★★★★★ 0/5

12 Monkeys

A small screen version of a 20 year old sci-fi film shows there are still fun ways to turn back time.

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Time flies when you’re having fun or when there are deadly plagues about to envelop the world.

It also passes pretty fast for Hollywood, given it has been 20 years since the feature film 12 Monkeys was released with Bruce Wills and Brad Pitt (back then Willis was the bigger drawcard).

Now NBCUniversal is going back to its ‘source’ for a series adaptation, with a few shifts along the way.

There are four key time periods in this small screen version. In 2043 time traveller James Cole (Aaron Stanford) is sent back to 2013 where he meets virologist Dr. Cassandra Railly (Amanda Schull) to warn her about a virus that is set to be released in 2017.

Not unlike the Terminator concept, Cole is on the hunt for one man, Leland Frost (Zeljko Ivanek), to interrupt the future. If he can be stopped perhaps 7 billion people will not be wiped out. But Dr. Railly insists she has never heard of him. she is extremely sceptical of such outlandish concepts until he promises to meet her again in 2015 and vanishes, inexplicably, before her eyes.

Clearly hoping to fit into a universe of Ebola and The Walking Dead success, it’s a fun opening sequence to this fantasy series.

Two years later the deeply perplexed Doctor keeps an appointment with fate and meets her mysterious time traveller once more. How did he disappear? And could there be something in his story?

When the Doctor realises she knows Frost by another name, they pursue him and his henchmen, leading to all kinds of action scenes.

The title again refers to the deeper mystery that the 12 Monkeys were responsible for the end of civilisation as we know it, with graffiti and markings of a underground forces at play. I don’t think these monkeys are the same missing links, for instance, in the universe that is Planet of the Apes!

I never saw the original 1995 film by Terry Gilliam so I’m unable to compare how old and new versions compare. But I was pleasantly surprised by the opening episode of this reinvention.

Aaron Stanford (X2, X-Men: The Last Stand) looks the part of the intense, action hero while Amanda Schull (One Tree Hill, Pretty Little Liars, Suits) makes a fair fist of working against type given she has been cast as a particularly attractive scientist. Zeljko Ivanek is always watchable as a TV baddie and I look forward to Kirk Acevedo (Oz, Fringe) having more to do in subsequent episodes -here he is confined to the future.

Like other small screen versions of sci-fi –Terminator is a good example- it’s hard not to get around the reality that bold premises tend to lose their distinctiveness somewhat as weekly television, and visuals often begin to cut corners.

12 Monkeys will hopefully settle into being a spirited genre piece, but that’s no guarantee it will be remembered in 20 years time.

12 Monkeys premieres 8:30pm Thursday on Syfy.

2 Responses

  1. Twelve Monkey’s is typical Gilliam film, surreal, gritty and dystopian. For most of the film you aren’t sure if Cole is a time-traveller or just psychotic, and neither is Cole. Events like The Twelve Monkey’s eco-terrorist group, that Cole is sent to stop, turning out to be harmless, crazy, anti-capitalist, anti-zoo protestors convince him its the later. It’s based on a French short film about a time travel twist.

    12 Monkey’s is your standard network buddy conspiracy theory story. Still it might be interesting until the final season of Continuum pops up. We aren’t exactly in a golden age of SF TV at the moment. Syfy is more interested in stuff like Sharknado.

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