One of the best Sci-Fi movies ever made

Rating: 10/10 (8 February 2020)

12 monkeys has got to be one of the best movies about time travel ever made. It's witness to the height of movie making in the 90s that gave us such gems as this one, American Beauty, Se7en, Terminator 2 and L.A. Confidential (although not technically 90s). Movies still had a deeper story and didn't forcefeed the solution to the audience.
Bruce Willis gives his best performance, other than his great work on Moonlighting. The scene in the car with him and the radio is Oscar-worthy to me. Madeleine Stowe makes me wonder what ever happened to her, she was a great actress.
The key to understanding the movie is to understand that there are two approaches to time travel. Some say you can change the past. But the more realistic approach is that you can't, because whatever happened in the past has already led to the present.
In 12 monkeys, most of the movie takes place in the past, BUT the main storyline is in the present/future.
Cole is doomed from day one. He isn't sent back to stop the virus (that can't be done, or the present/future wouldn't exist to begin with. Merely by existing, it proves that the past can NEVER be changed). The characters in the movie even talk about this several times.
Cole is basically sent back to die. Why? Because he is caught in a strange time loop. We have the young Cole that will always see his older self (that shouldn't be there anyways) die at the airport. He will grow up to be the older Cole from the present. But he always will be sent back, because he has to die in the past (maybe that's why he is in prison too at the beginning of the film).
Cole tells the scientists that he won't come back. So he has to die. They achieve this by giving him the gun. This also assures that the virus will be released. It's a moebius loop. This has and will always happen in the past time line. This also explains why Kathryn feels she has seen Cole before.
The scientists basically use Cole only to get information. They need to travel back to the point before the virus mutated. When we see the scientist shaking hands with Peters, she is basically infecting herself with the virus, making sure the scientists have a sample of the original virus to work with, thus creating a cure in the present.
If you keep that in mind (that the present can't be changed), the movie isn't that hard to understand, except for the Cole paradox. I guess because the movie also progresses in the present/future, that's the reason why Cole will eventually seize to exist. He will just always grow up to the point where he is sent back in time to die, to grow up again to be sent back to die to grow up again etc.
Still, by doing that, he did help mankind to finally take the next step and gave them a future again. It's just sad that it'll be one where he never saw the ocean...