Before going into detail about the film, let me ask you a question: "If you travel through time and space and go back to the past, can you change history?" ”
Or, in other words, whether the world you are trying to change history is still the same world as it was.
Time and space and cause and effect, past and present, endless time travel, the cycle of life that cannot return to heaven, the end of the world that cannot be changed.
Is everything predestined, or is it self-grave-
The Twelve Monkeys
After watching the 1995 movie Twelve Monkeys, you might have your own answers.
The shell plot of "Twelve Monkeys" is very simple, even a bit cheesy:
In 1996, a deadly virus appeared on Earth, killing 5 billion people and leaving only a few survivors, forced to live underground and survive ever since.
Fast forward to 2035, and scientists send prisoner Cole (Bruce Willis) back to 1996 to investigate the source of the virus, and the only clue is the mysterious "12 Monkey Army".
But he mistakenly went back to 1990 and was put in a mental hospital as a madman. There he meets Jeffrey (Brad Pitt), a psychotherapist, and Catherine (Madeleine Stowe), a psychiatrist.
After a series of chaos, Cole escapes with the help of Jeffrey and retransmits to 2035.
Due to the failure to complete the task, he is teleported again, and as the investigation deepens, the truth gradually surfaces...
But even if the story synopsis is clear, due to the large number of clues in the first 2/3 of the film, it is also filled with a lot of seemingly meaningless nonsense and brainwashing symbol bombardment.
As a result, the audience is often confused and gradually surrounded by the director.
So, if you want to understand this movie, you first need to know the following two points:
1. The paradox of time travel is called the "grandfather paradox" (grandmother paradox) The paradox is probably: If a person travels to time until his grandparents have not yet given birth to his own father, and kills his grandmother, does this time traveler exist?
There are two opposing explanations for this paradox: the first is called the "parallel universe theory"; the second is called "inability to intervene in the laws of physics".
The second thing "Twelve Monkeys" wants to express is that even if the time traveler successfully travels back in time, he cannot intervene in any event in the objective physical world.
That is to say, the protagonist Cole is teleported to 1996, where he discovers the Twelve Monkey Army and the man who released the virus, but the world is still destroyed, it cannot be avoided or changed.
2. What is the significance of future scientists teleporting Cole back to the past? The movie says: "Collect information and find the pathogen that infects humans", but the film finally explains that this task is not done by him. TeleportIng Cole back in time is only to help future humans get back on the ground, not to change the fact that 5 billion people were extinct.
However, due to the goodness of Cole and Catherine's nature, they misinterpret the purpose of the mission and try to prevent everything from happening.
So the scientists avoided this problem and passed Cole back, telling him that he had been pardoned and did not need to carry out the mission.
But frequently traveling through different time and space makes Cole trance, and he is very nostalgic for life on the ground and breathing fresh air.
He even began to believe the words of the psychiatrist, believing that he was really schizophrenic and that the mission from the future was really his own illusion.
On the first crossing, Cole traveled back to 1990.
Here, Cole is thrown into a mental hospital and meets the mad Jeffrey for the first time.
During a chat, Cole inadvertently said, "Maybe humanity should be destroyed." ”
The madman Jeffrey agreed with this and began to plan a plan to destroy the world, and in 1996 stole the virus from the scientist's father's laboratory, successfully destroying mankind.
After the first crossing, Cole dreamed of what he had seen as a child, and this time, he clearly saw the face of the murderer, Jeffrey.
Cole's inadvertent words caused the butterfly effect, prompting the destruction of humanity.
Cole, who failed to escape from a psychiatric hospital, was arrested by doctors and locked up.
As a last resort, he was teleported back to 2035, but due to a dating error, Cole's trip was fruitless, so he began a second crossing.
However, the second crossing also made a mistake, and the unsuspecting Cole was teleported to the battlefield of the 1917 World War, and before he could react, his leg was hit by a stray bullet.
However, the crossing took place only a few moments, and it wasn't long before Cole was passed away again.
The people who influenced this crossing were not only Catherine, but also the assistants of the scientists. The shrapnel on Cole's leg from hundreds of years ago proved the fact that he was a crosser, making Catherine believe him. At the same time, it also made the assistant who had always believed in the proverbs of the end of the world more convinced that 1996 was the end of the world.
