Back in 2018, the white-hot Taron Egerton played Robin Hood in a film that tried to reinvent the classic legend for a pop culture saturated in superheroes and an audience growing increasingly sick of late-stage capitalism. On paper, it all sounded fantastic. In practice, the film failed hard enough to no-clip through reality and get lost in the Backrooms.
Class disparity has been a major theme in cinema for the past twenty years. It feels like every other film nowadays features capitalism and billionaires as the overarching villain in one way or another. And in a world that’s been fundamentally reshaped by the MCU and all its aspiring would-be competitors, why not bring back one of the oldest and most foundational superheroes who just happens to be in the public domain?
Now feels like exactly the time when we need a new depiction of the outlaw who stole from the rich and gave to the poor. (Hell, this movie was preceded by the trailer for the upcoming How to Rob a Bank.) Instead, we got The Death of Robin Hood, in which all of Robin Hood’s infamous exploits are mere backstory. It’s right there in the title, folks — we’re not here to see Robin Hood bring justice to exploitative tyrants and corrupt officials of the law, we are here to watch him die. What the fuck?
Still, the film was written/directed by Michael Sarnoski, who previously made Pig and A Quiet Place: Day One, wildly overdelivering on both counts. We’ve also got an inspired casting choice with Producer Hugh Jackman as Robin Hood, alongside such marvelous talents as Jodie Comer, Bill Skarsgaard, and Noah Jupe. Given all the talent involved and the current sociopolitical climate, I couldn’t help my curiosity with regard to what we were getting here.
No, seriously, what in all the nine bloody blue-blazing hells happened here?!
Right up front, Robin Hood himself tells us that all the legends and stories were a pack of lies. To hear Robin tell it, there was nothing altruistic about what he and his Merry Men did, they were bloodthirsty crooks and killers who outright murdered countless people for their own petty gains. The stories we all know and love were made up by a pack of idiots, to fool and entertain an even dumber pack of idiots. And all of this is accompanied by a graphically bloody depiction of Robin Hood straight-up murdering a defenseless child. Twice.
All of this before the end of the first act. Even before the opening title card, this film is thoroughly FUBAR.
Granted, the second act takes a notably different turn. Through the middle half of the film, Robin is taken to an isolated nunnery, where his wounds are healed by the Prioress Bridgid (Comer). Shortly afterwards, this same nunnery welcomes Little Margaret (Faith Delaney), the daughter of Little John himself (Skarsgaard). This is where the film starts showing signs of promise, as Robin tries his hand at a more pastoral life and contemplates whether he can find redemption in his waning years.
And all of that is for absolutely nothing, because the third act ends up right where the first act left off. Stories are for losers, there are no heroes, and there’s no such thing as justice. There are only petty men settling grudges and acting in their own self-interest in an endless cycle of violence until everyone gets their rightly-earned ignominious death. Fuck that noise.
I get that the filmmakers wanted to talk about whether or not a homicidal psychopath could be redeemed, but this is freaking Robin Hood. To take this angle with this character means ignoring everything we’ve ever known and liked about the character. There’s nothing about the law, nothing about economic disparity, and none of the moral ambiguity about when breaking a corrupt law for the common good may or may not be justified. This movie only thinks and acts on a strictly binary good/evil morality in which Robin Hood and his Merry Men apparently killed so many hundreds of people for no reason at all. And it doesn’t stop there, either.
The first act of the film makes a big deal in showing other characters praying to God. Robin never does, but other characters do. This brings up the question of whether there might be a just and loving God. But then we set three-quarters of the film in a freaking nunnery, with the prioress as our female lead, and the angle is abruptly dropped. God, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, the Bible, nothing like any of that is ever shown or mentioned. The word “sloppy” doesn’t even begin to cover it.
What really sucks is that there was so much talent and effort here. Every actor turns in an engaging performance. Every shot is immaculately presented. And it’s all in service of this morally ugly and empty picture.
The film wants to talk about justice, but it won’t talk about the law or abuse of power. It wants to talk about all the awful things that Robin Hood did, but it won’t talk about the good intentions so iconic to the character. It wants to talk about religion, but won’t go into details or philosophies from any particular one. It’s cowardly chickenshit that mistakes cruelty for bravery, showing bloody and brutal violence as an end in itself.
The Death of Robin Hood is straight-up character assassination. These filmmakers hate Robin Hood, they hate anyone who ever loved the character, and they hate anyone with any kind of aspirations for a more just and compassionate world. This is an ugly, mean-spirited, nihilistic, morally empty film that appropriates the name of Robin Hood without adapting anything that ever made the legend timeless or relevant or fun to modern audiences.
FUCK. THIS. MOVIE.