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Team America World Police

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Team America: World Police is een Amerikaanse satirische poppenfilm uit 2004, geregisseerd en geacteerd door de makers van South Park.

De regie werd verzorgd door Trey Parker. Stemmen werden onder anderen ingesproken door Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Kristen Miller, Masasa Moyo en Daran Norris.

Leeswaarschuwing: Onderstaande tekst bevat details over de inhoud of de afloop van het verhaal

Team America is een groep geheim agenten die wereldproblemen probeert op te lossen. Zo redden ze Parijs nadat terroristen van plan waren de Eiffeltoren op te blazen, maar vernietigen hierbij zelf grotendeels de stad.
De Noord-Koreaanse leider Kim Jong-il verkoopt massavernietigingswapens aan terroristen met een strategisch plan diverse locaties op aarde op te blazen. Team America komt via hun computer, "I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E" te weten dat het hoofdkwartier van de terroristen zich in Caïro bevindt. Ze schakelen Gary, een Broadwayacteur in om undercover te gaan als terrorist en meer over toekomstige aanslagen te weten te komen. Hun plan lekt uiteindelijk ter plekke uit, maar Team America weet toch alle terroristen te vermoorden en Caïro verwoest achter te laten. Nadat ze teruggekeerd zijn wordt Gary stapelverliefd op Lisa, een ander team-lid. Maar Lisa's hart is gebroken vanwege een lid van het team dat haar ooit ten huwelijk had gevraagd tijdens de aanslag in Parijs, maar sneuvelde in de strijd. Ze wil daarom geen nieuwe relatie beginnen. Gary belooft haar echter dat hij "nooit dood zal gaan", waarop een gratuite (en bizarre) poppen-seksscène volgt.
Sarah, een ander teamlid, is jaloers op Lisa want zij is ook verliefd op Gary. Nadat een groep acteurs genaamd de "F.A.G." kritiek uit op Team America omdat zij zoveel verwoestingen uiten in de wereld, beseft Gary dat hij hieraan heeft bijgedragen. Het hele team belandt nu in een crisis vanwege hun liefdesproblemen. Nadat een nieuwe missie tegen terroristen mislukt, wordt Team America gevangengenomen door Kim Jong Il. De dictator heeft namelijk vriendschap gesloten met de F.A.G. en misleidt hen dat hij niets dan goede bedoelingen heeft. Inmiddels heeft een lid van de "F.A.G." (Michael Moore) via een zelfmoordaanslag het hele kantoor van Team America de lucht in geblazen. Gary keert na een dronken nacht op café en een nietszeggende speech van een caféganger terug naar het kantoor van Team America, maar treft hier enkel de baas van het team aan. Deze is bereid Gary te vergeven indien hij orale seks op hem toepast als teken van vertrouwen. Dit gebeurt en hierop wordt Gary opgeleid tot superspion die incognito op missie vertrekt naar het paleis van Kim Jong Il, waar een internationale conferentie plaatsvindt. De dictator is van plan aan het einde van de avond wereldwijd bommen te laten exploderen, maar Gary bevrijdt Team America en samen besluiten ze de Noord-Koreaanse despoot tegen te houden...
Ze worden echter tegengehouden door de F.A.G. die niet door hebben dat Kim Jong-Il kwade bedoelingen heeft. Er breekt een gevecht uit waarbij vele F.A.G.-leden als Helen Hunt, Matt Damon, George Clooney en Samuel L. Jackson sneuvelen. De aanslag wordt gestopt en Kim Jong-Il gedood. Dan blijkt dat hij bezeten was door een buitenaardse kakkerlak en vlucht per raket de wereld uit.

