I don't think the concept is different, I just think the movie's execution would be difficult to have in television form with an indefinite end date.
12 Monkeys pilot greenlit by Syfy
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Rather, it is a complete misunderstanding of the concept to think that "original" means "not based on any preexisting idea." Every story concept is built on earlier ideas to a greater or lesser degree. The originality is in what you do with the concepts. It's not where they come from, it's where you take them.
12 Monkeys was based on an earlier film, but it would be totally wrong to say it lacked originality. Because Terry Gilliam is a very original director, and it's his style and approach that bring originality to the ideas in his films. Lots of Gilliam's films have been either based on or inspired by earlier works. Brazil was overtly inspired by 1984. The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen was based on the tall tales told by the real baron of that name. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is an adaptation of an autobiographical novel. The Brothers Grimm is loosely based on real historical figures. If you define "original" as "not based on any specific earlier thing," then you'd have to conclude that the majority of Gilliam's oeuvre is unoriginal. But that's clearly a daft conclusion, since he's one of the most original filmmakers of his generation. So that's clearly the wrong way to define originality.
By the same token, whether a 12 Monkeys TV series can work or not isn't about what it's based on or how closely it follows the film. It'll be about the imagination and vision of the people doing the adaptation. And that's the tricky part, because Gilliam's a hard act to follow when it comes to that sort of thing. A series might end up being somewhat more ordinary in tone. Particularly since we've already had a number of TV series or season arcs about characters trying to prevent an apocalyptic future. One would want a 12 Monkeys series to stand out from the pack, at least stylistically, at best conceptually.
I see now that my fears regarding the death of originality were wholly unfounded.
But in 12 Monkeys, you can't prevent anything, "it already happened." Though they might dilute or abandon that concept; the inevitable demise of five billion people could be considered a downer for TV audiences.
To put it mildly...
If the series introduces a way to change history, I'd be all for that. It always pissed me off that the movie took the easy way out and killed billions of people.
Huh. I always felt that changing history was the easy way out.
To have a tool like time travel and fail to use it - to not even TRY to change history - is a crime, in a way. Especially with so many lives at stake.
Um...the point is that in the end they -do- try...but history has other plans.
Anyway, I wouldn't respect the film nearly as much as I do if it had had a happy ending.
I don't see Terry Gilliam's name as having anything to do with this production. That doesn't give me confidence. Maybe they're actually going back to the original source so that they don't have to pay him anything.
I'll say this for the film though, it gave me an appreciation for Brad Pitt's talent in the nuthouse scenes. I'd always discounted him as just a pretty boy before then.
I'll say this for the film though, it gave me an appreciation for Brad Pitt's talent in the nuthouse scenes. I'd always discounted him as just a pretty boy before then.
Yes, I worded that badly. What I meant to say was that just because something isn't based on an original premise or idea doesn't mean that it can't be good; that remakes can often be excellent.
That's what I was trying to say with the rest of my original post, when I referred to this project's absence of (among other things) the writing and direction that helped make 12 Monkeys so special.
Well, the movie seemed to play with that more than you seem to be letting on. Yes, at the beginning, they said that you can't change anything. However, it seemed, in the thick of things, that Bruce Willis really wanted to try (and you begin to wonder if they were right about that in the beginning). In the end, of course, they clearly were right. However, whether or not they keep this aspect of timetravel, that's certainly something they can explore (I'm thinking Lost here, where altering time was also said to be impossible, but there was disagreement).
Are they somehow preventing people from watching the movie? Perhaps going back in time and altering it?
Brad Pitt may be a guy with a lot of mainstream recognition but he's really done a lot of unconventional roles.
It's not a question of trying vs. not trying, but possible vs. impossible. They know how time travel works (in this movie), and nothing can be changed. The pandemic is going to happen no matter what, because it already happened. Whatever they did in the past already happened also, and didn't make any difference.
But that's just Cole's POV, and as the movie went along he began to be unsure of reality, and it was implied that he may have been losing his mind. It doesn't change how time travel worked in the context of the movie.
Isn't this basically the plot of Odyssey 5?
What they did in the movie is beside the point. A series would be a different take on the concept, a different continuity, and thus free to reinvent the concept in whatever way suits the series' needs. Just like virtually every TV adaptation of a movie ever made.
I'm not disagreeing, but the key there is "in the context of the movie." Given the television show would also be from his perspective and that they don't necessarily have to follow everything from the movie, they're free to toy with this idea and even change the rule. There's no reason for the audience to already know the answer, especially since the movie audience didn't definitively know the answer the first time watching it (precisely because we're following Cole's POV).