By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) was one of two popular screen retellings of the Robin Hood legend in the early 1990s. The other was Tony Robinson’s gloriously anachronistic and funny children’s sitcom Maid Marian and Her Merry Men, which even featured several humorous nods to the big-screen Kevin Costner version.
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is often seen as a failure, a mess, a let-down in numerous ways whether it’s Kevin Costner’s decidedly American accent in the film, the fact that the film doesn’t appear to know quite what it wants to be (a family film or a grittier take on the medieval tale of robbers and tyrannical rule), or the fact that, as Roger Ebert highlighted in his review of the film, Alan Rickman’s performance doesn’t seem to mesh with the rest of the cast. But all of these supposed drawbacks might be turned on their heads and seen as strengths, of a kind.
First, it’s worth saying that this is the first of our new monthly ‘film club’ where we review (kind of) a film that has sufficiently literary links, whether or not it’s an actual adaptation of a novel or play, to warrant our attention on this blog. So, the literary links. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves wouldn’t exist without Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe.
It was Scott’s 1819 novel which turned the robber Robin into a nobleman, Robin of Locksley, who becomes an outlaw in Sherwood Forest (the original ballads from the fifteenth century had Robin and his merry men in Barnsdale Forest, not Sherwood). It was also in Ivanhoe that Robin became inextricably linked with Richard the Lionheart and the 1190s, when previously he had been said to live during the reign of a ‘King Edward’ (which one is never specified, though presumably it’s not the potato).
Scott wasn’t the first to write about this – it was a Scottish historian of the sixteenth century, named John Major, who first talked of Robin living during Richard’s reign – but it was the stratospheric popularity of Ivanhoe which fixed Robin of Locksley in the world’s imagination. And ‘Locksley’ is how Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood is most frequently referred to in the film.
So, the film’s perceived weaknesses. It is an unusually violent film for one with a PG rating in the UK. The film opens with the brutal dismemberment of a hand in a Palestinian dungeon (I can remember seeing the film in the cinema when it came out, and being terrified by the violence in this opening scene) and will later feature jokes about penis length, explicit reference to the size of Robin’s balls, a guard commenting on Maid Marian’s ‘tits’, and – most controversially of all – an attempted rape in the film’s dramatic finale. The BBFC employee who certified the film as a PG apparently later said it was his single biggest regret of his career.
But then, the low rating aside, the film is true to its subject-matter. The Middle Ages were brutal. Women’s honour was often under threat. As Chaucer shows, bawdy gags were common. Like another historical production set during the medieval era and considered something of a failure, The Black Adder, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves offers a powerful image of the Middle Ages, full of dim candlelit castle chambers, Norman guards in chain mail, the mud and blood and peasants and so on. When placed alongside such imagery, the Sheriff of Nottingham’s reference to ‘10.45’ (in an age before such accurate timekeeping was possible) is easily forgiven.
Even Costner’s Californian brogue can be overlooked. After all, the English spoken in the 1190s, even among the Saxons, would have sounded very different from that spoken by the modern Brit. Alan Rickman’s character would have spoken French. And talking of which, the fact that Rickman’s Sheriff of Nottingham is so over-the-top (he only agreed to the role after he was allowed to interpret the character however he wished) in a film otherwise peopled by more understated acting only serves to emphasise the gap between the frustrated Norman tyrant and his subjugated people.
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, then, has a great deal going for it. It has Brian Blessed going ‘Gaaah!’ at the top of his voice. It has an absolutely brilliant soundtrack courtesy of the late Michael Kamen: the stirring opening titles, which are played over scenes from the Bayeux Tapestry, are a musical masterclass, a nod to the swashbuckling sound of classic Robin Hood movies but with a darker, more booming modern twist.
The Bayeux Tapestry, of course, reminds us that, ever since Sir Walter Scott’s telling of the Robin Hood legend, Robin of Locksley has often been portrayed as a displaced Saxon nobleman under the Norman yoke, and the Tapestry (actually an embroidery, of course: we see Maid Marian working on it in the film) marks the momentous event when that displacement came about.
I never thought I’d see the day where Costner’s Robin Hood was covered by IL! I’m faintly disturbed by my wish now to see the movie again and rethink my considerations. It would be worth it, of course, for Rickman, but I just can’t bring myself to see Costner again in any role really!
Nevertheless, fascinating start to a new section to the site! I can think of lots of suggestions. How about a controversial one? Mel Gibson’s Hamlet – for my money, BY FAR the best Hamlet on film. I await the flinging of mud and small rocks!
I enjoyed this review! I actually like the film in all its imperfections. I like Kevin Costner and I love the soundtrack and the hit song by Bryan Adams. I think you hit it on the nail that it depicted the era nicely.
Thank you, Camie! Yes, a flawed masterpiece, but still a masterpiece that can be watched over and over (as the regular repeats on British TV suggest at least!).
Looking forward to reading the other posts of your film club – that’s exactly my cup of tea!
Thanks! Just deciding what to write about next time at the moment. Suggestions always welcome too!
Are you more into filmic adaptions of one novel / play or films that combine and, by doing so, discuss several sources?
I would suggest “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”. I just love how so many literary characters, who originate in different works, interact with each other. The film draws only loosely in the eponymous graphic novel of Alan Moore, so it might be acceptable to look at the film and its many literary references exclusively, IMO.
That’s a great suggestion! Especially so I can revisit Allan Quatermain, one of my favourite literary characters from adventure fiction. The films covered don’t have to be out-and-out adaptations – the flimsiest of literary links will suffice!
I’m glad you like it! Yes, “King Solomon’s Mines” is great. But you also have gems like “The Picture of Dorian Gray” or “The Mysterious Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” in here…
There are great out-and-out adaptions of “Pride and Prejudice”, “Frankenstein” etc., but I honestly find them less interesting to read and / or write about. It more or less ends up in debates how and why the script derivates from the novel.
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It’s so badly done it’s a classic.
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Doesn’t he address Richard I as “Your Majesty” rather than “Your Grace”? And walk from Dover to Nottingham in about two hours?! But it’s worth watching for the Bryan Adams song!
Yes, good point on the ‘your majesty’ – didn’t Richard II introduce that two centuries later?! And yes he appears to go from Dover to Nottingham, via Hadrian’s Wall…! Yet there’s something about it. The music is high up on my list of reasons for re-watching…
Great post. This is one of my favorite films, and in my opinion the best Robin Hood film (although there’s a new one coming out later this year). I am well aware of its faults, and the errors especially in the extended edition – the clerk has his tongue cut out but then later speaks – but I still love it and watch it frequently. I bought the soundtrack and listen to it often. The scenery is also wonderful – the mist, the scenes in the forest, the castles, and who doesn’t love the hit song from the movie. I also appreciate your nod to Sir Walter Scott. Without him, where would historical fiction or historical films be?
Thanks! And I hadn’t spotted the clerk-tongue inconsistency – good spot! I feel I need to go and re-watch the extended one now. Kamen’s soundtrack is phenomenal. You’re right about the scenery though too – I think this film was one of the reasons the Middle Ages became such a topic of fascination for me as a child…