Poppen
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Het merkwaardige van Team America: World Police is dat er in de film geen gebruik wordt gemaakt van echte acteurs of animatie, maar van supermarionation; marionetpoppen in de stijl van de Thunderbirds. Hiervoor moesten reusachtige sets gebouwd worden die Caïro, Parijs en Mount Rushmore voorstelden. In de poppen werden apparaatjes ingebouwd die de ogen en lippen deden bewegen.
Feitjes over het maken van de film
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De producenten van Team America: World Police, overigens ook een deel van de acteurs en scenarioschrijvers, zijn dezelfde makers van South Park, een programma waarin gebruik wordt gemaakt van geknipt- en geplakte personages. Het camerawerk is van de director of photography van The Matrix-trilogie, Bill Pope.
In de film worden bepaalde zaken op een originele wijze gebruikt zodat ze iets anders voorstellen: zwarte katjes vertolken de rol van zwarte panters en cannabisplanten vervullen de rol van varens.
De film is qua stijl een parodie op actiefilms als Top Gun en de blockbusters van Jerry Bruckheimer.

Team America: World Police is a 2004 puppetry comedy film directed by Trey Parker, who co-wrote it with Matt Stone and Pam Brady. Parker and Stone also star alongside Kristen Miller, Masasa Moyo, Daran Norris, Phil Hendrie, Maurice LaMarche, Jeremy Shada, and Fred Tatasciore. A satire of action film archetypes, American militarism, and the foreign policy of the United States, the film follows the titular international counterterrorism force, which recruits a Broadway actor to assist in saving the world from Kim Jong Il and his coalition of Islamic terrorists and liberal Hollywood actors.

The film intertwines puppetry and miniature effects in a manner similar to Supermarionation, known for its use in the television series Thunderbirds, although Stone and Parker were not fans of that show. They worked on the script with Brady, a former South Park writer, for nearly two years. The film had a troubled production, with various technical problems regarding the puppets and the scheduling extremes of finishing in time for its theatrical release. It also came into routine conflict with the Motion Picture Association of America, which returned the film multiple times with an NC-17 rating due to an explicit sex scene involving puppets.
Team America: World Police premiered at the Grauman's Chinese Theater in Los Angeles, California on October 11, 2004, and was released in the United States on October 15, by Paramount Pictures. The film received generally positive reviews from critics and grossed over $51 million worldwide on a $32 million budget.

Team America, an international organization dedicated to counterterrorism, defeats a group of Islamic terrorists in Paris, but are very reckless and destroy the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, and the Louvre in the process. The team includes Lisa, an idealistic psychologist; her love interest Carson; Sarah, a psychic; Joe, a jock who is in love with Sarah; and Chris, a martial arts expert who harbors a grudge towards actors. Carson proposes to Lisa, but a terrorist kills him in the middle of the act.
Team America leader Spottswoode brings Broadway actor Gary Johnston to Team America's base in Mount Rushmore and asks him to use his acting skills to infiltrate a terrorist cell. Unbeknownst to the team, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il is supplying terrorists across the globe with WMDs. Gary infiltrates a terrorist group in Cairo. The team is discovered and a chase ensues, ending with Team America killing the terrorists. However, Cairo is left in ruins, drawing criticism and outrage from the Film Actors Guild (F.A.G.), a union of liberal Hollywood actors led by Alec Baldwin.
At Mount Rushmore, Gary tells Lisa that as a child, his acting talent caused his older brother, Tommy, to be brutally killed by gorillas. While the two grow close and have sex, terrorists blow up the Panama Canal in retaliation for the Team America operation in Cairo, killing thousands. The F.A.G. blame this on Team America, while Kim chastises the terrorists for detonating one bomb too early. Gary, feeling his acting talents have again resulted in innocent people dying, resigns from Team America. The remaining members depart for the Middle East and North Africa, but are defeated and captured by North Korean forces while Michael Moore blows up Team America's base in a suicide attack. In North Korea, Kim invites the F.A.G. and world leaders to a peace ceremony, planning to detonate several bombs around the world while they are distracted.
Succumbing to depression, Gary is reminded of his responsibility by a rambling speech about "dicks, pussies and assholes" from a drunken tramp. Returning to the team's base, he finds Spottswoode has survived Moore's bombing. After regaining Spottswoode's trust by giving him a blowjob and undergoing one-day training, Gary goes to North Korea, where he uses his acting skills to infiltrate the base and free the team, although Lisa is held hostage by Kim. The team is confronted by the F.A.G. and kill most of their members in an ensuing fight. After Gary uses his acting skills to save Chris from Susan Sarandon, Chris confesses to Gary that the reason he dislikes actors is because he was raped by the cast of the musical Cats when he was 19 years old.
The team crashes the peace ceremony and Gary goes on stage to deliver a recontextualized version of the tramp's speech, arguing that "dicks", though criticized by "pussies", are necessary to stop "assholes", which convinces the world's leaders to unite. Kim betrays and kills Baldwin for being unable to counter Gary's argument, but he is kicked over a balcony by Lisa and impaled on a German delegate's Pickelhaube. Kim reveals his true form as an extraterrestrial cockroach and flees in a spaceship, vowing to return. Gary and Lisa happily begin a relationship and in the end, the team reunites, preparing to fight the world's terrorists once again.


