They seemed solely persistent on getting a cure for the virus and studying it but never mentioned just stopping it all together.
I don't remember any fancy quotes about not being able to change the future so whats the deal with not wanting to save 5 billion people
Well, if you believe in branching universe theory (per Deja Vu), it shouldn't matter...
shareSaving 5 billion people wouldn't be changing the future, it would be changing the past. Cole's mission is to find a cure for his present, not to prevent the release of the virus in 1996. Nobody can change the past, this movie uses the single and fixed timeline model. There are no parallel or branching universes in 12M.
shareThey seemed solely persistent on getting a cure for the virus and studying it but never mentioned just stopping it all together.
The scientists most likely knew the past couldn't be changed, therefore they wouldn't have to worry about preserving the (fixed) timeline. If they're unable to find a cure even after getting a pure sample of the virus, that probably means they will never find one (at least, not via time travel to the past).
shareI don't think that the scientist believe that changing the past is something that is possible. I don't think that there was any discussion on "stopping" nor "changing" anything.
As I mentioned in another Twelve Monkeys thread, their trips to different points in the past SEEM somewhat limitless. If they felt that they could change an event, it would make sense to put forth the effort.
If you felt that you could change the past, and you missed an opportunity, you would still be able to make additional attempts. For the sake of this particular film, we have to assume that the past cannot be changed. Otherwise, it's a plot hole).
If they felt that they could change the past (and without limits to time travel), the scientist should have just sent as many people as they could to "the week before the plague began" AND... Keep sending people back until they figure out how to stop it.
Obviously, a worldwide plague is important enough to put forth the effort to thwart (if that was established as "possible," based on the rules of this particular film).
Yes, that's a key part of the story. You cannot change the past which also means your future is predestined because it's someone else's past. People just have a hard time with the "no free will" concept in scifi probably because pop scifi like Star Trek avoids such concepts.
"I don't remember any fancy quotes about not being able to change the future so whats the deal with not wanting to save 5 billion people"
Why would the scientists want to prevent the virus? To use that mental patient's term, the scientists are part of an intellectual elite. When they've cured the virus and returned to the surface, there will be a whole world waiting to be rebuilt, better than the one that was destroyed.
Regarding the time machine, one wonders if the scientists had ever tried to send anyone forward in time, a hundred years maybe, to see if the virus had been cured and the earth reclaimed. Maybe the time machine is only capable of sending people backwards. But in the original short film La Jetée the time traveller did go into the future, where he met a race of "new humans".
Why would the scientists want to prevent the virus? To use that mental patient's term, the scientists are part of an intellectual elite. When they've cured the virus and returned to the surface, there will be a whole world waiting to be rebuilt, better than the one that was destroyed.
"So the future scientists would risk the extinction of the human race just to be in charge?
Yikes..."
In the scene where the scientists granted Cole a full pardon, they seemed pretty confident that they would come up with a cure now that they had all the information they needed to pinpoint the virus to its source. "We'll be back on the surface in a matter of months", one of the scientists said. I don't think they would have said that if they weren't reasonably sure they were on the verge of a breakthrough.
I think the scientists of the future(present) original most realistic thing to settle for was to just get a sample of the virus, but when they found out who the target was they sent the Jon Seda Character Jose back in time to give Cole the gun to kill the David Morse character. Therefore stopping the virus before it ever happened and saving the world. Seems they had the ability to go back and try again as many times as they wanted so the next time they would simply kill off the Morse character before he ever released the virus or even thought of the idea if they wanted. Of course the Bruce Willis character would grow up normally but Madeline Stowe would be aprox. 16 or so years older then him. They might have hooked up by fate as she seems to recognize him vaguely when she first meets him. I believe this if from living through timelines over and over again (DeJa vu). Would she make this unknowing connection again if they ever caught sight of each other and would the age difference matter? Worse case scenario love between them is lost but the world is saved.
shareThe scientists knew stopping the virus and saving the world was impossible, it had already happened. Their only purpose was to get a sample of the virus. They knew Cole would die at the airport.
It's a fixed timeline, the past can't be changed, as proved many times in the movie. Deja Vu uses different time travel 'rules' that don't apply to 12 Monkeys.