MovieChat Forums > Time Bandits (1981) Discussion > This movie gave me nightmares... (spoile...

This movie gave me nightmares... (spoiler)

posted 16 years ago by pintSizeSlasher
19 replies | jump to latest

I watched it when I was about 6, and really the only thing I remember is the end when he watches his parents blow up, then the fireman drives away. I used to dream constantly of that scene, only with myself as the kid, and my parents the ones who blew up. It would be the same dream over and over: my parents blow up and the camera pulls away overhead and the credits roll...

I guess even now as an adult, I don't understand the ending and how this is supposed to be a kid's movie. That was seriously the most traumatic movie scene I'd ever witnessed as a kid (in addition to the 3 fingered old lady in Cloak & Dagger)... No matter how bad his parents were, why have them blow up and everyone drive away like it was perfectly normal?

.•:*¨¨*:•.Twilight 20s.•:*¨¨*:•.

[–] CoriSCapnSkip (2727) 3 years ago

I don't blame people being traumatized, particularly children.

[–] runemesa (200) 2 years ago

It's hard to believe that that is the scene that gave you nightmares. I had nightmares too and had trouble sleeping when I couldn't have the nightmares, but it was due to something(s) else in the movie: those really tall, robe-wearing, moosehead-skulled, bonescythe-handed, eye-socket fireball-shooting minions of the villain, and to a lesser extent, the half-man / half-pig, but mostly the moose-skull things. Those things really scared me bad for a long time.

[–] greenvelvet (176) 2 years ago

I think they were based on Mari Lwyd (weird Welsh Christmas tradition).

[–] Aylmer (616) 2 months ago

The cow-skull guys were the most nightmarish thing about the movie, thanks to the screeching sound design that came with them. The ending I found bleak too, though always felt that I was "missing" a little something about the point of it.

It ends with God rolling up the chart and an upbeat George Harrison song so it can't be a totally bad ending, right?

I saw a nice take on the ending once (maybe it was by Rob Ager?) which insinuated that Sean Connery popping back up as the firefighter was no small coincidence. He was Kevin's ideal father and had followed him into the modern day dimension, somehow. If he'd jumped through the door they left at his court, or it was his soul passing through the ages, they had been reunited again. He winks at him, I think insinuating that he knows him, but it's far from a tearful reunion. I think it's meant to leave things on a tragic, but hopeful note. Kevin will find a new, better family, now that his bad one (and his fantasy dwarf family) has left him. Connery symbolizes that new, better hope, and I think he merely winks at him instead of suddenly adopting him, as a way of giving him some "tough love". This is a way of making Kevin a man now, invested in navigating the contemporary world instead of escaping into history and fantasy.

As Connery would later say, "You're the man, now Dog!"