12 Monkeys, What Happens *after* the end? (spoilers probably)

Cafe Society
21

Oh they all try to change the past. And it would make no difference if they didn’t try to change it. It’s just that their efforts to change the past are already included in the past. The past and the future are quite bound together. A future person going back can “do” things, seemingly making decisions along the way, but their influence must already be part of the future’s history. All the time travellers can influence is by way of memories brought back. The scientist cannot stop the virus, but she can discover where a pure sample might be found (or discover that she already knows, but did not realise the significance of her memories). She might try to stop it, but that would just contribute to the way it already was/ would be released.

The time travel does nothing more than uncover the significance of memories and records. This was particularly nicely done in the scene where Stowe makes the ‘phone call that set them onto the track of the Army of the 12 Monkeys in the first place. Willis’ interaction with her - which required him having been sent back - led to this call, which led to him being sent back. Neat and consistent (but really bad news for free will). The only slightly clunky bit is the gradual decoding of new material.

22

Wow,hawthorne, thanks. That’s all cleared up. Oh, one more thing…got a cite for that?
Since no one has gone back in time (that we know of), wheather one could or couldn’t change the future is open to debate. As Jeremy’s Evil Twin pointed out it’s a common problem for TT movies (one of my fave’s: Time Rider).
And no, **JET **, IIRC that was not Cole’s decision to shoot the guy. He had already been convinced by Dr. Railly he was from the future and was following orders.

Hi Lamia! :slight_smile:

23

A cite, warmgun? Watch the movie; there’s your cite. Watch carefully and pay attention and I think you must conclude the movie is saying exactly what hawthorne wrote.

24

Well I guess it depends on wheather hawthorne mean’t within the context of that particular movie or TT in general. Regardless, as pointed out, there is that fatal flaw in time-travel movies which I will spell out now rather than allude to. To wit: there would be an infinite number of 'Cole’s (for example) at the airport because everytime he went back he would see the previous number of himself. The movie just happens to take place the first time he went back. In otherwords, the first time he goes back, he sees (or if he doesn’t - we do) himself as a little boy. If “The past and the future are quite bound together” and the past cannot be changed, as hawthorne suggests, then the little (young) Cole will grow up again, go back in time again, and see himself as a boy again - and see himself as an adult (shooting [and dying]) at the airport from coming back the first time again. Since this will repeat ad nauseum there would be an infinite number of Coles at the airport. Since there’s not, we could conclude that the past is changable.

25

Time travel (TT) is not possible, but not for the reasons stated.above It has nothing to do with infinite regression or airports filled with innumerable Coles.

It’s because time doesn’t exist.

HOWEVER, followng (Everest?) multi-universe interpretation of quantum bifurcation, it may be possible to travel to a near-by parallel universe at a ‘prior’ moment, and alter its course with impunity. These apparent paradoxes disolve when you realize that they are not saving their own world, but only a neighboring world.

It’s not ideal, but better to save the universe next door than save no universe at all.

26

Ok, who let DR. Pinky out of GQ?
Methinks, good doctor, you are picking nits. Whatever your very strict definition of ‘time’ may be, I think we here are talking ‘movie’ physics.
I could go on at length explaining why real time travel (‘backwards’) is not possible - but you know that already.
However, time, in a very real sense does exist. Yesterday, tomorrow. 5 minutes ago, 5 minutes from now. The age of the earth. The age of the universe.
Even, the ‘Special Theory of Relativity’ provides for twins to age (in a given time) at different rates( ‘time’ happening differently for each twin).
It’s simply a frame of reference and a covenient yardstick to measure our human life-spans against.
In the context of the movie, it has everything to do with infinite regression.

27

warmgun:

I don’t know why you think it would be that way.

(Note that all these musings are about the movie; I don’t think time travel is possible in real life.)

If the past is immutable, then clearly Cole only went to the airport as an adult once. There were two of himselves there: the man who was killed, and the boy who saw the man killed and later remembered the event as a dream.

So the timeline of Cole’s life is like a length of rope that loops. No infinite regression required. No multiple Coles.

28

Point taken (well, actually like a piece of rope shaped like the number 6 - he was about 10 or so before it started looping :slight_smile: ).
But that could mean that life goes no farther than (adult) Coles dying (Unless Cole’s life is divergent [ha ha] from the space-time continuem), if that is the case, the pure virus won’t do them any good anyway. And they should know that. The same way they should know that the shooting at the airport is futile.
If the past is ‘mutable’ :wink: , then there’s no reason that there can’t be an infinite regression of Coles.
But I must toss out this diclaimer; It’s been a while since I’ve seen it and I wasn’t thinking, “what happens next?” when I was watching it ‘cause I thought the woman on the plane killed the distributer (remember she is the same age in the future and the past) and the whole thing was (mostly) avoided. My reasoning: Before the scientist knew how it was started, they might have thought some major outbreak occured naturally and assumed there was no way to stop it. But after they discovered it was just one guy, they realized they could (almost) stop it.
This is my swiss-cheese theory so far.
I’ll dig it out and get back to you. There’s some dialog at the airport I’m kinda fuzzy on.
In the mean time, Fiver, did you see "Time Rider’ (Peter Coyote, Fred Ward)? It’s a fun romp through time - I’d be curious to hear your take on it’s ending.

