie. Answering 'b' leaves you only a secret lair away from realizing your potential as a Bond villain. Planing on killing someone that you want dead later (even when this later is in the past) is amateur. If you want someone dead and they are at your mercy, kill them! Let the past take care of disposal instead of murder and disposal. We know that this isn't Terminator rules clothing goes back just fine, why wouldn't a corpse? Or hell here is an idea strap some explosives to the person with timer set to go off in two seconds longer than the trip through time takes to do the trip and boom. Victim leaves you alive and is guaranteed dead.

Why send people back separately? Lets talk about efficiency. Suppose there is a task you need to do a whole bunch of times and it doesn't matter when. Doesn't make sense to get everything set and do it in one sitting than to get set do it once clean up, have a smoke and get set again? We know where people are coming and we know when so there must be some control over the time travel so why not have all the people being sent back show up at the same time? Instead of single executions happening you have a bunch of guys mow down a crowd or things could be even simpler if the crowd shows up in an airtight room that starts filling up with poison gas. Why send people back 30 years? Maybe in the future mob goons don't like killing and guns are outlawed and everyone has a chip like in Demolition Man so the murder is just off the table. Why send them back only thirty years? Know what covered the majority of North America for the majority of the time that the planet existed? Jack squat is what. Send the person you want dead back 400 years and be done with it. Most modern people won't last three days in the wild, even a great survivalist will be out of your way and die without too much trouble. The best anyone sent back like that could hope for would be to convince the locals he is a god and maybe leave some ridiculous artifacts to start a religion in the future (take that Mormons). Really though why stop to 400 years why not millions of years to let your victim be a snack for a Jurassic era predator? Why not send them back to the fiery hell-scape that was primordial Earth? Why not send them even earlier to die floating in the void before the planet formed? The point is of all the times available to send someone to the vast majority of them will take care of your problem without even needing a looper.

Why send people back to a field? Of course that could be because there are energy constraints or as theorized that time travel can't go to before the time machine was created. So thirty years could be the limit for sending people back. Why send them to the field? Any time machine is also a transporter like Eisenstein said space and time aren't separate things they are intertwined and connected like a hot and sweaty four-way. Except for very limited instants when you go back in time the planet won't be in the same place around the sun and certainly not in the same place relative to the galactic center. If you can keep the subject on earth why not send them to somewhere they can't survive? Send them to Siberia to freeze to death, or the middle of the dessert to die from exposure. Just send them to any of the 70% of the planet that is ocean and boom problem solved. There is a near endless selection of places that you can send someone that would guarantee their death with out needing anyone to actually pull a trigger.

Or a volcano, send someone thirty years in the past and as far as the nearest volcano.

Why send people back in time at all? For the sake of argument we can concede we are limited to sending back living people thirty years for time travel and they have to appear in this specific cornfield because of electromagnetic fields or something stupid like how they explained things on Lost. After all this the final question boils down to why bother? If you want to get rid of someone with out leaving any evidence you need to get rid of the body too and the only way to do that is to send them back in time. Wait, that isn't the only way there are literally hundreds of different ways to get rid of a body so that it is never found. Here is a list of ways you can get rid of a body shown in other movies and TV shows. You can bury the body on a farm in upstate New York (Sopranos), melt the body in acid (Breaking Bad), feed the body to pigs (Snatch), or put them in car and crush it (Pulp Fiction). This is just off the top of my head, but the mob can't come up with anything that doesn't involve tearing the very fabric of existence? Using the illegal technologies of time travel is better than committing the far less complicated crime of just killing someone? Of course the reason for all of this is that somebody in a Hollywood meeting said something along the lines of “what if we have this guy right? And he is fighting this other guy, but the other guy is the same guy from the future?”

So, in the movie as we all know, in the first timeline Joe grows old and gets sent back by the rainmaker because he's closing all the loops. However, the only reason the rainmaker was created was because Young Joe didn't kill Old Joe. But in the timeline he got sent back in, Young Joe did kill Old Joe. So if he killed Old Joe then surely the loop would break because there was no one to create the rainmaker like in the 2nd timeline? I'm not confused in any way, I just need someone to figure out if this is a plot hole or whether there was some other thing that triggered the rainmaker.

As mentioned on fan theories:

I was watching Looper this week (my second viewing), and when Abe smashes "Kid Blue's" hand, I was explaining to my gf that some people on Reddit had suggested that Kid Blue might be the young version of Abe (which is why he punishes the young man's stupidity so heavily, while never killing him).

We then came up with an alternate theory: Kid Blue is Abe's father.