The film also features a man dressed as a giant statue of Kim Il Sung, two black cats who pose as panthers, two nurse sharks, and a cockroach, with the difference in size with the marionettes played for humorous effect. A poster of the Barbi Twins was featured on the billboard in Times Square, making the Twins the only non-marionette humans in the film.

Development
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The film's origins involve Trey Parker and Matt Stone watching Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's Thunderbirds on television while bored. Parker found that the series was unable to hold his interest as a child because "the dialogue was so expository and slow, and it took itself really seriously".[5] The duo inquired about the rights to the series and found out that Universal Studios was doing a Thunderbirds film directed by Jonathan Frakes. "We said, 'What? Jonathan Frakes is directing puppets?' and then we found out it was a live-action version, and we were disappointed," said Parker.[6]
News broke of the duo signing on to create the film on October 17, 2002, with Stone revealing that it would be a homage to Anderson.[7] The news was confirmed in June 2003, with Variety quoting Stone as saying "What we wanted was to do a send-up of these super important huge action movies that Jerry Bruckheimer makes."[8]
Before production began, Team America was championed at Paramount Pictures by Scott Rudin, who had been the executive producer for Parker and Stone's previous film, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. After the "hassle" of producing the South Park film, Parker and Stone had vowed never to create another movie.[6] Other studio executives were initially unenthusiastic about the project: the studio was in favor of the film's lack of political correctness, but were confused by the use of puppets. The executives explained that they could not make profit from an R-rated puppet feature, and Parker countered that similar things had been said about the South Park film, an R-rated animated musical which had become a box-office hit.[9] Tom Freston, who was co-president of Viacom, Paramount's parent company, also supported the film, feeling that Paramount should make more lower-budget films that appeal to children and young adults after the studio's failures with adult-oriented films such as The Stepford Wives.[10] According to Parker and Stone, executives were finally won over after they saw the dailies from the film's production.[5]
Writing
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Parker, Stone, and longtime writing partner Pam Brady spent nearly two years perfecting the Team America script. For influences, they studied scores of popular action and disaster films, such as Alien, Top Gun, and S.W.A.T.[11] The duo watched Pearl Harbor to get the nuances of the puppets just right when they were staring at each other, and also used Ben Affleck as a model.[9] To help shape the film's archetypal heroes (from the true believer to the reluctant hero to the guy who sells out his friends for greater glory), they read the books of Joseph Campbell. "On one level, it's a big send-up," Brady said. "But on another, it's about foreign policy".[11] The first draft of the script was turned in well before the Iraq War.[9] The film takes aim at various celebrities, many of whom came out in opposition to the Iraq War in 2003. Brady explained that the film's treatment of celebrities was derived from her annoyance at the screen time given to celebrities in the beginning of the Iraq War, in lieu of foreign policy experts.[11]
Filming
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The film's central concept was easier to conceive than to execute.[11] Team America was produced using a crew of about 200 people, which sometimes required four people at a time to manipulate a marionette. The duo were forced to constantly rewrite the film during production due to the limited nature of the puppets. The 270 puppet characters were created by the Chiodo Brothers, who previously designed puppets for films such as Elf and Dinosaur. The costumers of the crew were responsible for making sure the over 1,000 costumes remained in cohesive order and were realistic.
Production began on May 23, 2004.[6] The project was interrupted multiple times early on in production.[9] As soon as filming began, Parker and Stone labored to find the right comic tone; the original script for the film contained many more jokes. After shooting the very first scene, the two realized the jokes were not working, and that the humor instead came from the marionettes.[12] "Puppets doing jokes is not funny," Stone found. "But when you see puppets doing melodrama, spitting up blood and talking about how they were raped as children, that's funny."[11] Filming was done by three units shooting different parts at the same time. Occasionally, the producers had up to five cameras set up to capture the scene.[5] The film was mainly based on the 1982 cult classic action film Megaforce, of which Parker and Stone had been fans. Many ideas had been copied such as the flying motorcycle sequence.
The film was painstakingly made realistic, which led to various shots being re-done throughout the process due to Parker and Stone's obsession with detail and craftsmanship. For example, a tiny Uzi cost $1,000 to construct, and Kim Jong Il's eyeglasses were made with hand-ground prescription lenses.[11] Although the filmmakers hired three dozen marionette operators, simple performances from the marionettes were nearly impossible; a simple shot such as a character drinking might take a half-day to complete successfully.[11] Parker and Stone agreed during production of Team America that it was "the hardest thing [they'd] ever done."
Rather than rely on computer-generated special effects added in post-production, the filmmakers vied to capture every stunt live on film.[11] Parker likened each shot to a complicated math problem.[13] The late September 2004 deadline for the film's completion[5][11] took a toll on both filmmakers, as did various difficulties in working with puppets, with Stone, who described the film as "the worst time of [my] life," resorting to coffee to work 20-hour days, and sleeping pills to go to bed.[14] The film was barely completed in time for its October 15 release date. At a press junket in Los Angeles on October 5, journalists were only shown a 20-minute reel of highlights because there was no finished print.[15] Many of the film's producers had not seen the entire film with the sound mix until the premiere

