Welcome to another Popcorn Paradoxes post, but first a little aside. I’m beginning to run out movies to perform these Watsonian investigations on and am asking for suggestions in the comments for what movies I should watch and dissect next. Please, if you enjoy the series suggest a movie, otherwise I’m going to run out of things to write about.
This time we are looking at one of the 90’s great time-travel movies, Terry Gilliam’s 1995 epic, Twelve Monkeys. A movie so profound that they made a series from it (or at least rebranded a time-travel series to match) although as you’ll realise the series takes a completely different approach to time-travel than the movie.
If you haven’t watched the original movie then you’ve missed a treat. Go and check it out, it’s okay I’ll wait.
Gilliam’s movie is, at least in part, based on an earlier 1962 short-film called ‘La Jetée’ (the Jetty – or airport viewing platform). Although, Gilliam added a lot of his own surreal imagery and musings on the nature of free will.
The Plot
If you have watched the movie recently you might want to skip this synopsis… It’s a little detailed…
In Twelve Monkeys we discover that the human-race has been all but wiped out by a pandemic plague that has reduced the few remaining survivors to living beneath the surface in a series of bunkers. It is implied that the society that exists consists mostly of a small, but leading, scientific elite and prisoners. If you aren’t contributing to human survival then you are a criminal. Criminals that contribute receive reduced sentences.
From their bunker stronghold a group of scientists have created a time-machine. They have discovered (or reasoned) that they cannot stop the virus from wiping out mankind (to do so would create a paradox, as the society that created the time machine, wouldn’t exist).
It seems the time-machine hasn’t been perfected yet, and time travel is physically and mentally dangerous, and so the scientific elite seem unwilling to use it themselves. Because time travel is so dangerous they use ‘volunteer’ prisoners as test subjects. James Cole (Bruce Willis) is one such criminal.
At the opening of the movie, after a brief dream sequence (that repeats with variations throughout the film), Cole and Jose (John Seda) are in adjacent cells discussing the fate of other volunteers, who they believe have gone mad. This is while a volunteer is selected in the background of the scene (who might be Louie, the character that calls Cole ‘Bob’).
James is tattooed over his ear with an “AS-6” and prison number (87645). He is sent onto the surface, out of the bunker, in a sequence where we learn the surface is devoid of human life and that animals, including bears and lions, have claimed the Earth. James is gathering insect specimens for the scientists.
When he is interviewed, after his excursion and decontamination, we are told he is violent, has been designated “Antisocial Six” for “Repeated violations of the Permanent Emergency Code. Insolence. Defiance. Disregard of authority.” and is “Doing 25 to life.” but that he also has excellent observation skills and memory.
He is tasked as a scout, to go back in time and try and locate the people responsible for the virus, to locate a pure sample that one of the scientists will retrieve and study later. He is taught a phone number to a voice mail that the scientists can monitor, and told to leave the information there.
Something goes wrong however and James doesn’t arrive in 1996 as planned, but instead arrives in 1990.
He was found naked in the streets by the police, and attacked the five cops that try to bring him in, hospitalising two of them. A psychiatrist, Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe) is brought in to assess him. She sees a delusional paranoid, who doesn’t know where or when he is, but who (she feels) she recognises. He seems delighted with the quality of the air, and the lack of germs, but insists he must gather information.
Cole ends up being taken to the County Psych. There he meets Jeffrey Goines (played as a twitching, squinting madman by Brad Pitt), and another patient, TJ Washington (Frederick Strother) who introduces Cole to the concept of mental divergence. This is the idea that he may be creating a delusionary world that only he can experience.
Cole meets a panel of psychiatric doctors (in a parallel to the earlier interview with the scientific elite), and explains his story, asking them if they have heard of the Army of the 12 Monkeys and telling them he can prove it if he phones the number. He is allowed to call his phone number, but there is no voice mail, only a very confused woman. Cole begins to doubt his own story, although he quickly realises that because he is too early the number is not connected yet. Of course the psychiatrists see this as him adjusting his delusion to avoid confronting the truth.