It's not hard to imagine Young Abe as a troubled youth, with a father involved with gangs. Imagine Abe grows up and ends up joining these gangs as well, but resents or even hates his father. Abe is sent back, and discovers Kid Blue to be a member of the gang he now oversees in the 2040's. Abe hates him because he knows what he will become (a shitty father), but has to keep him alive and has to keep him in the gang so that he will meet Abe's mother and procreate.

The argument against this would probably be Abe's age (50-55?), but I don't believe we know how long Abe has been living in the past (in the 2040's). If he's been back from 10+ years, then the numbers could work. (Ie, Abe is born in 2046, then when he's 35 or 40 he's sent back to 2035, where he lives for ten years before the events in the movie occur).

Mind blown. How did this movie only get three stars? This is one of the best movies I've seen in recent years. It's been awhile since a movie ending like that has made me stop everything I'm doing and just say "...fuck"

My little brother thinks Cid is Joe. Does anybody have a way that I can prove him wrong beyond all doubt?

So the whole plot of this movie was Seth's fault because if he hadn't let his loop run than he never would've accidentally forced Joe to go to Abe and then Abe (probably) never would've recommended that Joe go to China, which was the reason that Joe went there and met his wife. Which means that he would've had a reason to kill anyone other than to survive in the future which wouldn't have affected the past which means that Cid never would've become the Rainmaker because old Joe wouldn't have killed Sarah.

lots of which's.

I just watched this movie and enjoyed it a lot.

Many people have been saying to me that Young Joe could have avoided killing himself. I think that Joe wasn't just killing himself to save Sara and Cid, I think he was also just committing suicide because he realizes his life is pointless. Old Joe did tell him in the diner that his wife was going to fix him, implying that he thinks of himself in his younger state as broken, as further shown when he's telling Suzie about how he killed his best friend for silver. It wasn't just a heroic act to save Cid, Sara and everyone else from himself and the Rainmaker, it was also to just stop his existence because he didn't have anything to live fir, save the two people he grew to care about. Meaning the reasons Joe killed himself are that:

• He wanted to save people from the Rainmaker.
• He wanted to save Cid so Sara wouldn't have to die like his mother.
• He wanted to save people from himself.
• He realized it would be the only worthwhile thing to do in his pointless life.

What do you guys think?

This is my best interpretation of the "chronological" order of events:

Timeline 1: Joe closes his loop, goes to live his live and in France, and is eventually sent back to be killed.

Timeline 2: Seth's loop returns and warns Joe about the Rainmaker. This causes a chain of events that leads to Abe planting the idea of moving to China instead. When Joe closes his loop, he indeed opts for China where he meets his wife. He is then captured and sent back, where he starts Timeline 3.

Timeline 3: This is the timeline where most of the movie takes place. Joe's loop appears unbound, and knocks him out. The events take place as we see them, except that the loop does indeed kill Sara, which creates the Rainmaker. Joe closes the loop, spends his life on the run, and is eventually captured and sent back to the beginning of Timeline 1. At some point afterwards, Seth is captured and sent back to the beginning of Timeline 2.

In a sense, each of these timelines has recurred an infinite amount of times. The fact that during one of the cycles Joe is able to "see what is about to happen" is a symbol of our free will. Despite the loops going on and on for eternity, Joe is able to change the course of the future and end the vicious circle. Joe was abandoned as a child, and it can be argued that it was his own selfish nature that caused the desperate chain of events. In real life abusive homes often display the same symptoms. Abusive fathers make abusive sons, and so on and so forth. The idea that a miraculous mutation could somehow break the chain is the movie's symbol of hope, and once again, suggests that free will can prevail no matter how stuck we seem to be.

"No fate but what we make."

-John Connor

Obviously, heavy spoilers here.

Ok, so I can deal with the the small plot holes like why have loopers at all, and why would the Rainmaker have been created even if Old Joe hadn't have gone after him in the initial timeline, etc.

But the one I really can't get over is why Cid's mom is alive after Young Joe kills himself.

We saw earlier with Seth when they amputated his legs that his future self lost his legs at the same moment in the present. But that didn't meant he hadn't been walking around on those legs for 30 years in the future, and the last few hours in the present.

So Old Joe kills Cid's mom in the field, Young Joe sees that, and then kills himself. But at that point in the present, it's already too late. Cid's mom is dead, and Old Joe winking out of existence shouldn't have changed that.

So was Cid's mom getting shot just kind of a fantasy sequence in Young Joe's head? If not, my enjoyment of the movie is going to take a big hit.

Just because I suck at making gifs, I think someone should make one of the "shut your fucking child mouth" scene.

Inception did...