Beware the Mullet

There once was a hero named Robin Hood. The character is one of those classic heroes that, for a time, ranked very highly in popular culture. There was your Robin Hood, your King Arthur, your Sherlock HolmesOften cited as the world's greatest (fictional) detective, this character was introduced in 1887 (in A Study in Scarlet) and has gone on to appear in hundreds of stories, films, shows, and more.. Characters that have existed so long that they can almost be taken for granted. Certainly they are baked deep into the very culture in ways few other characters can claim. Even current heroes, like Green Arrow, can point to Robin Hood for their inspiration. He takes from the rich to aid the poor, running around in a green suit and shooting arrows. He’s a superhero.

Of course now you’d be hard pressed to find anyone that is really interested in a Robin Hood movie, as the 2018 Robin Hood clearly proved. A big issue that the likes of Robin Hood and King Arthur struggle with is that it’s hard to get invested in these older, classic, maybe even stodgy characters when there are bright and shiny superheroes in the big screen providing more splash, more dazzle, more glitz and bright colors, than Robin Hood ever could. How does someone like the Hood compare to what Marvel and DC are cranking out, especially when the market is already oversaturated to begin with?

That’s something current adaptations have to worry about, but if you go back thirty years, when superhero movies were considered jokes and no studio in their right mind would spend north of $60 Mil on any superhero that wasn’t SupermanThe first big superhero from DC Comics, Superman has survived any number of pretenders to the throne, besting not only other comic titans but even Wolrd War II to remain one of only three comics to continue publishing since the 1940s. or BatmanOne of the longest running, consistently in-print superheroes ever (matched only by Superman and Wonder Woman), Batman has been a force in entertainment for nearly as long as there's been an entertainment industry. It only makes sense, then that he is also the most regularly adapted, and consistently successful, superhero to grace the Silver Screen., the Hood was able to top the charts. Released in 1991 and garnering massive acclaim, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves became the Summer Blockbuster smash of the season, and it basically did what every superhero movie does now: origin story, confrontation with the criminal, and action-filled climax. It just did it for Robin Hood. Even modern versions fail to handle all that with aplomb.

Starring Kevin Costner as the titular character, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves finds Robin of Locksley coming home to an England he barely recognizes. After spending years abroad fighting in the Crusades, Locksley finds that back in England his father is dead, his lands have been ransacked, and the populace doesn’t give a damn about him. After fighting a few ruffians on his own lands to save a (mostly) innocent boy, Locksley accidentally becomes an outlaw all because those men worked for the Sheriff of Nottingham (Alan Rickman).

Forced into hiding, Locksley – along with his friend from afar, Azeem (Morgan Freeman), and his blind servant, Duncan (Walter Sparrow) – end up in Sherwood Forest. There he meets a band of outlaws led by John Little (Nick Brimble). The group decide that if the Sheriff is going to treat them like outlaws, stealing their lands, taxing them into oblivion, and then making them out to be the bad guys, then the outlaws will strike back. They steal from the Sheriff and other nobles and give the treasure back to the poor, all while poking a metaphorical finger in the Sheriff’s eye. But this all can’t go on forever, especially when the Sheriff intends to take over England and rule it as its king, so war will be the final stage of this back and forth between Hood and Sheriff, outlaw and despot.

I haven’t watched Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves since the film was on basic cable back in the early 1990s. I know everyone loved this film when it came out (it went on to make almost $400 Mil at the Box Office at a time when that kind of return was all but unheard of outside the Star WarsThe modern blockbuster: it's a concept so commonplace now we don't even think about the fact that before the end of the 1970s, this kind of movie -- huge spectacles, big action, massive budgets -- wasn't really made. That all changed, though, with Star Wars, a series of films that were big on spectacle (and even bigger on profits). A hero's journey set against a sci-fi backdrop, nothing like this series had ever really been done before, and then Hollywood was never the same. and JawsThe mother of all shark movies, this film from Steven Spielberg made a whole generation of movie fans afraid to go into the water. franchises) but young me found the film to be pretty awful. It had a self-satisfied air to its production, with a plotline that goes on way too long and a runtime to match. It just wasn’t a film for me and once it stopped airing on television, I all but forgot about it.

