robin hood doesn't live in my hood anymore
i saw a movie a couple of days ago and, since i am still fuming about it, i have to vent here.
it was the new Robin Hood. even if you hate the content of a movie, there is always room to like it for its technical merits; so i'll start with those.
there are spoilers here, but that's okay, because you would have predicted everything anyway.
technical
- you couldn't stuff more clichés into a movie. you even have the token female romance novel dominatrix, who underneath her strong veneer wants nothing more than 1) to be conquered by a man, preferably the strong silent type, 2) proves her worth by saving women and children from sure demise (this, of course, is not a man's cause, so she is the only one who thinks to save them), 3) maintains integrity as a powerful woman by not having sex, 4) is the keeper of barren fields (seriously!) until loverboy finds a way to steal the seeds back and plant them! of course, she is a 16th century feminist or whatever, so she valiantly shows up in battle, only to almost drown within ten minutes and almost kill loverboy in the process. if i were her, i would have felt pretty shitty about myself after that. i think it would have been more sensible to stay out of the battle, or take pictures or something.
- there are some decent shots. i think this is because they could afford a decent cinematographer and expensive cameras.
- the setting is beautiful... Ireland or New Zealand maybe, i didn't bother to look it up.
- long. slow. boring. long. slow...
- they had a good cast but didn't utilize it well. Friar Tuck was played by a comedian and wasn't funny at all. seems the studio ran a pretty tight ship, though they probably didn't have much of an artistic vision to compete with. Russell Crowe really didn't have to do anything at all except look placid. his friends were funny though. i liked Little John.
- they did a good job with everyone's rotted teeth. except the dominatrix (Cate Blanchett) and Robin Hood, of course.
- there were a lot of details that ended up being ultimately unimportant, which isn't an exceptional artistic move unless it's supposed to be like that, which it wasn't.
thematic
- normally i reserve a lot of license for interpretation in art, but it is always annoying and potentially dangerous when you do a 180 on a historically and culturally important legend. like the recent Alice in Wonderland, this version of Robin Hood was twisted into some kind of capitalist, imperialist, individualist fable.
Robin Hood was an important story for kids in my generation, and i remember him as an outlaw. he was a thief; by all accounts, someone who rebelled against society's rules partly for his own gain, and partly because he was friends with the freaks and geeks, who were ultimately the better people. in other words, he was fallible and pretty human, but developed a simple moral code that revealed the hypocrisy of mainstream society's laws and regulations.
also, he stole from the rich and gave to the poor. this, i think, is pretty fundamental to the Robin Hood story.
now, apparently, Robin Hood is not only a soldier who leads regiments to war, but he hates French people and was the founder of the Tea Party movement. there is some vulgar collapsing of history i'm not going to get into at the moment, but apparently Robin Hood was really concerned about individualism and the ownership and cultivation of property as a basic human right. of course, he had to deal with a monarch, who is alternately tyrannical and cutesy-silly. we can get along with the cute monarch, sometimes, but we only tolerate him because we're nice people and he said he'd do what we wanted. but he won't come through in the end, and then you'll have to set up camp as an outlaw and probably sail off to America at some point so that you can write your Tea Party constitution.
of course, the people threatening the Tea Party movement were foreigners. British people were sort of OK though not terribly advanced, but those French people... downright evil. they really like to rape British dominatrices, but can't even do that, and they really suck in battle... every time. the worst image, however, and the one with the least taste is the flag covered in fleur de lis, sinking under the water. i wonder if the studio had any consultants that said, "hey, did you know that just four and half years ago there was this storm that hit the United States? it was called Katrina. the levees were really crappy and broke, resulting in a flood that damaged a major US city, pretty heavily i hear, and the symbol of that city is the fleur de lis. Afterwards the mainstream press referred to the city as 'Atlantis'. most people died in the aftermath, because they weren't rescued in time, so people who lived there felt a little ostracized. it might be a little insensitive to show the fleur de lis hitting ocean bottom, as no one there has quite gotten over it yet."
the only thing, i think, that would have redeemed this movie is if they recruited Sarah Palin for the dominatrix part, rather than Cate Blanchette. or at least, Tina Fey. that would have been much more honest.
