The Sci Fi Guy

Back in the 1990’s, Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt, and Madeline Stowe showed up to put together a strange (soon to be cult) movie called 12 Monkeys. Thanks to a little On Demand magic, I cued it up, and was reminded of what a well put together movie they’d really invented.

For those that haven’t seen it – 12 Monkeys basically tells the tale of James Cole, a prisoner in a bleak future where man kind has been forced underground by the emergence of a destructive virus that’s wiped out 99% of the population. The remaining civilization (if you can even call it that) is relegated to bleak citcumstances, but somehow along the way they did invent time travel. Cole must now travel to the past – where he meets Madeline Stowe, psychiatrist extraordinarre, and where his mind begins to unravel on him. Part of his mind thinks he was sent to the past to uncover the secret actions of the “Army of the 12 Monkeys” – the political terror group that unleashes the virus on mankind. But the other part of him believes that he’s actually crazy – that the future he believes he’s from is just a figment of the imagination. Sure enough, we get a little dose of Stockholm syndrome on the part of Stowe, and Brad Pitt’s character accuses Willis’ of creating the reality by which Pitt is now enacting.

Overall, 12 Monkeys is a complex story, and has enjoyed reasonably good cult success since it’s release in 1995. The film features little in the way of advanced computer graphics or sophisticated special effects that are so often deemed prerequisites of contemporary science fiction. Rather, 12 Monkeys does much of what Kevin Spacey’s K-Pax accomplished by creating a sincere doubt in the mind of the audience as to the validity of the alternate realities that these “time travelers” (or in K-Pax, dimensional travelers) are explaining.

Could it be possible that time travelers are sitting in the worlds’ mental institutions? Sure, why not. We’re all sci-fi fans here, right? If you haven’t done it in a while, dust off your copy of 12 Monkeys and give it another go, and if you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and set aside a couple hours to rent this great 90’s science fiction story.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 10:50 pm and is filed under Science Fiction Movies, post apocalypse. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.