VeeshanVault

I still get a headache trying to iron out the last scenes.

I understand if you guys have a rusty memory of this movie, but in the very end, did that lady on the airplane stop the guy from spreading the virus or was she there to make sure it was released?

anybody remember it well enough to comment?

I remember it well enough to comment.

It sucked.

Sucked? Hmm hardly. The movie definately was hard to follow. In the scene at the end of the movie where the dude with the vials gets on the plane, and says something along the lines of "The world will end soon" to the same lady that was a doctor in the movie to Bruce Willis in the future. So I'm guessing Willis was unsuccesful in stopping the virus. However, people had to of seen the man Willis was chasing at the end, and no one went after him? Even the Police that apprehended Willis... Did they not wonder who Willis was chasing through the airport with a gun?? Good flick nevertheless. Some people like movies with endings that are definate and we know what happened to all the parties. Others of us enjoy movies that let us make up our own ending. However, I'm pretty sure in this one the virus gets spread and people die, but she could of been there to stop it. They never said... >< Hope that helps Adex.

Actually, I think the significance of the final scene is to show the Bruce Willis is caught in a loop of events that will never end. He will always witness himself dying but will always make the trip to the past to try and stop the release of the virus but will never suceed, and will always die. Not sure about the underlying meaning, I gotta watch it a couple more times.

Anuin hit in right on the head.

But there is some underlying meaning for it, something really really deep. Must figure it out.

Cajen wrote: Some people like movies with endings that are definate and we know what happened to all the parties. Others of us enjoy movies that let us make up our own ending.

And yet others of us like movies with cohesive plots that don't have holes you could fly a 747 through, regardless of the style of ending.

Seems Karae doesn't care for time travel

Anyway, at the end, in the plane, loony-boy shakes hands with some old girl - the female scientist from the future - thus giving her an unmutated sample of the virus. Hurrah etc.

Loop-of-time my arse

I always thought it was the loop thing like anuin suggested, but i havent seen in years. Always did like that movie though, will have to rent it soon.

Some people also like to follow their own rules in life and not listen to the bitching or "this is right because i like it and im me!" way that is forced upon them by single minded, genetically halted worms who praise themselves for their beliefs.

On a closer note.
If you liked the film, good for you
If not, well you wasted just under 2 hours of your life, but hey, its was an experience. Dry your eyes.

It had Bruce Willis in it.

By definition it will suck and make no real sense by his mere presence. He is a blight on the movie industry.

Ok, I'm going to get deep for a momment, so those of you that thought ID4 was a better sci-fi movie than 12 Monkeys might want to go get a box of crayons and draw on the nearest wall for awhile.

There is an old myth about a young man named Sisyphus whom the Gods had condemned to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor. Many argue that this was not a true punishment, since Sisyphus was able to try again after each failure.

The above myth is very much a part of our culture today. It is a paralell to people who work everyday in jobs they don't like. And for what? This is supposedly a curse of the Gods, that men shall toil and labor ceaselessly with no end in sight but for death itself. The curse was laid down in the days of the greek Titan, Prometheus. Sorry, I digress...

Anyway, the character in 12 Monkeys (James Cole) is basically a modern day version of Sisyphus. However, James's situation has been updated to modern times, and he basically carries the weight of mankind on his shoulders. No matter what he does, he is doomed to fail, as time is linear. He has to witness the consequences of his own failure on an endless cycle, much like Sisyphus and his boulder.

I thought the movie was well done and I enjoyed the deeper implications of the plot. The above is just my take on the subtle meaning to the movie and may not be what the director was even trying to portray.

For those that need paint-by-number to understand the movie, this link should help: http://members.tripod.com/~Bucephalus/plot.html

I never dislike the movies that leave me thinking afterward. I am more likely to dislike the ones that I forget I saw, 5 minutes after I left the theater.

Any movie worth revisiting to figure out exactly what is going on is a good one in my book I have always liked movies with plots that make you think. 12 Monkeys is a fantastic film and Terry Gilliam continues to impress. I need to re-read the script to figure out what was going on at the end although I like Anuin's idea.

Canelek, you need to check out that link I posted. SOme good info and interesting takes on events in the film.

