Could someone please explain 12 Monkeys to me? (1 Viewer)

[oscar_merkx]

fabulous thread about 12 monkeys indeed.
now which region has the best dvd out there ?

 

[Brad Porter]

New story...

A detective opens his morning paper to find a report of a guilty verdict in a 40-yr-old murder case. To his surprise, the defense attorney shows up in his office with an unusual request. The attorney wants the detective to travel back in time to the murder and collect evidence that clears his client. The detective insists that his job is to collect evidence, whether or not it clears the client. The attorney is certain that his client is innocent. The detective is given some tools of the time period (camera, notebook, etc.) of the murder and instructed to leave them in the office of a different detective who had recently passed away. By doing this, the evidence can be uncovered and used in an appeal. The detective travels back in time to the murder scene. Through a strange series of events, he commits the murder himself. He fabricates the evidence to point to the originally convicted man and hides it as instructed. He also plants some evidence in plain sight that points toward the convicted man. He returns to the future and explains to the attorney that his client was guilty.

The victim of the murder died because the lawyer sent the detective back in time. The man convicted had nothing to do with the crime but was convicted because the lawyer sent the detective back in time. The timeline is not disturbed because the detective was always the murderer - only nobody knew it. The question is: What would have happened if the jury had declared the man "Not Guilty"?

Brad

 

[Yee-Ming]

For example, a time traveller trying to stop Lee Harvey Oswald

reminds me of an episode of Twilight Zone (new version, not 60s original), where a descendent of JFK was a historian with access to a time machine, and these future historians often travelled back to observe first-hand past events, but on the strict instruction not to disturb anything.

unfortunately this guy gets a bit too anxious, and creates a ruckus just at the moment JFK is to be shot, which tips off the Secret Service who successfully foil the shooting. the historian is taken into custody in view of the ruckus he caused, and initially they don't believe his story, but later do, partly because of the fancy wristwatch he wears (his portable link to the time machine IIRC), and also because in his pocket he has a coin with Kennedy's head on it -- coinage only bears the heads of dead presidents.

he is informed by his superiors that JFK's survival has disrupted the timeline, which inevitably results in WW3. JFK accepts this, and agrees to wear the watch and return to Nov 22, 1963 to die. (there is a separate, simpler watch which is a simple "recall" emergency device, which the historian would use to get home.) the historian rationalises that the point is that the JFK presidency must end, any which way, and sends JFK "back to the future" using the emergency device, jumps into JFK's place in the motorcade himself and dies. the episode ends with JFK in the future, lecturing at the JFK School of Govt.

(as an aside, Andrew Robinson, aka the madman in Dirty Harry, played JFK.)

 

[Deborah*T]

The question is: What would have happened if the jury had declared the man "Not Guilty"?

A tricky one.

Going on the seeming inevitability of the events on this time line line, the jury would have to find the man guilty.
In other words: just as it is inevitable for the detective to go back in time and commit the murder him self, on this time line it is also inevitable for the jury to find the innocent man guilty.

 

[He@ther]

Oooh, that JFK episode is the only episode of Twilight Zone I've ever seen! My English teacher had us watch it last year.

Ok, one more question about 12 Monkeys: If there's only one 1996, and Cole is shot in 1996, then how is it that he begins the movie in the future if he died in 1996?

 

[Nick_Scott]

Ok, one more question about 12 Monkeys: If there's only one 1996, and Cole is shot in 1996, then how is it that he begins the movie in the future if he died in 1996?

There was 2 different Coles in 1996. The older one was shot.

Basically, he is saying that "12 Monkeys Time Travel" does NOT use the mutli-threaded/dimentional time travel theory that is often used. (like in BTTF 2,etc).

12-Monkeys follows the current convention that all time-travel "has already happened". This means that THERE WAS ALWAYS 2 Coles in 1996, because a 1996 without 2 Coles has never existed. This works if you don't consider time to be linear. This is the model that most scientists use for the "if it was possible" scenerio, then they disprove time travel by saying that we would have already met time travelers. (ignoring traveling forward, which currently is possible).

If BTTF followed these rules, then Marty would of started out as rich, and ended the exact same way.

 

[RobertW]

Imagine that you're in an action movie setting, and your older self shows up an congratulates you on your upcoming unscathed victory over evil. Because of this, you take every possible chance (jumping leaps of faith, fighting impossible odds, saving the day) because you know you will survive unscathed. If you had never warned yourself, you would have been cautious and the bad guys would have killed you.

but that doesn't make sense. perhaps you only survived the situation in the first place because you lay huddled in a corner. of course, your future self knows this, and tells you you survived, and should tell you the reason why is because you were huddled in the corner.

if now you take that information, assume you are invulnerable, and and don't stay in that corner, now you are doing things that your future self did not, and you could end up getting killed by a stray bullet or other means.