29

I once posted four different possible explanations for what happened in 12 Monkeys. I’ll skip the ones that have already been raised here and mention one that hasn’t.

Cole really was insane.

There is, after all, support for this. He behaves in ways that are inarguably irrational. He hears voices. He questions his own sanity on a number of occasions (including at one point trying to convince himself that the future world is an illusion in his mind). The man in the mental hospital tells Cole that half the time he believes he’s living in a science fictional world; this conversation might be a clue that Cole is doing the same.

As someone noted, in one version of Cole’s dreams he had incorporated Goines, a person he met in real life, into his dream. He also told Kathryn Railly that since he met her he now recognizes her as the woman in his dreams. This could imply that his dreams are not memories as they appear to be on the surface, but just normal dreams which are changing as Cole incorporates people and events from his life into them. In which case, the appearance of the “scientist” on the plane is proof of this. She’s not a scientist as Cole imagined her to be in his fantasy world, she’s an insurance agent he saw in the airport.

Now granted, there are holes in this theory. But there are holes in any of the explanations that have been offered since this movie came out. So treat this as another possibility and a new way to look at the film.

30

You may be on to something there, Little Nemo. Whatever else is true about Gilliam as a director, he always likes to fuck with our minds. And the same sort of “is he crazy or is this all real?” disconnect was running through his other films Adventures of Baron Munchausen and The Fisher King.

warmgun, I’ve never heard of that movie. How old is it?

31

Gilliam doesn’t so much fuck with you as ask questions. Is the end to Brazil optimistic? Sure, the guy’s being tortured, but he’s free in his mind. What is Gilliam saying here - that totalitarianism can never triumph if we are free to dream or our apparent freedoms are pathetic fantasies against a brutal world? I don’t think he demands the viewer to draw a conclusion about these things. I’m not sure he has.

32

It’s pretty old…say, 10 yrs or so. But it’s worth digging up if you can find it. There are some independant movie rental places around here that have it.

33

First off, I love this film…

I think movies like this and Memento fuck with the viewer, bringing them in or pushing them out, instead of letting them be a passive sedentary cow with flashing lights in front of their eyes.

Second, besides the various levels of mind-fucks, there is a level of believability that increases when you think about the fact that each character comes bound with their own limitations of information at any one point (examples being Cole’s dreams or the anxious investigation of the scientists).

I don’t believe the past is changed or can be changed (Grandfather Paradox) at any time in the movie, so events that take place have always taken place, cyclically. 5 billion people have to die, Cole has to die, and if events are changed, as someone pointed out, you can save a neighboring reality (or be stuck in a repeating loop, a la Dark Tower)

The fact that the security guard was snooping to me means he was exposed, (David Morse) was exposed, and therefore the female scientist as well. She may in fact be the guinea pig that carries an original germ back in herself (technically making her nowhere near the coldhearted bitch we presume her to be during the rest of the movie) hoping that the scientists can save her when she is pulled into the future with a pre-mutation virus in her.

As for Cole, Jose, and the gun… Why?
One thing that is easy to overlook is that since the scientists know the path, and grow ever closer to completing the whole trail to the source, they have access to newspaper clippings (shown in one scene) and would know that Cole (or an unidentified man, since no one with records would expect James Cole to be forty something in 1995) was killed, and Railly (identifiable) was arrested in the airport, with a decent amount of news coverage about it.
They know that changing the past could be destructive/paradoxical, so they send Jose back with a gun (that will be in phoos) that looks just like one that they possess, and “insure” that the whole thing goes down just as it always did (circular, not infinite)

34

I wonder if the un-mutated virus caused everyone in the future to become zombies.

35

I guess we need to update warmgun’s post.

36

Movie rental places?

It’s like digging up the freaking Valley of the Kings sometimes. Cultural artifacts of a bygone era.

37

It is older than that. Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann was actually released in 1982.

38

I always took it as they were trying to alter the past anyway. But iteratively.

It seemed logical given that Willis is back there, and part of the past, so it has been altered.

But as the ending, they were trying to ultimately stop the virus and they would have, if it was not released in the airport. The other scientist can then go forward with the knowledge of who created it, and when it was released, and send back someone to kill him.

Sure, Willis could be insane. Yes, they say they can’t alter the past, but clearly they already have.

I don’t see their future as something they want to preserve, being lords of a world of shit is no substitute for being a nobody breathing fresh air in a normal world. I think people tend to confuse the people of the future with the malevolent authorities in Brazil, which shares a Gilliams visual touches of them. While self serving, their motives are also shared with the rest of humanity…

39

All I know is that no airport security guard in our universe at least would even consider letting him on the plane with those bottles. This would be true even before Sept 11, 2001, much less after.

40

Welcome, phillionayers. Because this thread is several years old, many of the original participants may be gone, and several of the people who wander in now may tease you about reviving an old thread. Chewing over a movie like this never gets old, though, in my view, and it’s a mark of how well-crafted the movie is that it can inspire this kind of analysis.

Hope you stick around!