Time travel. Since my first day on the job, I swore I’d never let myself get caught in one of these godforsaken paradoxes - the future is the past, the past is the future, it all gives me a stomachache.
Just saw 12 Monkeys again last night for the first time in many years - good stuff. Some thoughts:
Why did Jones, the woman “in insurance,” shake hands with the bad guy who had just released the virus at the airport security checkpoint? It’d be like shaking hands with Hitler… unless she didn’t know he was the guy.
Cole’s appearance in the picture in the WWI trenches is much clearer than I’d remembered. There can be little doubt that was him (although we never see the photographer in that scene, among all the soldiers there).
Was the crazy-eyed street preacher in Philadelphia who recognizes Cole (“You’re one of us!”) the same Dark Ages prophet who Dr. Railly mentions in her speech on the Cassandra Complex?
I noticed one of the members of the underground council of scientists was played by the same guy who played Arthur Dent in the original Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
She had a job to do, and perhaps getting him to relax would make her job easier. Maybe she’ll “watch his stuff” when he goes to the bathroom, or slip something in his Coke when he’s not looking. If shaking Hitler’s hand let you prevent WWII, wouldn’t you do that?
Heck, wouldn’t Indiana Jones accept the guy’s autograph?
I’m going to have to watch this again. Somehow the significance of the final scene completely missed me. I didn’t realize she’d come from the future. I thought it was just her past self, and it was just some bizarre coincidence.
She can’t “prevent WWII”. She’s there to get the sample of the virus that Bruce Willis never got and take it back to the future with her for study to look for a cure. You can’t change the past in 12 Monkeys time travel.
Indeed, it’s not the past that is changing at all, but Cole’s memories of it.
I could buy that for some techo-babbly reason, they need a sample of the virus in its original form, while having no intention of even trying to stop the plague or even believing that stopping it was possible.
Perhaps it is indeed possible in the Monkeyverse to change the past, but the scientists and their “volunteers” are so beaten-down and fatalistic that, having tried to do so repeatedly already, they just assume they can’t.
Exactly. In my opinion, the whole point of her showing up was the show the people in charge were full of crap and weren’t even scientists.
Whatever. The point remains, that she has an important job to do, and if that requires shaking his hand, why wouldn’t she do it?
In the airport near the end, why did Jose force the gun on Cole? The “scientists” must have known Cole would fail to kill the bad guy, mustn’t they? In the monkeyverse the past is immutable, at least they believed so, therefore to tell Cole to shoot him is illogical, or is it that because the chase happened, the chase had to happen?
Also, why did Dr. Railly smile when she picked out the young Cole in the crowd after adult Cole died in her arms? Was it simply a feeling of joy knowing that Cole still lives, even though he’s just a child?
Love this movie.
I thought Jose gave Cole the gun as a way to point out the Virus Guy. They knew Cole’s brain was so addled after the repeated trips, that simply asking him to point Virus Guy out would not work. Cole knew who Virus Guy really was, the scientists all thought it was Brad Pitt.
They may have given him the gun so that the cops would kill him. Loose end all tied up. Although he’d almost surely die of the virus anyway.
Also, the scientist may have been intentionally committing suicide to bring back a sample of the virus. Look at how she looks at her hand afterwards. She knows she’s just been infected.
That’s how I’ve always seen it.
That was my take before reading this thread. The problem is that she’s the same age in the past and the future, while Willis/Cole ages from boyhood to adulthood. So she must have traveled through time. h/t PlainJain
It’s been a long time since I have seen it but I assumed that they had the technology to prolong their own lives.
I don’t think that is even implied. From where did your assumption come?
If you haven’t read it, you might enjoy Palimpsest, By Charles Stross.
It’s a novella that goes pretty deep down the time-travel rabbit-hole, including describing what happens to pivotal moments in history when there are multiple powerful groups in possession of the capability to travel in time and not agreed on the desired outcome. It’s everything in your example and more.
From the fact that she looked the same. I believe that the people in charge’s only priority is to remain in charge and nearly everything they told Cole was a lie.
Obligatory Wikihistory link: http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/08/wikihistory