There is a chance that James Cole is not insane. His paranoid ravings about a post-apocalyptic future in which the world has been ravaged by a deadly virus might be true, and the Army of the Twelve Monkeys might be real. The only trouble is, if Dr. Kathryn Railly accepts this, she will have to accept a terrifying truth:
The End Of The World As We Know It is coming... very soon.
Twelve Monkeys is an Academy Award-nominated 1995 science fiction film directed by Terry Gilliam and written by David and Janet Peoples. The film was inspired by the French short film
La Jetée. It stars Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, and Brad Pitt, who won a Golden Globe for best supporting actor; Pitt was also nominated for an Academy Award in the same category.
This Movie Contains Examples of:
- Air Vent Escape: Referenced; after Cole vanishes out of his restraints and a locked room in a mental hospital, the staff glance up at the tiny vent shaft (however, subverted in that this escape did not actually happen in such a way).
- Animal Wrongs Group: The Army of the Twelve Monkeys is an animal rights group blamed for the spread of a deadly super-virus that kills most of humanity. They end up having nothing to do with it.
- Apocalypse How: Class 3a
- Beauty Inversion
- Cant Take Anything With You
- Cuckoo Nest
- Go Among Mad People
- Hilarious In Hindsight:
- Just Before The End
- Mad Oracle: It's implied that many such oracles were actually time travellers who landed in the wrong era.
- Meanwhile In The Future
- Mind Screw: For the viewer, although by the end it becomes comprehensible. Also, for James, who starts to think he really is insane and that he imagined travelling from the future. It's mentioned that this happens to all time travellers. Finally, for Katherine, first as she starts to realize that James must have come from the future, and later when she starts to "remember" things that never actually happened (when they put on the disguises and she says he looks familiar.)
- Misanthrope Supreme: The villains, who engineer a lethal virus.
- Narm Charm: The airport shooting of James Cole, anyone? Pretty narmy by all standards, but by the final time the scene is played, This Troper couldn't help crying.
- Playing Against Type: Along with Se7en, one of the movies that helped Brad Pitt break out of pure pretty-boy type-casting. Also, Bruce Willis character is notably more frail than what he usually plays.
- Red Herring: The Army of the Twelve Monkeys didn't release the virus.
- Shoot The Shaggy Dog
- Stable Time Loop
- Through The Eyes Of Madness: The longer James stays in one timeline, the more he begins to doubt his memories of the other one.
- The Usual Suspects Ending
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: All the time travellers are going insane from the stresses involved in time travel; hence the use of expendable prisoners for this task.
- You Can't Fight Fate: Played cruelly straight.
- You Already Changed The Past: The only reason the protagonists think that the Army of the Twelve Monkeys was responsible for the apocalypse is due to an answering machine message left by one of the protagonists who thinks that it is true because of the future people hearing that message and sending a time traveler back who tells her about it.
- Chekhovs Gunman: A rather creepy but otherwise unimportant character is introduced midway through who turns out to be the guy who spread the virus.