 

[RobertW]

similarly, the jfk twilight zone puzzles me. if indeed, jfk does go back in time to be killed again, the historian is still there, causing the disturbance that prevents jfk from being killed.it will continue in this circle unless something prevents the historian from making the disturbance in the first place.

perhaps someone else, or himself again, traveling back in time and not allowing him to either make the time travel trip in the first place, or not to go near dealy plaza, and so not causing the disturbance.

 

[TSpringett]

I think the key point is that the people who sent Bruce back never intended to change the past, it was a fact finding mission only. Changing the past would change their present. Possibly erasing their own existence. Most people that see this film initially miss that.

T.

 

[Alex Spindler]

I think the key point is that the people who sent Bruce back never intended to change the past, it was a fact finding mission only. Changing the past would change their present. Possibly erasing their own existence. Most people that see this film initially miss that.

Here is another very interesting concept. Cole goes back in time and warns Kathryn of the possible plot. She warns Goines' father that Jeffery was going to release the virus. Of course, Jeffery doesn't even plan on killing anyone, but the conversation is overheard by the Redhead. What if that is the final catalyst for him going through with his plan. In that was, the cause of the plague are the people would send back observers to learn how to compensate from the future effects of the plague. It wouldn't exist if it didn't already happen.

 

[Anders Englund]

There's a very interesting analysis of 12 Monkeys here. According to this, it works even if the timeline is not fixed.
There are some other good ones there too, including BTTF and Terminator. My favourit is still Lost in Space. What were they thinking when they came up with that movie.
--Anders

 

[Yee-Ming]

if indeed, jfk does go back in time to be killed again, the historian is still there, causing the disturbance that prevents jfk from being killed.it will continue in this circle unless something prevents the historian from making the disturbance in the first place.

as I understood it, the key was that the JFK presidency had to end. what they did was to send JFK to the future (2280s? can't remember the date at all), which of course would end his rule as president, and the historian jumped back to Nov 22, 1963, somehow into JFK's seat, and got shot in the head instead of JFK.

I know, it's a bit inconsistent in that it doesn't address the issue of the historian himself running around earlier on Nov 22 1963 causing a ruckus. this isn't addressed, all you see is the fellow getting shot and dying, and the final scene of a still-living JFK in the future lecturing.

face it, any time you talk about time-travel, you are bound to get yourself tied up in causality loops. another recent example I came across watching re-runs of Voyager (for the first time, in my case) was Year In Hell. but that's for another thread.

 

[Brad Porter]

Anders, that's a compelling analysis at the link you provided. I had to dig through it a few times to fully grasp how he pieced it together. It works as an explanation, but there are too many pieces that are not a part of the film for me to believe that it is the explanation that the viewer is supposed to come away with.
It was nice to see an explanation that accounted for the "Bob" character, though. I've always considered him as a series of hallucinations generated by the time travel process.
I do have one problem with the timeline as discussed in this thread. Cole and Railly determine that Jeffrey Goines and the Army of the 12 Monkeys are not responsible for the virus. They go to the airport to escape to the Florida Keys and Cole makes a phone call to the answering machine to inform the future of his findings and let them know he won't be returning. At the same time, Dr. Railly is determining the identity of the real virus spreader, but she hasn't informed anyone.
Cole goes to the bathroom and has another "Bob" hallucination. Does this have meaning?
When he emerges from the bathroom, he runs into Jose, his time-travelling buddy from the future. Two questions immediatly emerge:
1. How did Jose know to find him at the airport? The only answer that makes sense - a different time traveller, perhaps the prison guard from the future that shows up on the escalator, had been tracking Cole and Railly and informed the future where they were when the phone call was made. He also may have been hanging around the international terminal at the airport because that is the logical starting point for the spread of a world-wide plague.
2. Why did Jose give him a gun? As far as Jose knew at this point (if his only source of information was the phone message as implied in the film), there was no bad guy with the virus at the airport for Cole to shoot. Cole had only informed the future that the Army of the 12 Monkeys was not responsible. It isn't until after Jose meets Cole that Dr. Railly approaches and identifies Goines' assistant as the plauge carrier. Jose overheard this and then faded into the crowd. Are we supposed to believe that Jose gave him a gun to kill the bad man before he learned that there even was a bad man? Because effects cannot precede their causes in any individual time traveller's experiences, Jose's intervention to give Cole a gun would need to be informed by some other time traveller witnessing the events at the airport. Since we know that Cole didn't make any other phone calls, it is necessary that some other information pathway to the future must exist. This requires the involvement of the security guard time traveller.
- BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE -
Speculation: The goal of giving Cole the gun is not to get Cole to kill anyone. The scientists know that they can't change the past, so giving him a gun and getting him to try would be futile. The only other explanation is that they want him to attempt to kill the bad man and to be killed by the cops while trying. The only motive for this would be to deny him the opporunity to live out his life in the past. The gun was probably not even loaded.
The prison guard time traveller must have lurked around the concourse long enough to witness all of the events that followed. He returned to the future and gave the scientists the identity of the bad man so that they could send someone back to book a flight and collect a virus sample. He doesn't know what Jose and Cole talked about, nor that Jose gave Cole the gun. He doesn't even know why Jose was sent there or "when" he came from. He may not even recognize Jose since Jose was attempting to mask his identity. He returns to the future with the following information:
a. The identity of the bad man, and
b. Cole knows who the bad man is and dies trying to catch and kill him.
The scientists haven't been able to retrieve Cole because he removed his tracking teeth. They now know that he dies at the airport. Apparently they force this issue by sending Jose to meet him and force him to go after the bad man, a strategy which they already know will be successful.
The only other explanation for Jose giving him the gun is that the past is changeable and the scientists want Cole to try to stop the plague - a causal impossibility because he wouldn't have been able to travel back in time if the plague never happened.
Conclusions:
1. Someone other than Jose has to be at the airport to inform the future of the presence of Cole and the identity of the bad man. We see the prison guard on the escalator, so he is the likely culprit.
2. Based on the information that this "someone" gave them, the scientists send one of their own to retrieve a sample and Jose to give Cole a gun.
3. Since a fixed timeline is incompatible with Cole being able to do anything useful with the gun, the scientists must have had a different motive in giving Cole the gun. Perhaps they felt it was necessary to motivate Cole to identify the bad man, even though they know from "someone's" account of the events that Cole dies while doing exactly this.
Owwwww, my head hurts. Does my analysis hold water? Anybody got any other explanations to account for Jose's presence and the gun?
Brad

