All the popular brands, to your door. Free UK delivery on eligible orders
Search results
People also ask
What does the ending of 12 Monkeys mean?
What happens in 12 Monkeys?
What happened in Syfy's 12 Monkeys?
What happened to the 12 Monkeys characters in the new timeline?
Does 12 Monkeys ever change?
What is the message of 12 Monkeys?
Oct 6, 2020 · In spite of the ambiguity in its ending, a key message of 12 Monkeys is that the past is fixed and can't actually be changed. We know that Cole witnesses his own death as a...
- Sezin Koehler
Nov 25, 2022 · As 12 Monkeys makes an incredible resurfacing on streaming, it’s time to dive back into the nitty gritty of James Cole’s (Bruce Willis) temporal mission fiasco.
Answer: The ending of “12 Monkeys” suggests that time travel is not a linear process but rather a cyclical one. It implies that certain events are destined to repeat, regardless of attempts to alter the timeline.
- 12 Monkeys (1995) Movie Plot Explained
- 12 Monkeys Ending Explained: What’s The Meaning of The Recurring Dream?
- Thematic and Visual Analysis of 12 Monkeys
- Final Thoughts
Who Unleashed the Plague?
The film is set in Philadelphia in the year 2035. A devastating viral plague has claimed the lives of 5 billion people. A handful of human survivors live in a subterranean community. At the movie’s beginning, we see our protagonist James Cole (Bruce Willis), imprisoned in a lair within the underground society. He is picked up for ‘volunteer duty,’ i.e., forcing convicts to make a trip to the abandoned, deadly surface in order to find clues related to the plague. Donning a protective plastic s...
A Ploy to Escape and a Mysterious Disappearance
At the institution, James Cole meets Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), a hyperactive individual whose quicksilver delivery of thoughts withholds kernels of truth. From mass media to consumerism and the general definition of insanity, Jeffrey, the paranoid schizophrenic troublemaker, walks Cole through the ironies of late 20th-century human society. Cole narrates his story to the doctors of the institution. The disbelief on their faces is apparent. Adopting a dispassionate tone, Cole tells the psych...
The Doomsayer’s Second Chance
Still disoriented from the drugs, James Cole wakes up in a cell in 2035. He hears a mysterious raspy voice (credited as ‘Louie’), which addresses Cole as “Bob.” Cole hears the voice couple more times in the narrative, specifically during moments of extreme duress. One obvious theory is that the strain of time travel has caused the auditory hallucination in Cole. But later in the narrative, Cole meets a homeless man in 1996 who speaks in a raspy voice and calls himself Louie. The old homeless...
One of the crucial motifs in 12 Monkeysis the recurring dream of James Cole. In the dream, a little boy watches a long-haired man gunned down at the airport. Subsequently, a blonde woman in a red dress screams and runs toward the bullet-riddled body. Cole wakes up from this dream in 2035 in his prison cell. It’s hinted that he has had this dream al...
Determinism vs. Freewill
Time travel paradoxes are always a head-scratching subject. One might wonder how did events unfold in the original timeline. In 12 Monkeys’case, a viewer might question how the ‘apocalypse nut’ Dr. Peters got the idea of releasing the deadly virus if not for Dr. Kathryn Railly and James Cole’s intervening presence. We don’t know how the virus spread in the unaffected timeline. Moreover, the repeated time-traveling of various players from the future has made it tough to figure out the truth of...
Memory, Trauma, and Madness
The other significant themes apart from determinism and free will are the themes of mental illness, trauma, and memory. James Cole withholds the traumatic memory of witnessing a man getting killed. The trauma is so etched deeply within that it drives his dreams. Interestingly, the script refers to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) at one key point. Vertigo not only explored the blurring boundaries between reality and illusion, but it also questioned the nature of memory and trauma. In Vertigo...
Terry Gilliam’s Dystopian Visual Component
Terry Gilliam is one of the original image-makers in cinema. Of course, his visual idiosyncrasies are considered too eccentric for the mainstream. Yet from his contribution to the animation department in Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969) to his crazy (and cursed production of adventure drama The Man Who Killed Don Quixote(2018), Gilliam’s distinctive aesthetics make him stand out. 12 Monkeys was one of the few films in his directorial career where Gilliam wasn’t involved with the script wor...
While earlier apocalypse movies coming out of America zeroed in on the fear of nuclear war, 12 Monkeys was centered around the anxiety over a deadly viral epidemic. Two global health crises exacerbated societal fears at the end of the 20th century: One was HIV/AIDS, and the other was Ebola. The virus narrative in Terry Gilliam’s film is partly buil...
12 Monkeys' answer to this Christian hymn is a definitive yes. But let's back up a second and reconsider what exactly happened at the film's conclusion. Desperate to stop Dr. Peters from boarding the airplane to spread the virus, Cole runs by airport security and draws the gun given to him by Jose.
Movie ending - definitive explanation. Thanks to another poster here I just remembered that I wrote this late last year and never published it; it fully explains the ending of the movie based on behind the scenes info. Many here will already know this, but in case it's of interest; https://bshistorian.wordpress.com/2020/04/10/time-travel-the ...
May 10, 2020 · At the end of the 12 Monkeys series finale, the future was finally changed. Here's what became of every main character in the new timeline. After four years, they all got happy ending.
