Robin Hood (2018)

  This was just a straight-up terrible Robin Hood film.  Like, I get what they were trying to do with it but it just doesn't work.  If you wanted to tell this particular story, there were other vehicles than Robin Hood.  Hell, there were probably other medieval characters that fit better.  Maybe the fall of Constantinople.  But it does not work here.

Robin of Loxley (Taron Egerton) receives a draft notice --seriously-- calling him to fight in the Crusades.  He leaves behind his lady love, Marian (Eve Hewson), and travels to "Arabia" under the command of Gisbourne (Paul Anderson).  After a particularly nasty ambush (with a ballista firing javelin bolts like a gatling gun), Gisbourne starts executing prisoners.  Robin tries to intervene, is wounded, and sent home to England.  He discovers that he was declared dead, his lands were seized by the Sheriff of Nottingham (Ben Mendelsohn) to pay for the war effort (which also makes no sense since they would have been worth more if they had been resold, not just left to decay), and Marian has moved on to the local grassroots politician leader, Will (Jamie Dornan).  Before Robin can drown his sorrows, it is revealed that the father of the man he tried to save, Yaha, quickly anglicized to John (Jamie Foxx), stowed away aboard Robin's hospital ship in order to train Robin specifically to get revenge.  Robin uses his title to ingratiate himself into the Sheriff's good graces, helped with generous donations of the Sheriff's own money, stolen and re-gifted back to him, in order to learn the Sheriff's true dastardly plans.

Robin Hood is a great allegory about a man on the inside, using his wealth and power to secretly suborn the established hierarchy by standing up for the little guy --oh no, wait, that's Zorro.

Robin Hood is a great allegory about a man who loses all his wealth and privilege, gains perspective, and works outside the system to redress the wealth disparity.

This Robin Hood, however, is basically a pastiche between Black Hawk Down with arrows and Batman Begins, also with arrows.  It ignores the power structure of the time, focusing on the corrupt Sheriff (fine) and an equally corrupt cardinal (F. Murray Abraham), who would not be subject to any of the same laws, but fine.  There's a story to be told in the complicity of the church to squeeze gold to fund foreign wars to spread Christian ideology while hypocritically ignoring the starving poor at home, but it's not here.  It doesn't even address the corruption of an absolute monarchy, practically a staple of Robin Hood movies.  There is no King John, no Richard the Lionheart.  Only the Sheriff, whose grand plan is somehow to become more powerful than the king?  Not a lick of sense.  It's not even set in Sherwood Forest, for Christ's sake!  Nottingham is now a mining town?  Which, maybe it historically was, I'm too lazy to look it up, but again, that's not the Robin Hood story.  That is a different story that could have been told, if the writers/producers/director weren't so dead set on calling it a Robin Hood movie.

Fuck, I haven't even started on what a hash they made of Marian's character.  

Or the costumes.  Jesus.  You are not A Knight's Tale.  Stop trying to be.

Anyway, this is why we need more stuff to come into the public domain and to break up entertainment monopolies so they are forced to take risks instead of just slapping the name of an established property onto some drivel.

Robin Hood is currently streaming on Peacock so you know what to avoid.