After many attempts, Cole finally succeeded in crossing, he came to 1996, and kidnapped catherine, the heroine who had just finished preaching.
After seeing the shrapnel on Cole's leg, he believes that Cole is from the future, and naturally believes that the Twelve Monkey Army is the murderer of the virus.
So she called the scientist and told him to watch out for her son Jeffrey.
So for the sake of safety, the scientists handed over the virus to the assistant for safekeeping, pushed the boat along the water, and the assistant became the person who released the virus.
This fact cannot be affected by how many times Cole travels, one is the notion that the crosser "cannot intervene in the laws of physics". Even if Catherine had predicted by calling the scientists first, the virus was still released, but the people were different.
But future scientists don't know all this, and they must be clear about the identity of the person who released the virus to ensure that history is not altered.
So there was Cole's fourth crossing.
Cole, who crosses back for the fourth time, learns that "Twelve Monkeys" is just a joke and that the real poisoner is someone else.
He called the future scientists to report the situation and told them he was going to stay here and wouldn't go back.
Such a situation was absolutely not allowed for scientists, so they sent Cole's future friend Jose to give Cole a gun.
Jose asked Cole to put the gun in his arms, and if he didn't, he would kill Catherine, and Cole had no choice but to accept the gun.
Scientists already knew that Cole knocked out his teeth to avoid tracking, and to prevent him from falsifying history again, they had to design to kill Cole.
By this time Catherine had spotted the suspicious assistant, and she ran to Cole and told him about the suspect.
Seeing that his assistant had passed the security check and was about to leave, Cole couldn't think about it and was ready to shoot him and stop the spread of the virus.
But he finally slowed down, and with a few gunshots, Cole fell under the gun of the airport police.
The finale of the movie is the most contemplative, Catherine holding the dead Cole, and she suddenly remembers Cole's dream.
So she looked for Cole as a child in the crowd, and when she saw him, everything understood...
The plot develops here as if caught in a dead loop.
When the male protagonist saw the person who was shot and died in front of him when he was a child, he was actually his grown-up self.
Since then, his psychology has been overshadowed, so he grows up and makes a mistake and goes to prison, and then is teleported to the past to perform tasks...
The film is closely associated with monkeys everywhere, but in the end it seems to have nothing to do with monkeys.
The monkey motif loops for nearly a minute at the beginning of the film
The twelve monkeys" symbol that constantly appears in the streets and alleys
Monkeys are sometimes not mentioned in the character dialogue
In this regard, it is to make the audience subconsciously accept that the leakage of the virus is related to the "monkey" and the organization associated with it. (Actually has nothing to do with "monkeys")
On the other hand, it is through monkeys that have been experimented with humans to reflect humans themselves
In fact, Cole He is often not the monkey in the news, "volunteered" to do tasks that no one else is willing to do, and in the end he is only one of many "victims". He is like the plaything of those scientists, constantly traveling through time and space, constantly pursuing fate, and finally falling into endless reincarnation, never seeing the sea of his heart and mind.
The Book of Revelation, also known as the Book of Revelation, is the last chapter of the New Testament.
It is said to have been written by John, a disciple of Jesus, primarily as an early warning of the future of the world, including prophecies of the end of the world. It is generally symbolized as a prophecy of great catastrophe, catastrophe, war, or the return of God.
At the end of the movie, when the heroine discovers that the person who leaked the virus is actually the assistant, it is because she remembers that at the end of her speech, the assistant gushed and told her that she believed in the last judgment.
So much so that whether Cole's crossing affected the identity of the person who leaked the virus, in fact, there is none.
Because the assistant himself is an apocalyptic fanatic, and all this is due to the fact that the people of 2035 are constantly sending people to the past, and these people have been warning the world of the end of the world in 1996.
This made the assistant more certain about the occurrence of the end of 1996 and the fact that he was the messenger of the final world.
At the end of the film, the assistant is on a plane, and he is seated by the female scientist who has been guiding Cole.
What did she teleport from 2035? The answer is "in insurance", do insurance!
She knows that the male owner will definitely fail, so she personally comes to do insurance, what is insurance?
The first is to ensure the smooth spread of the assistant's virus, and the history has not been tampered with. The second is to retrieve the original strain of the virus, return to the future, and successfully develop an antidote to help people in 2035 return to the ground.
So much so that the 5 billion people who died, she had no interest in paying attention.