Every movie has a MacGuffin – the thing that instigates the action and drives the characters’ motivation. Sometimes the MacGuffin is obvious. Other times it is not. That’s when you need The MacGuffin Report. (Cue theme music.)
Leave it to Terry Gilliam to give us a MacGuffin like this. In Time Bandits the instigating object is a map, so, essentially, the hunt is on for a thing that helps us hunt things. Okay, we're just at the logline and our heads have erupted!
The map is on thick, sturdy parchment (it survives significant wear and tear, including a ride through the frozen North Atlantic in April of 1912) and features just enough spooky Mercator-ish signifiers to make it look legit.
The map through space and time leads a band of diminutive thieves to a closet of a young Briton's bedroom that leads to a pocket universe behind his bed containing yet another of the wormholes.
This soon leads to the Supreme Being appearing in spooky-as-hell-for-a-kid film stock negative intoning in an extremely booming and frightening voice “Return the map!!” While I absolutely loved Time Bandits as a kid, I very nearly fled the Pond Road Cinema in Monmouth County (now a Staples) in existential dread. As a result of this imprinting, every time I’ve ever given or received a map in any context I boom, “Return the map!” Most people shrug it off as Tourette’s.
The map itself was an office supply of the Supreme Being's morally bankrupt middle management team, seen above in their vertically challeneged splendor. While the ol' S.B. himself was busy crafting things like Good and Evil, Man and Woman or Night and Day, little things like trees and shrubs were left to these fellas. After ticking off the boss with a particularly absurd bit of flora (the Pink Bunkadoo) they got busted down to the Repair Department. Considering the fabric of the Universe was created in just six days, there's always a lot of fixit work to do. The map points out the holes. And can be quite coveted by those who want to run around time stealing Napoleon's silverware.
Theft is wrong, of course, so our stealing sextet must be punished. But the rascals aren't really evil. That role goes to David Warner (Tron's Sark and Picard's Cardassian torturer Gul Madred) who wants the map not just for some bling but to controll the Universe! Warner's Evil Genius takes the map, but is reduced to cinders of pure evil by The Supreme Being who manifests himself as a fumfering old Ralph Richardson. When wide-eyed Kevin asks him quite plainly "Why does there have to be evil?" he quickly blows him off with "Uh, I think it has something to do with Free Will." Then Kevin's parents explode and the closing credits roll.
