Corrected entry: Katherine's phone message that is responsible for the hypothesis about the Army of the 12 Monkeys is left as a direct result of her experience with Cole, and at the same time what leads to him being sent back in the first place. Well, if that message is there all along, then why isn't the one Cole left at the airport contradicting it also present from the beginning? It should have created a paradox, as it would have stopped the investigation into the Army before it started, hence the first message would never have been left.
lionhead
11th Nov 2007
Twelve Monkeys (1995)
30th May 2020
Twelve Monkeys (1995)
Plot hole: At the end the police shoot Cole while he was chasing Dr Peters but the police do not stop Dr Peters and question him as to why a man was chasing him at the airport with a gun, instead he is unchallenged and allowed to continue his journey.
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Suggested correction: There is no connection between Cole and Dr. Peters, nobody knows he is specifically chasing him. Dr. Peters is beyond the gates and on his way into the plane so unless they want to stop the entire flight, which is unlikely, he is left alone. Perfectly reasonable.
Cole is chasing a man and Dr. Peters is running away (and knocking people over in the process). Further, they were screaming "there he is...stop him he's got a deadly virus" and pointing at Dr. Peters. Highly unlikely they would have let the plane depart.
There was a dude with a gun, a lot of people were running, panicking. Perfectly reasonable reaction from Peters. The police were after Cole anyway, so the attention was on him, not on Peters. And as I said, Peters was already past the inspection, so he was where he was supposed to be and there was no reason to stop him.
Not to mention that Dr. Railly can also corroborate the reason Dr. Peters is being chased.
Dr. Railly can corroborate the reason Cole is chasing Dr. Peters. When she points out that he is even on the front page of USA Today with a Nobel Prize winner, I think they'd definitely investigate.
The shrink was still alive and seemed to give up quickly on her mission to stop a virus from killing billions. Like she just let them take her while she remained silent instead of continuing to scream that he had a virus so Cole died in vain. And they would know why he was chasing them because all they would need to do was ask him.
Her concern was with Cole, she tries to protect him throughout the movie. After Cole is shot she knows there is no way they let her continue the chase, all she cares about is Cole. Cole is being chased by the cops, no reason for them to believe what he is yelling, no reason to believe her either, since she is as an accomplice.
8th Apr 2020
Twelve Monkeys (1995)
Corrected entry: Why do the scientists, whom are older than Cole, not remember that the army of 12 monkeys let out the animals? It was on the radio the same morning when Cole and Reilly were in the taxi on their way to the airport. It must have been a pretty significant thing in your memory especially if the death of the human race starts almost immediately after this event. They do not realise this until Cole calls the voicemail and explain the situation 5 minutes before hell brakes loose in the airport. Where were these scientists during this quite spectacular incident? Even Cole must have remembered something about this since he just went home with his parents after the shooting in the airport. The story about the fleeing animals must have been on most of the news networks that day, so why would the grown up Cole not remember this rather important piece of information from his childhood?
Correction: Who's to say that the scientists don't remember it? Why couldn't they have released the animals from the zoo as well as releasing a devastating virus? They sent Cole back to investigate and find out more specific details.
To add to that: Cole doesn't remember these events himself nor anybody else does because right after the animals were released and the incident at the airport the virus starts to spread, taking up all the time on the news and media several days later and starting a really desperate time for all people, trying to survive it all. It's not unlikely people will not remember the time before the virus.
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Correction: Both messages are there all the time but one (Coles) was more degraded than the other (Katherines), and the scientists needed more time to work on it.
They do decrypt that message though and send back Jose to give him the gun. So they do know eventually it wasn't the army of the twelve monkeys.
lionhead