It would take three and a half hours to drive the distance today in 1194, when this movie takes place, the journey would have taken rather longer. Nottingham, by the way, is 164 miles away from Dover as the crow flies. Especially not one who attacks downwind and stinks of garlic." Robin shrugs and boasts that his home is close by they’ll be in Nottingham by nightfall. Azeem shakes his head at Robin and explains that an awareness of one’s surroundings is actually an asset in battle: "No man controls my destiny. Azeem anticipates the attack and scares off the heavies, who splash back to their little boat and paddle away. Robin rolls around in the wet sand for a bit because that’s how he demonstrates affection, then tries to get Azeem kidnapped back to Jerusalem. Speaking of unlikely, Robin and Azeem arrive at Dover. There’s some “join us!” “never!” to-ing and fro-ing and then all the Klanners rush at BRIAN BLESSED, and Nottingham smiles evilly, and we’re supposed to understand that the Ku Klux Klan has overpowered BRIAN FUCKING BLESSED? Doesn’t seem very likely, does it? A servant tricks BRIAN BLESSED into going outside, where he’s accosted by the Ku Klux Klan, here led by Alan Rickman as the Sheriff of Nottingham. Robin doesn’t work very hard to talk Azeem out of this plan.īRIAN BLESSED, who plays Robin’s father, is hanging out in his drafty castle, doing whatever it is one does in drafty castles when one is estranged from one’s son. Morgan Freeman is Azeem, and he owes Robin his life, so he’s going to hang out with him until he has repaid him. Robin and Morgan leave dead Peter behind and hide in a dark corner nearby, to share a melon (which Morgan Freeman awesomely breaks open across his knee) and some exposition. Peter immediately gets shot and makes Robin swear to take care of his sister, Marian, as he dies. There’s some fighting (and Robin’s first Heroic Utterance: “this is what English courage looks like”) and Robin and Morgan Freeman escape, Robin’s buddy Peter in tow. Seriously, to have grown that much hair they must have been imprisoned for, like, decades. What does matter is this: Kevin Costner, in the world’s most horrifying fright-wig and beard, is languishing in a prison in Jerusalem, along with a bunch of other similarly beardy dudes and also Morgan Freeman. Have a cookie.įor our purposes, however, none of that matters. He also once said he’d sell London if only he could find someone to buy it. Good King Richard, the history professor inside me is compelled to point out, who spent less than ten months of his ten-year reign actually in England. We get some exposcreention about how good King Richard is away leading the Third Crusade and almost everyone who went with him died in his absurd campaign to reclaim the holy lands. A) Because the Tapestry represents the Norman invasion and William the Conqueror’s victory over the Saxon English king Harold a hundred years before this film is set, opening the movie by referencing the Tapestry subtly sets up the central socio-political tension of the Robin Hood myth between the conquering Normans and the subjugated Saxons, or, B) we learn later that Maid Marian embroidered all 230+ feet of the tapestry herself. The use of the Bayeux Tapestry here is important for one of the following two reasons. The film opens with a titles crawl over the Bayeux Tapestry. It is horrific contrivances running amok amidst the pillars of some of modern film’s greatest campy acting, chased down by the swelling tide of heroic music and lovingly beaten to death by absurd slow-mo action sequences. It is, indeed, everything a great Monsters & Mullets movie is supposed to be: equal parts nostalgia-evoking, horror-inducing, cringe-warranting and adoration-justifying.
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