With the arrival of Taron Egerton’s take on the rogue Englishman, here are the top 10 versions of an immortal cinema legend.
10. The One With Frank Sinatra
Riding the success of 1960’s Ocean’s 11, Sinatra reconvened the Rat Pack for Robin and the 7 Hoods in 1964, which ports the story from Sherwood Forest to prohibition-era gangland Chicago. Robin becomes “Robbo” (Sinatra), Marian his “main squeeze,” and Sammy Davis Jr. carries a gun, just like in real life. In a breakout performance, the late Peter Falk played a hilariously flustered Guy Gisborne (leader of a rival gang, the Sheriff character, and Robbo’s foil). His film career stretched out another 45 years afterward, although you probably knew him best as television’s Lieutenant Columbo. Being that Robin Hood is the product of English ballads, the story makes flat sense as a musical, just not such a slapstick one.
9. The One With Russell Crowe
Here’s screenwriter William C. Martell, in a 2010 blog post for Scr(i)pt Magazine, about how Ridley Scott’s Nottingham project became Robin Hood:
So, Ridley Scott wanted to change the NOTTINGHAM script which featured period forensics to a script about archers and archery …
Then he came up with a brilliant idea! What if the Sheriff Of Nottingham and Robin Hood were the *same person*! Kind of like FIGHT CLUB. He’d be chasing himself for the whole damned movie! And there were some drafts of the screenplay written like that, until someone (maybe [screenwriter Brian] Helgeland) must have hinted that it might be a little silly.
And draft after draft, the script changed – evolved – twisted – becoming something completely different. The way the most expensive meal you have ever eaten turns into something else when it goes through the digestive process.
What actually came out is a story in which Robin Hood was Robin Longstride, a gruff soldier played by Crowe in King Richard the Lionheart’s army who takes up the name Loxley once Loxley dies, and backs up into his role as socialist folk hero, eventually falling in love with Original Loxley’s widow, played by Cate Blanchett. Blanchett is amazing. The Sheriff, sufficiently slimy, went on to become Tom from Succession. The movie is fine.
8. The One With Keira Knightley
On ABC, on the occasional Sunday, there’d be a new original television film, and one of them was Princess of Thieves, which takes place after the events of the Robin Hood story. Robin and Marian have a daughter named Gwyn, played by Knightley, who lops off her locs, puts on pants, and takes up her father’s fight against the patriarchy monarchy.
By the time the movie came out, in 2001, Disney had already begun to shift its focus back to theatrical films, like Pirates of the Caribbean. Good thing for Knightley that her turn as Robin Hood may have set her on course for the role of Elizabeth Swann.
(Excerpt) Read More at: TheRinger.com