Hacker Cinema
Time Bandits
1981 · Film · 116 min
Directed by Terry Gilliam
FamilyFantasyScience FictionAdventureComedy
Young history buff Kevin can scarcely believe it when six dwarfs emerge from his closet one night. Former employees of the Supreme Being, they've purloined a map charting all of the holes in the fabric of time and are using it to steal treasures from different historical eras. Taking Kevin with them, they variously drop in on Napoleon, Robin Hood and King Agamemnon before the Supreme Being catches up with them.
9 positive6 neutralfrom 15 commenters
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17 comments on Hacker News
I love the movie "Time Bandits", they did a great job casting the dwarves there.
I'm still thrilled Sean Connery joined the cast and that George Harrison wrote part of the score (Dream away).
RIP, Randall, Fidgit, Strutter, Wally and Vermin!
Many happy returns, Og!
Let’s be real, the overwhelming majority of those 500 are straight up terrible. Netflix alone has produced well over 100 movies, and IMO at best some of them are worth finishing not that I can think of any off the top of my head.
Now I’m sure you’ve looked forward to many movies but off the top of your head list stuff you’ve either seen more than once and or actually recommend to someone that came our in the last 10 years vs…
(78) The Deer Hunter, Superman, National Lampoon's Animal House, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (79) Apocalypse Now, Alien, Life of Brian, Mad Max, Escape from Alcatraz (80) The Shining, Star Wars: Episode V, Airplane!, The Blues Brothers, Caddyshack, The Elephant Man (81) Raiders of the Lost Ark, Das Boot, The Evil Dead, Mad Max 2, Escape from New York, Time Bandits (82) Blade Runner, The Thing, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Poltergeist, Conan the Barbarian, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Tron (83) Scarface, WarGames, Star Wars: Episode VI, Trading Places, The Evil Dead
Obviously not all great movies but that’s ~30 classic movies in just 6 years and I’m sure I’ve missed a few as kids movies are largely missing from that list.
Richard G was HEAVY into time bandits (1981) and Ultima 2 (1982) on were heavily influenced and easter eggs for the movie are spread all over. The airplane in New San Antonio for example...
I signed up for beta testing of UO and beta of roadrunner cable modem and I still have the Beta cd and cable modem. I bet you can narrow down what city I was in from that but oh well. I might still even have that old acer pentium 75 in the attic that was delivered damaged to my employer and was comped by ups insurance and taken to my personal dumpster and fixed by yours truly. my first very own computer. I learned to program on that thing and got a bank job just a few months later. gradually this has taken me around the world in 8 different countries for long on-site implementations. I even have dual citizenship now and live by the sea in a nice hot place. I was 19 years old when it kicked off. I blame the video games for all this. Btw did you know Time Bandits movie was a heavy influence on Ultima? And is Marvel's multiverse concept inspired by Ultima sharding also? I would bet a dollar. Well everytime I think about portability and scalability problems I am sure UO is back there somewhere influencing my work.
When I was a kid, VHS home recording was a thing... so my sisters and I watched a few movies wayyyyy too many times.
The Blues Brothers Stripes Ferris Bueller's Day Off Footloose Dirty Dancing Amadeus These days, everything comes and goes from streaming. I'll watch these when they pop up again
The Expanse Monty Python and the Holy Grail The Ministry of Time Groundhog Day Dirty Harry Apocalypse Now About Time Time Bandits
‘Time Bandits’ was before, so it's the other way around.
Besides, you might be unfamiliar with the fact that Gilliam referred to ‘Bandits’, ‘Brazil’ and ‘Munchausen’ as a trilogy about the same thing. Which trilogy evidently ended up having at least nine films in it, excepting ‘F&L’ and me having not watched ‘Quixote’ yet (the latter's theme obviously follows the rest, though).
