I'm so excited! I'm so... scared.

In 1983 I was 1 and the world had officially been a better place for a year. It was about to get better though, because on January 23 The A-Team premiered.

The A-Team is quite possibly my favorite TV show of all time and it would stand to reason that I would be ecstatic that on Friday, Universal is bringing The A-Team to the big screen. I'm not though. I have this sense of dread that one of my favorite things from childhood is about to be crumpled up like so much paper, set on fire, then put out with piss.

I'll see it, of course, but I won't like it. And I'll bitch about it endlessly until my fiancee tells me to shut the fuck up before she shoots me.

The problem, is that The A-Team won't translate to the big screen in 2010. In 1989, sure. Early to mid 90s, maybe. But in the era of Michael Bay explosion-gasms that pass for action movies these days I'm afraid that Hannibal and the guys are going to be The A-Team in name only. Kind of the way George Lucas raped the Indiana Jones franchise that I also adored as a kid (and still do) with his alien ships and nuked refridgerators.

Sure there are executives that will explain that the movie (and it's a movie, not a film you pretentious fuck) is more of a reimagining of the mercenary troupe than it is a faithful adaptation of the show. But then that's not really The A-Team, is it?

George Peppard's Hannibal was an ingenious character. I'm pretty sure he was a sociopath and a narcissist, but he was such a fun loving and admirable sociopathic narcissist. Sort of like Dr. House or Barney from How I Met Your Mother. Sure he helped people, but I'm pretty sure he was in it as more of a recurring fuck you to his nemesis Colonel Decker. Liam Neeson's Hannibal will no doubt be a super-serious imagining of the character without the knowing smirk that always preceeded, "I love it when a plan comes together." Oh I'm sure they'll say the line, but it just won't be the same.

Mr. T's BA doesn't like to fly but in comically ridiculous ways is routinely sedated and loaded onto an aircraft only to wake up to Murdoch, his comic foil. Murdoch was like the little brother flicking BA in the back of the ear. And like a big brother/little brother relationship, he took it but bitched about it to no end and occasionally scared Murdoch enough to get him to stop. Temporarily of course. Let's see Rampage Jackson and Sharlto Copely (who?) pull that dynamic off in an environment full of un-ironic explosions so extreme that you'll have to wear shades.

This brings us to Face. Dirk Benedict played the smooth talking confidence man, but he played it in a way that his sleeziness, like Hannibal's psychosis, was almost endearing. He was able to sexually harass and hit on women every epsidode without coming off as a complete scum bag. I will give you a thousand dollars is Bradley Cooper's character isn't just a shallow jerk-off letting you know, "Derrr, I fuck lots of chicks."

And let's not forget the general attitude of the show. No one ever got hurt. Hundreds of rounds would be fired and dozens of vehicles would explode in each episode but no one was worse for wear. Everything was done tongue in cheek. I saw a preview for the movie the other day and they had someone rappelling down the side of the building to crash through a window. That shit didn't happen in The A-Team. Don't get me wrong, I like explosions and action just as much as the next guy. Probably more. Believe me, I love to turn my brain off and just watch shiny things blow up on my TV. But I would prefer to remember the A-Team the way it was: a campy, pseudo-action show from the 80s that I can still pop in and watch the DVDs of when I feel like it. Not as some orgy of forced lines that won't be as good as the originals because they'll be shoe-horned in between obnoxious explosions and action sequences.

As I said before, I'll watch it, but I probably won't like it. And I wouldn't be being true to myself if I didn't make up my mind beforehand based on pure speculation and not a thread of proof. Hopefully I'll be wrong, I just don't think I will be.