Remember when Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood came out and Roger Ebert bemoaned its gritty, joyless atmosphere? Or hell, perhaps you even remember when Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves came out, and the illustrious critic decried its “violent and depressing” tone, and “general moral climate” of clerical corruption, grimness, and pessimism. Well, dear Mr. Ebert would probably heave a great defeated and depressed eyeroll if he saw the new trailer for A24’s The Death of Robin Hood.
The Death of Robin Hood | Official Trailer HD | A24
The upcoming movie, directed by Michael Sarnoski stars a particularly haggard looking Hugh Jackman as a wandering Robin Hood. Only he isn’t really Robin Hood. As he tells his traumatized, mute little girl companion (because of course Hugh’s got a traumatized, mute little girl companion), the stories of Robin Hood are all lies. He was really a “murderous brigand,” guilty of horrific acts of mass violence, a man soaked in blood and gore. Now he wanders around a medieval England/Iceland, tortured by guilt, and finally, wounded, finds himself on a strange island cared for by a mysterious woman (Jodie Comer). I suppose that couldn’t possibly be Maid Marian. Meanwhile he is hunted by a specter of the pass as he searches for redemption.
The descent of the Robin Hood legend into darkness isn’t exactly new. After Errol Flynn and Disney, Hood gradually became less jovial, adolescent, and adventurous to a grittier, more cynical approach. From the acerbic, bittersweetness of 1976’s Robin and Marian, to the dark occult adventures of Robin of Sherwood, to the aforementioned film adaptations, to that godawful BBC show from the 2010s, the jovial outlaw was applied to themes other than simply antiauthoritarianism, loyalty, and bravado. He became a symbol of the evil of the Crusades, the futility of the Feudal system, and or the simple rich-bad-poor-good narrative by a generation raised to idolize Che Guevarra, with very little sunshine in-between (with the exception of that vastly underrated, subversive British comedy, Maid Marian and Her Merry Men).
And now here we are. Robin Hood was never really good, never a hero. There are no more heroes. No more ideals. No more romance.
Well, I guess it could be worse. They could have made Robin Hood a Communist/Socialist Antifa agitator.
The qualities of the film, I can’t speak to. It might be great, in and of itself. And fair enough, heroes and legends often do spring from real-life sources that are far from perfect or even downright unsavory. The human need for heroes runs deep. Perhaps this film will be an honest and thoughtful meditation on that. And I like Jodie Comer, who I think should have won the Best Actress for 2023’s largely ignored The Bikeriders.
But still. On its own, a film like this is a one-off, perhaps genuinely capable of bringing a different, even uncomfortable new perspective on old stories or views that people take for granted. But it’s become a trend nowadays. Let’s face it – Robin Hood died years ago. Just as the once novel “villain’s perspective” approach that could reveal subversive, uncomfortable truths about human nature, has now become an overused trope designed to erode traditional concepts of evil, so too has the “deconstructed hero” become an overused, hackneyed trope eroding the traditional perceptions of good itself.
And frankly, I think most people are tired of it.
All types of stories should be told. All sorts of character should be explored. You can make as many gritty, violent Medieval sagas as you want. But occasionally, it would be nice to see real heroes again. Real heroes. Not the bumbling, meta-quipping male buffoons, or the arrogant girlbosses, or the dark antiheroes whose ethics change with the needs of the script.
And we live in an age when we desperately need shared cultural heroes.
Also, I’m inclined to agree with one perceptive YouTube commenter, that this does look like Medieval Logan with bows and arrows.
By the way, Robin and Marian (1976) starring Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn, and the TV show Robin of Sherwood are fine entertainment worthy of your time.
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English (US) · 