Door de film Looper is tijdreizen opeens weer helemaal hip onder de nerds en geeks. Nu denken de meeste mensen gelijk aan Back to the Future of Terminator, maar er zijn meer films die dit thema op een hele andere manier benaderen. De website GFR heeft nu deze lijst met acht van dit soort films gemaakt, en zes er van heb ik gezien en vier daar van staan in me film kast op DVD. Zo is Donny Darko uit 2001 een must see, en dat geld ook voor de inmiddels bejaarde The Final Countdown (1980). Maar mijn favoriet, die ik kan blijven kijken is toch wel:

12 Monkeys (1995)

Time travel stories inevitably break down into two different categories. There are the ones that assume that we can change our own past, even if only by creating a divergent alternate reality (see Back to the Future II or the first two Terminator flicks). And there are the ones that presume that history is immutably fixed, that things will unfold more or less as they always did, regardless of how much we try to alter the flow. It's the idea of time protecting itself, of having a self-correcting defense mechanism that prevents rampant paradoxes.

12 Monkeys is easily one of the most elegant examples of that second category. Bruce Willis plays James Cole, a convict sent back in time from a diseased future and tasked with discovering who unleashed the world-ravaging virus. For most of its length, 12 Monkeys teases the viewer into thinking maybe Cole really will change history. That makes it all the more shocking when it reaches its brilliant, poetic crescendo and all the divergent possibilities come crashing down beneath the weight of inevitability. All we can do is watch it happen: what has to happen, what always happened.

The Best Part: Cole comes full circle.