Editing
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"It's a back-and-forth with the board. They said it can't be as many positions, so we cut out a couple of them. We love the golden shower, but I guess they said no to that. But I just love that they have to watch it. Seriously, can you imagine getting a videotape with just a close-up of a puppet asshole, and you have to watch it?"
—Trey Parker on the clashes between him and Stone and the MPAA[13]
Even before the scene's submission to the Motion Picture Association of America, Parker planned to "have fun" pushing the limits by throwing in a graphic sex scene.[6] The duo knew the racy film would be met with some opposition, but were outraged when the film came back with their harshest rating, NC-17. The original cut's minute-and-a-half sex scene with Gary and Lisa was cut down to 50 seconds. The original scene also featured the two puppets urinating and defecating on one another,[13] which was based on what children do humorously with dolls such as Barbie and Ken. At least nine edits of the puppet love scene were shown to the MPAA before the board accepted that it had been toned down enough to qualify for an R rating.[16] Parker contrasted the MPAA's reluctance for the sex scene to their acceptance of the violence: "Meanwhile, we're taking other puppets and, you know, blowing their heads off, they're covered with blood and stuff, and the MPAA didn't have a word to say about that."[17] In addition to the sex scene, the MPAA also objected to the scene in which the Hans Blix puppet is eaten by sharks.[18] Stone and Parker had faced a similar conflict with their previous film South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut in 1999.

