SpiderJerusalem said:
Why NOT make a modern take on the story? You're not giving any reasons yourself - I'm at least giving something to this.
Also, Robin Hood is a LEGEND, the Robin of Loxley part you're thinking of came from folk stories and lore that were never cemented as fact until Hollywood came in with their version of it - and that is about as reliable as anything put on film.
The tale of Robin Hood is most likely collected of stories of other outlaws, commoners fighting oppression and highwaymen with very good PR campaigns. He's a template that can fit any age - which is why the story is so popular century after century.
And why do you count the Ridley Scott film as something that has set the standard now, making a modern story useless? Scott told a version of the tale that had about as little to do with Robin Hood by your standards as what the Wachovski's are doing now.
You're also stuck on the old ideas of Robin Hood, unnecessarily thinking rigidly within the box and not allowing this any chances - which is funny, since you're lambasting Hollywood for not taking any chances on taking a chance with revamping this property! Here's a newsflash - nothing is or will be totally original, they're still going to be based on lore and old old material like this. The Matrix was a collection of ideas from almost every anime, philosophy book and Asian film around - yet the Wachovski's showed that they clearly had the vision to use them in a new and fresh way. Something that is more than likely to happen with Robin Hood.
But it's your turn; why NOT make a modern tale of Robin Hood? Where's the harm in bringing the story that's already been told in different ways for over 600 years?
Never cemented as fact? Pretty much all the lore comes from ballads and poems written about him the 1300/1400s. Hell, Shakespeare even makes a reference to Friar Tuck (calling him "Robin Hood's fat friar") in one of his plays. All that stuff was around long before Hollywood got there. As far as legends can get cemented in fact, Robin Hood has some pretty good foundations.
The tale of Robin Hood is the tale of Robin Hood. There are not numerous outlaws bearing the name. You're thinking of real life, where the legend probably arose from shadowy figures like Robert Hode or Richard Hodd
If you actually read my post you'd see I called the Ridley Scott film an 'affair' which rather obviously shows I didn't like it. My point there, which you missed (so you missed my opinions and my point in that paragraph, nice job with the reading there), was that that one isn't even a year old. Why do we need another one so soon?
Yes I'm stuck on the idea of old Robin Hood-
because it's Robin Hood. He's a classic English folk hero. Imagine the outcry if we Brits went around messing with the Paul Bunyan story.
Okay, now you're just seeing what you want to see and putting words in my mouth. Since when did I decry the lack of originality? I know full well Hollywood has always pinched ideas from other places, like every old Disney film being a bowdlerised fairy tale. What I'm criticising is the Wachowski brothers just taking a story and 'reinterpreting' it into the modern age. It's like everything these days having to get a gritty reboot.
Especially if its the Wachowski brothers, as it happens, since I've always thought the Matrix was bland, pretentious and full of cardboard characters.
A modern interpretation of Robin Hood would, quite frankly, be terrible. You'd be taking the character out of his element and stripping away most of what made him Robin Hood. Robin Hood as a legend was born from the Norman oppression of the local Saxons (Normans ban hunting deer? Boom, Robin lives in the forest and eats deer whenever the hell he likes). He did what they couldn't do, and made a stand against foreign invaders. A modern Robin Hood, if you stuck to those same principles, wouldn't work. For a start, Will Smith in the role means it would be set in America. Where everyone is the foreign invader. Robin Hood stole from the rich. To do that in modern time Hood would have to be a bank robber, and this would turn him from roguish hero to psychopathic gunman. Congratulations, you've ruined the character as effectively as that proposed film that made the sheriff the good guy
