The 2018 Robin Hood Movie

It's been a while since I've posted about any Robin Hood media on here and I think I should fix that. The 2018 movie, directed by Otto Bathurst and starring Taron Egerton, was supposed to form a franchise to rival Marvel movies and all that. Unfortunately, it falls super flat. And I'm a Robin Hood obsessive nut.

The plot is very standard, Robin goes to the Crusades, is sent home for sympathizing with the natives, and finds the Sheriff abusing his people. He is convinced by a man who followed him home from the war (he goes by "John" as in John, Little) to take up arms against the Sheriff and undermine his authority after hearing that Marian is now with a certain Will Scarlet. Hi-jinks ensue, and it ends with Robin getting Marian back, evacuating the people of Nottingham, and Will being made the new Sheriff after the old one gets killed.

Honestly my biggest problem with it is that it tries to say too much about the current political climate. Clearly there are parallels between the Crusades and the modern Middle East, but the scenes with Robin fighting in the Holy Land don't look medieval at all. Arrows apparently go off automatically, and explode everything around them like guns. And then he returns and doesn't seem to care too much about politics, until John forces him to. Which triggers a couple of dramatic speeches that seem out of character.

Then there's the characters. Robin, to his credit, hits a nice note of always enjoying stealing from the rich. What I'm confused about is why John followed this mess all the way back to England to just take revenge on one town that he didn't have much to do with. The switcheroo involving Will becoming the Sheriff just because his girlfriend broke up with him also confuses me as he was for the people right up until that moment. My biggest problem though is with this training montage where John teaches Robin how to fight once he's in England which makes zero sense as he just spent a couple of years fighting in the Crusades which I'm sure trained him to fight.

So it isn't a great movie. I still found it fun, but that's just me. I'm consistently amazed at how modern Robin Hood movies try to set up a series only to fall flat when all I want is a franchise I can enjoy. Maybe someday it'll come.