Jeffrey Goines talks with Cole that evening, picking up on some of Cole’s obsessions and reflecting and incorporating them into his own rants. He tries to help Cole escape, giving Cole a key and distracting the nurses, but Cole is already heavily medicated and freaks out when he finds a patient being scanned in a CT scanner.
Cole is confined, restrained, and heavily sedated, but then vanishes back to 2035.
He encounters a voice in a room that calls him Bob (played by Harry O’Toole and called Louie in the credits). The voice (Louie) tells him that the scientists will be very disappointed in him. Louie believes Cole has indulged himself in drugs and women in the 90s.
Cole then talks to the scientists who they have reconstructed a voice from the phone number he called. They ask him about the message, and he tells them it wasn’t him that left it, as he arrived in 1990, not 1996. They also show him pictures, one of which is of Jeffrey Goines, who he recognises.
He’s offered another chance, a chance to redeem himself and travel again.
We then see a sequence of Cole being prepared for time travel, and see the time machine for the first time. We follow Cole through time, and see him naked in a trench in World War I. He is confronted by a French man in a gas mask, and then hear’s Jose screaming, “I have to find him!”
Cole lunges to Jose’s side, just as a photograph is taken, and then Jose is dragged away. Cole races to follow, but is shot by the French soldiers in the leg. Then he time travels again.
We finally find ourselves in 1996 watching Kathryn Railly giving a lecture on apocalyptic delusions and prophesies. She shows a photograph of Jose and states it was taken in October 1917. It is obvious that she has been affected by her encounter with Cole, and found other stories of an apocalypse in 1996. While she is signing books after the talk she is met by a red-headed man (Dr. Peters – played by David Morse) who suggests that the alarmists are the sane ones.
She leaves the venue and is kidnapped by Cole, who tells her he has a gun, and has been sleeping rough, until he saw a notice about her lecture. He makes her drive to Philadelphia where they find evidence of the The army of the Twelve monkeys. On the radio Cole here’s music, that he responds incredibly positively to, and a story of a kid trapped in a pipe. Cole tells her that the boy is crying wolf, and is hidden in a barn. They arrive in Philadelphia, find signs of the Army of the Twelve Monkeys and even find the offices that the reconstructed message warned them was the secret HQ.
They encounter Louie again, revealed as a homeless man watching the building. Louie tells him that he has outsmarted the scientists and removed his teeth so they can’t track him. Cole pulls Kathryn away and they follow the paint trails into an old theatre where they are attacked by thugs, who Cole kills. They then go into the HQ now Cole really does have a gun.
The activists there tell Cole that Goines is working for his father Dr. Goines (Christopher Plummer), a renowned virologist. Kathryn believes that Cole incorporated Goines revelations into his delusion, but he insists on going to see Goines. Along the way Kathryn removes the bullet from Cole’s leg, before Cole assaults Kathryn and goes to the Goines household.
Cole meets Jeffrey and the two of them talk. Goines thinks Cole has a plan to wipe out humanity using one of his father’s viruses. Cole breaks out fleeing. He goes back to the stolen car and releases Kathryn.
He tells her that he is starting to think that he gave Goines the idea. That he is responsible for the virus. Kathryn persuades him to hand himself in, that he is delusional, and no one is going to die. He agrees, if it means he gets to stay with the fresh air and water of this world.
Kathryn goes to car, sounding the horn to attract the chasing police, but in that instant Cole vanishes.
Kathryn talks to the police, and then her friends. She finds out that Cole was right, the missing boy was hiding in a barn.
Cole meanwhile comes around in a bed in the future. He is being sung to by the scientists. They congratulate him, telling him he has connected the Army of the Twelve Monkeys to a virologist, and that they will be on the surface in months. They show Cole his signed Pardon. Cole dismisses everything they say, believing them to be a delusion now.
Cole later has a conversation with Louie’s voice. Cole tells him that they met in 1996, and that he’d pulled his teeth out. Louie asks him why would he do that and what year they met, suggesting a different year. Louie then tells Cole that he has to play nice to get what he wants, which is to get back to Kathryn.