Whenever someone of this stature goes, I tend to gather together their films, what I have of them, and work through them. So here I am looking at Outland (which isn't as terrible as Harlan Ellison said but goodness it isn't great), Zardoz, In the Name of the Rose, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (it's fun, I will grant it that), Time Bandits and was left wondering: what films had his iconic performances? What's a good sample to understand the range he had?
I grew up with the Bond films so they're very much background to me, almost hard to notice in a way. Any recommendations?
I'm a big Gilliam fan, but in my opinion his movies have gotten worse and worse since Time Bandits, Brazil, 12 Monkeys, and The Fisher King.
There's something of his charming sensibility in even the worst of his films, and they're worth watching for die-hard Gilliam fans like myself, but even the best of his later films (like the Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus) are a pale shadow of the brilliance of his early output.
> You can see this most clearly in the Metacritic for Tideland which is pretty positive as far as user submitted reviews go, but is one of the worst movies ever if you were to go off the critics reviews.
The problem is, critics are usually right, and the audience usually isn't. This is because critics have studied film, often went to film school, and can point out just exactly how a film fails.
That being said, Gilliam is the rare exception, and I do believe it is because of that ineffable quality about him and his directorial style. Maybe it's because I grew up with it, but "Time Bandits" is still one of my favorite films of all time. "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" was not really very well made, but it's still distinctly Gilliamesque, and it actually works around the death of Heath Ledger very adroitly. "Zero Theroem" was also a bit disappointing, but it's still at least different, not your usual Hollywood schlock.
"Brazil" was Gilliam par excellence; I am hopeful his take on Quixote is good, but even if it isn't, it will almost definitely be interesting.
I seriously wish they would do a sequel to Time Bandits. That movie was a cult masterpiece.
Go check it out, I was able to see this a couple of months ago. I really enjoyed it, Gilliam has an amazing film style / world building ability.
I really feel transported to another universe/world in his films, Zero Theorem/Dr Parnasis/12 Monkeys/Time Bandits/Fisher King.
I can only imagine what it feels like to finally release this film after so many hurdles.
Love his work, his distribution lately has been rather crap, thumbs up from a random on the internet.
Oh my god... I'm many years removed from childhood, but the last scene of the movie "Time Bandits" still chills me. Little Kevin yells, "Mom! Dad! It's evil! Don't touch it!"
...and the adults, thinking themselves smart, reach right in, touch the glowing chunk of pure evil, and evaporate in a puff of smoke.
To this DAY I am so angry at those parents...
I'm more interested in what those 20 movies are. I found:
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=1981
1 Raiders of the Lost Ark 2 On Golden Pond 3 Superman II 4 Arthur 5 Stripes 6 The Cannonball Run 7 Chariots of Fire 8 For Your Eyes Only 9 The Four Seasons 10 Time Bandits
Of which I guess 2, 3, 8 isn't original.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=2:w014
1 American Sniper 2 The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 3 Guardians of the Galaxy 4 Captain America: The Winter Soldier 5 The LEGO Movie 6 The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies 7 Transformers: Age of Extinction 8 Maleficent 9 X-Men: Days of Future Past 10 Big Hero 6
Of which only 10 is original.
I don't think people realize how much better Google search has gotten over the years. We tend to remember the annoyances or failures, and not remember all of the successes that are second nature to us.