it was the new Robin Hood. even if you hate the content of a movie, there is always room to like it for its technical merits; so i'll start with those.
there are spoilers here, but that's okay, because you would have predicted everything anyway.
technical
- you couldn't stuff more clichés into a movie. you even have the token female romance novel dominatrix, who underneath her strong veneer wants nothing more than 1) to be conquered by a man, preferably the strong silent type, 2) proves her worth by saving women and children from sure demise (this, of course, is not a man's cause, so she is the only one who thinks to save them), 3) maintains integrity as a powerful woman by not having sex, 4) is the keeper of barren fields (seriously!) until loverboy finds a way to steal the seeds back and plant them! of course, she is a 16th century feminist or whatever, so she valiantly shows up in battle, only to almost drown within ten minutes and almost kill loverboy in the process. if i were her, i would have felt pretty shitty about myself after that. i think it would have been more sensible to stay out of the battle, or take pictures or something.
- there are some decent shots. i think this is because they could afford a decent cinematographer and expensive cameras.
- the setting is beautiful... Ireland or New Zealand maybe, i didn't bother to look it up.
- long. slow. boring. long. slow...
- they had a good cast but didn't utilize it well. Friar Tuck was played by a comedian and wasn't funny at all. seems the studio ran a pretty tight ship, though they probably didn't have much of an artistic vision to compete with. Russell Crowe really didn't have to do anything at all except look placid. his friends were funny though. i liked Little John.
- they did a good job with everyone's rotted teeth. except the dominatrix (Cate Blanchett) and Robin Hood, of course.
- there were a lot of details that ended up being ultimately unimportant, which isn't an exceptional artistic move unless it's supposed to be like that, which it wasn't.
thematic
- normally i reserve a lot of license for interpretation in art, but it is always annoying and potentially dangerous when you do a 180 on a historically and culturally important legend. like the recent Alice in Wonderland, this version of Robin Hood was twisted into some kind of capitalist, imperialist, individualist fable.
Robin Hood was an important story for kids in my generation, and i remember him as an outlaw. he was a thief; by all accounts, someone who rebelled against society's rules partly for his own gain, and partly because he was friends with the freaks and geeks, who were ultimately the better people. in other words, he was fallible and pretty human, but developed a simple moral code that revealed the hypocrisy of mainstream society's laws and regulations.
also, he stole from the rich and gave to the poor. this, i think, is pretty fundamental to the Robin Hood story.
now, apparently, Robin Hood is not only a soldier who leads regiments to war, but he hates French people and was the founder of the Tea Party movement. there is some vulgar collapsing of history i'm not going to get into at the moment, but apparently Robin Hood was really concerned about individualism and the ownership and cultivation of property as a basic human right. of course, he had to deal with a monarch, who is alternately tyrannical and cutesy-silly. we can get along with the cute monarch, sometimes, but we only tolerate him because we're nice people and he said he'd do what we wanted. but he won't come through in the end, and then you'll have to set up camp as an outlaw and probably sail off to America at some point so that you can write your Tea Party constitution.
of course, the people threatening the Tea Party movement were foreigners. British people were sort of OK though not terribly advanced, but those French people... downright evil. they really like to rape British dominatrices, but can't even do that, and they really suck in battle... every time. the worst image, however, and the one with the least taste is the flag covered in fleur de lis, sinking under the water. i wonder if the studio had any consultants that said, "hey, did you know that just four and half years ago there was this storm that hit the United States? it was called Katrina. the levees were really crappy and broke, resulting in a flood that damaged a major US city, pretty heavily i hear, and the symbol of that city is the fleur de lis. Afterwards the mainstream press referred to the city as 'Atlantis'. most people died in the aftermath, because they weren't rescued in time, so people who lived there felt a little ostracized. it might be a little insensitive to show the fleur de lis hitting ocean bottom, as no one there has quite gotten over it yet."
the only thing, i think, that would have redeemed this movie is if they recruited Sarah Palin for the dominatrix part, rather than Cate Blanchette. or at least, Tina Fey. that would have been much more honest.