Time Bandits and the portrayal of evil in popular culture

Introduction

A scene that honours a Muslim ruler can draw our attention while the larger story teaches a very different view of the unseen. Ahmad Dadoosh begins this episode with that concern. Clips of Mansa Musa in Time Bandits had impressed him, but his reading of the complete series led him to object to its treatment of the Creator and evil. His review asks us to consider a story's beliefs as carefully as its costumes, jokes and historical settings.^[1]

For a Muslim, Allah's greatness is not a role that a human performer can reproduce. The Qur'an teaches that nothing resembles Him. A comic character called the “Supreme Being” belongs to the writers' imagined universe; that character's weaknesses tell us nothing about Allah.^[2]

This article follows the episode's six sections. Its detailed scene descriptions come from Dadoosh's account; the original television episodes have not yet been independently checked. Publisher credits, selected interviews and historical texts provide separate checks where indicated.

About the series

Time Bandits premiered on Apple TV+ on 24 July 2024 as a ten-episode series created for television by Jemaine Clement, Iain Morris and Taika Waititi. The three wrote and directed selected episodes, with Clement and Morris serving as co-showrunners. This was a collaborative production, even though Dadoosh concentrates much of his criticism on Waititi.^[3][4]

The series adapts the 1981 film directed by Terry Gilliam and co-written by Gilliam and Michael Palin. The film and television version should be treated as distinct works, rather than assumed to share every scene or conclusion.^[5]

TVLine reported the series' cancellation after one season in September 2024. That establishes a reported cancellation, but it does not by itself verify the episode's proposed budget or its explanation of the financial decision.^[6]

The story and its imagined universe

A stolen map

Kevin, an eleven-year-old who loves history, joins a group of time-travelling thieves. In Dadoosh's retelling, a portal opens through Kevin's bedroom wardrobe, and the travellers are pursued for stealing a map. That map allows movement through time and becomes the object of a struggle over the world's future.^[7][8]

Apple identifies the main supernatural characters as the Supreme Being, played by Waititi, and Pure Evil, played by Clement. Lisa Kudrow plays Penelope, the band's leader, and Kal-El Tuck plays Kevin.^[9]

Dadoosh reads these figures as fictional counterparts of a creator and a devil. He describes an early scene in which Kevin asks whether the pursuer is God and receives an evasive answer. His concern is that the question introduces an association which later jokes can exploit.^[10]

Power, dependence and ridicule

In the episode's account, the Supreme Being removes an imposing costume to reveal an unimpressive figure. Prayers arrive like office correspondence, while the map's loss leaves him unable to accomplish his plans. Dadoosh also describes a confrontation near Troy in which this character struggles to reason with Kevin.^[11][12]

His objection concerns the theology carried by these scenes: an imagined creator is made dependent, frustrated and vulnerable to ridicule. The Islamic distinction is fundamental. Allah is not one finite power competing with another inside the universe He created.^[2]

The series' devil figure must also be distinguished from what revelation teaches about Iblis. The Qur'an identifies Iblis as one of the jinn who disobeyed his Lord. His rebellion does not make him another god, and the description of a “fallen angel” should not replace the Qur'anic identification.^[13]

Mansa Musa: history inside the comedy

Apple's sixth-episode synopsis identifies a visit to Mansa Musa and a scheme to rob him. Dadoosh sees a mixture of admiration for a wealthy Muslim ruler and jokes that can leave viewers with false impressions of Islamic teaching.^[14][15]

The wives joke and the historical ruler

Dadoosh reports repeated jokes that Musa has ninety-six wives. Whatever the original scene's wording, that number is not a statement of Islam's marriage rule. Qur'an 4:3 discusses two, three or four wives, and directs a man to one when he fears failing to maintain justice.^[16][17]

The legal teaching and the ruler's actual conduct are separate historical questions. Knowing the rule does not establish how many wives Musa had, whether he always followed it, or which people a medieval source counted as wives, attendants or enslaved persons. The exact claim about ninety-six wives has not been historically verified here.^[16]

Cairo and the question of prostration

The pilgrimage episode draws on Musa's encounter with the Mamluk sultan al-Nasir Muhammad ibn Qalawun. In the inspected critical edition of al-Maqrizi, Musa arrives in Egypt in 724 AH/1324 CE and refuses the court's ground-kissing gesture, explaining his devotion to Allah alone. The sultan excuses him and receives him honourably.^[18]

This version differs from Dadoosh's retelling of Musa resolving the situation by bowing with an intention directed to Allah. It also does not say that both rulers bowed together. The episode names Ibn Kathir as another authority, but that passage remains to be checked. Preserving the distinction keeps a comic scene, a modern retelling and a medieval text from becoming one undifferentiated account.^[19]

Another chronological distinction matters. Musa's Cairo visit was in 1324, whereas the Black Death reached Britain in 1348. References to England's plague in the reported scene therefore cannot serve as a straightforward description of England at the time of that pilgrimage.^[18][20]