Consider vague long tail queries. Google knocks these out of the park compared to Bing, DDG or others. Let's say there's some old movie you vaguely remember details about:
"movie where evil is in microwave" => Google "Time Bandits". Bing: Nada. DDG: Nada
"dystopian movie with a motorcycle named einstein" => Google "Warrior of the Lost World" Bing: wrong, DDG: wrong
"song about cocaine in california" => Google: Hotel California, Bing, DDG: bottom of page
"star trek episode where spock is possessed" => Google: Return to Tomorrow, Bing/DDG: Spock's Brain (wrong), but nice try"
"previous name of java language" => Google: link to Oak as second item, Bing/DDG: worse result (must click through links to find answer)
"cartoon about plants and a kid with a ring" => Google: Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, Bing/DDG: Nope
"tv show with scientist named blackwood" => This one is EASY, Google: War of the Worlds, Bing/DDG: Nope
"guy who tried to bomb parliament" => Google: Direct Answer, Others: links
"tv show with alien who has necklace powered by sun" => Google: 1st result, The Phoenix, Others: 3rd or lower
"cartoon car that has auto jacks" => Google: Speed Racer 2nd result, Others: nope
"flying characters similar to thundercats" => Google: Silverhawks, Others: nope
"movie with guy who owns last car" => Google: The Last Race, Others: nope
"commodore 64 game where alien knocks on window" => Google: Rescue on Fractalus, Others: nope
"toy where you program trailer to dump" => Google: Big Trak, Others: nope
You can play this game all day, trying to come up with the vaguest possible query about old things you remember bits and pieces of from decades ago, and I'm often amazed at how vague and obtuse I can get. Google does these queries much better than others. Yes, it fails a lot too, but the instances where it fails, and others succeed are much more rare than the instances where it succeeds and others fail.
But Google isn't an AI yet. And what Larry is speaking about is achieving Star Trek: a computer that can read the meaning of words, understand, rather than just index characters.
DDG: http://duckduckgo.com/?q=the+movie+where+evil+is+in+a+toaster+oven
Time Bandits is #8
vs https://www.google.com/#hl=en&output=search&q=the+movie+where+evil+is+in+a+toaster+oven
First hit.
I realize it is in fashion to make bold claims that somehow Google destroyed its search in a monomaniacal pursuit of social, but a hyperbolic if not patently untrue story. Yes, the user interface has changed and gotten fancier and more cluttered with the introduction of toolbar and sidebar (that's been happening over years, prior to G+), but the actual organic results have not changed much at all except to improve on average, even if you take into account Search Plus Your World (which you can disable)
Shocking, but most people at Google do not work on G+, it is not the sole focus of the company, and the narrative that Google is simply dropping everything else to mindlessly chase Facebook is blogosphere fiction. There are over 30,000 employees and I would be surprised if even 2% of them worked on G+. Teams at Google are typically small and at any given time, people are working on a large number of projects. It's simply not Google's culture to mindlessly focus on a single unproven product to the detriment of others. If anything, Google is frequently criticized for doing too many new things at once, and that's what you get when you have a company run with engineering culture.
Google makes most of their money from Search and Ads. You can bet that they watch data from search quality and marketshare like a hawk, and if social was causing Google search to suck more and lose customers, you can bet they'd turn it off in a heartbeat. It's been said by some analysts that every 1% loss in search marketshare is $1 billion in revenue. Facebook isn't making that much money, and so from a cost-benefit analysis, sacrificing billions in search share revenue to try and gain social-search revenue doesn't sound rational.
It would thus be reasonable to assume, that any changes Google actually makes to core search are a) conservative b) subjected to a battery of scientific tests and c) as low risk as they can make them to their core business.
But the way you read things in the Blogosphere, Search has been radically altered. The evidence just isn't there.
All great movies. Some others (with varying degrees of sophistication):
The 13th Floor (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139809/)
A Scanner Darkly (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405296/)
Brazil (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/)
Time Bandits (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081633/)
Dark City (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118929/) - A little disappointing at the end though =/
This isn't exactly the same, but here's something that comes close:
I have a young son, and we watch a lot of Netflix instant movies. We've watched everything from Voltron episodes to Matilda. Yesterday, we wanted to watch a new (to him) movie, and after logging in to Netflix, I found that the most prominent link on the page was "Movies for 8-10 Year Olds." I never had to tell Netflix what we usually watch, or ask for recommendations. It just knew, and provided us with a list of films that (almost, with the exception of the cheesy religious cartoons for kids) exactly met our criteria.
He picked Time Bandits, and he loved it. If more sites offered content in the same way, they'd have legions of fans. Meanwhile, over at Amazon, I get recommendations for strollers and baby toys, despite the fact that I generally buy toys for an older kid.