Editing 12 Monkeys (section)

== Themes ==

=== Thematic elements ===
{{quote box|align=right|width=30em|Cole has been thrust from another world into ours and he's confronted by the confusion we live in, which most people somehow accept as normal. So he appears abnormal, and what's happening around him seems random and weird. Is he mad or are we?|salign=right|source=— Director Terry Gilliam<ref name="second" />}}

In the biographical novel ''Gilliam on Gilliam'', director Terry Gilliam described the film as "very much about the twentieth century's inundation of information and about deciphering what among all this noise and imagery is useful and important to our lives"; these themes are expressed in conflicts between the protagonist and antagonistic elements in the relative 'past' and 'future'.<ref name="second" />

References to time, time travel, and monkeys are scattered throughout the film, including the [[Woody Woodpecker]] cartoon, ''Time Tunnel'' (1969), playing on the TV in a hotel room, the [[Marx Brothers]] film ''[[Monkey Business (1931 film)|Monkey Business]]'' (1931) on TV in the asylum, and the subplots involving monkeys (drug testing, news stories and animal rights).

=== Allusions to other films and media ===
''12 Monkeys'' is inspired by the French short film ''[[La Jetée]]'' (1962); as in ''La Jetée'', characters are haunted by the images of their own deaths.<ref name="third" /> Like ''La Jetée'', ''12 Monkeys'' contains references to [[Alfred Hitchcock]]'s ''[[Vertigo (film)|Vertigo]]'' (1958). Toward the end of the film, Cole and Railly hide in a theater showing a 24-hour Hitchcock marathon and watch scenes from ''Vertigo'' and ''The Birds''. Railly then transforms herself with a blonde wig, as Judy ([[Kim Novak]]) transforms herself into blonde Madeleine in ''Vertigo''; Cole sees her emerge within a red light, as Scottie ([[James Stewart]]) saw Judy emerge within a green light.<ref name="third" /> Brief notes of [[Bernard Herrmann]]'s film score can also be heard. Railly also wears the same coat Novak wore in the first part of ''Vertigo''. The scene at [[Muir Woods National Monument]], where Judy (as Madeleine) looks at the growth rings of a felled redwood and traces back events in her past life, resonates with larger themes in ''12 Monkeys''. Cole and Railly later have a similar conversation while the same music from ''Vertigo'' is repeated.<ref name="third" /> The Muir Woods scene in ''Vertigo'' is also reenacted in ''La Jetée''. In a previous scene in the film, Cole wakes up in a hospital bed with the scientists talking to him in chorus. This is a direct homage to the "[[Dem Bones|Dry Bones]]" scene in [[Dennis Potter]]'s ''[[The Singing Detective]]''.<ref>{{cite web |title=SALON Reviews:12 Monkeys |url=http://www.salon.com/05/reviews/monkey2.html |work=[[Salon (website)|Salon]] |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050531001122/http://www.salon.com/05/reviews/monkey2.html |archive-date=2005-05-31 |access-date=2012-04-10}}</ref> James Cole is a notable [[Christ figure]] in the film.<ref name="Kozlovic">{{cite web| first=Anton Karl| last=Kozlovic| url=https://www.usask.ca/relst/jrpc/art8-cinematicchrist.html| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050223221011/http://www.usask.ca/relst/jrpc/art8-cinematicchrist.html| archive-date=2005-02-23| title=The Structural Characteristics of the Cinematic Christ-figure| work=Journal of Religion and Popular Culture| access-date=2016-01-06}}</ref><ref>{{citation|title=Roman Catholicism in Fantastic Film|chapter=Blasphemy in the Name of Fantasy: The Films of Terry Gilliam in a Catholic Context|author=Christopher McKittrick|editor=Regina Hansen|publisher=[[McFarland & Company|McFarland]]|year=2011|isbn=978-0-7864-8724-0|pages=34–35}}</ref> The film is significant in the genre of science-fiction film noir, and it alludes to various "canonical noir" films.<ref>{{citation|title=Transgressing Women: Investigating Space and the Body in Contemporary Noir Thrillers|date=January 2005|publisher=Lancaster University|author=Jamaluddin Bin Aziz|section=Future Noir}}</ref>