Kathryn, meanwhile, is told by the police that the bullet she pulled from Cole was fired sometime before 1920. This physical evidence, combined with the Barn kid story and his vanishing convinces her that Cole has been telling the truth the whole time.
She tries to warn Dr. Goines that his son, her former patient is going to try and steal a virus. Dr. Goines is dismissive of her concerns on the phone, but then tells his assistant Peters that they need to beef up security. Goines removes himself from the list of people with access to potentially dangerous materials.
Cole persuades the scientists that since he knows the players, he can be more useful back in 1996. They reluctantly agree, and teach him details of the how the virus spread so that he can assist in finding the original release.
Kathryn is trying to find Cole. She goes to the activists offices again, and sprays the wall with a message that Cole was just reading as part of his training. She tries to confront the activists, but they refuse to let her in as Goines is inside preparing for some event.
Cole arrives then, recognising the message instantly as Kathryn drags him away, warning him that the police are watching her. He wants to hand himself in and get better, but Kathryn tells him that he’s right after all. Kathryn drags Cole into a hotel, and pays for a room for an hour. The manager places a call asking if Wallace has a new girl.
Cole and Kathryn talk in the room. She basically tells him that he isn’t deluded, he telling her that he wants her to make him better. Then a pimp (Wallace) turns up yelling at Kathryn that this is his territory. He punches Kathryn in the nose and then brandishes a knife. Cole beats and drags Wallace into the bathroom and emerges covered in blood, saying that he had remove his teeth, just in case.
The police arrive shortly after and Wallace describes his encounter with a coked-up whore and a crazy dentist.
After a bus ride, and with both of them covered in blood, Cole and Kathryn find a pay phone and Kathryn calls into the number. She returns telling Cole that they are crazy, there were no scientists on the phone, just a carpet cleaning company. She starts to tells him what she said, Cole completes the message. It is the one he heard before. He apologises that he didn’t recognise her voice before.
They go and buy new, clean clothes and wigs. Then go to an all-night cinema. There Cole notices that he has seen the movie before, but that while the movie hasn’t changed, he has, making the movie seem different. He chooses this as an analogy for time travel. History doesn’t change, but it feels like it has. He asks Kathryn why she’s helping him, and she replies that if in a few weeks nothing has changed then they will happily turn themselves in. She is going to take him to Florida though, to see the ocean.
Jeffrey and the Army of the Twelve Monkeys have kidnapped Dr. Goines and lock him in a zoo, releasing all the animals that night.
In the morning travelling by taxi, Kathryn and Cole see the freed animals and put it together.
The Army of the Twelve Monkeys had nothing to do with the releasing the virus, they just released the zoo animals. Cole decides he must call it in before they fly to Florida and leaves the message on the phone number that he memorised.
Immediately afterward he is met by Jose, who tells him he shouldn’t have messed with his teeth, and to take a gun from him, and that if Cole won’t take the gun, that he is to shoot Kathryn. Cole says that this is nothing to do with the virus, that this is just about doing as he is told. Cole sees other people in the crowds who resemble the scientists and prison guards from the future.
Kathryn, getting tickets and making purchases, sees Dr. Peters in the airport, and notices a photograph of Dr. Peters and Dr. Goines working together in the newspaper. She recognises him as the apocalypse nut from her lecture and realises he must be behind the virus release.
Dr. Peters is stopped at check in and asked what is in the bag. He not only shows them, he opens the vials with a smile.
Kathryn yells to Cole to stop Dr. Peters, and he runs through the gate, brandishing a gun. Cole is shot by airport security and the police as Kathryn runs towards him. He collapses to the floor. Kathryn reaches him and cradles him. She looks around and sees the young boy who is staring back, and seems to recognise him as Cole, giving him a half smile.
The movie ends with Dr. Peters boarding the plane. He is met by one of the scientists from the future (the Astrophysicist called Jones played by Carol Florence) who shakes his hand and tells him that she is in insurance.