Well, given that when the red-headed hippie with the load of virus sits down on the plane, he is surrounded by the scientists who sent Bruce back in time, I think that the mission was successful.

You know, if you take a step back from the time picture and look at it as a timeline. The line for the Cole character is just a loop. He "experienced each frame of that loop only once."


Think of any moment of a person's life as a single pringle chip. That person's whole life would be a stack of pringle chips like you get in the can.

As we live, we "progress" frame by frame and experience our moments one chip at a time. The future is locked, the past is locked.

If you assume this, the neat thing about that movie is that it showed one character with a lifeline that curled back on itself.

Zoom back a little further. The way the movie is written, the Cole character's lifeline is independant of them ultimately getting a pure virus sample or not. That sample was either gotten or not by the lady on the plane.

If you hold to my description of time. The lady only was there to get a virus sample. She allowed the madman to continue on. If she tried to stop him, she would cease to exist at that point in the timeline.

Everything fits into place if you look at it from the idea of a static block of time.

If your description of time is accurate, Adex, then we live in a donut-shaped universe! Intriguing!

Aye, to me, it seems the woman let the man go as well, hence, guaranteeing the outcome of the virus killing billions, and putting Cole in the exact same situation to repeat his dilema.

It also odd, that only Cole is in the endless loop. Everyone else in both the present and future portions of the film carry on with life, living and dying as normal. It's as if bending the laws of time is somehow punishing him with this eternal loop.

Anyway, other good "thinking" films would be:

Momento
Dark City
Matrix
The 13th Floor

I think Cole only experienced it once.

He went frame by frame though his life like everyone else. The only difference is his last frame was sharing space with a frame from his childhood.

Is this in some way stating that God is a poor Editor?

Aye, he only experianced it once, but in that dying breath, he realised he was doomed to repeat it all over again. It just makes you think about what was going through his mind.

Kinda like, when the bad guy in Total Recall had his arms cut off, and fell about 6 million stories to his death, wouldn't he have been trying to wave his arms around and such as he was falling? Boy, I bet that was a real head fuck, heh.

12 Monkeys is a kickass movie, as is everything that Terry Gilliam does.

I stumbled on this link a couple of days ago and it has interesting analysis of a bunch of time travel movies. Gets a little verbose in the geek-speak of time travel theory, but it was interesting all the same.

Sadly we spend all of our lives experiencing the change of time.
Our language is dependant on time references.

These things trap us, and make it hard to think of things removed from time.

The thought of Cole "living something all over" is a language trap.

Hell even me saying that he experienced things "once" is a language trap.

Its almost impossible to talk about the concept without crashing into time-dependant descriptors.

Well, given that when the red-headed hippie with the load of virus sits down on the plane, he is surrounded by the scientists who sent Bruce back in time, I think that the mission was successful.

Remember, he opened one of the containers at the baggage check counter.

I defined "success" from the future scientists' perspective: acquiring a sample of the original virus, not stopping the outbreak. The scientists would always quash his dreams of stopping the plague; they were concerned about their future, not their past.

I catch your meaning Masteen. However!

If the scientist from the future had a pure sample already, that would render sending Cole back in time as being redundant, since they would already have a pure sample. Does that make sense?
Good theory though

You aren't seeing things from the correct perspective. The scientists didn't have the sample when they sent Cole back. They had no idea where to look.

Think of the 2 timelines:

Present-->Cole returns-->Cole finds source-->Scientists retrieve it

Future-->Cole sent back-->Cole reports location-->Scientists retrieve-->scientists return to future to develop cure

According to your implied logic, the scientists returned to their timeline BEFORE they went back. Why would they risk creating a paradox (meeting themselves) by doing this?

do temperal paradoxes exist in "12 monkeys" or just "Back to the Future"

i noticed they don't exist in "Austin Powers"

can we get a ruling on this?

thanks

You can meet yourself in the past, there's no problem with that. The reason is the person you're meeting in the past ISN'T you, that person is someone who WAS you, two separate beings.

meeting yourself would not be a paradox unless you (older bruce) did something while you were in your (younger bruce) past to change what you (older bruce) already know about your (younger bruce) future

I would think that the scientists would have simply stopped the person instead of retrieving a pure sample, thereby averting the entire disaster in the first place.

