Time Bandits

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Time Bandits
Time Bandits film poster
Directed by	Terry Gilliam
Produced by	Terry Gilliam
Written by	Terry Gilliam Michael Palin
Starring	John Cleese Sean Connery Shelley Duvall Katherine Helmond Ian Holm Michael Palin David Rappaport Craig Warnock
Music by	Mike Moran
Cinematography	Peter Biziou
Editing by	Julian Doyle
Distributed by	Handmade Films
Release date(s)	July 13, 1981 6 November 1981
Running time	116 min. / USA:110 min.
Language	English
Budget	$5 million
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Time Bandits (first released on July 13, 1981) is a fantasy film, produced and directed by Terry Gilliam (who created animations for Monty Python's Flying Circus). Gilliam wrote the screenplay with fellow Python alumnus Michael Palin, who appears with Shelley Duvall in the small, recurring roles of Vincent and Pansy. The film is one of the most famous of more than 30 theatrical features produced by Handmade Films, the London-based independent company backed in part by former Beatle George Harrison.

Gilliam would work with many of this film's cast again in 1985's Brazil, including Jim Broadbent, Ian Holm, Peter Vaughan, Katherine Helmond, Michael Palin and Jack Purvis.

Contents 1 Plot summary 2 Taglines 3 Themes 4 Reception 5 Production 5.1 Deleted Scenes 6 Sequel 7 Legacy 8 Cast 9 External links

[edit] Plot summary

The protagonist is young boy named Kevin who is ignored by his parents. One night, Kevin is awakened by a noise coming from his wardrobe. Suddenly, a knight on horseback bursts through the wardrobe doors and rides off into an avenue of trees that temporarily replaces one wall of Kevin's room. Kevin, eager to see what emerges from the wardrobe next, prepares himself with a flashlight the next night. This time, it's a group of six dwarves. As they consult a map trying to find their way out, a wind picks up in the room and the glowing visage of the Supreme Being appears, demanding that they return the map that they have stolen from him. Pushing a wall in the room, the six dwarves and Kevin escape into a black void.

The stolen map shows time portals, holes in the fabric of space/time. It was supposed to help the dwarves repair the space/time fabric, but once they were kicked out of the repairs department of the universe, they decided to use it to get "stinking rich." Now they use it to drop in on various time periods to rob the rich and famous. Meanwhile, the Source of all Evil (personified by David Warner) is also after the map to gain control of the universe from the Supreme Being, and remake it in his own image.

The band of thieves roams history stealing all that they can, moving from Napoleonic France to the Sherwood Forest of Robin Hood (John Cleese) to Mycenaean Greece, where Kevin is befriended by the legendary king, Agamemnon (Sean Connery), to the early twentieth century voyage of the Titanic. With the unsolicited assistance of Evil, they land in the 'Time of Legends'. Commandeering a sailing ship from an ogre and his wife, they journey to Evil's Fortress of Ultimate Darkness. Despite recruiting help from various eras of human history in their quest to vanquish Evil, the bandits get much the worse of the encounter until the appearance of the Supreme Being, in the person of a middle-aged gentleman (Ralph Richardson) in a business suit, who destroys Evil, although there is a left behind a smoking mound of rubble which He identifies as "highly concentrated evil". The Supreme Being directs the chastened bandits to clean up the "mess" and returns Kevin to his home. Kevin awakens in his own bedroom, and immediately discovers that the house is on fire. He is rescued by some firemen. Once safely outside, he reaches into the pocket of his dressing-gown, discovers the Polaroid photos he took along his journey with the dwarves, and realizes that his adventure wasn't a dream after all. In the film's surprising, shocking ending, Kevin's numbskull parents run out of the house, fighting over possession of a microwave oven. The door falls open, revealing a piece of smoldering Evil. Kevin screams, "Mum, Dad! It's Evil! Don't touch it!" Disobeying Kevin, his parents touch it — and explode. Receiving a wink from a departing firefighter (also Connery), Kevin is left alone asking quietly of the smoldering piles of ashes that once were his parents, "Mum? Dad?"

