![]() Had Cole and Reilly merely been fulfilling their destiny, acting as helpless pawns doomed to repeat a vicious cycle of violence and disease, the scientists never would have needed to intervene in the airport. If one takes into account the Astrophysicist's mention of insurance and the fact that the scientists gave Cole the gun, one may arrive at an alternate conclusion. Some interpretations of 12 Monkeys suggest that the events at the end of the movie were inescapable, that they were set in stone by fate and that the movie's characters could never have prevented the release of the virus. ![]() Though their motivation for wanting to ensure the pandemic rather than prevent it is never explained, the Astrophysicist's final scene confirms that this is indeed their goal. After all, the scientists' goal is not to prevent the release of the deadly virus but simply to locate a sample of its purest form so that a cure can be made for the people of the future. The Astrophysicist introduces herself as Jones and says that her business is "insurance." Her lack of animosity toward the man who doomed the world suggests that her presence was meant as insurance for the virus to be released. Peters ( David Morse), the virologist responsible for releasing the deadly plague. ![]() One of those clues comes in the form of the Astrophysicist ( Carol Florence), one of the scientists from 2035 who appears on the plane next to the villainous Dr. In this way Gilliam cleverly foreshadows the film's ending in a way that prevents the audience from understanding its full impact.Įven though the film forms a bit of a narrative ouroboros, there are clues that in spite of adult Cole's demise, there is still hope for ending the virus's reign of terror in the future. Railly is likewise wearing a blonde wig in the dream, her face only shown briefly before being partially blocked by Cole's hand. Railly, his newfound lover and former psychiatrist / kidnapping victim, Cole dons a wig and Hawaiian shirt, thereby disguising himself from the police as well as the viewers, who might have otherwise recognized him in the dream at the movie's beginning. Thanks to the time travel complexity in 12 Monkeys, it turns out that Cole is both the child watching the shooting at the airport and the long-haired man gunned down by airport security. The film cuts from a shot of the boy watching the shooting to Bruce Willis's adult Cole asleep in his cell, implying that Cole was the child in the dream and that the dream is based on his memories. A woman shouts, "No!" and charges toward the long-haired man, cradling him. A young boy watches a bloodied long-haired man fall to the ground. The dream begins with the sound of a gunshot. While asleep in his prison cell in 2035, Cole dreams of a scene at an airport in the 1990s. In order to understand the ending of 12 Monkeys, it is important to keep Cole's dream from the beginning of the movie in mind. It should be unsurprising that, like Cole, many viewers of 12 Monkeys have struggled to keep track of what exactly happened, which events (if any) were pre-destined, and how many of these misadventures were figments of Cole's imagination. Cole is drugged and flung across time and space, often reducing him to a drooling, erratic mess. Cole also has the habit of suddenly disappearing whenever the scientists of the future decide that he needs to return, bewildering the people of the past in the process. Kathryn Railly ( Madeleine Stowe) dubs "Cassandra syndrome," a reference to the Trojan priestess of Greek myth whose doomsaying was never taken seriously. At one point he even finds himself in the middle of a World War I battlefield, thereby ensuring his place in history books as an example of what psychiatrist Dr. Unfortunately for Cole the time travel device that the scientists use is a bit imprecise, resulting in him occasionally being sent to the wrong year. RELATED: '12 Monkeys' Gets 4K Ultra HD SteelBook Release
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