C’mon Hollywood #212

… what the hell is going on with Robin Hood?
by Sturdy

I typically don’t question Ridley Scott. He has a unique, almost obsessed way of making films and since I enjoy 90% of everything he touches, I usually give the guy the benefit of the doubt and go see anything he directs. But there seems to be a lot of crap going on with this ROBIN HOOD film and I don’t have a good feeling about it. We probably won’t know until we watch the special features on the Blu-ray, but I really want to know why he’s so intent on making this film. And if the recent rumors that he and Crowe are fighting on set, or should I say, “not talking to each other”, then this film could be an embarrassment for everyone involved.

This is just something we don’t need. ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES came out in 1991 and was a decent, linear telling of the legend of Robin Hood. Yeah, I know Costner can’t hold a British accent and I still have no idea what Christian Slater was doing there, but the movie was fun, at least when I was 14. The point is that we don’t need another linear telling of the story of Robin Hood. If you’re going to bring Robin Hood back to the big screen, then do something cool with him and something we haven’t seen before.

Is Crowe too old to play Robin Hood?

So does this film even have a chance to succeed at this point? Every red flag a movie can have, this one has thrown out there. For starters, it doesn’t even sound like they could agree on a concept for the film. We started with the idea of telling the story from the view of the Sherriff of Nottingham, and even though I wasn’t a huge fan of that idea, at least it was a new take on an old story. Then there was the idea of Crowe playing both Robin Hood and the Sherriff, which, again, was a bad idea, but at least it was something different. So now it looks like they started filming with the goal of telling a linear Robin Hood story, which a) is a lame idea and b) is unoriginal.

Costner wasn’t that bad.

So after three (probably more) incarnations of an idea, they start pre-production and have to recast Maid Merrian when Sienna Miller dropped out. Miller seems like an actress that is trying hard to break into that elite status, so it’s surprising she would allow anything (even a “scheduling” conflict) to prevent her from starring in a Scott/Crowe film, but that’s a different topic. At least they got Cate Blanchett to step in. But they also started without even casting what is presumably the second lead actor role in the Sherriff of Nottingham. The role supposedly went to Matthew Macfadyen (who?).

At least Elwes held his accent.

I’m not saying this Robin Hood film can’t be good, I’m just saying it seems like a giant clusterf*** at this point. Yeah, I know Ridley Scott is a great director and this kind of stuff happens all the time on his films, but I don’t remember reading about this much drama on any of his other films. I’ll probably see it no matter what, but in order for Ridley to wow me, he’s going to have to do something I haven’t seen before, not just do something better than I’ve seen before.