*12 Monkeys* -we're right about this part, aren't we? (huge spoiler)

Cafe Society
1

I have to start out by saying how much I love this freakin’ movie. My partner Wolf rented the dvd for us one night a couple of years ago, not knowing what to expect; we’d both heard of the movie of course but that was about it. Fifteen minutes in, we were both rivetted to the TV screen.By the time it was over we’d each cried a time or two; my man found out that Bruce Willis can act, after all, and I found out the same about Brad Pitt.

There’s this thing, though, that Wolf picked up on right away, and once he pointed it out to me it was stone obvious,* but I haven’t seen it mentioned in anything I’ve read about the movie!* So I want to throw it out to any Dopers who’ve seen and dug and pondered upon this great, mind-entangling piece of science fiction cinema and see what you think.

[SPOILER] The man who unleashes the plague germs --who’s been in the background all along, as one of Dr. Goines’ assistants or associates, and who we see in the airport at the end of the movie – he is the future Jeffrey Goines, travelling back to our time in order to unleash the earth-cleansing epidemic, right? Because in the end, he wasn’t just a crazy but sweet animal-rights-loon hippie like his followers; he really did want to “leave it to the dogs and cats”. We’re led to believe first that the Army of 12 Monkeys was the source of the pandemic, then that they are harmless, well-meaning young fools ensorcelled by the glamour of a charismatic mad genius and all they wanted to do was liberate all the animals in the zoo; but then JG’s older self appears and does indeed play the ultimate misanthropic prank.

The evidence for this: we know that a person’s present and future self can exist in the same place (‘Bob’ and the little boy who’s obviously him in our time who watches his future self get shot down). The guy who is carrying the pandemic germs looks exactly like a 20-years-older version of Jeffrey Goines, with the same waist-length hair (dyed red as an additional disguise) and --this was the clincher for us–he has some of the same twitches and mannerisms of young Goines, but subdued versions of them, like he’s gotten them mostly under control after two-plus decades.

And it is implied strongly several times earlier in the movie that Jeffrey* does* feel that the only hope for the earth is to eradicate mankind, and he’s one of the only people in the world both dedicated enough to the cause to carry it through to the bitter end, and has informed access to the perfect means to that goal.

So, whattya think? Did that occur to anyone else, or was Wolf the first viewer to see the possibility and point it out?[/SPOILER]

BTW --another thing I wanted to acknowledge, that was really effective about the movie and JG’s character in particular, was how well it depicted what a magically charismatic person he was, even though he was plainly as crazy as a rat up a drainpipe. Without any obvious input from the script, you understand why the Army of the 12 Monkeys kids are drawn to him and swept up into his orbit, why they follow his lead without qualm or cavil, and why the black guy in the “bunker” scene says to him “Jeffrey, you are a great man” with that almost worshipful look and tone of voice; this even though when we first encounter him, he’s a gibbering, delusional schizophrenic.

It’s got to be one of my top 13 fav movies of all time, even though I have only seen it that once.

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I’d doubt it highly. It seems unlikely that they’d have two separate actors playing both characters and do nothing to link them at all (beyond some mannerisms) if they wanted you to think they were the same person. Usually movies will try to at least have similar voices–but David Morse has a rather distinctive voice so he would be a bad choice for that–and that’s only when you’re showing characters of distinctively different ages. Going from Brad Pitt to David Morse’s age difference, you’d do better to just add some grey to Pitt’s hair.

And, of course, Brad Pitt’s character is significantly older than Bruce Willis’ younger self, yet Bruce was one of the first people to be successfully sent back into time. So if the guy with the germs is meant to be an older Brad Pitt sent back in time, he would really need to be 65+ or so, given that David Morse and Bruce Willis are essentially the same age.

3

First time I’ve heard this theory. I highly doubt it. The problem is that Dr. Peters (David Morse) was the senior Dr Goines’ (Christopher Plummer) right hand man. Your theory would mean that we’re supposed to accept the idea that the future Jeffrey Goines was able to work alongside his father for several years and his father never noticed how much his assistant looked like his son.

Here’s one theory I think is interesting: James Cole really was insane. He didn’t come from the future and he wasn’t on any mission. The “future” scenes we saw on screen were just his hallucinations. He actually spent the whole movie in the present, wandering around, living the delusion that he was a time traveler, and incorporating people and events he witnessed into his delusions.

4

Nah, what’s-her-face found a picture of him from world war 2, and dug a real life bullet out of his leg. He was certainly sane.

5

It’s been years since I saw the flick, so it’s possible that I’ve retconned the memory, so to speak, but I seem to recall the two of them having similar strides and body language; it was subtle, but definitely there, if my mind isn’t playing games with me; but like I said in the OP,.it was mainly Morse’s half-suppressed tics, and their both having the same hairdo, that led me to think we were onto something.

You might have a point there; in fact I’d go so far as to say you definitewly do for sure, if for no other reason than I’m almost as confused trying to scope out the relative ages as I was by the film itself at a couple of moments :0

Ah, but would the elder Goines, as both a disapproving, critical father and a man with a whole lot of matters on his mind (like developing Doomsday disease weapons, for instance), be so apt to look closely at his disappointing, disgraceful and distractingly eyecatching son that he might notice a resemblance borne by a man closer to his own age? Also, we’ve already established that Goines the younger has a natural glamour (I use that word purposely) which effects the way people interact with him.