Punishment as a punchline

Dadoosh also reports a joke about beheading thieves so that they cannot repeat the offence. The Qur'anic theft passage he alludes to concerns the hand, not that reported punchline. This distinction is about identifying the text correctly; it is not a complete account of Islamic criminal jurisprudence or of every medieval ruler's practice.^[21][22]

These examples explain his wider concern about comedy: viewers can retain the joke after forgetting that it was fictional. At the same time, a criticism of a stereotype needs accurate history of its own.^[15]

The confrontation between Pure Evil and the Supreme Being

Two offers to Kevin

In Dadoosh's account of the finale, Pure Evil uses Kevin's parents as hostages to obtain the map. Kevin then faces competing offers. The Supreme Being proposes a new arrangement of the world, called a “Great Reset” in the retelling, while Pure Evil offers to preserve the familiar world and make it more miserable.^[23][24]

The presenter objects to the choice being framed between two limited powers. He describes the Supreme Being's attempted attack failing in the underworld, but also notes that Kevin tricks Pure Evil with a false map. The ending, as he recounts it, leaves both figures frustrated and the real map's location uncertain. His account is therefore more complicated than a story in which the devil simply wins.^[25]

He further notes that Pure Evil keeps a promise to release the parents. Dadoosh interprets that detail as making the villain a negotiable authority: frightening, but someone with whom a person might strike a workable bargain.^[26]

Hell is not Iblis's safe kingdom

The episode challenges the image of Hell as a domain where the devil and his friends can enjoy power. Revelation gives us a different warning: Iblis and those who follow him are themselves threatened with Hell. Becoming his ally offers no refuge from Allah's judgement.^[27][28]

Suffering and the purpose of this life

Dadoosh also rejects the inference that suffering proves a defective Creator. This life is a test, not the promised final state of reward. Qur'an 67:2 connects life and death with the testing of our conduct.^[29]

Faith does not promise freedom from every illness or sorrow. The Prophet ﷺ taught that a Muslim's suffering can expiate sins. This gives hardship spiritual meaning without turning it into evidence that Allah has lost control or that a rival power governs part of creation.^[30]

The presenter's criticism of humour returns here: if every commitment becomes a joke, a viewer may feel pressure to treat reverence itself as foolish. That is his interpretation of the work's possible influence, rather than a measured finding about what all viewers come to believe.^[31]

The creators and their stated views

The episode closes by connecting the work to its creators' public comments and other films. Those comments deserve accurate attribution. A performed role, an artist's ancestry, a personal religious statement and a film's meaning are different kinds of evidence.

Taika Waititi

In Konrad Marshall's own published excerpt from a 2023 Good Weekend interview, Waititi dismisses the image of a judging man on a cloud and emphasizes kindness and a good life. The excerpt supports that account of what he said; it does not contain an admission of worshipping devils.^[32]

Dadoosh also cites a 2022 Wall Street Journal interview about Indigenous beliefs. A secondary compilation supplies a bibliographic lead, but the original passage remains unchecked. It should not be turned into an exact English quotation on the strength of the Arabic retelling.^[33]

Waititi's involvement in Jojo Rabbit and Moana can be established more narrowly. The Academy lists him as the adapted-screenplay winner for Jojo Rabbit in 2020. Disney's interview with Moana screenwriter Jared Bush describes Waititi's early writing contribution within a collaborative development process. Neither credit establishes the hidden religious motive that the presenter proposes.^[34][35]

Terry Gilliam

The episode's Gilliam quotation has an identifiable original. In a 2014 interview with Nathanael Smith for The Skinny, Gilliam describes his Presbyterian educational background and later calls himself pagan and animist. He speaks of nature and rejects expecting someone to solve everything for him. He also argues that religious ideas should withstand humour.^[36]

These statements explain a real disagreement with the Islamic account of worship and dependence on Allah. They establish Gilliam's stated position in that interview; identifying animism does not, by itself, document secret rituals or a coordinated programme among every member of a film crew.

Gilliam's earlier Monty Python and the Holy Grail was co-directed with Terry Jones in 1975. Its official synopsis includes religious parody. That provides a concrete example of his work; a separate declaration allegedly made around that film's release still needs its own source.^[37]

Reading a story with discernment

Dadoosh's closing appeal is to take entertainment seriously as a carrier of ideas. A Muslim can notice when a story makes worship ridiculous, gives a devil divine independence or confuses historical Muslims with Islamic teaching. The judgement should rest on identifiable scenes, accurate sources and the guidance of revelation.^[38]

That approach allows a clear theological criticism without assuming that every performer shares a single creed or that an entertaining story reveals its creators' private lives. Questions about jinn and Iblis begin with what Allah has taught us; fictional beings remain fictional beings.

References