Newest in my venture to watch my movie collection in alphabetical(ish) order. To see other posts in the series, click here. As always, potential Spoiler Alert.
I’m not gonna lie. I enjoy a good mindless action flick. I also enjoy a mediocre mindless action flick. And depending on what kind of bad it is, even a bad mindless action flick can be pretty enjoyable. Personally, I’d put The A-Team somewhere around the high end of mediocre/low end of good. When I’m in the mood for something blowy-uppy, it’s not my number one choice, but it’s top fifteen, maybe even top ten.
I was a bit surprised it wasn’t more successful than it was. (The end of the film is a complete and total Sequel Set-up, but a Part Two never happened because it didn’t make enough money.) I think much of that is due to the “You Ruined My Childhood” crowd. Any time there’s a reboot of a beloved old franchise, it’s guaranteed some fans will start screaming about how the new version somehow retroactively destroys the old one.
Take The A-Team. I mean, sure, the movie’s not a carbon copy of the original ’80s TV show. It’s got a definite gritty element, for example, with profanity and a body count. Meanwhile the TV show was fun and goofy and cartoonish and … and … um …
… racist.
That’s an old newspaper clipping with a photo from The A-Team TV show. It’s of George Peppard as Hannibal Smith.
In blackface.
For a few years as a teeny bopper, I spent a ludicrous amount of time cutting things about actors, shows, and movies out of newspapers and magazines and covering every inch of my bedroom walls with them. When I finally got to the point where I didn’t feel the need to have hundreds of photos of Harrison Ford (among others, but mainly him), staring at me from every nook and cranny of my room, I took them down. But after the hours I’d spent collecting them, I didn’t want to just throw it all away, so I stuffed everything into an envelope and tucked it into my steamer trunk. And there it’s sat for 30+ years.
Until a week or so ago, when I opened the envelope in search of something for a Star Wars article I was writing, and stumbled across the A-Team photo above.
It illustrates perfectly one of the real problems with the “You Ruined My Childhood” mentality. We don’t remember the details of the shows, just the way we felt when watching them. When we look back on the entertainment of our youth, it’s through a nostalgic haze of unreality.
And the reality is, there are parts of our childhood that deserve to – and in fact should – be ruined.
The View From the Handbasket 
You know how much I love the A-Team but a good number of the shows are very casually terrible in some way. But I still love it (most of the time) when a plan comes together!
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