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Team America: World Police

2004 film directed by Trey Parker

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 15, 2026
Entity authorityQ907640
Source-derived summary

Team America: World Police is a 2004 American puppet 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 eponymous 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 progressive 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. Production took place from May to September of 2004 and was troubled, with various technical problems regarding the puppets and the scheduling extremes of finishing in time for its theatrical release. Like Parker's previous film South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, it also came into routine conflict with the Motion Picture Association of America, which returned the film multiple times with an NC-17 rating, particularly due to an explicit sex scene involving puppets.

Team America: World Police premiered at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles 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 $50 million worldwide on a $32 million budget.

Plot

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.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Team America: World Police” as 2004 film directed by Trey Parker. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2004—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—2004-10-11, 2004-12-30, 2004-10-15, 2004—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. The account is most persuasive where Team, America and World can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 2004 film directed by Trey Parker. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q907640. 5 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2004.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Team America: World Police”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Team America: World Police primary sources, Team America: World Police archive and Team research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Team America: World Police”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Team America: World Police” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.