# Annoyingly ambiguous endings **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 7, 2007, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annoyingly-ambiguous-endings/387044 "2007-01-07T11:34:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2007, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annoyingly-ambiguous-endings/387044/61 "2007-01-10T19:21:10Z")
[QUOTE=davidm] Total Recall. Was it all real, or an artificially induced dream? [/QUOTE] Who knows? Kiss me before we wake up. 😃 > [@CalMeacham](#): > > Bryan Elkers – I think his objection is that, if one of the scientists came back to the time the plague is being launched, you expect it to be to prevent that from happening (if they only want to fix the effects in the fututre, then why come back?) and that, presumably, if they did prevent the plague, then the animalsd wouldn’t still be running free, and the world wouldn’t still be devastated by plague. Of course, that gets you into all kinds of time travel paradoxes then. It’s easier to assume they don’t send anyone back. The premise of the story is that they wanted a pure sample of the original virus which somehow will help them immunize against mutated forms and let them return to the planet’s surface in 2027. How exactly this was going to work is left unclear, but I’ll buy it. They had already determined that they couldn’t change the past (or at least not in any significant way) so they weren’t even trying. It’s not far removed from virtually all other time-travel fiction in which the characters arrive during or shortly before a major historical (to them) event and feel they can’t (or shouldn’t try to; or if they try to, the effort fails or makes things worse) change it. I have to admit, I find it less satisfying when the time travellers themselves become an integral part **of** the historical event, but I can tolerate in _Twelve Monkeys_ because James Cole didn’t realize he was doing so. By comparison, the rah-rah cheerleading of Zephram Cochrane in _Star Trek: First Contact_ is repellent. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2007, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annoyingly-ambiguous-endings/387044/62 "2007-01-10T19:23:13Z")
[QUOTE=Peter Morris] Actually, I’m **agreeing** with you, not raising an objection. [/QUOTE] Okay, I see that now. My mistake. If we had an edit feature, I could go back and change my earlier response, but evidently the administrators here have the same attitude toward changing the past as the future scientists. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2007, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annoyingly-ambiguous-endings/387044/63 "2007-01-10T19:37:47Z")
**BE** , please note that that’s not _my_ interpretation, but what it seemed clear to me **Morris’** was. Which might not even be correct. ---
**Author:** ![Caprese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a9a28c/32.png) [@Caprese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caprese)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2007, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annoyingly-ambiguous-endings/387044/64 "2007-01-10T22:03:31Z")
[QUOTE=Sean Factotum] I must be remembering it wrong. The site is going to be used for a research facility, Burt Lancaster is going to stick around for awhile to get things up and running using the local residents, and Boone goes back to the States to return to whatever it was his job was for that company before he went to Scotland. What’s ambiguous [/QUOTE] Remember the phonebox ringing at the very end? Some people think that Mac, who’d fallen in love with the town (you called him Boone, but his name was Mac) was calling, perhaps returning to Scotland. But nobody really knows who the caller is. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2007, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annoyingly-ambiguous-endings/387044/65 "2007-01-11T02:43:26Z")
> [@](#): > > I don’t think that is possible. Willis sees things early in the film that don’t happen until late in the film. eg in the virus-ridden future world he sees the message “we did it - 12 monkeys” and zoo animals wandering rounds loose. But they don’t set the animals free and paint the message until the end of the film. Also, he remembers seeing someone dying in the airport. But at the end of the film he dies in the same way as his memory. So, either he’s a time traveler who has been in the future, or he’s precognitive. Or maybe the entire thing is a dream. But the flashback scenes weren’t fixed. In the early scenes, the face of the person in Cole’s flashbacks who gets shot in the airport isn’t seen. But after Cole meets Goines, we see a flashback in which Cole now “remembers” Goines was the person who gets shot. Obviously even if Coles was a time traveler, he couldn’t have actually remembered that - Goines, as it turned out, was not the person who got shot. This showed that Coles’ memories were not accurate and they were being influenced by things he was experiencing around him. And once you recognize that some of his memories were false, it opens up the possibility that all of his memories might be false. ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2007, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annoyingly-ambiguous-endings/387044/66 "2007-01-11T03:42:39Z")
[QUOTE=davidm] Total Recall. Was it all real, or an artificially induced dream? [/QUOTE] We once had a lively debate on the SDMB about this very subject, with each side siting evidence for the reality or non-reality of Arnie’s adventure. I was in the “real” camp, but of course you can’t prove it either way. ---
**Author:** ![TimeWinder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@TimeWinder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TimeWinder)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2007, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annoyingly-ambiguous-endings/387044/67 "2007-01-11T06:15:23Z")
[QUOTE=Autumn Almanac] …perhaps even stop the original spread-- she’s already on the plane sitting next to the guy and is aware of his plan, how hard could it be to just catch him off guard and steal the case? [/QUOTE] Doesn’t matter. David Morse’s character had already released the virus – he opened the vial for the security guard earlier. Perhaps she did, and Morse (now a carrier of the virus) simply visited his destinations to spread it. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2007, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annoyingly-ambiguous-endings/387044/68 "2007-01-11T06:53:30Z")
> [@](#): > > I’m surprised nobody has mentioned Angels With Dirty Faces yet. The priest asks James Cagney’s character to pretend to be a coward to stop the kids following him into crime. Cagney refuses, because dying bravely is all he has left. But then as he is put in the chair he starts screaming and begging not to be killed. Does he change his mind and put on an act for the sake of the kids? Or does he really turn coward at the last minute? That ending may have been aimed at the audience. There would have been plenty of audience members who were as attracted by Cagney’s character as the kids in the movie were. If Rocky had agreed on camera to fake his cowardice, he might have convinced the kids in the movie but the kids in the viewing audience would have known he was faking it and that he had really been brave to the end. By making it clear he wouldn’t agree to fake being a coward and then showing him really being a coward, the audience as well as the movie characters saw him having a bad end. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annoyingly-ambiguous-endings/387044.md?page=3)