It seems that every twenty years or so, Hollywood decides it wants to take on the English folk hero Robin Hood. From the Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn era, to the Connery/Hepburn duo of Robin and Marian and more recently the dubious-yet-classic Kevin Costner outing, Robin Hood is no stranger to the big screen. I’m going to make myself feel old right now and state that it has been nineteen years since Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and like it or not Hollywood has gone and made another Robin Hood film. This time out they decided to go with a great filmmaker—or rather someone who was a great filmmaker before 1991—Ridley Scott. Predictably, Scott’s Robin Hood is a gritty medieval tale, full of complex political intrigue, brutal battles and more characters than you can shake a sword at. What may come as a surprise to many, is the comedic tone that the film takes on at times. This shift in tone makes Robin Hood feel like two very different films; films that don’t work individually or together for that matter.
Spoilers to follow.
The film is a prequel of sorts, an origin story for Robin Hood. The film takes numerous liberties with history, which is par for the course for a Hollywood picture dealing with a legendary figure. While it is interesting how American screenwriter Brian Helgeland weaves various English legends and histories together for the story, you’d think that Scott, himself an Englishman, would want to get the facts straight. The average viewer probably won’t care, but last time I checked Robin Hood was not responsible for the Magna Carta. There are also some real issues with continuity and location, again not something that the average viewer will care about, but anyone familiar with English or French geography will know that you cannot travel back and forth from Nottingham to Dover in an hour by horseback—something many of the characters do more than once throughout the course of the film. Scott expects the viewer to suspend their disbelief, but in the case of Robin Hood this convention is far too convenient and relies on an ignorant audience to work.