And here endeth the synopsis… From here on in we’re into non-canon territory.
Ambiguities and Mental Divergence
There are strong hints of madness about the events of the movie. The character of Jeffrey Goines is clearly not neuro-typical, and his mania and ticks would have a good chance of being ‘infectious’. That sort of unmoderated behaviour can be disturbing and is highly imitable.
It is possible that James Cole is actually an adult in 1990, and that he suffered from an extreme delusion that causes him to act the way he does.
However, while there are ambiguities in the script, such as the dream changing to reflect Cole’s latest discoveries (such as seeing Goines at the airport), the only way these could represent a true reflection of events would be if Dr. Kathryn Railly also become mentally divergent. She would have to catch James Cole’s delusions herself, and she’d have to imagine the police telling her the bullet was fired before 1920. Such a reading also forces us to ignore Cole’s ability to vanish from inside a locked room while strapped and sedated.
Cole shows other signs of paranoid delusions, especially some of his conversations with the voice of Louie. I suspect that some of these conversations may be hallucinations (particularly the final one in the airport toilets), as there is nowhere for Louie to be hiding.
This reading of the plot would also make the final scene part of Kathryn’s delusion, and Cole’s dream purely a coincidence.
So What Have We Learned?
Well, we know a few things about the time machine:
- Only living materials can be projected through time. Which, in keeping with The Terminator franchise, means you can only time-travel naked. The time machine seems to require a direct connection to the traveller, with metal wires attached to the travellers skin.
- Targeting the time-machine seems to be difficult. People being sent to the 1990s turn up as far back as medieval times. It is possible that it took the scientists several attempts to calibrate the time-machine before they were willing to risk one of their number to get the sample.
- The machine seems to scoop travellers back again. Travellers don’t seem to leave piles of clothing behind when scooped back up, and there’s no implication that Cole arrives back in 2035 with clothes. We have to assume that anything held or carried is destroyed by the scooping process, which only ever happens off-camera.
- The character who calls Cole ‘Bob’ (Louie) tells him that the machine tracks an implant in the molars of the traveller. Although it is worth noting, the scientists don’t seem to know where or when they have scooped Cole from after sending him to 1990, and seem to have sent Jose to locate Cole in 1917.
- Time-travel is very confusing. Travellers are selected for mental strength and resilience. The suggestion is that the nature of time-travel actually disturbs and stresses the brain. It seems that Cole and the others are, at the least, unstable or anti-social before they ‘volunteer’ to travel. It may be difficult to judge, especially as anyone claiming to be a time-traveller would be considered insane (or mentally divergent) by most psychiatric professionals, and as in Cole’s case would be ‘treated’ with potentially very powerful medication that would further confuse them.
Time-machine 101
It appears the time-machine operates on a wormhole technology to create closed timelike curves for the travellers. Cole is injected into the machine and experiences a sensation of movement, that seems dizzying (implied by white and black bars flickering across the screen), before he arrives.
The wormhole ends appear to be locked to Earth, but that’s about all we can say about its geographical limits. Cole and Jose are present in France during World War One and it is implied other travellers went to Medieval England, and even Ancient Egypt.
There is some dialogue amongst the scientists that implies that missing the target year of 1990 was in some way Cole’s fault, and he shouldn’t fight the process. While this may just be blamestorming, it is possible that the wormhole may respond to the traveller’s mental state in some way. In Le Jetée the targeting is entirely based on the strong memories of the traveller, so this may have influenced the decision.
As well as being able to scoop them back to 2035, there is also an ability to move a traveller from one point in the past to another. When Cole is sent back to World War I, he is scooped up after meeting Jose (who has been shouting “I have to find him!” — presumably Cole) and transferred forwards to 1996. Cole had been shot, and it would have probably been noticed and treated if he had returned to 2035, instead the bullet was removed in 1996 by Dr. Kathryn Railly.
This makes me suspect that the time-travelers are altered somehow by the machine, so that they can be tracked and projected through a wormhole. Because the alteration is electromagnetic in nature it can affect, and is affected by, the travellers brain-waves. Travel in the wormhole may be impeded or accelerated by resonance effects with the traveller’s mass, brain-waves and similar properties, explaining how Cole might be responsible for missing the target time. These effects are reduced later on as the scientists understand the technology better. They get very good at honing in on the correct time period.
It is this altered electromagnetic field, in my opinion, that allows the traveller to survive time-travel. The alterations to the body’s fields protect it in the wormhole, but have a deleterious effect on the mind. It also marks the time-traveller out for retrieval or moving in time. Removing teeth then, doesn’t stop them from being tracked because it removes a surgically embedded transmitter, but rather it alters the resonant electromagnetic frequency, and capacitance of the traveller, slightly.
The Paradoxes
While the movie is actually very tightly written and full of ambiguities that can make it harder to understand, such as Cole’s own belief that he is insane, it is based around a number of apparent paradoxes that are worth discussion. Most of the plots paradoxes are of the Causal Loop (or Bootstrap paradox – also known as the Predestination Paradox). There are a number of distinct causal loops that exist within the framework of the movie. These events are all predicated on the existence of time-travel.
- The release of the virus. The circumstances that allow and encourage Peters to release the virus rely on the actions of Cole in 1990, 1996 and somewhat even his existence in 1917. As Peters is partially persuaded by the apocalyptic visions that the time travellers have left in the past, they act as a final convincer on him in the lecture Kathryn gives. The changes to Dr. Goines’ security that allow Peters unrestricted access also are influenced by Cole, through his persuasion of Kathryn.
- Removal of teeth. The knowledge that they are being tracked by their teeth appears to exist in a closed loop. Cole is told by Louie about this, and then seems to tell Louie about it before he has removed them.
-
Run Kathryn Run Cole’s dream. Throughout the movie Cole dreams about his own death (not that he realises that until the end). The dream helps Cole fall in love with Kathryn, in fact, he may have fallen in love with her the very first time he saw her, but doesn’t realise that until later in the movie.
- The Army of The Twelve Monkeys. The name of the group is suggested to Jeffrey Goines partially through his interactions with Cole in County Hospital in 1990. Cole’s mission causes him to ask questions that prompt Jeffrey to this name later.
- The photograph of Jose and Cole in 1917. Kathryn has a copy of this photograph, which is probably why she believes she recognises Cole from somewhere.
- Kathryn’s Cassandra theory. Kathryn after meeting Cole in 1990 goes on to investigate apocalyptic prophets from history and finds a common thread mentioning a plague in 1996. As a Psychiatrist she decides that these prophets are predicting this event because of some common psychology, rather than the truth, which is that there are time-travellers spreading the news of the plague.
- Creation of the time-machine. While there is no direct loop in time that passes knowledge of how to build a time-machine, the environment that creates the time-machine exists only because of the virus release.
- Paradoxical Voice-mails. All the messages left in 1996 just before the plague that the scientists reconstruct in 2035 exist paradoxically. Cole hears the message Kathryn leaves long before he is involved in the events that led to her leaving it. The message Cole leaves is paradoxical in that he had to be sent back to leave it, and all the messages existed on the tape before Cole was ever volunteered.
There may even be other smaller loops that elude us (or at least me – let me know if you spot one).
The Solution
The existence of all these Causal Loops leads me to consider that there can be no truly valid Multiversal solution to Twelve Monkeys. Instead, we have to consider the movie as a proof of the Novikov self-consistency principle.
Igor Dmitriyevich Novikov is a Russian Physicist who (in his work on Relativistic Astrophysics, Black-holes and wormholes) calculated that Closed Timelike Curves could allow time-travel, but only if the time-travel could not change the past. Other theoretical physicists have calculated that ignoring free will and considering even mechanistic examples (such as billiard balls being shot through a wormhole) have been found to always have a solution that preserves the originally observed chronology. The mathematics is incredibly complex, but it proves that as long as Causality is preserved (relativistically), then no paradox occurs.
