Terminating the Loop

The Terminator, a 1984 movie with questionable graphics that has so many relations to Looper. In both films, there are people from the future traveling back in time to assist some way in the past.  The question we discussed in class was how did Bruce Willis not know what Younger Version of him would do.  Just like in Terminator, Kyle had to come back in time to save Sarah Conner from the Terminator because she was the going to carry the future of the human existence.  Unlike in Terminator, Joseph Gorden- Levett had to see what the potential future would be when the Future him came back and did the damage to the child Seth.  Yet, Kyle in the Terminator came back and became the father to John Conner, leader of the rebellion. The issue with the paradox with time is that the future joins the past which equals the present; though neither film had the same time traveling effect with regards to memory.  Looper was focused on the future in a sense that memories could constantly be accessed, Terminator was not using a lot of memories from the future to aid the quest to save Sarah.  They did not know where the Terminator was going to be.  All characters from the future had to join the past because there was no way to ever get back to the future.  Which begs to question the of how time traveling back into time, why is it so loved by movie writers? Why change the past, to potentially make a better future? Thinking of people trying to consider "time as a river", and "space as a great motionless vessel", how can one possibly believe traveling back up the river (into the past) is nearly as possibly and traveling into the future.  Going back into the future poses so much threat to certain existence because if just one thing is changed, a life can be altered, a species can be eliminated, Earth can be destroyed; Or in Looper, Seth could become the RainMaker, or John Conner not existing at all.  The simple paradox of time travel into the past to alter the future is impossible, even though Hollywood thrives from the idea.