Robin Hood (2018) is objectively not a good movie, but it is an intriguing one. I decided to watch it two times, months apart, to gain some real insight into the baffling conflict within the movie between progressive and regressive impulses, the cautious, tentative revolutionary drag that cloaks commercial, safer impulses seeking to cool genuine anger by subtlety casting it as villainous. It is a masterpiece of pernicious subversion, which maybe was always inherent in the legend, but is more apparent in this incarnation.
Robin Hood (2018) stars Kingsman and Rocketman’s Taron Egerton as the titular hero, also known as Robin of Loxley. He is depicted as a rich, hot guy from the void: no family, no servants, just a ton of well maintained stuff that he mostly enjoys but we never see getting maintained. Marian is a hot girl from the void. She represents the poor while being dressed fabulously at every occasion, but we never see her sowing, her family or her place. She always ends up living with her love interest, which, no judgment, but don’t you have a room of your own. At least Sansa would get down and dirty with some cloth and needle, and we knew where her home was. Marian is sympathetic to the poor just because she is pretty and nice and aren’t those two things the same? Probably because Egerton is pretty and nice and is totally cool with Marian’s sympathies even if it means taking his stuff, which we never actually see happen, but is implied otherwise she was just arranging a meet cute to snag a rich pretty boy with abs. Marian is the only woman character with any major screen presence so essentially we have a Smurfette, which leads to a love triangle. (Why are love triangles a thing to produce more tension? I just find them aggravating. Eat your cake and have it too.)
It all goes to crap because the Sheriff of Nottingham is always angry, shouting and generally chewing up the scenery in the most magnificent way that only Ben Mendelsohn can. You may know Mendelsohn from some artistic thrillers as Animal Kingdom or commercial artistic successes as Captain Marvel or Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Robin Hood (2018) has a very simple lesson: beware of poor boys that pull themselves up by their bootstrap. They’re angry, self-serving, and have an ax to grind with everyone. They resent the rich and would kill them if they could. They believe in working within the system, which is corrupting. You can’t trust a formerly poor person to lead the poor. Past trauma makes them evil, not empathetic. In contrast, the (formerly) rich Rob is only motivated and inspired by love, wants to destroy the system, transforms trauma into strength and wants to fight. The people can trust him even though his ostensible motivation sounds less noble and more like revenge. He is like Arrow or Batman except more progressive and uses no excessive force on ordinary people.
Robin Hood (2018) makes explicit visual allusions to our conflicts in the Middle East when depicting the Crusades. The arrows flying are more like automatic gunfire. Loxley’s uniform looks like a US uniform. When a group of black people are in chains, before any human rights violations can start, the movie makes sure to show that a mixed race, probably black, member of Robin’s troop is just as eager to participate to brush aside any concerns that racism is a factor because the images seem very close to evoking slavery. So the movie wants to explicitly draw parallels to our conflict today while simultaneously robbing it of any possible historical intersectional flavor that could make an audience uncomfortable or make the conflict more complex.
Islam is depicted as a more genuine faith than the (Catholic) Church. Robin Hood (2018) alludes to child abuse within the church’s orphanages and a general eagerness to harm people on a larger scale to advance their own agenda: money and power. The Church is depicted schmoozing with the rich as if they are at the Met Gala. It feels as of they are making allusions to the trope of the treacherous gay man out of the original Spartacus, but because they restrict it to force, not sexual content, it gets to exploit homophobic vibes without drawing condemnation.
Genuine Christians cannot be a part of this system without facing ridicule, abuse and eventual excommunication. Real Christians are lovable goofs. Real Muslims are badass fighters. Without a real Muslim, real Christians will not be able to successfully fight the insidious corruption within their faith. It is one of those mixed compliments from The Help. You have a villain give a speech reminiscent of Presidon’t about Muslims, which the movie then depicts as true, but with different motivations than the villain attributes to them. It is a subtle way of making the villain’s conspiracy theory right and wrong at the same time, and I’m not a fan of speaking out of both sides of your mouth. Is Jamie Foxx’s character a magical Negro if he is such a badass with a backstory? It is fair to say that in real life, no one is following a black man robbing the rich because he would be arrested, but still…
How does Robin Hood (2018) feel about rapists? There is a guy who is a war criminal in the Middle East who comes home to impose his type of peace on his fellow citizens. He strongly implies that he will rape Marian later, but the movie thankfully never goes there. He only gets knocked out, which Marian explicitly says that he deserved. What?!? The woman who keeps urging for armed force against the government is satisfied with one hard hit on a would be rapist’s head. The movie clearly is hoping that we’ll agree with it because it reasons that war criminal, would-be rapist saved Robin’s life and is also a victim in all of this, not a perp, right? Eek. Death only comes for one villain, the one who gave the orders, not the one that carried them out or the real mastermind of those orders, who is then easily replaced so this movie can desperately hope for a sequel that will never come. This movie’s idea of an armed uprising is rather peaceful, measured and bloodless.
Robin Hood (2018) is all about the money. The money is being used to fund wars to eventually erode the King’s power and put a ruler in place that the Church controls. Rob returns the money to the poor so they can go to the forest and never spend it? Then after all of this hullaballoo, the Church is still wealthy and in power. Basically Robin Hood’s people did the Church’s dirty work for them by killing the guy that the Church was going to kill or at least fire if he didn’t deliver what he promised to the Church. The Church is still using the money to work with the opposition, and that secret is still a secret. The King, whom we never see, is still in danger. It is funny how this revolution is really about protecting the king and trusting the wealthy without actually divesting anyone of power. Nothing really changes. So is it a documentary?
Robin Hood (2018) is worth watching for Julian Day’s delicious costume designs. The fight scenes are fun. If you’re a fan of the actors, they don’t disappoint. Just beware that you will have to shut down your brain or it may stop you from enjoying the spectacle if you think about it for too long.