Yesterday I watched "Deja vu" and was kinda confused bout a few things....?

Question

1. In the end when Denzel Washington dies in the car, how is it that he comes back to life later??
2. If he comes back to life is it possible that the bomber guy didnt die?

No what I mean is did he ever actually die???
Because if you die in the past how can you be alive in the future???

Answer 1

This is a really thought-provoking movie, and you can read all the interesting theories that have surfaced on the IMDB board. However, I agree with this theory best...the 3 Dougs theory. Try to stay with me, here goes...

Before the movie actually begins, Carroll the mad terrorist plants the bomb on the ferry, it goes BOOM, and the 1st Doug arrives at the scene. He finds Claire's dead body, he discovers the secret government project, blah, blah, blah and decides to travel back in time to save her on his own motivation (there was no fridge magnet to encourage him at this point). So he rushes to the baddie's house (because using that high-tech surveillance thing, he would already have known where it was) and crashes his ambulance into it. The ambulance flips upside down (which is why in the movie when Doug 2 first arrives at the house after the car chase, it IS upside down), he shoots Carroll and saves Claire. Takes her home, she cleans him up, and they fall in love. He leaves a message on the fridge magnet to his future self in case he doesn't make it. Now here's the crucial bit, he leaves her while he goes to stop the ferry. Carroll, still alive, kills Claire, sneaks the bomb on board and blows it up anyway, killing first time-travelling Doug 1.

With me, so far? Now the movie starts. The oblivious Doug 2 arrives on the scene, he discovers the time machine, he finds his fingerprints all over Claire's house, he sees the upside-down ambulance at the hideout, and he nabs Carroll. Now this Carroll was the one who succeeded in killing Doug 1, so he was more than a little surprised to see Doug 2 alive and kicking, so he does his little "You Don't Know What's Coming" speech, cos' Doug 2 DOESN'T know what's coming. Anyway, encouraged by Doug 1's fridge magnet message, Doug 2 goes back in time a second time. He saves Claire, but this time the ambulance lands right-side up. No matter. He shoots Carroll and Claire cleans him up. He leaves his fridge magnet message again, and then realises something's amiss, probably a remnant from Doug 1's demise. Which is why he says "We have to leave now, you're coming with me". So he brings along, they thwart the terrorist together, but he has to die, cause there can't be two Dougs at the same time.

Doug 3 arrives and comforts the upset Claire, and they ride off into the sunset together. The End.

You see, there's two Denzels, his time-travelling self and the oblivous present-day self. And no, it's quite impossible Carroll survived, he was finally killed in the third timeline. Unlike Doug/Denzel, he didn't travel back in time, so there's only one version of himself, and that's the present day one.

Hope my long and tedious explanation helped. :)

Answer 2

He didn't die and come back to life later. When he goes through that machine to the past...there are 2 Denzel characters. The one that knows everything that is going to happen (and wants to change the fact that the girl dies) and the one that is oblivious...just living day to day like any other day. He is just going to check out the explosion (in this case, not the boat...but the car in the water because the first Denzel changed things) When he went back...he made some changes which threw off the time continuum so now there is an alternate reality for the Denzel that lives. It makes sense that the Denzel that traveled back through time dies...he has to, because there can't be 2 Denzel's at the same time in the same place. The bomber guy dies in the alternate reality because Denzel changed that. In order for the bomber guy to be able to come back...he would have had to known Val Kilmer's character, be on good terms with him to get into the whole secret of viewing the past and launch himself through that little fax machine that sent Denzel back. They do make it look like the bomber guy knows something...like this isn't the way it is supposed to happen...but I think that is because 1) he either knows about a secret project being ex-military...or 2)he was just a nutty bomber thinking that he knew exactly what would happen.

Answer 3

Because it's Deja Vu