Robin Hood official site/
I can’t link directly but go to the site.
(wrap a towel tightly around your head)
Enter the site
Click continue unless you want to watch the trailer.
Then either watch the ‘behind the scenes’ movie till just before Brian Grazer speaks or go to the ‘Dover Beach’ Section.
If you did not get a towel first you will need one now for your brain has exploded at the sight of Robin Hood coming out of WWII style landing craft.
twitch twitch twitch
Saw this film yesterday…could NOT believe this at all. I want my 2 plus hours back.
Saw the film yesterday as well and while its not THAT bad (though it cuts close)
Robin is leading England (and at this time it actually was England) army in the defence of the realm against the perfidious French, while the Archers take up position on the cliff and shower the French with arrows the cavalry lead by Robin and King John charges them.
The D Day allusion is fulfilled, the boats the French are landing on just like WWII landing crafts
Incidentally
I really like King John in this part, he is clearly terrified yet he still lead the charge, I actually have sympathy for him at the end.
ABout a month ago I completed an on-line customer survey about this movie. One of the first questions was “How likely are you to go and see this movie in the cinema?” I answered “Quite likely.”
Then they showed a trailer which included the beach scene.
Next question “After seeing the previous footage, how likely are you to go and see this movie in the cinema?” Unfortunately “You’re fucking kidding me aren’t you? I’m not wasting money on that.” was’t an option.
BTW does Cate Blanchette sound like she smokes 40 a day all the way through the film, or just when she’s being romantic?
Isn’t Robin Hood supposed to be fun? Isn’t that the whole point of Robin Hood?
This argument is nonsense. And what if he rode around in the film on a pink elephant? Well, why not? Robin Hood’s supposed to be fun!
Honest question. How anachronistic would those landing boats be? I assume methods for trying to beach seaborne troops while protecting them from approaching fire is something that came up before WWII.
High hulled rowboats don’t seem that big a leap to me (I’m not saying they had them then, just curious when they began to appear).
I read an article in Entertainment Weekly about this that completely turned me off. First, Ridley Scott described it as trying to replicate Gladiator, only with Robin Hood While that was fairly evident from the trailer, it’s not interesting in any way. Second, there was a wilderness preserve that he’s always wanted to film in, but never cold for environmental reasons. He finally badgered them into lifting the restrictions, and chuckled about being able to basically rape and pillage in the course of filming.
Asshole.
The first landing craft saaw action in WWI in Gallipoli. Most troops were put ashore (often directly into graves) using row boats. A few, however, were in Fisher motor-lighters (you can see a few pics here). You can’t power a boat like that until the internal combustion came along.
There’s fun, and there’s silly.
Robin Hood is the culmination of a long line of English folk heroes - like Jack the Giant Killer or Jack of the Beanstalk - who defeat their enemies through wit and audacity. They like nothing more than to tweak the noses of their “betters”, setting the low up high and bringing the high down low, by being smarter and less predictable.
Sure, you can have Robin Hood a dour revolutionary who rides into battle to smash his enemies with armor and helm. You could also have James Bond a pudgy little guy who’s uncomfortable around women. Either way, you’d be missing the point.
(Plus, why would the English care if the French conquered England? They were already ruled by a bunch of Frenchmen!)
The point of this movie was to paint Robin Hood in a realistic light. It was supposed to be a serious film, regardless of what you believe the point of Robin Hood is. Have you seen Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves with Kevin Costnar and Morgan Freeman? It had the exact same goal. Was that movie “fun”? No, it was a serious movie. Robin Hood is not this exclusively wacky character that you seem to think he is. Disney didn’t create the character.
Are we talking about the *Robin Hood *that had him swinging from church-bells and launching himself off a calapult? The one with Alan fucking Rickman? Robin Hood stories are adventures. A “realistic” Robin Hood would be a smelly rapist who lived on a died of squirrels.
Look what “realism” did to *Troy *and to every Arthurian film made after John Boorman’s excellent Excalibur. Realism and folk tales don’t mix.
Here’s the thing: Robin Hood is a long-standing and long-time legend, with lots of stories and interpretations. Traditionally, the Robin Hood in legend and story is, as Alessan comments, a trickster – stories about archery contests to trap him, a fighting friar, deeds of derring-do, etc. See the Errol Flynn version.
We live in an era of re-interpreting ancient legends and myths. Not even so ancient. Batman becomes darker and darker. Alice in Wonderland as Goth. Vampires are heroes. Etc. So, no surprise that they’d try to re-interpret Robin Hood as a revolutionary, or as a sociopath, or whatever. Alessan’s mention of TROY and Arthur are in the same vein. IMHO, such re-interpretations need to stand (or fall) on their own merit, and not because of any pre-conceived notion of how they character/story “should” be or “used to” be.
The only surprise is that the re-invention of James Bond is much closer to Ian Fleming’s!
Yeah, and Star Wars movies are adventures, too. And there’s a reason why the prequels are hated and that Return of the Jedi is the least popular of the original trilogy. Because they weren’t fucking serious enough.
I don’t see the problem with making a serious Robin Hood. Why the hell not? If it was done well it would be fucking awesome. Of course, this movie sucked balls (I can say that without even having seen it), but that doesn’t mean that the idea was bad.
Actually, the SW prequels were hated because they lacked someone with the vitality and devil-may-care attitude of Han Solo, instead focusing on dour, dull galactic politics. The original tilogy was fun; *Jedi *was just poorly made.
If you haven’t seen this and all of this guy’s SW reviews, you should check them out. They’re all hilarious and he explores the flaws of the prequel trilogy in-depth.
The opposite of “serious” isn’t “stupid”, you know. A film can be both fun *and *intelligent.
But if a film is both “fun” and unintelligent it becomes slapstick, which I hate.
My basic and simple understanding of Robin Hood is that he is the guy who as a member of elites is trying to fix the system that got corrupted and not necessarily change it. So, not really revolutionary in a say Oliver Cromwell way but rather a tale so typically English (see Orwell’s interpretation of Dickens) that has a mild message of justice and fairness within given system. In other words, with a guy like Robin Hood being a peasant is not all that bad. With the current atmosphere of corrupted elites I was expecting “realistic plot” along those lines. I guess WWII is always safe reference.
It’s funny, there is a comic book in Italy called “Alan Ford” (I’m yet to meet a North American that heard of it) happening in NYC where one of the serial “bad guys” is superhero named Superhick, a complete anti-Robin Hood kind of a guy who steals from poor to give to the rich 