[edit] Taglines

• Tagline: All the dreams you've ever had — and not just the good ones ...
• Tagline: They didn't make history, they stole it!

[edit] Themes

As might be expected, given the participation of half of the Monty Python troupe, the film's sense of humour is irreverent and dark. It also was the first film in which Gilliam's unique visual style was fully extant: he would go on to develop the style further in his subsequent fantasy films Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen.^{[citation needed]}

Students of Gilliam's films have dubbed these three movies the "Trilogy of the Imagination" and Gilliam himself refers to it as "A trilogy about the ages of Man and the subordination of magic to realism." ^[1]. The connecting link shared by each film is the fact that each celebrates the spirit of imagination, and is anchored by a quixotic central character whose imagination is suppressed by forces not of his own choosing or design (in this case, Kevin). In each film, the character must undergo a fantastic journey that will allow his imagination to be given its freedom as God (here called the Supreme Being) had originally intended. What binds these three together is that in Time Bandits the dreamer is a boy, in Brazil a man, and in Baron Munchausen an old man.

The film once more uses Gilliam's motif of bureaucracy and technology hurting imagination and creativity. This was even more expanded upon in Brazil.

[edit] Reception

As discussed in a DVD interview with Palin and Gilliam, the film came out in the fall season (after the blcokbuster summer films, but before the hit Christmas season) and became extremely sucessfull at the US box office, making over 40 million dollars. Critical reseption was overall extremley positive, gainging a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes.

[edit] Production

The film's script broke down as Gilliam mostly devising the story and Palin mostly writing the dialogue. Gilliam has said of writing dialogue that it "doesn't come as easily as it should."

Time Bandits was filmed at Lee International Studios, Shepperton, Middlesex, England, and on location in England, Wales and Morocco.

Originally Craig Warnock's brother auditioned for the lead in the film, but Gilliam thought his performance was too cute and artificial, and was instead drawn to the more sedate Craig, who had only tagged along and hadn't planned to audition at all. ^{[citation needed]} Sean Connery appears in the film as Agamemnon; this casting choice derives from a joke Michael Palin included in the script, in which he describes the character as being as Sean Connery-like as they could afford. ^{[citation needed]} The film is unusual in featuring large roles for dwarf actors; Gilliam has commented that it offered a rare chance for these actors to create detailed characters, instead of doing stunt work or playing one-dimensional costumed monsters.^{[citation needed]}

According to the commentary on the Criterion Collection DVD, Gilliam kept the camera angle rather low throughout the film, in order to give audiences a child's or dwarf's point of view.

The Supreme Being was originally intended to manifest in Kevin's bedroom at the beginning of the film in the form of a sinister, shadowy figure with long, scraggly, wind-blown hair and glowing eyes. Thinking this was ineffective, Gilliam redid the scene with the Supreme Being as an enormous, floating head. A photo of the character's original appearance is shown in the published screenplay.

Gilliam and Palin were nervous about the long sequence in Greece, because they had never written a scene that long without any jokes. ^{[citation needed]}

Katherine Helmond's character, the ogre's wife, was originally planned as a comic crone, but Gilliam was delighted when Helmond gave an unexpectedly sexy spin to lines like, "Terrify them... you know, like you used to..?" Helmond also came up with the idea of her character appearing as a normal human, and not a female version of her ogre husband. ^{[citation needed]}

In an interview with Empire Magazine, Terry Jones pointed out that a Brian Froud book published before this film was released featured an image of a giant with a boat on his head; Jones jokingly accused Gilliam of "pinching" (stealing) the image for his film. For the scene with the giant, Gilliam originally planned to use an enormously tall actor, but later realized that a short, extremely stout person produced a more effective impression of gigantism. The actor chosen was a British wrestler. ^{[citation needed]}

The shot of the Titanic sinking was actually re-used footage from A Night to Remember.

