This is that whole "Not greatest thing in the world, this should be the baseline" situation that you guys brought up with Inception.

I thought the first half was fucking amazing in every way, but where the story went in the 2nd half was not nearly as interesting as the 1st, and I was kinda hoping for more from it in that department. I was hoping for some kind of cross-time conspiracy or something, or more of an interplay between the future and past.
The telekinesis thing just seems like an odd way to go. Again, major points for originality, but it's not as satisfying as I'd like.

I don't want this to come off negative, cause I think there's lots of super awesome stuff (and ballsy choices that I respect), but I think it's a bit of a Source Code situation for me, where I do not at all get the people calling this a "modern sci-fi classic" or whatever. Very Good, not Great.

It's funny seeing this the week after the new Judge Dredd movie, cause while I respect Looper more on an intellectual level, I enjoy Dredd more personally, and think that movie is more confident and focused on what it wants to say and do.

That's my gut opinion, look forward to discussing the timeline stuff later.

I guess here's my beef with it. It starts out being a movie about Loopers and that concept, and then after the diner it almost completely shifts into being a movie about "what if we could kill future sci-fi Al Capone in the past".

Both ideas are interesting, but I think the movie would've been better off choosing one to run with. I definitely do not think it's a perfect movie/screenplay.

You look at the Looper side of the story, the present-day mob ends up being mostly throw-away in the 2nd half. You spend time setting up Jeff Daniels like someone important, then he doesn't even get an on-screen death, and his entire gang is wiped out in 2 minutes of screen-time. This feels pretty sloppy to me, the movie is basically relying on us going "well it's like one of those Bruce Willis movies where he kills everything", when the 1st half feels a lot more grounded and dangerous to me.

Now lets look at the future Al Capone part of the story. In my opinion, there's not enough time spent setting up what is essentially a moral dilemma (that ends up being wrapped around a time loop, but still). Crucially, I think we get far too little information about who the Rainmaker turns into in the future. There was like one 5 second bit of a news report, and 2nd hand information that he's running all the gangs and killing all the Loopers. To me, that's not setting up enough of a danger, unifying the gangs might be a positive thing, and the Loopers kind of deserve it (and sign up for it in their contract if I understood correctly?). I feel like we need to see more of what he's actually been doing in the future, it would work better for the story if he was really, really bad news, like Genocidal or something, but they don't really set him up that way.

Now in the present part of the storyline, it seems that future Joe has very little to do in the second half of the story. I give them points for having the balls to have him murder a kid, but that's basically it, he barely exists in the 2nd half of the story, and him and young Joe don't interact at all till the last scene.

In fact, and this is what I've been getting at, you could remove the "Looper" aspect from the 2nd half, and tell almost the exact same story ("time-traveler comes back from the future to stop future evil, do I let him?"). This is the central dilemma of the 2nd half, and I don't feel like there's enough setup for it, nor is there enough discussion of it, the end feels extremely abrupt.

It really feels like 2 awesome separate stories kind of awkwardly smashed together, both kind of under-developed in the end, which is a shame cause about an hour in I'd have said this really is an instant classic.

I enjoyed Looped a lot but never felt like it completely gelled as a story. The whole TK idea seemed like a second magic bean that could have been scrapped altogether. I suppose it was constructed to answer the question as to how The Rainmaker was able to begin taking over future cities single-handedly, but the whole thing seems irrelevant to me. Why couldn't he just be the next Hitler or something? A person Old Joe has good reason to want dead, but not someone who strains our suspension of disbelief so much.

I have to agree with bullet3. It seemed like two different stories that would have sufficient enough on their own, but may have tripped over each other when combined.

The other thing that bothered me a bit was some of the costuming (although Jeff Daniels' tie critique was amusing). I"m a little tired with the black trenchcoats and sunglasses look the goons were sporting.

All that being said Looper was fun and fairly original and had some memorable scenes (the one in which Paul Dano's future self begins falling apart was brilliant) .

See, I totally disagree. I think that the two story elements fit together perfectly. It all has to do with how violence breeds violence, and the Looper stuff was the perfect metaphor to carry that message. Frankly, the mob aspect wasn't that interesting to me, and I'm glad it wasn't the focus of the movie. The stuff with the kid was far more thematically resonant, and the movie is stronger for it. A movie which focused entirely on the mob? Cool, fun, maybe even engaging, but it's not this movie, and it never should have been.