The 'Time Bandits' Trailer is a Childish Delight

A few family films from the 1980s seem impossible to be made or remade today. Ridley Scott's Legend, for example, featuring Tim Curry on two-foot stilts, is a camp classic impossible to recapture; The Princess Bride is so perfect that a remake would be blasphemy. Then there are the oddities that came out of the Monty Python camp. From Brazil to The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, these weirdo fantasy films seem impossible to remake simply because the vision of director Terry Gilliam is so singular. But there's nothing quite like Time Bandits, which is singularly brilliant and deeply problematic for the 21st century.

When Apple TV+ announced they would do a remake of Time Bandits, it seemed a wild swing, though one that could work, with Taika Waititi at the helm. However, the declaration that the show would cut the film's most problematic aspect, the cast of little people, made the most significant impact. For some, this was a chance to have a children's series set in this delightful time-traveling world without the parts that made it deeply dated.

But for a particular type of fanboi, it made the show Pure Evil.