12 monkeys

Year of release : 2015

 

Run time : 40-48min, 10 episodes, tv series, mini series

 

Genre : Sci Fi

 

 

Season 1

 

The series are based on the 1995 movie of the same name.

 

The season starts with doctor Cassandra Railly giving a lecture about pandemics, being kidnapped right after.

Cole,who claims he comes from the future, asks her about a man,Leland Frost, and tells her he is from the future, and only in within a few years, a pandemic will wipe out humanity. He, and the team of scientists he works for, consider Frost responsible.

In order to convince her, he shows her a watch he says belonged to her, and scratching it in the past,her present, the other watch,from the future,receives the scratch too.

 

He is asking doctor Railly to meet him in two years time at a hotel. And disappears right after.

2 years later, doctor Railly waits for him daily at the hotel bar. When about to give up,Cole finally appears. Having the same bleeding wound he had when she last saw him.

 

Doctor Railly decides to help him. Going further with their investigation,they find out Frost is not the architect of the world's doom. Instead,they find out clues about how an organization called "12 Monkeys" are the ones who are behind it .

 

Cole puts himself in the mental institution Frost's daughter is in, and finds more information from her. Her information takes him to the sole survivor of a team of scientists believed to have been killed by Frost's daughter.

 

He goes back further into the past, finding out he is dead.

 

The series also deal with the Cole's present where the VII, a gang, rob people and kill them for power. There's an attempt to humanize the characters as we see their lives in the future, but it just bores me, because it's all been done before,in other series.

 

Every once in a while, when Cole goes into the past, depending on what happens to key characters like doctor Railly, his future is completely changed, for the worst.

 

They introduce more and more characters and it's just a mess. I personally don't care about their lives, with their incredibly boring relationships (their relationship issues are the same as today) or the life in the future.

Episode 8 bored me with Cole's best friend's love life, introducing Elena, the love of his life and a plain and boring woman, whom he still swoons over, who left him.

 

The only episode I liked was the 11th where they reveal the villain of the story, the origin story of the one behind the 12 monkeys who wants to kill the world. I read the episode is called Shonin( I don't know why we have to find the title of the episodes from the internet,instead of them actually writing the title at the beginning of the episode!)

 

I started watching these series as I read online that they are much better than the original, which is not true. Having watched it, it doesn't even compare to the 1995 movie,the feeling, the vibe that movie had, the sense of dread, the weight and depth of the characters, the slow character build,Bruce Willis creating a compelling character with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

 

The actors weren't bad, but I thought the male lead should have been built like Kyle Reese from Terminator or Bruce Willis from the original. This one doesn't have the same depth, the same weight of the world on his shoulders, he just seems unfazed by the seriousness of the situation.

He seems more a man of today, unattached to anything and incapable of any depth. Honestly, it feels like he's an ordinary man of our time.

 

The same thing goes for the female lead.

Brad Pitt's character was gender swapped, and is played by an actress who is not bad, but it just feels like she is overacting.

 

The series don't have the same sense of doom, not to mention it doesn't have that emotional connection even with the audience,as in the original the lead dreams about a man dying in front of him, something that marked him,only to realize at the end of the movie,it was himself!

 

The series feel generic to me,the plot, the acting, like any other series about post apocalyptic worlds, like The walking dead,The 100, Falling Skies.. there's nothing new, just more of the same, and it's redundant.

 

I personally don't think such a concept could work for a series, because as a series, they need to find reasons to prolong it indefinitely, so he'll go back in time with no consequences forever.

 

The soundtrack is good, but doesn't compare with the cool accordion song "12 monkeys" had,which just merged with the movie.

 

The visual effects are good.

 

I won't be watching the next 3 seasons.

 

The series are streaming on Netflix.

 

Rating : Could have been a contender !  leaning more towards The HORROR!