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THE FUTURE IS HISTORY

Following the commercial and critical success of The Fisher King, Terry Gilliam next feature would turn toscience fiction and a screenplay by Janet and David Peoples (Blade Runner, Unforgiven) inspired by Chris Marker’s classic short film La Jetée.

In 1996, a deadly virus is unleashed by a group calling themselves the Army of the Twelve Monkeys, destroying much of the world’s population and forcing survivors underground. In 2035, prisoner James Cole (Bruce Willis,Die Hard) is chosen to go back in time and help scientists in their search for a cure.

Featuring an Oscar-nominated turn by Brad Pitt (Fight Club) as mental patient Jeffrey Goines, Twelve Monkeys would become Gilliam’s most successful film and is now widely regarded as a sci-fi classic. Arrow Films are proud to present the film in a stunning new restoration.

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS

• Brand new restoration from a 4K scan of the original negative by Arrow Films, approved by director Terry Gilliam

• DTS 5.1 Master Audio

• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing

• Audio commentary by Terry Gilliam and producer Charles Roven

• The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys, feature-length making-of documentary by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe (Lost in La Mancha)

• Extensive image galley

• Theatrical trailer

• More to be announced!

• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Gary Pullin

FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Nathan Rabin and archive materials

bcsparker wrote: Wed Feb 23, 2005 6:32 am I see on Amazon that a Special Edition of 12 Monkeys is coming out on May 10th. Anyone know anything about this? You think they might have just repackaged it in order to list the documentary and the commentary on the package this time?

its the same release as before, but it will be with a different cover, and will have one featurette that was supposed to be on the old edition, but for some reason was left out (but was on the original packaging).

Again, the beaming brilliance of Universal. It's on so many levels that these guys have completely lost it.

As announced last month at the CES, 12 Monkeys is also among Universal's launch titles for the HD-DVD format, to be released later this year if all goes well.

I see on Amazon that there will be a new Special Edition of 12 Monkeys coming out in May. Anybody know anything as far as the content? Will it still include the doc from the previous version? Answers appreciated.

New transfer? Sounds like a DVD Beaver job!

Even though it says that there is a new transfer, I don't think there is going to be too much difference since the first one was pretty good. It just look like a re-release with lower price and no DTS version. Why has Universal discontinued all their DTS titles?!

The DTS version was available without any extras... I hoped for 2-disc re-relase with DTS sound for the film and extras on the second disc, so I sold old version. Oh, well....

Blu-ray coming July 28

World still ending in 1997

I recently re-watched 12 Monkeys, and have to say that the film is truly brilliant, and is one of T. Gilliam's best. It also is the most-thought out & well-done Time Travel film I've ever seen. Great story, acting, and cinematography.

- The sequences with Cole (B. Willis) going aboveground - in the beginning - and seeing the animals walking all over an abandoned city was amazing - very iconic & great post-apocalyptic imagery. And, when they showed how this first occurred after the army of the 12 monkeys released the animals from the zoo in protest (in 1996) was nicely done.

- The flash-backs

Spoiler

that Cole kept having when he, as a kid, saw his future self die in the airport was chilling - liked how this all came together at the end.

- Going along with the above, the time travel sequences are not forced or confusing as they can be in other time-travel films, and you can follow what's going on; of course, seeing the film more than once helps a lot with this. And, the movie is edited extremely well - for example, I was really impressed by the whole short WWI scene when Jose & Cole were in the trenches, and then this cut to a scene in the present (1996) with the Madeline Stowe psychiatrist character giving a talk/lecture about how a man (Jose) was found in the trenches during WWI speaking English, etc.

- Great urban city scenes of '90's Philadephia & Baltimore; this really focused on the interesting architecture that both cities have, and was a visual treat.

- Superb acting by Stowe, Willis, and Pitt; the supporting actors/actresses were also great.

Coming in October

I'm reading reports that "Scenes from 40:50 to 41:10 are shown twice (the same footage is seen from 41:11 to 41:31 again), while audio is not looped." I didn't buy this particular film but I'm done pre-ordering 4k titles from Arrow.

Too late for me to cancel my Amazon pre-order but I'm confident Arrow will correct this soon enough. Still, what is it with authoring UHDs that keeps resulting in this misplaced footage issue?

A user on Blu Ray dot com is claiming the UK 4K disc is unaffected.

A US user says their US disc has it. Weird.

More users reporting the editing error. It should be 20 seconds of the camera moving around Willis instead. Folks checked it against older discs and that's the shot that ought to be appearing on both Arrow products but they never corrected it on the Blu-Ray.

Are you saying the earlier BD has the error as well?
Guess I’ve not got around to watching it yet.

I checked 2018 UK Arrow BD and it contains the same repetition discussed on Blu-ray.com.

Thanks tenia. I suppose it says something about how needed a 2018 BD was if no one (not enough) noticed it back then.

Still waiting on that Limits of Control replacement program, Arrow.

Some members on the Blu-ray.com forum said the repetition error is also present on the version streaming on Peacock.

I’m confused. If the audio is not looped, wouldn’t the sound-picture be off sync for the rest of the film from that point on?

Per Finch’s post above, the repeated footage replaces a shot you should be seeing. Hence the audio remains in sync once things return to normal.

Adam X wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 12:09 pmThanks tenia. I suppose it says something about how needed a 2018 BD was if no one (not enough) noticed it back then.

The PQ upgrade was massive nevertheless, and I certainly enjoyed at the time seeing one more time the movie. However, it's clear (especially with the sound still in sync) that this can be things hard to notice if you know the movie well enough. This morning when I checked, it took me some time DESPITE KNOWING IT to find the precise segment and double check. It's also very likely that the people who noticed it on UHD missed it on the 2018 BD.

What I find interesting though is that with this and Henry, it's twice in the course of a few weeks that the same kind of issue is noticed on masters that seemingly have been containing the mistake for some time now (though in the case of Henry, it was only released in France so the audience to pick this up was smaller than for 12 Monkeys). Still, I'm wondering what's happening for this kind of mistake to happen. I understand, say, a fade being forgotten at the restoration stage (à la Eraserhead), but a shot being visually repeated ?