Engaging Culture

Ridley Scott brought us Alien and Blade Runner. Brian Helgeland brought Man on Fire and Mystic River from the page to the screen. And Russell Crowe starred in A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man, and 3:10 to Yuma. You would think that if these three joined forces, the result would be phenomenal, I mean Helgeland and Crowe worked together on L.A. Confidential, and Scott and Crowe teamed up to create the epic Gladiator. But their forthcoming collaboration, Robin Hood, looks less than stellar to me.

Three years ago when I first heard about this movie, I thought the idea was good. The plan was, as far as anyone on the outside could tell, to tell the story of Robin Hood as if he were some sort of double agent, by day he would be the dutiful Sheriff of Nottingham, just a guy doing his job. But in the shadows, he would be Robin Hood. The movie would be called “Nottingham”, and in it, Robin Hood would battle the excesses of the opulent government by working from the inside to bring it down. Originally, Russell Crowe was slated to play both Robin Hood and the Sheriff which would concur with that plot line. That looked like a good idea for a movie, it was something that I’ve never seen before. But then last February, the story broke that the film would be called simply Robin Hood, the lead character would no longer be the Sheriff, and that Crowe would no longer play the role of the sheriff, but only Robin Hood. Also Scott said that the plan was to give the sheriff a very minimal role, because he’s not the villain, instead the black hat goes on the entire country of France.

At that point I was confused and disappointed and stopped reading the news about new cast members and seemingly a half a dozen rewrites because I was sure that they had relied on their collective past successes and simply taken the easy route to making several million dollars. After all, people will line up to watch this film simply because of the star power. They lost the nerve to bravely do something unique and intelligent, wanting instead to simply sell tickets. After watching all the previews and featurettes and interviews, I can’t even muster enough excitement to put together a good prediction. I’m just expecting two hours of Gladiator in tights. It may be the best most expensive Robin Hood film yet… but it’s still the same old story we’ve seen dozens of times.

You can watch the trailer below if you’d like. Personally, I’m gonna pass on this one, and if I go see anything the week of its release, I’ll probably take my wife to see Letters to Juliet or Iron Man 2 for the second (or third) time. Predicted score: 63
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