But what's your specific suggestion for the FAQ?
It does, according to director Terry Gilliam. Cole's mission was never to change the past, which he repeatedly states cannot be done, but rather to find a sample of the pure virus which could be sent back to his time for analysis, in hopes that they could at least create a cure for all the virus' mutations, and make the Earth habitable again in that future. At the end of the film, Cole identifies the carrier of the virus, and although Cole himself dies, his information allowed one of the scientists to go to the past from the future, and obtain a sample of the virus, thereby making the hope for an eventual cure possible. Note that the female scientist is clearly the same age in the modern setting as she is in the future scenes, ruling out the notion that her younger self just happens to have been on the plane with the carrier. It is strongly implied that the scientists from the future planned Cole's death because he refused to return to his own time, and they could not allow him to disturb the past any further. They send Jose (Jon Seda) through time to give Cole an ancient gun and instructions to complete his mission. They might have intended that Cole try to use the gun in a(n) (futile) attempt to kill the carrier of the virus. The scientists probably knew it would not work and would cause security personnel to neutralize him, while the female scientist herself made sure the mission was completed.
I assume your argument is with the
bolded section here? They couldn't "plan" it if it'd already happened. Now, they may not have known it was going to happen, and may have just been mad about his not wanting to come back, but... that's another story.
two copies of the same person to exist in a specific timeline...
I'm not big on this magic hooey stuff, like in Time Cop, or even that bizarre business in the current Monkeys T.V. series with the watch.
Who says they can't (both exist at the same time)?
Being present at the same time as your "other self" is a big theme both of the film and the B&W French film it was based upon. In neither did things work out very well for the future character, but there's no suggestion there was some quantum physics reason that they couldn't coexist.
Fan Fic "12 Monkeys" Trilogy of Sequels (not remakes)
www.tempesta-tormenta.ca
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corleone_tm
10 years ago
Yeah in retrospect that latter part didn't seem to fit in too well.
Anyways that WAS my specific suggestion for the FAQ.
[Current text, which you already quoted]
Then throw in this at the end:
"You can also argue that his death had already happened in the past, making it inevitable, although this would be somewhat of a paradox."
His death happened in two timelines since he was there as a kid and as a grownup. That would mean it had already happened in the past and was inevitable. This would mean that whatever the scientists did, they could not change the occurrence even if they wanted to. Given his record, it's quite possible that they would have shot him even if he had ran through the security checkpoint without a weapon.
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