8 Movie Characters Who Suffered The Most From Time Travel

7. David Cole Fails To Save The World And Dies - 12 Monkeys

Looper wasn't the first time Bruce Willis travelled back in time with some vague plan of changing the future. In Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys he's sent back from a post-apocalyptic future to stop the outbreak of a virus that decimated humanity. With only a couple of vague transmissions to go on, when back in the mid-nineties Willis' James Cole begins investigating the Army of the Twelve Monkeys, which keeps him bumping into Brad Pitt's Jeffrey Goines, a man he unwittingly motivates to create the group.

But the big twist is that the films focus on the titular apes is completely misleading. The "Army" is really a group of animal activists who want to release Central Park zoo animals into New York - the person responsible is a corporate guy only tangentially related to Goines. To top things off, Cole is killed trying to stop the outbreak, an event he himself witnessed when he was younger.

The message of 12 Monkeys is an incredibly bleak one. Whereas in the likes of Back To The Future travelling back in time offers the hero the chance to change the future, here it's an inevitable loop - Cole will always die in that airport, catching the eye of his younger self, and humanity will always succumb to the virus. At least the animals got set free.