Current Events > Robin Hood (2018) is so weird. **Mild Spoilers**

(+) Yeah! (+)

No, I'm not complaining about Little John being black. The Robin Hood stories were always anachronistic and idealistic. Besides, Jamie Foxx gave the best performance. I'm talking about other things.

- The film can't decide whether it wants to be Batman Begins or Equilibrium.
- The good guys dress like Antifa. (And ninjas!)
- There are no swords and there is no Sherwood Forest.
- Marian wears a revealing outfit throughout the film and is made a damsel in distress at one point.
- Leonardo DiCaprio produced it.

On the whole, it was better than I thought it would be. I'm surprised they'd give it such a generic title as Robin Hood though. When a title is basic, it usually means it's going to be awesome or it's going to be shit. There's seldom an in-between and this was in-between.

It was entertaining if forgettable.

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I liked the Russell Crowe one better, but this one was fine. Ben Mendelsohn is always a treat. I don't know why he didn't just kill the guy at the end tho.
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I liked that one a bit better as well. This one had more energy, but that film was of a higher quality overall. I'm really not sure where I'd rank this one among the Robin Hood films I've seen.

This one at least gets points for having Sir Guy. Despite being the primary adversary in the silent film and the Errol Flynn movie, he's been a relative rarity in Robin Hood movies since. The Russell Crowe movie replaced him with Sir Godfrey, Disney replaced him with Sir Hiss, and the Kevin Costner film treated him as comic foil.

Oh, one more thing I missed...

At one point, Sir Guy threatens Marian with rape. You don't see that too often in modern films either. It really caught me off-guard when he said he was going to have fun with her later. Personally, that's one cliche I don't mind putting in the past.

Well the prince and sheriff are fascists so...

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There was no Prince John this time around. They replaced him with the Cardinal.

Skye Reynolds posted...

The good guys dress like Antifa.

Just like irl!

I wonder if we'll ever get a more traditional, light-hearted, swashbuckling Robin Hood again.
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At its heart, the Errol Flynn movie was a kids movie.

I'd say that, for a PG-13 movie, this one was probably about as lighthearted as it was gonna get. For the most part, it didn't really try to be gritty. There were moments -- such as prisoners being decapitated -- but Robin himself was an optimistic character who had a boyish smile more often than not. I think that's as close as we're going to get to the old Robin Hood unless someone wants to make another kids movie whether animated or live action.

I saw that movie once, then saw it again forgetting that Id already seen it, and I still barely remember it. Super generic action flick.

The Russel Crowe one felt like an epic war movie thanks to Ridley Scott so I much prefer that one.

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Unlike some other Robin Hoods, this one can speak with an English accent.


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Skye Reynolds posted...

There was no Prince John this time around. They replaced him with the Cardinal.

Yeah haven't seen the movie. Still at it's core the Robin hood story has always been a communist fantasy. It is the story of a group of poor people sick of a fascist government controlling everything and taking everything from them that they steal back their money and give it back to the people.

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Kevin Costner is my favorite one, followed by the cartoon and men in tights.

All these modern ones are junk.
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Eve Hewson is hot so why is her wearing revealing clothing a negative exactly?

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...there was a Robin Hood movie in 2018?

sylverlolol posted...

Eve Hewson is hot so why is her wearing revealing clothing a negative exactly?

I didn't say that it was a negative. Just that it was uncommon for a 2018 movie.

I very much appreciated Eve's attire in that movie. And the way that they worked her running to a fallen ally's aid into the film. I may or may not have hit the rewind button a few times.

Sorry to bump a dead topic, but this movie has been on my mind.

It hits all of the necessary notes -- aside from having a skinny Friar Tuck who doesn't drink -- but there's just something that's missing. Robin and Marian are fairly shallow characters as far as any sort of character depth is concerned. The film's focus is on Jamie Foxx, but the filmmakers didn't want to go all "Adventures of the Sidekick" and have him be the one to defeat the bad guys while Robin Hood sat in the corner.

So, while the action sequences go to Robin Hood, Little John is the emotional center of the film. Robin Hood himself really only has agency in one scene and that's the one where he goes against Little John and attempts to rob the treasury. This creates a problem in that the one saving the day isn't the character we actually care about in the movie.

I think this movie would've been better if they had made Jamie Foxx the star and just made it an original property centering on a Muslim hero trying to stop the crusades rather than trying to tie the story into Robin Hood. It would have garnered more media attention and would've allowed greater freedom. It would have also been a much stronger film as the character whose story arc we cared about would've been the man who was front and center.

This is just one of those films that really makes me stop and think about the filmmaking process in general.

Hollywood is creatively bankrupt. You've only come to realize this now?
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJOQtU0joTI
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But with a few name changes, and a slight shift in focus, they could've been onto something spectacular. Let's let the Muslim guy be the hero in our medieval story for a change. The Robin Hood character (with a name change) could be the sidekick and the story would play just fine.