I wonder if Phil every tries to do disturbing things while he is stuck in the loop, such as kill people, take off his pants and show his privates on live TV, force women to have sex with him, cause accidents to happen, etc. He kills himself a few times, but we never see him intentionally do malicious things to other people.
shareWell he could have just forced himself on Rita instead of spending years trying to be the perfect date. I think it just shows he is not a sociopath. Most people would not do those malicious things if trapped in a time loop, he did punch Ned in the face though.
shareHe easily could have got himself some tranquilizers from the hospital and pulled a Bill Cosby on Rita.
He did expose his buttocks
shareCosby's dream was to be stuck in a time loop for eternity like Groundhog Day, and it came true. Only problem is that he's repeating Groundhog Day in 2021.
shareThe idea for this time loop from what we can conclude when it finally ends, is to make Phil a better person, a much kinder, generous and selfless person. From the purpose behind the loop itself you can assume there is some higher power taking judgment on Phil, in which case I'm not sure how rape and murder would fit in with his path to redemption. Those would be stains on his character that would be hard to come back from if we're honest.
It could be that such a higher power knows that Phil is not the type of person to commit what would be considered evil acts upon his fellow man, just an arrogant jerk who beneath it all has a heart and the capability to truly change his personality for the better, hence why he was chosen.
Reading your reply i wholeheartedly agreed with you and that's how Ive always seen it, he's not fully evil enough to commit atrocious crimes.
However upon thinking more about this, whatever/whoever this higher presence is doing it to him, would this power of infinite time looping be wasted on someone that is just a bit of a jerk that needs slight redemption from basically being a bit of a shit that most of us can be at times?
If you want to redeem someone in this way through potentially hundreds of years then maybe they should be truly evil so the sacrifice and redemption is greater?
It opens up a whole can of worms when you start thinking about the higher power and the reasons behind doing this. You can branch off into all kinds of things. Maybe Phil being a good person somehow makes a big difference in the future and it affects many other people, maybe humanity itself? I guess by going that far you can be in danger of overthinking what is just a comedy about some guy reliving the same day.
shareHe also ran afoul of that one guys chicken Louie at that eatery
shareHe murdered Phil in cold blood!
Poor rodent.