‘Robin Hood’ and story-killing politics

Just saw “Robin Hood” with Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett. I liked it, but I was put off what appears to be Hollywood’s chronic butt-kissing of anyone the West has ever fought.

Now Robin Hood is haunted by the shameful 1191 massacre of 2,500 Muslims by King Richard’s Crusaders at Acre (or Akko) in the Middle East. In fact, Robin’s public objection to the massacre makes him an outlaw for the first time. But come on.

The Crusades weren’t a one-sided struggle. The Muslims committed their own massacres and inflicted their own oppression. So why the need, this year, to shoehorn this atrocity into the Robin Hood legend? In 1199, didn’t the unelected king of England have a few other flaws worth rebelling against?

Robin for freedom. Speaking of which, Robin Hood later demands that King Richard’s successor, King John, sign a charter (foreshadowing Britain’s Magna Carta of Freedoms to come in 1215) limiting the king’s powers and guaranteeing political liberty to every Englishman.

This was one of the better moments in the film. Robin says every man’s home is his castle and every man should be allowed to keep what he earns by the sweat of his brow, suggesting that Robin believes both in equal justice under law and in free market economics.

But just in case you think “Robin Hood” went all the way for laissez-faire capitalism, no. As the movie ends, Lady Marion tells us how Robin and his merry band are living in the woods, where there are “no rich, no poor, and fair shares for all.”

Economic duel. I’m not sure how Robin and Marion reconcile their two economic philosophies, possibly with luck and a lot of competition. Perhaps they’ll duel it out in the sequel. Let’s just hope the next movie doesn’t begin with another lopsided suck-up to an enemy of the West. (“Oh, King, you were mean to Kim Jung Il. I don’t like you for that.”)

Errol Flynn's old Robin Hood (1938) did have objections to King John's Crusades -- mainly that John's absence from England gave Richard the opportunity to inflict his particularly mean-hearted abuses on the English. He opposed the Crusades as over-reaching, not evil.

Except for the weaselly pandering, this new “Robin Hood” is fine. I'd like to talk about the directing and acting, but the screenwriter's annoying politics got in the way.

Frank Warner

* * *

Another thought: We now can anticipate the prequel, in which Robin Hood participates in the beheadings and disembowling of 2,500 civilians. At which beheading would Robin become disillusioned?

Check the logic of the new story line. If he rebelled against the massacre at the time, he would have been killed. If he didn't protest, that's the end of the Robin Hood legend. Nice one, Hollywood.

 

Comments

[moolib]

Butt-kissing? Come on, you can crack a history book. Richard was notorious for his ruthlessness and savagery in an era when there was a lot of that going around (he was a nutcase)....he cut the shopkeepers of Acre open hunting for anything he thought they might have swallowed to keep him from getting it -- like coins, jewels, etc. And he didn't wait till they were dead either. He hired a good pr staff later (musta been from Texas, huh?).
Even though that was then and this is now, soldiers might still have had some qualms about killing everybody in sight, including women, children, and pets.
Men with morals and ethics have lived in every century. Regretting having committed murder doesn't seem like a huge stretch for someone with those qualities.
The argument that nobody should be upset about it because everybody else is doing it doesn't hold water any more than it did when you were in high school.

[Frank Warner]

The argument isn't that everyone did it, so don't be upset about it. The argument is, if you're upset about one side's atrocities, why not be upset about the other's? You should be horrified by all horrors.

The other point is, why introduce this one-sided -- and unlikely -- view into the Robin Hood legend now? It smacks of a screenwriter making a stupid political statement to impress his friends, at the expense of the story.

Both King Richard and Saladin ruled undemocratically. Both denied freedoms that always were the right of the people, and both committed atrocities under the false cloak of divine right.

The difference between Britain and the Arab-Kurdish Middle East is that one land rose up out of that darkness with the Magna Carta in 1215. Eight hundred years later, the other land remains under the pall of tyranny, except (recently) in Iraq.

Hollywood has forgotten how to fit that truth into a movie. It would rather tarnish the West and give a free pass to the worst despots. It would rather encourage more Saladins.

[CJW]

I purposely ignored the vast amount of politics in the movie and I enjoyed it immensely.

[Frank Warner]

Most of it worked, though Robin did seem to spend a little too much time on the beach saving Marion. It was hard to see how he got credit for the victory.

We now can anticipate the prequel, where Robin participates in the beheadings and disembowling of 2,500 civilians. At which beheading would Robin become disillusioned?

Check the logic of the new story line. If he rebelled against the massacre at the time, he would have been killed. If he didn't, there is no Robin Hood legend anymore. Mission accomplished, Hollywood.

[CJW]

I think he invented the predator drone.

[Frank Warner]

No question, his arrows were laser accurate, with a high-tech kick.