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| Film |
12 Monkeys
began its first season on SyFy last Friday. Like many people, my first reaction
when I heard the announcement of a TV series was: “Why the hell would they do
that? The story’s over and there's not much more to say.” But in the worlds of time travel
and Hollywood, there's always something else to say, even if no one cares to hear it. My next thoughts
were: “How are they going to duplicate Terry Gilliam’s offbeat style which was
one of the real selling points of the film? And how are they going to even come
close to the performances of Bruce Willis (one of the best of his career) and
Brad Pitt (the one that convinced me he could act and earned him his first
serious critical appraisal), which were two more real points in the film’s
favor?” The short answer is: They’re not. The long answer is: SyFy, like much
of Hollywood, is hoping to attract viewers with a franchise (even though a
20-year-old standalone film only somewhat registers in that classification) and
then keep them with solid writing and acting. Did they do so? In my case, not
really.
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| Film |
The first problem is the visuals. Films obviously have
much larger budgets than TV series (at least to start they do) and so can
create and shape their worlds in vastly superior ways. Gilliam’s film, like
many of his other efforts (Brazil, Time Bandits) was gritty, dirty, shadowy. It
made you uncertain about what was real and what wasn’t. It left you searching
the screen for clues and answers and still fascinated even if you didn't find them. It made the mundane menacing, as it would be
to someone traveling through time on what seemed to be a hopeless mission. But
even with all that uncertainty, it felt like real people lived there. The
technology used for that time travel was the most obvious aspect of that feel.
The steampunk brass and protrusions were in full evidence and it was clear that
humanity and this technological wizardry were confined to dark and dirty spaces
because we could never see the time machine or really ascertain how it
functioned, but we knew that it was unstable. It was presented that way with
all of the wobbling bits and jarring performance as James Cole plunged into the
chronal stream.
The TV show has none of that. In the couple shots we saw
of the machine and Cole, it’s spotless. It could have just rolled off of the
nearest Star Trek set as a stand-in for one of the Enterprise’s dilithium
containment tubes. Furthermore, there’s nothing around the machine to indicate
that it’s anything other than a film set. It’s in a largely featureless room,
without people and without indication that anyone or anything has ever been
there other than Aaron Standford, who plays Cole, and a camera crew. The same
problem exists for the rest of the episode. Cassandra Railly’s (Amanda Schull)
hotel room is just a spot to shoot a scene, despite her having waited there for who knows how many days and then waited while Cole recovered from his wound. The lengthy interrogation of Cole
takes place in what looks like a converted garage. Cole’s first disappearance
takes place in the cleanest alley of any American city yet known. The only
place that has some degree of visual character is the house where they meet
Leland Goines, which simply apes a similar scene in the film as Cole
desperately tries to find the progenitor of the world-destroying virus. There’s
nothing eye-catching in the episode that leads one to think: “Hey. I wonder if
that were a clue to this story or the background of it! I’d like to see that
again.”
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| And TV... |
Likewise, both Standford and Schull, while not bad at
their jobs, certainly don’t sell their roles. Willis as Cole was determined and
borderline maniacal, but he was also completely confused because he was in an
environment that he remembered but had left behind 30+ years ago, past who knows how many drugs and the strain of the time shift. That’s an
interesting character and Willis played it to the hilt. Standford acts like he
just walked on to the set from downtown Toronto… because he did. He’s completely in
control and cagey at all the proper moments. There’s nothing to indicate that
he’s any different from any of the NSA agents who hold him prisoner, despite
being stupid enough to let his personal aggression threaten the security of the
mission he’s supposedly so committed to. Part of the film’s appeal is its uncertainty.
We’re pretty sure about Willis’ Cole’s mental state but we’re as lost as he is
in trying to solve the big mystery (the virus) or the small one (if he’s actually sane.)
There is no doubt in Standford’s Cole. He’s completely linear and, thus,
completely uninteresting. Similarly, Schull doesn’t even approach the doubting
desperation of Madeline Stowe in the film, who keeps spouting rationalizations
even as the impossible occurs right in front of her. Schull goes along with the
story because it’s the story, not because her character believes it. And,
seriously: Cassandra Railly? Really?
Nothing reeks so much of SyFy’s
Sharknado cheapness than dropping
in little sops to Greek myth as some kind of nod to the audience that a) knows
the myth or b) remembers the reference to Cassandra from the film or c) somehow
doesn’t think that this is their lowbrow attempt to let the audience know that
they’re in on the story.
Because, in essence, the first episode played out like we
were in on the story, right? It’s a franchise. The only reason we’re watching
is because we’ve seen the film. The show doesn’t have to spend any time
questioning the reality of what Cole is seeing. We know he’s sane because we’ve
already seen this. In that case, why are we watching it again? Oh, I see. It’s
to introduce all of the random viewers who haven’t seen a film from 20 years
ago but are still somehow SyFy Channel watchers. They must be a crowd of… what?
20? Maybe 25? In that case, boy, did they get screwed because they got the
45-minute National Geographic version of a genuinely interesting story. They don’t get any of the bad in-episode
references like Cassandra, but they do get a canned pilot that doesn’t even set
up interesting questions about time travel (the central premise of the show,
albeit not the film) other than: “Why is this happening?” I can ask the same question
about the weather and get a response that might be more interesting.
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| Time travel, yo. |
But there’s a key in those last two sentences. The
central premise of the show is time travel, which means that what we’re likely
looking at is a modern, slightly-darker version of Quantum Leap except without
any of the historical trappings that made that show successful. We won’t get to
see Scott Bakula try to deal with the rage, frustration, and danger of living
through the Watts riots. Instead, we’ll see Standford bulldogging his way
toward the final answer: the solution to the virus. But that doesn’t make for
good TV. Either we’ll be chasing time travel red herrings every week (“This
week: How do James and Cassandra deal with the fact that Goines dropped his key
to the bioweapons vault in a building that later burned down?!!”) or we’ll be stalling as they attempt to keep
from solving the virus issue in order to not end the series. It’s like The
Fugitive. What happens when he finally finds the one-armed man? Well, it’s
either a great movie or the end of your series, so you’d better start stalling
and make some wicked subplots to carry you.
And, granted, this could all be a case of pilot episode
necessities. You have to lay your groundwork before your story can really roll
forward. Fine. But, in the name of that bloody weather, HOOK
ME! Give me something, anything, to say: “That was cool and I’m coming back
to see what this person does next.” The pristine example of this in modern TV
is the first episode of Breaking Bad,
where Walter White is driving a runaway RV down a desert road in his tighty
whities and a gasmask with two corpses rolling around in the back. Holy shit!
I’ve seen it twice and I want to watch that again more than I want to see the
next episode of 12 Monkeys. It
doesn’t even have to be that explosive.
Again, the selling point to the film was the mystery. You sat and
watched because you weren’t quite sure what was going on but it was
interesting. This first episode was laid out in a fashion in which you couldn’t
miss what was going on, which made it largely uninteresting and certainly not
compelling enough to turn on again.
All of that said, I may give the second episode one more
shot because I could be wrong (Grantland thinks I’m wrong.) It wasn’t the
unmitigated tire fire that was Constantine,
but that’s like saying you’d rather watch 12 Monkeys instead of C-SPAN during
budget deliberations. Yes, I’ve done that. There may be no greater combination
of boredom, abject despair, and astonishment at the idiots appointed as our
“representatives.” Now that I think of it, I’ve got this great idea that
involves time travel, the US Congress, and nerve gas… Meanwhile, 12 Monkeys is currently just another example of why TV is bad for your eyes.
