Rian Johnson's 'Looper' time-travel diagram (SPOILERS)

Posted by Bryan Bishop on October 1, 2012 06:34 pm 6

Before we begin: if you haven't seen Looper and don't want anything spoiled, stop reading this right now — and don't scroll to the bottom. Don't worry, this post will be waiting for you later.

Seriously. I mean it.

Okay. Now that we've gotten that out of the way...

When I interviewed writer-director Rian Johnson earlier this year, he gave us a look at some of the storyboards and notebooks he used while making the film. One photo, tucked away in our sidebar, was of Johnson's own diagram mapping out the scenes of the script into Looper's different timelines (no straws were used).

I asked him if the image was a Back to the Future 2-style breakout, or just a tool for the production itself. "It's sort of the same question," he said. "Unless you want to get into the idea that each change that Old Joe creates in the past drops you down to a new timeline, in which case things get complex quickly. But it's definitely at the very least a simplified illustration of the two main timelines in the movie, where they diverge, and where they sync up."

Here's the image in its high-res glory below. Take a look — and don't forget to join our discussion of Looper's ending!