My point was that if Cole had mentioned the list of cities in the present, then it could have been like the idea of the Army of the Twelve Monkeys and the virus attack. It was Cole himself who initiated these things by telling them to Goines who then passed it on to other people.
But having a World War I bullet in your leg doesn’t prove you were in World War I.
It certainly suggests more than a person having mere delusions of having been in World War I.
I’d have to review the movie to see where the list of cities was first mentioned and in what context. I don’t recall Cole reciting the list to Goines or anyone connected to Goines.
Capt. Kathryn Janeway: "“My advice in making sense of temporal paradoxes is simple: Don’t even try.”
I got into a heated argument with a guy that interpreted the film to suggest Cole was just a schizophrenic, he said do you really think time travel is real? Do you really think it wouldn’t involve you know machines to alter space time? But they manage to do it in a dirty basement with newspaper clippings? But I think his argument was that Cole really was in the future in an insane asylum or prison, and his adventures in the past were a delusion.
mind - boggling 
Hey i just watched this movie and have some comments to add. 1) when you say that someone going back in time will change the past you are looking at it wrongly. For example imagine your day yesterday. Now imagine that you plan to travel back a day to change something altering the past. So you changed yestetday, i.e. you changed the past. Not true. It is better to look at it the folowing way. Imagine in two days time on wednesday (lets say today is monday) you are going to travel back in time 1 day, to tuesday. Lets say you plan to walk by yourself. Then tomorrow, tuesday uyou will ser yourself walk by, before you having even travelled back. Then thursday you cant say you changed the past if you go back in time because that was already the past before you travelled. So in a way the future is already going to happen meaning that the future is also past. From the moment the universe was created a dice was rolled of the probability of everything, and everything to come. Like rolling a 6 in a board game just declares the way things happen before they happen. The happening being you moving 6 places. Also when you go back in time changes are small in the short term and large in the long term. I.e squashing a fly wont do much to change the next few hundred years but maybe effect the next few million. That said there are rules. In this case, they talk about not changing or stopping the virus out break. To stop the virus outbreak there has to be a virus outbreak to stop. So if they stop it, the group of scientist time travellers never would have esisted to yravel back and try to stop it, and ifno one trys to stop it then it will still happen. So they can only make small differences so that they will still be there, one difference is to study yhe virus and heelp the future.
If you know so much about time travel maybe you should have gone back and posted this when the thread was new.
Maybe he was posting… from 2041!
You know, after the great typography plague made paragraphs extinct.
I lived through that, or will, and let me tell you, it was and will be no picnic.
Hi, I’m a fellow time traveler. I’ve come back from 4176, Happy Birthday what used to be America, to study this movie. You see a virus has broken out and wiped out 18 billion people and there are only a couple billion left.
The reason I’ve come back to study this movie is because we want to use it as a blueprint for how to cure the virus and save the future.
The reason I had to travel back in time to study the movie is because in 4103 all Bruce Willis movies were declared illegal and all known copies destroyed. One of our film historians loves all things time travely and remembers her grandfather, who also loves all things time travely, telling her about this movie when she was young and so she recommend we send people back to study this film to come up with a plan.
I was originally meant to be sent back to 2001 but you know how inaccurate time travel is and this is my third try and I figured what the hell this is close enough.
So we need to know what the ultimate outcome that was implied in the film is. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
(Also your grammer and sentence structure is very primitive, and personally retardedly backwards, so I apologize for any mistakes.)
I already did!