The film's score was composed and conducted by Harry Gregson-Williams. The soundtrack also contains "Magic Carpet Ride" performed by Steppenwolf, "Battle Without Honor or Humanity" performed by Tomoyasu Hotei, "Forbidden Bitter-Melon Dance" performed by Jeff Faustman, "Bu Dünyada Aşkından Ölmek" performed by Kubat, and songs by Trey Parker including "Everyone Has AIDS", "Freedom Isn't Free", "America, Fuck Yeah", "Derka Derk (Terrorist Theme)", "Only a Woman", "I'm So Ronery", "The End of an Act" and "Montage" and "North Korean Melody". Marc Shaiman, who previously scored Parker's South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut originally composed the film's score, but was replaced by Gregson-Williams.

Famous people depicted as puppets, and lampooned, in the film include Michael Moore, Alec Baldwin, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Helen Hunt, George Clooney, Liv Tyler, Martin Sheen, Susan Sarandon, Janeane Garofalo, Matt Damon, Samuel L. Jackson, Danny Glover, Ethan Hawke, Kim Jong Il, Muammar Gaddafi, Tony Blair, Queen Elizabeth II, Qaboos bin Said, Fidel Castro, Peter Jennings and Hans Blix. Almost all of them are killed in gory and violent ways.
Reactions from those parodied were mixed; Baldwin found the project "so funny",[20] and expressed interest in lending his voice to his character.[21] In a 2008 video interview with Time, Baldwin related how his daughter Ireland's classmates would recite Kim Jong Il's line to him, "You are worthress, Arec Barrwin." [sic][20] Sean Penn, who is portrayed making outlandish claims about how happy and utopian Iraq was before Team America showed up, sent Parker and Stone an angry letter inviting them to tour Iraq with him, ending with the words "fuck you".[22]
Both George Clooney and Matt Damon are said to be friends with Stone and Parker, and Clooney has stated that he would have been insulted had he not been included in the film.[23] Damon is portrayed as a simpleton who can only say his own name. When asked about the film in 2016, Damon stated that he was confused by the portrayal, given that he was already known as both "a screenwriter and an actor":
[…] I was always bewildered by that, and I never talked to Trey and Matt about that. And incidentally, I believe those two are geniuses, and I don't use that word lightly. I think they are absolute geniuses, and what they've done is awesome and I'm a big fan of theirs, but I never quite understood that one.[24]
Stone and Parker had earlier stated in an interview that they were inspired to give the Damon character that personality only after seeing the puppet that was made for him, which "looked kind of mentally deficient".[25]
Kim Jong Il, a noted film buff,[26] never commented publicly about his depiction in Team America: World Police, although shortly after its release North Korea asked the Czech Republic to ban the film; the country refused, calling the request an "effort to undermine the Czech Republic's post-Communist-era freedom".[27] The filmmakers acknowledged this in a DVD extra and jokingly suggested he sings "I'm So Ronery". Michael Moore is depicted as a fat, hot dog-eating glutton who partakes in suicide bombing and is referred to as a "giant socialist weasel" by I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E. Stone explained the reason for this portrayal in an MSNBC interview:
We have a very specific beef with Michael Moore, […] I did an interview, and he didn't mischaracterize me or anything I said [in Bowling for Columbine]. But what he did do was put this cartoon [titled "A Brief History of the United States of America", written by Moore, animated and directed by Harold Moss] right after me that made it look like we did that cartoon.[28]
A deleted scene also shows Meryl Streep and Ben Affleck (who is portrayed with a real-life hand replacing his head)

In the aftermath of the December 2014 terrorism threats by Guardians of Peace on showings of the film The Interview, which resulted in Sony Pictures pulling the film from release,[53] several theatres, including Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin, Texas, protested the loss by scheduling free showings of Team America: World Police.[54] However, Paramount pulled distribution of Team America from theaters, including those in Cleveland, Atlanta, and New Orleans.[55][56][57] This action was seen by President Barack Obama as an attack on freedom of speech by Hollywood studios,[58] and others as an act of pure cowardice.[59] Snippets of the film mocking Kim Jong Il were reportedly set to be included, alongside copies of The Interview, in helium-filled balloons launched by North Korean defectors into their home country in an effort to inspire education on the Western world's views on it.