Team America: World Police is one of those movies you hear about because of the controversy it stirs up, so you get a general idea even if you haven’t seen it. The publicity surrounding this comedic drama that uses puppets and bizarre humor to drive the story varies from place to place, met equally with both praise and ridicule. Trey Parker and Matt Stone went all out this time, shocking even their most dedicated fans.
How can a movie that crosses so many lines still have so many secrets? There are a lot of things about this movie that you didn’t know and probably never even thought to ask about because you were so distracted by the brilliant insanity of this movie. Here are ten things you didn’t know about Team America: World Police.
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The Price of Puppets
You might think that a satirical comedy starring puppets would be a hard sell to a production company, but not this time. Paramount snatched up the project with nary a word of criticism or objection.
That wasn’t just because Trey and Matt had a lot of clout in Hollywood after a decade of South Parkepisodes and a feature film based on the famous TV show. Paramount mistakenly thought that a movie about puppets would be cheaper to make than a regular film with actors and real sets, and that was their main motivation.
Panama Cannabis
Most viewers miss this the first time, but now that you know it’s all you can see during this sequence.
If you’ve seen South Park than you know that Trey and Matt are staunch anti-Prohibitionists, so it won’t be too much of a surprise when you recognize all of the foliage in the Panama scene. With the exception of a few palm trees, every bit of greenery you see are cannabis plants.
“Back at you, Kim!”
George Clooney and Matt Damon were flattered to be depicted in the film and would have been disappointed if they had been left out. Contrary to what some of the publicity for this movie jokingly claimed, Alec Baldwin also liked this movie and thought it was funny.
In fact, the song that plays during the credits is entitled, “You are Worthless Alec Balwin” and the lyrics have become a running joke between Baldwin and his fans. Occasionally he’ll hear someone say, “You’re worthless, Alec Baldwin!” To which he replies, “Back at you, Kim!”
The Streets of Paris
There are a lot of jokes about how janky the puppets and other practical effects in this film are, but they’re meant to be that way. This is juxtaposed against some elegant craftsmanship when it comes to the sets.
An example of this is the subtle detail on the streets of Paris. Those cobblestone streets are actually lined with croissants, not the rough old rocks that are typical of old European cities.
Across the Pond
Although this movie is famous for making North American censors clutch their pearls, the subject matter didn’t have the same effect on everyone. Several European countries not only shrugged their shoulders at the film but rated it appropriate for kids and families.
That’s the same as a movie getting a “General Audiences” rating back in the 1980s. This would have been the theatrical version, not the uncut version with the extended puppet sex scene, but still.
“Success!”
Star Trek fans probably did notice this. In the scene when the Film Actors Guild decides to join forces with Kim Jong Il, they raise their fists triumphantly and cry the word, “Qapla!” This isn’t an ancient battle cry but a Klingon word that means “success.”
Tray and Matt love Star Trek and that shows through in their work. In fact, the puppet sex scene was written in an effort to distract censors from the other questionable material in the script, a tactic that Star Trek writers frequently used to skirt the censors of their time, such as when they wrote Kirk and Uhura’s inter-racial kiss.
Practical Effects
Here’s an interesting degree of separation. Bill Pope was the director of photography for Team America: World Police, and he took the job because he wanted to do something completely different from his previous movies.
And what were those? None other than the first two Matrix movies and Spider-Man 2, films that relied heavily on green screen and computer-generated effects. There’s virtually none of that in Team America: World Police, which uses practical effects. When Pope said he wanted a change, he wasn’t kidding.
Swearing in Russian
A shout out here to independent translator Dmitry Puchkov, who gave the people of Russia a rare and authentic experience when he translated this film. Most foreign films are heavily censored as opposed to translated faithfully in Russia, and this is one of the few that was distributed with little alteration.
The curse words are the best example, carefully replaced with their Russian equivalents as opposed to just cutting them out. Unlike in Europe, however, the film has a +18 only rating in Russia.
Team America After Tomorrow
When Trey Parker and Matt Stone originally thought of the concept for this movie, they envisioned a puppet-version of a hyperbolic disaster film typical of the time and chose The Day After Tomorrow as the object of this parody. They had a copy of the script and wanted to make basically the same movie, just with puppets.
It was already so over-the-top that it was already comedic and doing it with puppets would have been even funnier. The idea was dropped after it hit a few major snags, the foremost of which was the studio which owned the rights to the original film.
From My Cold Wooden Hands
One of the funniest characters in Team America: World Police is Spottswoode, Gary’s mentor, voiced by Darin Norris. His lofty diction fits the character perfectly, and Norris didn’t just pull that notion out of nowhere.
The main target of ridicule in Team America is big-budget special effects-driven films, but those are hardly new. Back in the day, it was the Biblical epic and sword and sandal flick that filled that void, and no actor was more immersed in that genre than Charlton Heston. Norris used Heston as his inspiration for the voice of Spottswoode, and it works brilliantly.