Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/07/10/watch-the-trailer-for-time-bandits-taika-waititis-tv-adaptation-of-the-terry-gilliam-classic.html
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Looks like I’m going to have to have Apple TV for a bit. That seems delightful.
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Yep - with Taika Waititi and Jermaine Clement, you know it’s going to be good.
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I’m sorry, if the Bandits aren’t small people, it’s not Time Bandits. There are brilliant actors that could do it these days too, so there’s no real excuse for erasing them from the story.
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Ok, that does actually look pretty good. I was prepared to hate it. I adored the original. But it looks like they’ve kept a lot of the right humor. Jemaine Clement as the devil seems like a great choice.
It all seems rather… tidier than Terry Gilliam’s version. But perhaps his aesthetic belongs in his own time.
I’ll give it a go as our new family series.
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This does look fun!
Please note however that I am also a sucker for Lisa Kudrow 
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egads, not saying i won’t happily watch it, but is there a studio named “Nostalgia gratia artis” now?
Here’s hoping that the canonical names are employed:
Randall, Fidgit, Strutter, Og, Wally, Vermin
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i was very excited for this, and i’m still going to give it a chance, but it seems off to me. it’s missing something… that Python-esque humor, or something.
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The trailer seems to suggest they’re still working for the Supreme Being,
Guess we’ll have to subscribe to ATV to find out.
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The leader of the co-equal Bandits seems to be Penelope, so perhaps not.
Which is probably fine, and gives them room to develop their own characters. I mean, they’re definitely not dwarfs…
(And what did happen to Horsefeathers? 
)
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The thing it’s missing for me is the almost tactile griminess of the original. This one is too sterile.
Also, bought with my allowance money in '81 (yep, I was a huge fan):
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Also a good way to describe Gilliam’s general aesthetic. This is probably made me feel so … uncomfortable? … with the original Time Bandits as a kid. There was something off about it, that felt like I as a kid was not supposed to be here. But that incongruous aesthetic — the mix of cartoonish-ness and visceral, overly-detailed horror through a fish-eye lens — is also what I like about Gilliams’ oeuvre.
I also raised an eyebrow at this. There were definitely some people with dwarfism in the trailer, so I’m reserving judgement for now. But I hope there do continue to be opportunities like this for small people actors.
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Echoing every one else - it does sound fun and good.
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True - but they’ve been sidelined. THat’s not OK
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I’m loving all of Lisa Kudrow’s delivery in this trailer.
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Mark Twain’s wife, a delicate, refined woman, often became very upset by his rough language. She tried, in many ways, to cure him of the habit — always unsuccessfully, of course. On one occasion she tried a shock technique. When Twain arrived home from a trip, he was greeted at the door with a string of profanity from his wife. From the lips of that delicate, refined woman, he heard everything he had ever said, and more. Twain stood quietly, listening, until she had finished. Then he said, “My dear, you have the words, but not the music.”
That’s how most remakes of classics feel to me.
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Taika Waititi set to ruin another production with his stupid interpretation.
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YES! I’ve got that same book!
The new series has a lot going for it – Taika Waititi at the helm, amazing cast, solid budget. I’ll absolutely watch it, and I’ll keep an open mind. But as you say, it comes across as clean and sterile, which is… concerning.
The original film was exceptional. It captured the deep, wide-ranging curiosity and imaginative play of childhood, while utterly disregarding all of the rules that children’s entertainment was supposed to follow. It was subversive and transgressive at just the right level to (mostly) slip past concerned adults while utterly thrilling kids. It felt dangerous. It might do anything.
- Adults are (with the exception of Agamemnon) too wrapped up in their own concerns to care much about kids if they even notice them. They operate in their own sphere, which the main character understands at some level without grasping the nuances or detail.
- The handling of a child’s perception of adult sexuality is handled with amazing deftness. Kids know something is going on between adults but can’t really fathom it. The clearly sexual but utterly opaque goings-on between Palin and Duvall’s characters (“Do you still have to wear the…” “Oh! No! I don’t have to wear the…” “Fruit! Fruit! I must have FRUIT!”) puts even adult viewers on equal footing in their fascinated bewilderment.
- God shows up as a major character, and is not unambiguously good. He is, at turns, terrifying, capricious, and dully bureaucratic. His theology and motivations seem muddy even to him. The film dabbles in theodicy, but God simply shrugs it off as uninteresting.
- Everything is messy and filthy in ways that make it all feel more real and unsettling despite the fantastical settings. Characters steal, smoke, drink, and carouse. Someone’s arm gets ripped off.
- No one is safe and there is no happy ending. The final scene of the film sees the main character’s house burned down and his parents killed because they can’t be bothered to listen to what he’s telling them. And yet it’s not a tragic ending – just alarming and ambiguous. Cut to a visually amazing shot of the Time Bandits’ map, cue a banger of a song by George Harrison, and let the audience’s imagination run wild trying to piece it all together.
The show is, of course, its own thing, and should succeed or fail on its own merits. But it does feel like it’s cut from entirely different cloth than the original. I guess we’ll just have to see.
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All of this! 
There are a handful of objects that I own that are touchstones of nostalgia, and this book is one of them. Handling it takes me right back to being 12 years old.
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