In Twelve Monkeys we are repeatedly told that the time travellers cannot stop the release of the virus. It simply isn’t possible for them to alter the past. Any time traveller projected back has always been a part of history.
James Cole’s first existence from a chronological viewpoint is a brief existence in 1917. Where he exists just long enough to be photographed and get shot. From this chronological viewpoint Cole’s existence is paradoxical and apparently impossible. How can a photograph exist of a person who has not been born?
It seems to defy entropy and causality, but because of the time machine’s existence Causality can only be considered from an individual traveller’s viewpoint.
Cole experiences birth, growth, the events at the airport from his younger perspective, incarceration, time travel, being in 1990, returning to 2035, being photographed and shot in 1917, kidnapping Kathryn Railly in 1996, returning to 2035 to receive his pardon, travelling back to 1996 and finally being shot and dying as a continuum. His causality is correct and valid, although it makes little sense when compared to Kathryn’s, the Preacher’s, Jose’s or Louie’s. This holds true for each of the time-travellers, they all make sense only from their own perspective (or relativistic frame).
But what about Free Will?
Of course, as I stated earlier the time-traveller only remains paradox free if we ignore the problems of free will. Twelve Monkeys sidesteps many of the questions regarding free will by simply not giving any of the players all of the facts. That said, there are a number of choices made that imply free will could destroy the continuity.
- Cole’s selection to ‘volunteer’ by the guards. Would everything have been destroyed if Jose had been volunteered first?
- The scientists choose Cole as an observer to send back to the past. It is possible that they have already identified Cole as being present in the past and so are acting to preserve the timeline.
- Cole chooses to tell people in the past of his mission, which has many implications. If he had kept quiet the future would have not been created. Admittedly most of Cole’s important conversations are while he is heavily medicated, and so he may not be able to choose not to speak.
- The wording of Kathryn’s message appears to be her own choice, but if she had chosen different words would Cole have been able to complete her message from memory?
- Cole’s decision to run after Dr. Peters resulting in him being shot. This appears to be a completely ridiculous choice until we remember that Jose has orders to kill Kathryn Railly if Cole didn’t take the gun and do as he was told. This threat removes Cole’s agency and suggests that the scientists knew all along that Cole was meant to die in the airport terminal.
Basically the time-travel overrides the characters free will, forcing them, either through circumstance or fate to not make any different choices that would affect the potential outcome. This too is consistent with the Novikov self-consistency principle.
TL;DR
Twelve Monkeys represents a single timeline and is completely self-consistent. No changes are made to the history of the universe by the time-travellers and that’s okay.
Like this article? You may like others in this series: Category: Popcorn Paradoxes
CJ Moseley
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As much as I’d love to see you cover the truly bizarre time travel movie Hercules in the Valley of Woe, I have some more sensible suggestions as well: Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, Mr. Nobody, the inexplicable 1978 adaption of The Time Machine, Slaughterhouse-Five, Toki o Kakeru Shōjo (there are multiple film adaptions of the same famous novel), Look Who’s Back, or Tomorrow I’ll Wake Up and Scald Myself with Tea.
Though not a movie, it’s really tempting to suggest the first series of the new Dirk Gently series, which essentially functions like an eight part time travel film centered on the same time loop.
Thanks James, I was starting to think no one was reading and was considering scrapping the next one.
There are some great suggestions there! I’ll investigate and see what I can find copies of or can Netflix. I’m sure I’ve seen most of them, but certainly movies blend together (especially Godzilla ones). 🙂
I think while Dirk Gently is a great example of a time loop, it falls a bit outside the scope for the moment.
Anyone else want to make any suggestions?
I loved reading this! You pointed out a couple things that I missed, with the teeth, thank you for that. I’ve had so many conversations about this movie over the years. How about Donnie Darko? Great time travel movie, with wormholes. Loved the ending! Deus Ex Machina.
If you have already wrote about it and I haven’t read it yet, just ignore me haha.
Keep writing!