The scene with the hanging cages in Evil's castle was quickly thrown together when another, more expensive scene fell through. Shot for little money and with the simplest of sets (some cages against a black backdrop), the scene was widely considered one of the most impressive in the film.^{[citation needed]}

The musical underscoring and orchestrations are credited to Mike Moran, with Ray Cooper, Elton John's longtime percussionist, serving as producer of the musical material, but executive producer George Harrison is also credited with "songs and additional material": Harrison did in fact write songs for the film at the request of co-executive producer Denis O'Brien, but the song score was apparently developed without the participation of Terry Gilliam.^{[citation needed]} As a result, the only song attributed to Harrison is "Dream Away", which the former Beatle performs over the credits. Sometime following the release of Time Bandits, "Dream Away" was included on Harrison's album Gone Troppo, on his own Dark Horse record label. The recording of "Dream Away" was produced by George Harrison and Ray Cooper in collaboration with Phil MacDonald; Mike Moran appeared on keyboards and synthesizers; and Billy Preston, Syreeta and Sarah Ricor joined Harrison as backing vocalists.

[edit] Deleted Scenes

Many scenes were deleted from the film before its theatrical run. Pictures of many of these can be seen in the published screenplay. They include:

• A scene involving two spinsterish spider-women in the Time of Legends. The two old crones have many legs beneath their skirts and use knitting needles to weave webs with which they capture handsome knights (and, very nearly, our heroes).
• A longer version of Katherine Helmond's song about fondue. The full song is included in the book.
• The "Forest of Hands" scene in Gilliam's The Brothers Grimm was originally planned for this film. Sketches for it and the text of the original scene are included in the published script book of the film.
• The characters make reference to a dwarf named "Horseflesh" who has apparently died sometime previously. In a preface to the published screenplay, the writers note that an early draft of the script included a part in the film for the Horseflesh character. However, during the revision process, the writers realized that releasing a film with seven dwarf characters might result in legal trouble, hence the need to kill off Horseflesh prior to the beginning of the story. Despite this, the role of Horseflesh was cast and Marcus Powell is credited with the role in the closing credits. Powell appears very briefly and sans dialogue as one of Evil's minions. Gilliam has said that, in one draft, Horseflesh turned into one of Evil's minions.

[edit] Sequel

A sequel to Time Bandits has long been rumoured, and in Gilliam on Gilliam, Terry Gilliam once expressed his intention of making one. It was intended to be released before or in 2000. The catalyst was the Supreme Being using the milestone of year 2000 as a time to reflect, and discovering that he was so disappointed with the way the universe turned out that he was going to end it. The Time Bandits were the only ones that could save the universe, if they could be bothered to. However, the millennium is now past, and three of the six "Bandits" (David Rappaport, Jack Purvis and Tiny Ross) are dead.

[edit] Legacy

Some commentators, notably Robert Hewison in his book Monty Python: The Case Against, have seen the dwarves as a comment on the Monty Python troupe, with Fidget (the nice one) as Palin, Randall (the self-appointed leader) as John Cleese, Strutter (the acerbic one) as Eric Idle, Og (the quiet one) as Graham Chapman, Wally (the noisy rebel) as Terry Jones and Vermin (the nasty, filth-loving one) as Gilliam himself.

The horror novel The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice mentions this movie: while introducing himself to the modern world via televison and videotape, the vampire Armand becomes particularly amused by the dwarves' performance of "Me And My Shadow" for a stunned Napoleon.

The computer game Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress is loosely based on this film.

[edit] Cast

[edit] External links

• Time Bandits at the Internet Movie Database
• Time Bandits: The Littlest Classic
• Criterion Collection essay by Bruce Eder

Films Directed by Terry Gilliam

Monty Python and the Holy Grail | Jabberwocky | Time Bandits | The Crimson Permanent Assurance | Brazil | The Adventures of Baron Munchausen | The Fisher King | Twelve Monkeys | Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas | The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (unfinished) | The Brothers Grimm | Tideland

Preceded by The Wages of Fear

The Criterion Collection 37

Succeeded by Branded to Kill