Time Bandits, Disney and Hollywood’s big dwarfism problem
The release of the new Taika Waititi and Jermaine Clement-created series Time Bandits, an adaptation of the much-loved 1981 Terry Gilliam film, has been broadly met with critical approval. “This is a loving – and ultimately loveable – homage,” said our critic Benji Wilson. The consensus is that, amidst the grim Sturm und Drang of everything from House of the Dragon to Rings of Power, it is a welcome relief to have a fantasy series designed to be fun.
But there is a problem. One of the appealing factors about the original Time Bandits film was that Gilliam assembled a fine ensemble cast of restricted-height actors including Kenny Baker (who was best known for playing R2-D2), David Rappaport and Jack Purvis; the latter went on to make Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen with Gilliam.
At a time when representations of dwarfism on screen were usually either played for comic effect or for novelty, there was something deeply refreshing about the way in which Time Bandits allowed its cast to be cowardly, silly, heroic and funny by turns – in other words, to be actors, rather than walking special effects.
Gilliam often discussed making a sequel, but the death of Rappaport in 1990 and Purvis breaking his neck in a car crash the following year put paid to that. Therefore, the new series represents the first opportunity that the film’s many admirers have had to revisit the world, albeit with new characters and a different storyline. However, it has not gone unnoticed that the Time Bandits are now made up of able-bodied actors – excluding actors with dwarfism from roles which they would be perfectly suited to play.
Purvis’s granddaughter Abbie Grace, who also has dwarfism, has publicly criticised the decision, saying on social media that while she was “over the moon” to hear about the new series being made, as Time Bandits “is the only film that’s ever represented people like me in a way that isn’t seen as a goblin or one of Snow White’s seven little men….[it] was a film that changed the times and it was ahead of the times to be honest because people like me weren’t treated the same as they are now”.
But she was also “baffled” by the casting of the latest Time Bandits, accusing it of “tarnishing the legacy” of the original. “For a generation that is so big on talking about inclusivity and diversity and making sure that everyone’s heard,” Grace said, “this whole casting choice just seems absurd.”
Nor is Grace the only figure in the entertainment industry who has been speaking out. Disney’s forthcoming would-be blockbuster Snow White, starring Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot, has congratulated itself on its socially conscious credentials, casting the Latina actress Zegler as the title character, boasting a script co-written by Barbie’s Greta Gerwig and with numerous changes to the storyline that gave Snow White greater agency. Yet the casting of the seven dwarves – no longer featured in the title, supposedly because Disney toyed with the idea of making them “magical friends” instead, a pointless notion that was thankfully abandoned – became an issue almost immediately.
Hollywood had been here before, of course. In 2012, the Kristen Stewart film Snow White and the Huntsman attracted controversy for casting the likes of Ray Winstone, Ian McShane and Bob Hoskins in the roles of the dwarves, and digitally attaching their faces to the bodies of people of restricted growth.
The Little People of America group vociferously protested that decision, which they argued marginalised actors with dwarfism. There was talk about “a hundred midget march” to the offices of Universal Studios and comparisons with blackface. Universal’s offhand reaction was simply to ignore the protests, claiming that the well-known actors cast “came with pedigrees and recognisability” and that their use in the film was “a casting decision, not a body-type decision”.
Over a decade on, such things are harder to justify. So for the Rachel Zegler film, Disney announced that, in order “to avoid reinforcing stereotypes from the original animated film, we are taking a different approach with these seven characters and have been consulting with members of the dwarfism community”. This wasn’t quite the step forward Disney had promised. The seven dwarves will be CGI characters – played on set for motion capture purposes by one actor with dwarfism and six able-bodied actors. Once again, special effects wizardry is being deployed in order to avoid casting actors of restricted growth – a state of affairs that has, unsurprisingly, outraged these actors.
Chief amongst these is the best-known actor with dwarfism working today, Emmy-winning Games of Thrones star Peter Dinklage. In 2022, he vociferously criticised Disney’s decision to remake Snow White as a live-action picture, and remarked that, while the company was patting itself on the back for the casting of a Latina actress in the lead, they had ignored another, possibly greater issue. “You’re progressive in one way but then you’re still making that f______ backwards story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together, what the f___ are you doing, man?” said the actor, who also starred in Joe Wright’s film Cyrano. “Have I done nothing to advance the cause from my soap box? I guess I’m not loud enough.”
The overwhelming majority of people, able-bodied and otherwise, seemed to agreed with him. Professor Tom Shakespeare, one of Britain’s foremost sociologists and bioethicists and himself someone with achondroplasia, singles out Dinklage as someone who has made a significant difference to social perceptions. “I think Peter Dinklage has been a great thing – a fabulous actor, a heart-throb too, and his role in Game of Thrones was central and admirable,” he tells me. “I think his version of Cyrano was very good and appropriate. His roles do explore difference and disability appropriately.”
For Shakespeare, who expresses disappointment about the choices made by the new Time Bandits series – “I thought the original Time Bandits was brilliant, and never made a big thing of the characters’ short stature, so I was sad to see they were now average height people” – the ideal situation would be fewer stereotypical roles of comic-relief or fantastical dwarves, and more varied opportunities.
“What we want is better roles for better actors – as Dinklage has been showing, you can compete, you can ‘open’ a movie,” he says. “I went to see Duchess of Malfi at Shakespeare’s Globe, played by Francesca Mills; she was excellent, and shows that our best actors can play any role. I would like to see better roles for more restricted growth actors, where they can be Hamlet or whomever, and diverse opportunities. I thought, for instance, it was great that EastEnders had a restricted growth woman who played a stall holder on the market.”
In some regards, the entertainment industry has moved with the times. The idea of actors of restricted growth being cast as leprechauns – as in the once-popular 1959 Disney fantasy Darby O’Gill and the Little People or Francis Ford Coppola’s bewildering Finian’s Rainbow – would now be seen as anathema. And while the behind-the-scenes antics of the little people who played munchkins on the set of The Wizard of Oz have passed into (often factually inaccurate) legend, its prequel, in the form of the new Wicked film, has taken care not to make such caricatured representations of those with dwarfism. Dinklage’s tacit approval of the project can be seen by his voicing the character of the goat-professor Doctor Dillamond.
Yet, as Shakespeare notes, there is still work to be done. “We are professors and doctors and farmers and shopkeepers and we should be represented as that – in all our variety – not wicked or marvellous, but both in different ways, as complicated as anyone, not as stereotypical as the pantomime.”
Dr Erin Pritchard, an academic specialising in disability studies, agrees. “Why do creators have to be lazy and revert to age old stereotypes of dwarfism, thinking we are just novelties or figures of fun?” she says. “We have moved on with other minority groups, so it about time we did the same with dwarfism. I would like to see people with dwarfism just in everyday roles where their dwarfism is not the main focus. Creators need to see people with dwarfism as just everyday people as opposed to props that are a must for fantasy films or to add elements of comedy.”
There may well be a backlash brewing with Time Bandits, especially as neither Waititi nor Clement has offered a satisfactory answer for why they chose to cast the actors they did, bar some unspecific comments in interviews about “scheduling conflicts”. “We in the disability rights movement always say nothing about us without us – this is just as relevant here,” says Bethany Bale, a campaigner at Disability Rights UK. “Non-disabled actors playing disabled roles takes more opportunities away from us. In 2024 this is unacceptable.”