Bruce Willis' Looper And 12 Monkeys Explained?

First I watched 12 Monkeys (the movie) which came out in 1995 a few times. Then Looper came out in 2005 and I liked it a lot, also watching it a few times. Then I watched 12 Monkeys the television series that started in 2015 which I liked and looked forward to watching every week (and each year until its conclusion in 2018). They were all compelling on their own. They all had great ideas behind them, good acting, proper filming and sound, good effects that added to the drama instead of taking its place or becoming the story itself.

  I have watched the series more than once as I did both movies, but all have their drawbacks. Each tell of a dystopian future where life is harsh and most people are suffering. When I’m well and in a good mood, this type of science fiction is fun, but overall, it is like popcorn… the stories get old and stale. Only the television series has a somewhat surprising ending that I really liked in which **SPOILER ALERT** all of mankind does not end and no one is sacrificed. While I remember having a great time watching each and would recommend them for hard core fans, I don’t think of them in terms of better or worse, but what person I would recommend them to and why.

  12 Monkeys explained had everything that I like in stories about plague, time travel etc., I became obsessed with the story and the whole idea of it which lead me to watch Teleseries (SyFy) based on the same plot, which was great except for hell lot of irrelevant paradoxes.

  Looper, on the other hand was completely strange, it was unpredictable and at least I couldn't have thought “for the love of what? What will happen?” and that was fun. I could go on with the “life lesson” thing but I hardly believe in any, so in my view, both of the stories were satiable but the one with a great ending-will always be Looper for me.

  Looper explained

  These scenes were shown out of order, and then we go back and see what really happened. Here's the sequence of events as I understood them: 1) Young Joe shoots old Joe and closes his loop. (We see this second.) 2) He travels the world, falls in love and settles down in China 3) When it's time to be sent back to be killed, Old Joe goes rogue, wanting to correct the course of action and prevent his wife's death. 4) He takes out the henchmen and travels back. 5) He knocks out young Joe and escapes. (We see this first.) 6) The film continues.

  Essentially, Joe closed his loop, but after living out his 30 years realized it was a mistake. So when he was sent back, he knocked out his younger self and sought to kill the person he felt responsible (Rainmaker).

  Is Bruce Willis’ Old Joe the protagonist or antagonist in Looper (2012 film)?

  You can't really answer this because it's not black and white. To Old Joe he is doing the right thing by eliminating a boy who will grow up to become a murderer and crime boss who ultimately kills his wife. Throughout the movie he believes in what he is doing except after he kills the innocent boy. But even then it's unclear if he's upset because he just killed an innocent boy or because he's not back with his wife by killing him. Both reasons kind of go hand in hand though. To us he's the antagonist because we know that you don't just kill innocent kids and also because we mainly see Young Joe's point of view so we sympathize with him more.

  One can look at Young Joe at the beginning of the movie and see him as a bad guy because of what he does for a living, the fact that he gives up his best friend, and the fact that he is set out to kill his older self despite what his older self is trying to explain to him. So at the beginning Old Joe seems like the protagonist because he is trying to do something right. But when Young Joe starts being nice and Old Joe seems to go out of control we see Old Joe as bad. Through the whole movie though Old Joe believes he's doing the right thing so he's sort of a broken hero. There's no clear antagonist because you can't completely see the Rainmaker as bad when you see who he is when he's a kid. The Looper gang seems to be the most black and white antagonists because they don't show any mercy and are murderers but I think one of the clever things about this movie is you can't say clearly that x is bad and y is good.