I think the answer to the question, “Why Bruce Willis?” is that we’ve been watching Willis for 20 years and we know all his tics and mannerisms and can recognize them when JGL does them. Yeah, the makeup wasn’t great (I think the high point is in the diner when you can see how their noses and cheekbones match), but I was amazed and amused at how many different Bruce Willis-isms JGL was able to identify and replicate. It maybe doesn’t serve the story in that it took me out of the movie a bit, but it was lots of fun to watch.

I think the reason they don’t kill people in the future is because they have godlike forensics and would be able to detect the murder had happened even if the body was sent to the past. And I think the reason the looper has to close his own loop is that way he he can’t get out of it without changing his own past and risking erasing it. That’s the reason they bad guys can’t kill the young guy to get the old guy, because they’re trying to preserve the timeline in which the young guy survived to be the old guy.

Also I agree that JGL really “gets” Bruce Willis, I hope I made that clear. I think he did a heck of a job as far as that goes, and I can’t say it took me out of the movie the way it did you. But I was constantly aware of it, which may be a distinction without a difference.

And I don’t think I can really argue with Tom that all that fuss is worth it, in the end. He makes a pretty good point about faces.

Yes. Okay. But if that person is a relative of someone that matters, who has coincidentally disappeared at the exact same moment, then you’re gonna look into it. It’s like that thing from Die Hard about the 600 million.

You’re not helping! Because suddenly I’m thinking, Wait. They’ve got godlike forensics, but haven’t quite sussed out the fact that certain people keep disappearing, without a trace, all connected to the same organization (presumably) and all taken to the same location before going “poof.” There’s no evidence there, at time-pod central, for the GSI (Godlike Scene Investigators) to process?

STOP TALKING! I LIKE THIS MOVIE!

There’s a line to the effect that loopers are sent back to be killed to erase any trace of their association with the criminals and thus let them cover their tracks, which of course just raises more questions.

Regarding the invisible cigarette:

In science-fiction, you have to be very careful about using metaphor. If you write, “The truck crawled across the landscape,” readers may wonder if they’re reading about a world in which trucks have legs instead of wheels.

In this case, I’m pretty sure she’s an ex-smoker miming smoking a cigarette as a coping mechanism for her urge to smoke a real one. And then later, when she has a post-coital cigarette, it shows that she’s now too worried about her son to care about lung cancer (and maybe suggests that having sex with JGL was an act of “falling off the wagon” in the same way as an ex-smoker having a cigarette).

It’s a nice bit of characterization without dialogue. But you guys’ confusion demonstrates that you just can’t use a gimmick like this in a movie with psychic powers. It’s even more muddled because she reveals her TK power in the scene where she smokes the cigarrette.

What would a telekinetic chick need a penis for? She’s traded up.