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This introductory chapter describes Terry Gilliam's cinematic work. For five decades, Gilliam has been a cartoonist, animator, comic, film auteur, social critic, and opera director. His ouvre is defined by his visual style as it expresses a political and social critique of the world he sees. He creates chaotic worlds for his characters to make sense of, and though they rarely do, the audience can find some use of their own world by sharing the chaos of the characters, and unravelling the complexities of the realities found there. In Gilliam's eyes, “the darkness is what makes the light more beautiful”, and he says, “a problem I see now in the modern world—particularly in America—is the perception of a world without struggle, a world where all our needs are taken care of”. This book offers a collection of critical chapters that engage in multiple approaches to reading Terry Gilliam's films.

This chapter looks at the penultimate scene of Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys, which shows the bird's eye shot of young Cole getting in the car and a close-up of his eyes as they follow a plane. It discusses how the mysterious plane scene seems to have bothered viewers a great deal and kept coming up in interviews with Gilliam. It also mentions a scene in 12 Monkeys that seems to offer a final comment on the free will versus determinism dilemma. The chapter analyses how humanity's survival must be purchased with the coin of human misery stretching far into the post-apocalyptic future, which is a concept that is made to be accepted in 12 Monkeys. It mentions Drew Goddard's The Cabin in the Woods from 2012, in which two dying teenagers respond whether it is acceptable to have a world in which humans are capable of the deliberate slaughter of others.

This chapter talks about getting caught in a loop as one of Terry Gilliam's greatest fears, much like the one that characterises the 12 Monkeys series, which has become derivative and repetitive. It explains why Gilliam famously refused to read Orwell's 1984 before making the film Brazil, and why he refused to see La Jetée before making 12 Monkeys. It also discusses anticipated memory, recollections from the future, and pre-emptive foretastes of the as-yet unknown. The chapter examines four-dimensional creativity enabled by two basic steps: rejection of linearity and partiality for the possible over the real. It looks at principal differences between 12 Monkeys the film and 12 Monkeys the show.

This chapter cites human interaction in Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys which suggests that closeness is virtually impossible, whether in the 'future' or in the 'past'. It talks about the setting in 12 Monkeys, where there is a constant need to guard against infection that forces future humanity into protective shells called human condoms. It also describes the 12 Monkeys's many mythical characters, cross-over characters, look-alikes, half-remembered faces, misremembered faces, and disembodied voices. The chapter examines why communication, even about rather important things like the end of the world, so often ends in total misunderstanding, as it does in the scene with Cole and Goines. The chapter explores how identity is presented as uncertain, unsettled, and conflicted in the film.

This chapter explains why 12 Monkeys was an unqualified commercial success, but remains Terry Gilliam's least understood film, both at and beyond the plot level. It analyses several genres that 12 Monkeys played with, such as apocalypse and post-apocalypse movies, sci-fi, nuclear noir, and geek dystopia. It also discusses time travel, free will versus determinism, and mental illness as themes of 12 Monkeys. The chapter mentions conspiracy theories that were included in the film, such as the impossibility of human closeness and the nature of reality. It examines intertextual links identified in literature that range from Frank Baum's The Magic of Oz to Omar Khayyám's The Rubáiyat, the Book of Revelations, Virgil's Aeneid, Hesiod, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

This chapter talks about the film 12 Monkeys from 1995, which was written by the co-author of Blade Runner in 1982 and author of Unforgiven in 1992, David Peoples, and his wife and collaborator Janet Peoples. It mentions Terry Gilliam of Monty Python fame, who directed 12 Monkeys. It also discusses how 12 Monkeys was made on an extremely modest budget of slightly under $30 million, resulting in the film's stars working for far less than their usual fee. The chapter recounts how 12 Monkeys defied expectations by raking in $170 million worldwide and receiving a number of nominations and awards. It describes the critics' response to 12 Monkeys, calling it a spectacular mess, a convoluted film with too many ideas for its own good, and a film with an involving, occasionally baffling storyline.

This chapter explains how Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys went to astonishing lengths to denounce science or humanity's unwavering belief that science and technology will cure all ills. It describes technology and science that were persistently discredited in the film, such as the scientists' time travel mechanism that twice hurls Cole into the wrong time. It also talks about psychiatry as another science of strict distinctions that is debunked by Railly as an inconsistent thought system with no closer link to reality than any 'religion' or 'faith'. The chapter describes the 1990s-set scenes in 12 Monkeys, in which monkeys appear repeatedly on TVs in various scenes, gnawing on their bars, suffering in cruel experiments, or being lowered on strings. It points out intriguing paradoxes of 12 Monkeys, such as the film's fictional worlds, from mythology and art to TV cartoons and commercials.

This chapter analyses Terry Gilliam's drawing for the opening credits of 12 Monkeys, which shows monkeys following each other in a never-ending spiral. It discusses 12 Monkeys's heftiest hint at the one point without which it cannot be properly understood as the film does not present time as linear. It also talks about how non-linear time is associated with time travel and futuristic scenarios, and how the idea has been around for centuries. The chapter mentions the Aztec calendar to which Gilliam's drawing bears some resemblance and relied on an interconnected tripartite system that assigned each day a unique combination of a name, number, symbol and patron deity. It talks about the hot debate in the film about linear time that becomes the acid test for the entire film.

This chapter discusses time travel as the secondary device for exploring the idea of liberty in Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys. It analyzes the juxtaposition between free will and determinism, in which the film seems to be caught in something of a bind. It also explains time travel that is one-directional, in which the scientists only ever send people into the past, never into their own future to see if their plan will pan out. The chapter talks about how 12 Monkeys seems to suggest that it is possible to influence the future, which is an idea that is entirely reliant on the illusion of linear time. It examines the debate between compatibilists and incompatibilists that centres on a failure to distinguish between that which is known and that which is real.

This chapter mentions Terry Matalas and Travis Fickett, the 12 Monkeys series' creators, who originally conceived the TV series simply as a time-travelling show with no relation to Terry Gilliam's film 12 Monkeys. It recounts how the 12 Monkeys series started out by ripping off the film's basic plot: a virus that wipes out the planet's population and a team of scientists from the future that send a man back in time to fix it all. It also points out how Cole's death at the airport, the original film's most traumatic scene and driver of its plot, was unceremoniously deleted in the 12 Monkeys series. The chapter discusses the basic premises that the 12 Monkeys series relies on, such as linear time. It explains the central theme of the moralistic drama of the ethical struggle between personal motives and the Greater Good.