 

[RobertW]

Ahh, but in the fatalistic sense, whatever you do with the information given by your future self is what you always did. Because your future self was around to congratulate you means that you survive. Because of your self assuredness, you take risks you wouldn't normally and survive the impossible.

i guess i just don't grasp that concept. if he decides to act differently than his future self had in the past(huh?), he's changing the path that he originally followed, which is the path that kept him alive. if he does, and is killed, then his future self will not come back to warn him.
but then again, maybe i am grasping this concept. so if he was killed, there would be no future self to come back to tell him, so he wouldn't change his behavior, he would do exactly as he had without the intervention of his future self, and so he would live. and now there would be a future self to come back. so just the fact that there is a version of him living in the future means whatever he does, he won't die.
i guess that supposes that there is only one timeline going forward and back. i guess i always supported the hasslein theory(reference anyone?) that time is like a highway, each lane going off into a different future, and you just change into another lane. but if time is one stream, whatever passes is inevitable, than no matter how much a time traveller goes back and messes with things, they will always end up righting themselves back to the correct path. say kennedy was saved in dallas, but a week later, air force one goes down in a crash. the south wins the civil war, but two years later, another war breaks out that the north wins. kind of like Final Destination, where the kids are saved from the crash, but inevitably die somehow anyway.
i guess if you were saved from being hit by a bus because your future self grabbed you by the collar and pulled you back, just the fact that there is a future you, means that you don't die. so what do you do, take all kinds of risks? lay down in the middle of the freeway? jump off tall buildings?

 

[Angelo.M]

It works as an explanation, but there are too many pieces that are are not a part of the film for me to believe that it is the explanation that the viewer is supposed to come away with.

I agree. I've read the stuff on that site, and it strikes me as... ...as the working of someone with way too much free time on his hands. At any rate, it's well-discussed.

Although this is a fascinating discussion, I can't say that I much care about whether the 'logic' of Gilliam's film conforms to any 'logic' about how the 'rules' of time-travel (or causality, for that matter) ought to work. Regardless, 12 monkeys is a highly entertaining film, and probably the best example of the use of time-travel as a plot device (heck, it's more than a device here, isn't it, it's a foundation) in a film that I can think of.

Fantastic film. Now I have watch it again!

 

[Alex Spindler]

3. Since a fixed timeline is incompatible with Cole being able to do anything useful with the gun, the scientists must have had a different motive in giving Cole the gun. Perhaps they felt it was necessary to motivate Cole to identify the bad man, even though they know from "someone's" account of the events that Cole dies while doing exactly this.

I think we're running into the interesting situation of fatalism and foreknowledge. With a fated outcome, and the scientific knowledge that you cannot change the past, you are compelled to perform irrational actions.

The scientists in the future send someone back in time to follow Cole and identify the plague carrier. In observing this, it becomes obvious that Cole brandishes a weapon and is killed. The weapon is an old revolver. The scientists notice that they have such a revolver among their retrieved artifacts and conclude that they must (in their future) decide to send someone back to Cole with the weapon and tell him to use it at the airport. They select Jose for this, and watch as fate plays itself out.

So, it may be possible that the only reason that Cole dies is because the scientists are compelled to follow their perception of Cole's future, and not for any logical reason. So, he essentially dies for no reason than to match his future timeline.