Apple TV+ Revives Terry Gilliam's 1981 Cult Classic: A New Look at

Unique Points

• Apple’s Time Bandits series is a remake of the 1981 film with the same name.
• Kal-El Tuck plays the role of Kevin, an 11-year-old English boy who travels through history with a group of thieves called Time Bandits.
• The show features anachronistic humor and historical recreations with impressive special effects.

Accuracy

• The new series is designed to be more light-hearted and comedic than the original.
• Kal-El Tuck plays Kevin, an 11-year-old English boy who travels through history with a group of thieves called Time Bandits.
• The show features a group of five time bandits who have stolen a valuable map allowing them to travel through time and steal treasure.

Deception (30%)

• The TV series from Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement gets laughs, but lacks the memorable strangeness of the 1981 film
• For weeks after, I had nightmares inspired by the ending, where our young hero’s parents blew up after touching a literal piece of Pure Evil (the film’s villain), leaving the boy utterly alone
• But if this new Time Bandits comes closer in ambition to what I wanted all those years ago, its execution is spotty.

Fallacies (100%)

None Found At Time Of Publication

Bias (80%)

• But if this new Time Bandits comes closer in ambition to what I wanted all those years ago, its execution is spotty.
• The movie was more strange than funny.

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Unique Points

• The series focuses more on the 'romp' side of the original film, to the exclusion of its darker and weirder elements.
• Kal-El Tuck plays Kevin, an 11-year-old history enthusiast who discovers a time portal in his bedroom wardrobe.
• Fianna, portrayed by Rachel House, is a huntress who uses fire lasers from her eyes to retrieve the map.

Accuracy

• The show adopts some elements of Mel Brooks and resembles the British and CBS versions of Ghosts.

Deception (70%)

• The series creators don’t feel the same pressure to avoid self-repetition, and the first half of the season plays like talented people content to do Monty Python karaoke.
• Nobody, though, specialized in making movies that were ostensibly for kids but definitely weren’t for all kids like Terry Gilliam.
• One needn’t take that comparison as an insult. Gilliam could sometimes benefit from bowling bumpers.
• The film replicates the chaotic weirdness of childhood dreams, but resists any of the pat moralizing that often anchors kid-friendly storytelling.

Fallacies (80%)

• ][author] Thanks to Steven Spielberg and his various acolytes, '80s kids didn't lack for entertainment made directly for us. But that doesn't mean we weren't periodically traumatized by a Gremlins or Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom or, in the case of my younger brother, The 'Burbs. Nobody, though, specialized in making movies that were ostensibly for kids but definitely weren't for all kids like Terry Gilliam. One of my first moviegoing memories is abruptly leaving a revival screening of Jabberwocky because it wasn't the movie my parents thought it was. Audiences experienced similar unease with The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and, before that, 1981’s Time Bandits, a frequently playful juvenile romp that's also nonstop dark imagery and narrative jagged edges. The film replicates the chaotic weirdness of childhood dreams, but resists any of the pat moralizing that often anchors kid-friendly storytelling.[/

Bias (90%)

• Most of those jagged edges have been sanded off for Apple TV+’s new take on Time Bandits, which concentrates on the 'romp' side of the original, very much to the exclusion of the weirdness.
• The film replicates the chaotic weirdness of childhood dreams, but resists any of the pat moralizing that often anchors kid-friendly storytelling.
• The series is very talk-heavy and even though it’s self-aware about its structure, the pattern of hopping into a portal, arriving in a new time, having Kevin lecture everybody about various historical personages, solving a minor problem and leaping into the next period becomes first familiar and then dull.

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Unique Points

• The team behind FX’s ‘What We Do In The Shadows’ are involved in creating and producing the TV version.
• Lisa Kudrow stars as the leader of the new time bandits.
• Kevin, an 11-year-old history buff, gets involved with the time bandits when they crash into his bedroom.

Accuracy

• The major change is that the time bandits are no longer played by little people. Some have criticized this casting decision.