First off, I would like to state that in my opinion, there is no right logical way to explain the movie because time traveling itself is unlogical and paradoxal. People offered a lot of theories but each and every one of them has a hole. Some of you said that you cant go back in the past and change things cause that would have already effected your present differently and therefore it would be a paradox. In some way that could be true, but then again time traveling would be pointless if you couldnt change the past. And in this movie Bruce Willis changes the past big time, which means that the films initial idea actually did include changing the past, cause in order to gather information about the virus, Bruce had to change the past. Going back in time resulted in changing multiple things which werent small issues like some of you say. And even if they were small issues they still resulted in a bunch of new consequences that eventually led to a whole new situation. But tell me this, how could have Bruce Willis had childhood memories that include seeing himself get killed as an adult, if he was sent in the past for the first time? How can u remember something that didnt happened to you? Its impossible…so the film implies Bruce Willis was sent back multiple times and that there are multiple versions of himself and also multiple realities. But that is also a major flaw cause then we would have a bunch of Bruce Willis guys at the airport at the end, or at least two (plus the kid ofc). So what ever way you look at this film you find yourself in a trap. If there is only one reality that is constantly repeating itself then you cant change the past cause there is only one possible world and it cant repeat itself if you change it. On the other hand, if there are multiple realities with multiple possibilities and outcomes (like in this film) then we have multiple future worlds that send multiple Coles back to the past, and each time they do it they create a new world, with new consequences, and that cant explain how come there was only one Cole at the airport at the end.
And i dont agree with you jason12, the scientist cant erase their own existence by making big changes in the past. They already exist and sending someone back in the past cant make them dissappear in the present, it can only make them dissappear in an alternative world/reality, so they really didnt have to care about making small or big changes, but only to take the original virus form from alternative reality and bring it to their so they can find the cure. And the ending of the movie (the plane scene) probably confirms that they made it. They are the first world that did it after multiple ones failed before them. So if you can forget the flaws (Coles words that he cant stop the plague and that no one can, or multiple Cole issue, or the fact that the warning message about the 12 monkeys was played to Cole before his second time jump, before he went back AGAIN and convinced Kathryn to believe him, before his actions actually created that message) and the fact that time traveling cant be logically explained, this is still a really great movie.
From an interview with the director:
You don’t know what happens after the end?
Well, Dr. Railly goes to work for some insurance company and James Cole calls her everyday and pretends to have some problem so that he can talk with her.
They get fed up with the insurance business and so they both become Communists and forever after are known as “Reds”.
Morgan Freeman finds out about this however and he goes to help James get some kind of redemption. I don’t know exactly what kind of redemption. But I think it has to do with some place called “Shawshank”.
I’m from the future and I’ve come back to warn you all! This thread will appear twice more (2015 and 2017) before mutating and becoming Skynet in the year 2024 at which point it will destroy the world.
I need $15,245,872 dollars in order to fund research into containing this thread as it develops into the future. Please email me at 13@mon keys.com for more details!!!
At the end the scientists dont know how it’s going to play out at the airport. They get Jose to give Cole the gun with instructions to kill the guy with the virus but dont know if he will succeed.
They do know the list of countries the virus is released and in order so they know it starts in the airport then the following countries the guy with the vials is travelling to.When the female scientists sits next to the guy on the plane and say’s she’s in insurance. . . . . .being at the airport she would know she was infected with the virus but not as to whether Cole would have taken him out or if something would prevent it.
The insurance was to ensure even if it was just her that made the plane she was infected at the airport and would travel to the the next countries and in doing so spread the virus.
Something I have always thought since I first saw the movies but no one ever seemed to believe or agree with was the reason you can’t change the past. It’s the flow of time. One can in fact change the events of the past but doing so makes the previous timeline no longer exist there for it would no longer be the past. I love the way the new tv series is tackling this concept and this weeks episode touched very early on in the series the paradox of things already having happened . Cole was the one whom told max and Decon how to get into the compound then accidentally gets sent back to two days before and realizes he was the one whom told them. I personally can not wait to see how this plays out. I loved the movie and feared the tv show we be a huge let down but it is turning out to be a wonderful and more intellectual take on the concept I can not wait to see how this turns out!
As you can see, my predictions are coming true! Only you can save the future! Act now for the sake of your children!!1!!
Oh my god! You were right!
Do you have a compound somewhere where we, the believers, can go and ride out the coming apocalypse?
well, since I completely missed this thread, I’m just gonna pop back in time back to 2001 and post to the original discussion…
…and…
done.