And Voro, paradoxes do not exist in 12 Monkeys like in Back to the Future.

If time travel were possible, wouldnt we have met someone from the future by now? No matter how well trained the travellers would have to be, surely one of them would make a booboo and reveal himself by mistake. Someone would catch on that "Hey, whered that guy come from?"

Time travel has always been an interest of mine. Almost every movie that comes out that has to do with time travel I see on opening night. "12 Monkeys" was a damn fine film.
"Philipelphia Experiment" was good too, and I even enjoyed that extremely cheesy Chris Cristopherson movie "Millenium"
"Timecop", "Back to the Future", "Time Machine".
But one of my favorite time travel movies is "Prince of Darkness". I love the whole storyline of that movie.

Even if meeting yourself wouldn't result in a universal implosion, I cannot imagine it would be a plesant experience. It would freak me out, fer sure.

God forbid Sparty ever meets himself...

it is only really possible to travel foward in time

you cant go back into your past and change something you already know to have occured. that is paradox. however, theoretically, you can change the past from the present.

Aabidano wrote:It had Bruce Willis in it.

By definition it will suck and make no real sense by his mere presence. He is a blight on the movie industry.

Sixth Sense? The Fifth Element? Both excellent!

Don't forget Hudson Hawk! (Maybe not a great movie, but has some funny parts.)

Two words:

Die Fucking Hard

OK, that was three words, but the movie just owns so much.

Yippie-kai-yay, motherfucker!

As I understood the final sequence, I thought she was represented in true time (much like young cole vice time travelling Cole), and not a time travelled instance of herself. I thought it was thrown in as a point of irony, that the mistery she was trying so hard to solve was, all this time, something that she was in contact with in her past.

I never considered that it was a time travelled instance of that character ... I will have to watch it again and consider that viewpoint.

Great, great movie - Pitt was worthy of the Oscar nomination he received for his role.

The only problem with that is that the woman would have to be like 70 years old in the future if that had been her in the present time. That's what leads me to believe that she had travelled back through time to meet the redheaded guy on the plane.

so why did they send bruce willis then?

i am lost. i saw this movie when i was in college i think, and havent since, and since i probably had about 20 bong hits before it, dont remember a damn thing about it.

Don't worry Voronwe, USA has their hands on the movie now and like Iron Eagle they'll be playing it 14 times a week for the next month or two.

I swear that network is nuts.

They sent Cole, not to stop the virus, but to locate the initial point of its introduction so they could get an unmutated sample, return to their own time and create an antivirus or something that would allow them to return to the surface and reclaim the world.

Cole trying to shoot the redhaired man was his own idea so he could stop the virus and stay there with the woman he was in love with, who would otherwise be, and is, killed by the virus.

Voronwë wrote:do temperal paradoxes exist in "12 monkeys" or just "Back to the Future"

i noticed they don't exist in "Austin Powers"

can we get a ruling on this?

thanks

Actually, I did notice a gaping plot hole in the "Austin Powers 3" timeline. If you'll recall, Austin (in the present) goes back to the 70s, where he encounters Foxxy Cleopatra. Cleopatra claims Austin knew and/or had dated her, which is impossible, because Austin never lived in the 70s. He was frozen in the 60s and then thawed out in the 90s. Cleopatra is about 20 or so in the 70s, which means that she would have been only 10 when Austin was in his prime (in the 60s) -- not to mention in the US, while Austin at the time lived in the UK.

I think I'll add this theory to IMDB's goofs list, if someone else didn't catch it already. ^_^

Millie, if you were able to pick out details from an Austin Powers flick, then you were FAR too sober to be watching it

Point taken.

masteen wrote:According to your implied logic, the scientists returned to their timeline BEFORE they went back. Why would they risk creating a paradox (meeting themselves) by doing this?

God damn, you're a retard. Spouting off fantasy from Back to the Future like it's scientific fact. Was the mutated virus a ninja? Oh wait...only mutant turtles become ninjas...scientific fact!

Given that we assume the feasability of time-travel to even begin discussion of this movie, why should we discount the existance of the equally-theoretical temporal paradox?

Oh, I'm sorry, I used logic on you. How unfair of me. Let me put this in terms you'll understand:

Lick my ass, you faggz0r!!!