As part of the research for his new film The Death of Robin Hood, writer-director Michael Sarnoski delved into a series of Medieval-English history lectures. These courses provided an immersive window into the world that Sarnoski was about to bring to the screen, with one particular challenge to the conventional wisdom proving especially resonant.
“You think of medieval battles as knights in shining armor, riding in on horses, but most of the time it was just peasants beating each other to death with shovels in the mud,” Sarnoski says now. That insight inspired his vision for how he wanted to capture action in his movie: “Just a couple of old men, desperately trying to kill each other in the mud — that was the core idea. How do we strip this down to its essentials?”
That motivating question speaks to The Death of Robin Hood as a whole. The stark film may seem to offer a departure from the eponymous outlaw’s typical, bloody role across movies and TV, but for Sarnoski, it reflects his honest relationship to the material from childhood. He loved the 1973 Disney version as a kid; he was still young when his father died, after which he encountered the ballad Robin Hood’s Death, which dates back to the 17th century. Reconciling the dramatically different tales led to his interpretation.