Of course, it certainly didn’t help that Robin Hood: Men in Tights came along a couple of years later and poked all kinds of holes in the 1990s action-drama epic. It’s like the parody film said, “you actually thought this movie was good? Here’s how silly it really was.” And, yeah, that parody’s take is pretty spot on. Going back and watching it again, I do have to agree that Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is very silly, at times overblown and very, bloated, all centered around, as Mel BrooksConsidered one of the true legends of comedy, Brooks is a writer and director who created many of the most famous, and most hilarious, parody comedies everyone constantly quotes.’s film put it, a Robin Hood that doesn’t even speak with an English accent. It just doesn’t work like it should.

That’s the weird thing, though: I can see now why this film worked for so many people because there is a thread working through it I kind of like. Setting aside Kevin Costner, who really sucks as a vapid and bloviating Robin, there’s parts of the film that actually do work. The production looks great, there are a ton of fantastic cast members, and parts of the story are actually quite good. Had the film been something other than a two-and-a-half hour Costner epic, like so many other films of the era the actor loved to make, I think it could have worked.

Let’s not undersell the biggest reason the movie works: Alan Rickman. While much of the cast, and the production, and the direction seems to think this is a serious movie about the Hood, Rickman clearly looked at the script and knew what he was making: a silly, dopey superhero film. As such, Rickman showed up to set to work, chewing every bit of scenery he could in the process. His performance is over-the-top, playing the Sheriff like a mustache-twirling, Snidely Whiplash type, and it is so good. If this film were actually the drama it wanted to be, Rickman would feel out of place, but because the film eventually reveals itself to be crap, Rickman’s villain shines brightly. Every time he comes on set, swaggering, making faces, and yelling at everyone else, the movie gets a little better.

The production values are also really great. The movie was filmed in England and France, using actual buildings and forests for many of the sets. While there are bits here and there that feel a little cheap, a touch threadbare, for the most part the film sells its time period and location. While it’s probably anachronistic as hell if you know anything about actual history, it is internally consistent, feeling lived in and “real”. That’s good enough to sell the Medieval setting and get us into the film.

The story, though, is pretty basic, following what are no well-trod superhero story beats. We see Robin before he becomes a hero. We see his “fall” (which is barely a fall at all, really). We watch him build his superhero persona. We watch him become the hero he was meant to be, killing his villain in the process. Even by 1991 we certainly had seen a few films that had already done this arc, like Batman two years prior. Now, over thirty years later, the film feels like a trope on a trope, a stilted and overly-long exercise in superhero storytelling. It hasn’t aged well because there are films that came out after that do what Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves did, only better.

It doesn't help that the film has maybe an hour-forty-five of story stretched out to two-and-a-half hours of length. The movie could have used a lot of editing, a fair bit of tightening, just to get to a length that felt appropriate. Characters are introduced that don’t have much bearing on the plot, story beats are raised and then discarded, whole montages are put together to show us life in the camp and lands around it even when those montages actively slow the whole film down. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves moves in fits and starts, working great when it finds its energy, but then quickly losing the thread just as fast.

And through it all there’s Costner, acting like a posh surfer bro. Costner is easily the worst aspect of the film, simultaneously acting above it all, like the rich, spoiled brat the film constantly accuses his hero of being, while never really engaging in the material. His lack of an English accent isn’t the worst offense he makes; the fact that he never really seems to care at all during his performance is far more egregious. He seems detached, like he’s in the film for the paycheck and not the story, and it sucks all the life out of Robin.

I think there’s probably some version of this film that could have been made that is actually really good. At the time the film was a success, and you can’t really argue with that. I might not have liked it then (and I certainly don’t now) but it was a phenomenon for a short period of time. The fact is, though, that despite making close to $400 Mil (we’re talking Batman money) this film has all but faded from people’s memories. It’s that Robin Hood movie that came and went, drowned out by other, better blockbusters and other, better superhero tales. It’s like all of society caught Hood Fever and then, just as quickly, got all embarrassed about it and pretended they weren’t that into it.

Which is fitting, really, since this movie really does suck. I tried very hard to give the film a chance, and I found something I could like about it (Alan Rickman, as always, is a treasure). On the whole, though, this is a bad movie that, somehow, became a cultural sensation. It’s better, then, that we’ve all moved on so we don’t have to pretend this film was anything other than an embarrassment. An amusing one at times, to be sure, but embarrassing all the same.