Deception (100%)

None Found At Time Of Publication

Fallacies (100%)

None Found At Time Of Publication

Bias (100%)

None Found At Time Of Publication

Site Conflicts Of Interest (100%)

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Author Conflicts Of Interest (0%)

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Unique Points

• Taika Waititi has remade Terry Gilliam’s 1981 film ‘Time Bandits’ as a 10-episode Apple TV+ series
• Kal-El Tuck delivers a standout performance as Kevin in the series despite its overall lackluster reception

Accuracy

• The new adaptation features average-sized actors instead of little people for the title roles
• The original ‘Time Bandits’ was notable for its representation of little people as heroes and giving them significant roles

Deception (30%)

• Despite their different professions and motivations (for example, Penelope occasionally refers to an ex-fiancé), these Bandits are equally airheaded and inept.
• The new Apple TV+ adaptation of Terry Gilliam’s 1981 film is a crime against little people.
• The following night, he receives additional unexpected guests: a group of ragtag thieves who are being pursued by a giant quasi-Zardoz head known as the Supreme Being that, upon appearing, compels everyone, including Kevin, to hastily flee through a portal that drops them on an 1810 Chinese pirate ship.
• Yet leave it to Taika Waititi, he of the eternally noxious Jojo Rabbit, to do the one thing that should not be done.
• Time Bandits concerns Kevin (Tuck), a contemporary 11-year-old who lives in the English town of Bingley with a mom (Felicity Ward) and dad (James Dryden) who don’t understand his nerdy love of history.

Fallacies (65%)

• The new Apple TV+ adaptation of Terry Gilliam’s 1981 film is a crime against little people.
• Devoid of condescension or clichéd mockery, and infused with its protagonists’ distinctive personalities, it was–and remains–one of the preeminent modern big-screen platforms for little people.
• Yet leave it to Taika Waititi, he of the eternally noxious Jojo Rabbit, to do the one thing that should not be done.
• With the same basic premise as its predecessor, Time Bandits concerns Kevin (Tuck), a contemporary 11-year-old who lives in the English town of Bingley with a mom (Felicity Ward) and dad (James Dryden) who don’t understand his nerdy love of history.
• Thus, to remake it without them is creatively nonsensical to the point of being outright offensive, since it both misses the entire reason for the original’s existence (and success) and denies actors of short stature some of the most notable roles they’ve ever been given.
• It's akin to, say, redoing The Wizard of Oz or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with, respectively, 6-feet-tall munchkins and Oompa Loompas.
• Except that in this case, it’s more objectionable, considering that unlike those supporting parts, the Time Bandits–funny, roguish, clever, and brave–are the heroes of their story.

Bias (15%)

• Anyone who’s ever felt even a hint of fondness for Gilliam’s saga is apt to instantly balk at such a fundamentally wrong-headed idea.
• Devoid of condescension or clichéd mockery, and infused with its protagonists’ distinctive personalities, it was–and remains–one of the preeminent modern big-screen platforms for little people.
• Except that in this case, it’s more objectionable
• It’s akin to, say, redoing The Wizard of Oz or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with, respectively, 6-feet-tall munchkins and Oompa Loompas.
• The following night, he receives additional unexpected guests: a group of ragtag thieves who are being pursued by a giant quasi-Zardoz head known as the Supreme Being that, upon appearing, compels everyone, including Kevin, to hastily flee through a portal that drops them on an 1810 Chinese pirate ship.
• The new Apple TV+ adaptation of Terry Gilliam’s 1981 film is a crime against little people.
• The same basic premise as its predecessor, Time Bandits concerns Kevin (Tuck), a contemporary 11-year-old who lives in the English town of Bingley with a mom (Felicity Ward) and dad (James Dryden) who don’t understand his nerdy love of history.
• Thus, to remake it without them is creatively nonsensical to the point of being outright offensive
• When he’s miraculously visited by Viking and Saxon warriors via his bedroom cupboard one evening, his parents dismiss it as just another of his stuck-in-the-past fantasies.
• Yet leave it to Taika Waititi, he of the eternally noxious Jojo Rabbit, to do the one thing that should not be done.

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