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May 4, 2023 · Some examples follow hard and fast rules, while others treat the timeline with a bit of open curiosity. 12 Monkeys is an enigma in many ways, including the way it handles its unique time travel...
- Senior Contributor
12 Monkeys is a 1995 science fiction film directed by Terry Gilliam and written by David and Janet Peoples. It is based on the famous French experimental short film La Jetée. It stars Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, and Brad Pitt, who won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor and was nominated for an Academy Award in the same category.
Dec 18, 2022 · Syfy's TV adaptation of 12 Monkeys is great, but it can also be incredibly confusing with its constant time travel. This is the entire timeline explained.
12 Monkeys is a 1995 American science fiction thriller film directed by Terry Gilliam from a screenplay by David Peoples and Janet Peoples, inspired by Chris Marker's 1962 short film La Jetée. It stars Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt, and Christopher Plummer.
- 12 Monkeys (1995) Movie Plot Explained
- 12 Monkeys Ending Explained: What’s The Meaning of The Recurring Dream?
- Thematic and Visual Analysis of 12 Monkeys
- Final Thoughts
Who Unleashed the Plague?
The film is set in Philadelphia in the year 2035. A devastating viral plague has claimed the lives of 5 billion people. A handful of human survivors live in a subterranean community. At the movie’s beginning, we see our protagonist James Cole (Bruce Willis), imprisoned in a lair within the underground society. He is picked up for ‘volunteer duty,’ i.e., forcing convicts to make a trip to the abandoned, deadly surface in order to find clues related to the plague. Donning a protective plastic s...
A Ploy to Escape and a Mysterious Disappearance
At the institution, James Cole meets Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), a hyperactive individual whose quicksilver delivery of thoughts withholds kernels of truth. From mass media to consumerism and the general definition of insanity, Jeffrey, the paranoid schizophrenic troublemaker, walks Cole through the ironies of late 20th-century human society. Cole narrates his story to the doctors of the institution. The disbelief on their faces is apparent. Adopting a dispassionate tone, Cole tells the psych...
The Doomsayer’s Second Chance
Still disoriented from the drugs, James Cole wakes up in a cell in 2035. He hears a mysterious raspy voice (credited as ‘Louie’), which addresses Cole as “Bob.” Cole hears the voice couple more times in the narrative, specifically during moments of extreme duress. One obvious theory is that the strain of time travel has caused the auditory hallucination in Cole. But later in the narrative, Cole meets a homeless man in 1996 who speaks in a raspy voice and calls himself Louie. The old homeless...
One of the crucial motifs in 12 Monkeysis the recurring dream of James Cole. In the dream, a little boy watches a long-haired man gunned down at the airport. Subsequently, a blonde woman in a red dress screams and runs toward the bullet-riddled body. Cole wakes up from this dream in 2035 in his prison cell. It’s hinted that he has had this dream al...
Determinism vs. Freewill
Time travel paradoxes are always a head-scratching subject. One might wonder how did events unfold in the original timeline. In 12 Monkeys’case, a viewer might question how the ‘apocalypse nut’ Dr. Peters got the idea of releasing the deadly virus if not for Dr. Kathryn Railly and James Cole’s intervening presence. We don’t know how the virus spread in the unaffected timeline. Moreover, the repeated time-traveling of various players from the future has made it tough to figure out the truth of...
Memory, Trauma, and Madness
The other significant themes apart from determinism and free will are the themes of mental illness, trauma, and memory. James Cole withholds the traumatic memory of witnessing a man getting killed. The trauma is so etched deeply within that it drives his dreams. Interestingly, the script refers to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) at one key point. Vertigo not only explored the blurring boundaries between reality and illusion, but it also questioned the nature of memory and trauma. In Vertigo...
Terry Gilliam’s Dystopian Visual Component
Terry Gilliam is one of the original image-makers in cinema. Of course, his visual idiosyncrasies are considered too eccentric for the mainstream. Yet from his contribution to the animation department in Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969) to his crazy (and cursed production of adventure drama The Man Who Killed Don Quixote(2018), Gilliam’s distinctive aesthetics make him stand out. 12 Monkeys was one of the few films in his directorial career where Gilliam wasn’t involved with the script wor...
While earlier apocalypse movies coming out of America zeroed in on the fear of nuclear war, 12 Monkeys was centered around the anxiety over a deadly viral epidemic. Two global health crises exacerbated societal fears at the end of the 20th century: One was HIV/AIDS, and the other was Ebola. The virus narrative in Terry Gilliam’s film is partly buil...
Dec 29, 1995 · Twelve Monkeys is a science fiction film directed by Terry Gilliam, released in 1995. It follows convict James Cole, played by Bruce Willis, as he is sent back in time to investigate the origins of a virus that devastated humanity. In 1990, Cole encounters psychiatrist Dr. Kathryn Railly and Jeffrey Goines, intertwined with the enigmatic Army ...
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Is 12 Monkeys based on a true story?
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How does Syfy end '12 Monkeys'?
Is 12 Monkeys a science fiction story?
Does 12 Monkeys represent a time travel cycle?
Sep 25, 2022 · What is clear is that 12 Monkeys depicts a time travel cycle in which it may be possible to change the past but that the scientists are continually conspiring to ensure that things play...