That one makes a whole lot of sense. But personally I kind of hope that isn’t actually it. What does it say about me, that I’d rather most of humanity really had bought it, than that the story be a mere figment of a mad mind?

All the ambiguous possible interpretations of what’s going on are what make it such a great flick!

6

World War One.

7

The relative ages don’t work. David Morse is only ten years older than Brad Pitt, and they look only ten years different in age. Morse and Pitt are well-known actors (and were when the movie came out) and don’t look much alike.

Incidentally, you should see La Jetee, the movie on which 12 Monkeys is based.

8

While this is the conclusion I eventually came to with Naked Lunch, and kind of “haven’t, but its a good way to watch the movie” with Evil Dead II, this isn’t the conclusion I came to with Twelve Monkeys…

What I came to was that some of the Mentally Ill really were time travellers. Especially with the guy who was removing the transmitter from his teeth, and the paranoid rantings of a mad guy suddenly makes so much sense…

But it never worked for me to say it was all hallucinations… What about the world war 1 bullet in the leg, visiting battlefields there and being in photograph? There’s even references to places he visited not shown in the movie (can’t remember specifics, but the Bruce Willis character is suprisingly contained for a mentally ill patient). How about disappearing from solitary containment? All of it would mean pretty much the doctor and her reactions were imagined. Which doesn’t make sense…

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I can’t get to it here at work, but it is available on YouTube. It’s not really a movie, so much as it is a slideshow, with narration.

10

It’s shown in theaters as a movie. It’s listed in IMDb as a movie. It’s discussed by film buffs as a movie. So it’s a movie.

11

Of course, but I think the point was that its not so much a motion picture as a motionless picture so to speak.

12

A bullet’s just a bullet. A person could get shot in 1995, even with a old style bullet. And Kathryn, who was already half-mesmerized by Cole, might have convinced herself that she saw a resemblance in a picture.

The movie was like a jigsaw puzzle. Except you could put the pieces together in a lot of different ways and see different pictures. And no matter how you put the pieces together, you were always left with at least one piece that didn’t fit.

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Tristan writes:

One thing I like about this flick is the way it really does challenge the boundaries of definitions. Every description of it I read seems to say “It’s made up of still images, except for one brief episode where a woman blinks.”
Yet, since it’s a movie even that “brief episode” is made up of still pictures! It’s just that there’s less time between them, and they show less change of motion between them than the other “still” pictures.
It’s an interesting way to make a film. Unfortunately, I’m not a particularly big fan of the movie itself. Or of Twelve Monkeys.

14

The theory does not work. The actors are just too different. After reaching adulthood when did Brad Pitt’s character find time to grow another 5 or 6 inches?

15

I’ve got a more basic question. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the movie, but . . .

Are we supposed to believe that Jones, who’s “in insurance” stops the release of the virus? I assume that was the point of the ending. Except, there seems to be some evidence that the way time travel works in the film is that you can’t really change the past, and everything is predetermined. E.g., Cole remembering getting shot before he’d gone back in time and gotten shot, and Cole hears Railly’s voicemail message in the future before he’s returned to the past and had the interactions with her that prompted her to leave the message. In other words, when he travels back in time he seems to be fulfilling his predetermined destiny, rather than changing things.

But if so, then Jones couldn’t change anything either. And if she did succeed in stopping the virus, it would mean they never had any reason to send Cole back, and that no one in the future would even know that there was a virus that needed to be stopped – it would break the whole self-consistency of the timeline.

On the other hand, if we’re meant to assume she fails, then what was the point of including that scene at all?

16

It’s been a while, but IIRC, the point of going back to the past wasnot so they could change the future, but so they could get a sample of the virus to effect a cure so they could return to ground level.

17

Oh, that’s right. :smack:

But then what was Cole supposed to do with the gun? Just steal a sample of the virus at gunpoint?

18

The scientists may not have realized that they were just fulfilling the events of the predetermined past (if that sentence actually means anything). So when they saw an opportunity to get Cole to kill the plague-bearer, they jumped on it. But of course, he gets gunned down in front of himself just like he remembered.

I like the way the scientist looked at her hand after shaking hands with Morse. Like shaking hands with Hitler in 1934.

I think that sentence would make Terry Gilliam very happy.

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I’m willing to accept that Cole is Insane.

Several scenes from “the future” are based on things that Cole see’s in “the present”.

For example, the first time Cole goes back in time, we don’t see the trip take place; we’re introduced to him babbling in a police cell.

Then, while escaping from the hospital, Cole see’s a patient being examined by a CT machine.

Only now do we see Cole taking his second time travel voyage, where he’s sent back a second time. This time, we see the whole time travel operation, whereby Cole is passed through what looks like a CT machine.

My take on this is that Cole’s mind invents things based on what is happening around him; Madeline Stowe (who I must say, is GORGEOUS) even says of Cole’s dreams of her;

“It wasn’t always me in your dream; It’s become me, because of what is happening now”

or something like that; it’s been years.

20

Another indication Cole is insane. Why would Stowe fall in love with him? There’s no reason for that to happen; it’s pure… well, insanity. Is he imagining that? Does she really go with him willingly or is that in his head, and she’s REALLY a hostage?