So there’s a new Robin Hood movie coming out. Directed by Otto Bathurst who has directed some TV (Peaky Blinders, Black Mirror, Hustle) but not, it seems, many movies. In fact, this looks like it is his first Movie gig. It’s being produced by Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way Productions and distributed by Summit Entertainment. Ben Chandler and David James Kelly are scripting with the story idea primarily coming from Chandler.
One red flag (aside from the fact that this is another Robin Hood movie being made in arguably the worst era for movies in movie history) is Jamie Foxx. He is playing little john…the leader of the Merry Men. Nottingham…Nottinghamshire, is a country in the East Midlands region of England. Which even today is 94.1% white. Kevin Reynolds’ Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) starring Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman is one of my favorite movies but it wouldn’t have been if they didn’t come up with a clever reason for what and why this black guy was doing there.
The film was even smart enough to have the characters accurately portray the fact that they don’t see many…or more likely any dark skin folk around that way “Did God paint you?”. The Moor bit worked, largely because the film did not pretend the situation was ‘ordinary’. I have my doubts that the writers of today can pull this off without revealing the only reason why Jamie Foxx is in this movie is muh-diversity. And that for me, will mark this movie as trash. And we haven’t even made it to the rest of the film. Let’s see what they cooked up…
Ugh. The slow-mo. The crappy action. The horrible lines. This is direct to video fare…VHS to be exact. So that it is very difficult for people to see it.
Robin Hood starring Taron Egerton, Jamie Foxx, Ben Medelsohn, Eve Hewson, Jamie Dornon and other people stinks up theaters Novermber 21st.
