As we all know, Robin Hood is the adorable varlet who, fighting the tyrannical King John and his sheriff in Sherwood Forest, robs the rich and gives to the poor. Robin Hood, the 2018 movie starring Taron Edgerton and Jamie Foxx with Ben Mendelsohn as the villain is, uh, decidedly not that. In fact this looks more like Arrow got sent to Westeros. Which isn’t a bad thing, just a bit surprising.
The trailer features Oliver Qu-, ah, Robin (Edgerton) as a noble firmly rooted in the power structure of a giant medieval city. By day, he’s a suck-up, rooting for this nasty rebel to get killed before he incites the peasants to riot. By night, he acrobatically injures people and steals from the city’s elite while riling up a rebellion. Jamie Foxx is Little John, head of the band of rebels the Merry Men, who teaches Robin how to trash goons and steal their stuff. In other words, it’s straight up superhero movie stuff, complete with training montages and secret identities.
To be fair, depicting the Robin Hood legend faithfully, which is pretty much all about residential zoning ordinances, is probably a non-starter, and there’s been no shortage of movies paying exacting tribute to the original legends, including Russell Crowe’s 2010 swing at the story. And it’s also got to stand out from the many, many Robin Hood movies that Hollywood’s turning out at the moment, including a long-in-the-works modern take from the Wachowski sisters called Hood; Sony’s plans for a sort of medieval literature shared universe, which will finally settle who’d win in a fight, Robin or Ivanhoe; and Disney’s would-be Pirates Of The Caribbean-esque take where the straight laced Sheriff of Nottingham and the quirky Robin have to buddy-cop their way through mystical hijinks. So a superhero take isn’t the strangest approach.
That said, that this movie has been delayed twice, from March and September release dates, and is now going to arrive over Thanksgiving, might raise a few eyebrows. But hey, there are worse ways to escape the family than by going to see a superhero movie. We’ll check out Robin’s moves November 21st.