Robin Hood Movie Review

As medievalists this year we have been treated to several films that build on a medieval theme, like How to Train your Dragon. Of course when we heard that Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe were teaming up to do a Robin Hood movie we all waited with baited breath. Even the more cynical amongst us admitted we would probably watch it, even if we were determined not to like it.

Having seen it, I will freely admit that I loved it. Most who know me are not surprised by that statement. Even as a Public Historian, I loved it because if there is one thing you can say about the film is that it was committed to conveying a sense of history. The characters were likable, the plot I found to be engaging, and I came away entirely satisfied.

This does not mean that the film was without its problems. In fact most critics have panned it. If we look at it from the point of view of a medievalist there are several things that it does quite well, and there are several things that I am not sure added to the plot.

*spoiler alert*

In terms of inaccuracies, I am sure others picked up on more than I did. The hardest thing I found to digest was the pyre funeral for Walter of Locksley. With Churchmen standing by. Part of the belief in the Middle Ages was that your body would be resurrected along with your soul, so it was not within church practices to burn bodies. This is not to say that it would have been uniform everywhere, or that this couldn't have happened, but it seemed to me to be unlikely, and not to add to the plot which elsewhere was being so careful with details.

The other part that I found myself somewhat incredulous about was Marian joining the charge. Not that I think it would be inaccurate for some women to be involved in the assault on the beach, but I hadn't really understood this to be part of the character they created for Marian, and so it felt a bit forced. I was entirely with them when she picked up a sword to defend her village, but I think a lot of people were taken out of the film by this addition. Again, not because it was necessarily inaccurate but seemed a bit of a stretch based on the rest of the film.

One of my favourite parts of the history that was in the film was the portrayal of King Richard and King John. Here they were truer to the history than to the conventions of the Robin Hood story, and I really liked that. Richard was brutal and John was pretty nasty, though his real fault was not having the same carriage or demeanour as his brother. As well, he was not pure evil, which I liked.

Perhaps the biggest fault of the movie was that the message was not elegantly placed within the plot, but instead the audience was hit over the head with it. Robin is part of the movement that would lead to the signing of the Magna Carta. The Magna Carta is certainly a big deal, and I could be corrected, but the Magna Carta at the time was mostly for the nobles who objected to John coming back and trying to take back some of the local power that Richard had lost because of his absenteeism. It was certainly about taxes, but part of that was John was a better administrator on the home front than his brother, and was dealing with the tremendous debt left by Richard. The movement was not really about the rights of the people, at least not all the people, though later politicians would understand it that way. What they were saying in the film seemed to be phrased, not so that it would be historically inaccurate, but so that audiences would recognize the ideals they were espousing as democracy, even though that's not really really what it was. In some ways Robin's espousal of these ideals seems forced, and it means that we lack some of the bravado and cockiness which was an appeal for earlier incarnations of Robin Hood.

But what it does do is place the whole story in a wider historical context, and it really does explain in many ways the momentum of the Magna Carta movement, though they never actually say the words 'Magna Carta.'

This Robin Hood, like Robin Hoods before it, tried to be relevant to today by exploiting elements of the history to show ongoing trends of injustice and resistance. As I say, I loved the film, but in its devotion to its message it lacked a bit of the fun that is to be found in other incarnations. And while Russell Crowe is excellent, his Robin Hood lacks the personality of others, and so he is by no means my favourite Robin.

In some ways, the final scenes of the films, with the camp and the greenwood, you come away with the sense that you would really liked to have seen more of that, that classic Robin Hood aesthetic. Though, in the end that is what we have seen before. It is just that I never tire of it.



Final note: Because I am a fan of Great Big Sea I enjoyed Alan Doyle as Alan-a-Dale. It didn't take me out of the movie too much, and as not that many are big fans like myself, I think it was an excellent choice.

Robin Hood for a New Generation (revised from writing for the public workshop in Public History)

On January 21st the Public History MA class had a writing history for the Public Workshop where we all submitted a short piece (500 words) and had it critiqued by established author, Professor Jonathan Vance. I have made the suggested changes to my piece, except for making it the right length. While I realize this means that by not adhering to the length guidelines a publication like a newspaper or a magazine would have to discard my article, I decided that too long was okay for my blog. Here is the revised version.

Robin Hood for a New Generation

In 2007 I met the Sherriff of Nottingham. She was friendly, soft-spoken and very well mannered. We were attending a talk being delivered about the historical Robin Hood at the University of Nottingham. Before the talk began she got up to speak herself about how good Robin Hood had been for the city. The Sherriff talked about how each new media incarnation of Robin Hood represented each new generation finding some way to make him their own, and how that was good for tourism. This was the first time I heard about the new movie directed by Ridley Scott, which at that time was called ‘Nottingham.’

It has been almost twenty years since Kevin Costner played the title role in Prince of Thieves, and the Robin Hood of 1991 is no longer appropriate for modern audiences. Each time a new movie is made we expect something new of our Robin Hood. For instance, we did not expect Sean Connery in Robin and Marian (1976) to be the swashbuckling adventurer that Errol Flynn was in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). Instead we wanted a more mature Robin Hood. In 1991 the filmmakers made it clear that the world of Robin Hood extended beyond the forests of England. The addition of Morgan Freeman’s character Azeem, both a Muslim and black, satisfied our expectations that Robin Hood’s goodness included tolerance for other cultures. Some might think it is making Robin Hood more accurate, but really it is making the tale fit our own values.

This is not new to the twentieth century. The process of adapting Robin Hood to fit the needs of a community has gone on since the first Robin Hood tales. In some of the earliest stories Robin is not a dispossessed noble but a yeoman and a forester. Maid Marian was not coupled with Robin Hood until a few centuries later. The tale of Robin Hood changed over the centuries through his inclusion in Mayday games, folk plays, ballads and other ‘media.’ The nineteenth century in particular loved tales of Robin Hood, and it is their overly romanticized version of the character that was passed on to early twentieth-century filmmakers.

The upcoming movie, due to be released to North American audiences May 14th 2010, is bound to be an interesting incarnation of the story of Robin Hood. Originally entitled ‘Nottingham’, the movie was supposed to focus on the Sherriff of Nottingham and his bouts with the outlaw Robin Hood. It is easy to see why the filmmakers’ decided to follow the more traditional route and focus on Robin Hood. There is a problem when an American production uses such a traditional, beloved tale of outlawry to praise authority. That is not the incarnation of Robin Hood that we want to reflect our times. It will be interesting to see how this version of the tale does reflect our expectations. The tagline in the trailer totes “the story behind the legend, the hero behind the outlaw,” implying that what we are looking for in this Robin Hood is realism, or at least Ridley Scott’s version of realism. In any case, it looks to be the most epic Robin Hood ever, but we would expect nothing less from Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe.