Robin Hood? OK. Ever since Elizabeth, I have had a crush on that tomboy-ish Kate Blanchette. Put her in armor and I am there. And Russell Crowe is OK in my book (see Master and Commander and Gladiator), so in spite of the tepid reviews, I was prepared to enjoy Robin Hood and Hell, I did! What's not to love about medieval England? I have been to a Renaissance Faire or two, after all. I am down with the whole the Dark Ages weren't really that dark. And Ridley Scott is , after all Ridley Scott (Hello, on my top 40 movies of all time - the Duellists, Alien, Blade Runner, Kingdom of Heaven (which this movie most resembles), Gladiator). Great fighting scenes in that quick time/slow time way of Gladiator. Lot's of realism.
What nags me about Robin Hood is the obvious setting up of the sequel, the franchise, the bloody POC - let's get kids eating their lunches from our lunch boxes and sleeping in our tie-in sheets and thinking Jack Sparrow is cool- feel to the movie. A prequel indeed! The movie stuck me over and over again as introduction of characters and setting of foundations for the next movie. Take the character of the Sheriff of Nottingham, really important to this episode? Not so much. NEXT episode, you bet. But they had to introduce him now to set the table for the next movie. Friar Tuck? Same deal. The 'Lost Boys of the Hood', come on?, it just goes on and on. The only interesting part was King John - good guy? bad guy? Who can tell?
(Sidebar comment - Test for a villain? Shaved head. Sorry, Jon Luc Picard. You know if the guy shaves his head, he is, by default , the villain. True for both movies, by the way)
Will I go see the sequel (oh there is a sequel, make no mistake)? Probably, but like watching Pirates of the Caribbean or eating at a McDonald's, the experience will be unhealthy and boring, predictable in a word.
Some movies you can watch, enjoy and forget. Others stick with you. Robin Hood is the former. I haven't given it a thought. (OK maybe a fleeting thought about Lady Marian in her PJ's by the firelight, but give me a break.) District Nine is one of the latter. There are unanswered questions - What happened to the aliens to bring them here? Why didn't they use their superior technology? How could we have treated them the way we did? What would I do?
Both movies trade in archetypes and myths. And you would think for all the stagecraft, Robin Hood would come out as the winner, but Wikus van de Merw is Everyman called to be something higher and better than when he starts. (And he may just be the Prometheus of this myth in part 2.) Maybe Robin Hood suffers because it is historical - we know how the Welch, the Scots and especially the Irish will benefit from English democracy won from King John. And the zenophobia in District Nine has its analogue in Robin Hood, the French are little better than the 'Prawns'. Maybe it is precisely the modernity of District Nine that makes it compelling? It is, after all, as much about African politics and culture, black and white, as it is about aliens. There is just something that rings truer in District Nine, more compelling and more human to me - for good or ill.
While I was mowing the lawn after watching District Nine, I got to thinking about how we treat minorities throughout history. That led me to consider our own genocidal treatment of Native Americans (Google Seminoles, for one example of how they were hunted after expulsion from Florida.) What if there had been some devastating illness in the New World that decimated the European population instead of the other way around? What if Native Americans had gained a technological advantage over whites in the New World? (Maybe by way of contact with the Chinese or Arabs from Muslim Spain.) What if there was a nation of English whites along the eastern seaboard and a Spanish nation along the western seaboard, but the rest of the country belong to the native nations? Say from Tennessee to Colorado was in native nation hands? The farmlands of Ohio, the mines of the Rockies, the oil in the Gulf, all in native nation hands? How would that have changed the course of history?
So District Ten ('I will return in three years') could be a very interesting movie. Unpredictable. How will we fare? Independence Day all over again? Or something different? I am excited to think about what the next chapter of our relationship with the 'prawns' might be.
"Robin Hood: Outlaw of Nottingham"? I can guess. Marian is kidnapped; Robin must save her by infiltrating Nottingham; assisted by the lost boys of the hood who Little John makes into a fighting force; King John finally forced to sign the Magna Carta at the end.
Myths are always predictable: we all know the stories before we hear and see them presented. But which myth? What is the story we are watching? That what sometimes makes the narrative compelling.
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