they are both great, but I'd agree with most that Blade Runner is better
after you watch 12 Monkeys, watch this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RvmJan17q8
darkodonnie
I guess I'll go ahead and agree that Blade Runner is better too.
However, as far as personal preference goes, I'd rather have 12 Monkeys in my permanent DVD collection than to never see Blade Runner again for the rest of my life.
I prefer 12 Monkeys. It may not be the "better" movie, but I'll be damned if I don't prefer it.
It's just such a beautiful picture of a dying world. It's an ugly pessimistic film in which everyone is doomed, but therein lies the beauty of it. The characters are aware of this, and choose to burn brightly for a little while rather than to fade into darkness. It's a stunning movie about the utter inevitability of death, and the way people cope with it.
In that sense, I actually prefer this movie even more than the remake of The Fly. Seth Brundle never had a choice. James Cole DID have a choice, and he chose to live in a dying past.
However, I think that this movie is most like The Terminator. As in, "T1". Not Terminator 2 or Terminator 3, but the original Terminator movie. Terminator was always by far the best movie of that series, simply because of the weight carried in it. Unlike either of its sequels, The Terminator was ugly and grungy. It wasn't shiny and funny. It didn't have the funny reappearance of Dr Silberman or funny jokes about talking to the hand or how cool people say "hasta la vista, baby". It was nothing but doom and gloom, nothing about it was funny. It never did anything as a joke, it didn't try to make jokes, it just tried to paint a portait of a doomed world that is about to die, and how one person holds onto the faintest glimmer of hope that it's WORTH living in a world that is very soon about to turn into a literal HELL.
For the record, that's why Terminator will always be the one true c1assic out of the entire franchise. Terminator 2 whussed out by implying that the future could be stopped, and in doing so invalidated everything that was great about the original movie. The Terminator was NOT great because it had Arnold Swarzeeneger in it. It was not great because it had a killer robot in it. It was great because DESPITE the inevitability of ANYTHING that will happen, or the futility of trying to prevent what has happened from happening, Sarah Connor still CHOOSES to do what she literally HAS to do. She KNOWS what's about to happen, but she still CHOOSES to play her part in things that she cannot change.
Still, 12 Monkeys is BETTER. It is the closest spiritual successor to The Terminator, and it does it better. It also ends better. Terminator 2 ended with a symbolic shot of a car heaading down a dark road leading to an indeterminate destination. I say, **** that ****. That's a sissified ending for mass consuming mouth-breathers who want happy **** spoon-fed to them in convenient Kool-Aid doses. The Terminator ended with Sarah Connor willingly heading off into the coming storm, ready to die because she knows about the burden that she's carrying.
Now, that's pretty good. But **** that **** too. 12 Monkeys ended with James Cole watching himself get shot to death, then him solemnly watching the plane take off that dooms the entire world and subsequently contributes to him going back in time and getting shot to death, only so that he can see himself getting shot to death, which makes him able to go back in time and get shot to death.
Now THAT is ****ing badass. That doesn't pull any punches. Unlike in The Terminator (still the best movie in that series), there IS NO magical saviour. There's just a doomed world that will never be saved, and James Cole choosing to die in a doomed past.
And despite that, it STILL manages to be a hopeful and optimistic movie.
12 Monkeys might technically be worse than Blade Runner, but I STILL prefer 12 Monkeys on a personal level. It's a bona fide c1assic, and one of the best science fiction movies ever made.
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