I thought the most interesting tragedy of the film was less about children losing their chance for a pure future and more about a man seeing exactly how he grows old. What if the Rainmaker child discovered who he became? Would that help him change? Does seeing Bruce Willis change JGL? If seeing him changes him, does that then change Willis' behavior? etc. The last twenty minutes focus heavily on JGL seeing Cid as himself (especially that shot of angry orphan Cid on the train), when I wondered if focusing on JGL seeing how shitty his life is and how embittered he becomes as an old man would have provided further tragedy. Self-awareness rather than projection of one's childhood upon another child...

... especially when The Rainmaker clearly had that seed planted well before JGL's arrival into his life. He's full of darkness from his "mother"'s death. JGL's departure from his life in no way gives a guarantee that the kid gets a normal life or doesn't turn out horribly shitty. If anything, he comes closer to facilitating a future dominated by the Rainmaker-- another person in Cid's life removed in an untimely fashion. It just didn't seem like a solution to the long term problem at all... but it did *feel* like a solution tonally. Which to me made the ending feel a little more facile than it actually was.

That and you could gripe that JGL killing himself dooms all of the good Willis had already achieved by killing Daniels and them. The logic problems of JGL removing himself when Willis had implemented so much change already etc. But it's a time travel movie-- none of that bothered me while watching it.

Again, this is me being nitpicky, as this is still a Top 10 movie of the year for me at the moment, and in the genre is one of the best in recent years. It just didn't quite nail the emotional resonance for me personally that I felt it was moving towards.