For those of us whose fondest memories of Robin Hood on screen are either Richard Greene appropriately resplendent in green as he rides through an immaculate (and studio-bound) Sherwood Forest or Errol Flynn’s similarly heroic and dashing Robin, our happy associations with the character are about to be sorely tested. Last week saw Hugh Jackman assume the role of the bow-quiverer in the suitably downbeat The Death of Robin Hood, which imagines the legendary outlaw less as the heroic figure of yore, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, and more as a near-psychotic vagrant who commits horrific acts of violence towards anyone who gets in his way, including women and children.
We loved Robin was because he is the swashbuckling epitome of fun and liberty, rather than some proto-Zack Polanski
If this isn’t enough, Paul Greengrass’s forthcoming Peasant’s Revolt film The Uprising was briefly given the subtitle ‘The Rise of Robin Hood’, bewildering audiences everywhere, until it was swiftly removed from the marketing. For those of us who were expecting the picture to be a fictionalized account of Wat Tyler’s march on London in 1381, this has come as something of a surprise – is its star Andrew Garfield really playing Robin, and is one of the starry supporting cast, including everyone’s favourite actor and wit Tom Hollander, the nefarious Sheriff of Nottingham? – but it is testament to how presentations of the character have shifted ever since the first appearance of Robin in cinema in the 1908 silent film Robin Hood and His Merry Men.
