# Help me to understand Jacob's Ladder. (UNBOXED SPOILERS)

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-to-understand-jacobs-ladder-unboxed-spoilers/231701>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [February 29, 2004, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-to-understand-jacobs-ladder-unboxed-spoilers/231701 "2004-02-29T02:38:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Meatros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2004, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-to-understand-jacobs-ladder-unboxed-spoilers/231701/21 "2004-03-01T00:31:41Z")

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> [@Jomo Mojo](#):
>
> I’m glad people are still interested in _JL_. It’s just about my favorite movie ever. Its basic plot outline was first experimented by Ambrose Bierce in the short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, set during the Civil War. (That was made into a short movie, has anybody seen it?) All the details are different, just the basic theme of a guy getting killed during a war and in the last milliseconds before his death, his fantasy life takes over reality and spins out into an elaborate scenario that goes on and on and on… Objective time is radically compressed while subjective experience is radically expanded… until the final end arrives and it’s really time to check out permanently.

I’ve seen that short movie, and I liked it. If memory serves, I think I saw it in my psychology 101 class.

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**Author:** ![Mesquite-oh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a183cd/32.png) [@Mesquite-oh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mesquite-oh)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2004, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-to-understand-jacobs-ladder-unboxed-spoilers/231701/22 "2004-03-01T06:10:58Z")

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I have not seen JL in years but I remember leaving the theater thinking about what I thougt was a fairly serious plot problem.

If in fact the whole movie is just a vision or dream out of Jake’s subconcious during the last few seconds or minutes of his life in 1960’s Vietnam, how could he accurately envision exactly what 1974 or 1975 would be like in his dreams?

For example, during one scene (IIRC, it was a long time since I saw it), Labelle’s “Lady Marmalade” is playing in the background. Lady M was not released until 74 or 75. During another scene there are characters driving what I believe was a 1975 Ford LTD. There were a few other examples, but I can not remember them right now.

If these are just battlefield visions, how could his subconcious create these things accurately? Wouldn’t he just envision things that he has already seen during the time period? This little plot problem confused me and made me think that maybe all these things happened years after the battlefield injury.

That is why I was a little angry after the movie, that and it seemed that they tacked on that little bit about drug experiments on the end- kinda like saying “All this time you thought you were watching a movie about soldier drug experiments- but you weren’t, we pulled a “Dallas” on you, but hey there were drug experiments on soldiers during the war- maybe you will get to see a movie about that some other time”

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