{"id":882065,"date":"2026-06-21T05:31:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T05:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/882065\/"},"modified":"2026-06-21T05:31:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T05:31:20","slug":"the-death-of-robin-hood-whats-real-and-whats-the-movie-based-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/882065\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Death of Robin Hood\u2019: What\u2019s Real and What\u2019s the Movie Based On"},"content":{"rendered":"

In A24\u2019s trailer<\/a> for its new film<\/a> \u201cThe Death of Robin Hood<\/a>,\u201d the first thing we hear is Hugh Jackman<\/a>\u2019s grizzly voice say, \u201cPeople speak of Robin Hood, tell his stories, they\u2019re all lies.\u201d Over Jackman\u2019s narration, we see violent, murderous images that counter our idea of Robin Hood as a merry bandit who stole from the rich and gave to the poor.<\/p>\n

The tag line pitch (\u201cHe was no hero\u201d) is that the film will reveal the lie at the heart of the legend of Robin Hood, but does that mean this revisionist version is true, or historically accurate? On this week\u2019s episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast,<\/a> we asked writer\/director Michael Sarnoski<\/a> what he based his story on, and if any version of Robin Hood has ever been based on a real person.<\/p>\n

\"'Victory'<\/a> \"'Valley<\/a> <\/p>\n

\u201c[Robin Hood] is probably an amalgamation of a few different people,\u201d said Sarnoski. \u201cThere isn\u2019t really a real Robin Hood, he kind of became a bit of a folk thing, like, people would [say], \u201cOh, that guy\u2019s a real Robin Hood.\u2019 There were probably a few outlaws named Robin, that was a common name back then, and that just turned into the Robin Hood that we know over time.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Sarnoski, the first written accounts of Robin Hood came two to three centuries after the 13th century, when he supposedly lived, and were based on oral stories that got passed down, and likely romanticized, through the years. Sarnoski\u2019s film is grounded in a real time (1274 AD) and real place (the Celtic fringe, with principal photography taking place in Northern Ireland), and he did a great deal of research into what life was like during that time.<\/p>\n

\u201cDay-to-day survival was hard, and fighting back then was brutal,\u201d said Sarnoski. \u201cI was watching this series of lectures on English history, and the professor had a great quote that was basically, \u2018We think of medieval battles as knights in shining armor riding around on horses, but most of the time it was just peasants beating each other to death with shovels.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The question Sarnoski asked himself: What would a bandit and outlaw look like in a world already steeped in extreme violence? Through this historical lens, even Robin Hood folklore played differently.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sorts of things that Robin would have done, even the sorts of things that he does in the original ballads, are pretty morbid and horrifying,\u201d said Sarnoski. \u201cThey\u2019re played for fun, but he\u2019s going around chopping off people\u2019s heads, wearing them on his shoulders, and pretending to be them. These are not the activities of a nice guy necessarily. There is a lot of morbidity and violence even in the early Robin Hood legends, so it wasn\u2019t that much of a stretch to be like, \u2018Well, if those are based on actual actions in any way, he probably did some iffy stuff.\u2019 Maybe that turned into these kind of folk stories, but he definitely murdered some folks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"'TheMichael Sarnoski<\/a> and Hugh Jackman on \u2018The Death of Robin Hood<\/a>\u2018 setAidan Monaghan<\/p>\n

Like most people, Sarnoski grew up with the light hearted stories of Robin Hood and his merry men. As a kid, he repeatedly watched the 1971 Disney animated \u201cRobin Hood\u201d with his father. Later, a neighbor, who became a mentor figure after Sarnoski\u2019s father passed away, gave him a book from the 1940s that contains the canonical stories from the centuries old lore of Robin Hood, one of which is \u201cThe Death of Robin Hood.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt didn\u2019t compute,\u201d said Sarnoski about reading \u201cThe Death of Robin Hood.\u201d \u201cIt was something I needed to figure out, like, \u2018Wait a minute, these iconic folkloric figures can die?\u2019 That became this fascination for me for a long time, and then that turned into this script.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the original story\u2019s imagery and setting for Robin Hood\u2019s death are something that moved Sarnoski \u2014 and he stays largely true to in his film \u2014 the circumstances leading up to his death never felt true to the filmmaker, and the role of the prioress (Jodie Comer) and Robin Hood (Jackman) would need reinvention.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the original ballads, the prioress was always portrayed as this evil nun, and Robin was kind of the goodly hero, and it felt a little black and white, and simple,\u201d said Sarnoski, who looked for inspiration for more complex and human versions of these characters. In particular, he drew inspiration in researching Hildegard von Bingen, a polymath nun, who was a theologian, musician, and healer. \u201cI turned the prioress sort of into this leader of almost a commune, she runs this priory where orphans and lepers and people would go, and she\u2019s there to help them.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Sarnoski\u2019s film, when the prioress takes in and heals a half-dead Robin Hood, the conflict becomes whether the prince of thieves, grappling with his murderous past, can find salvation, and if his healer will discover who he was before she showed him a new way of life.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Death of Robin Hood\u201d is now playing in theaters. <\/p>\n

To hear Sarnoski\u2018s full interview, subscribe to the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast<\/a> on\u00a0Apple<\/a>,\u00a0Spotify<\/a>, or your favorite podcast platform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In A24\u2019s trailer for its new film \u201cThe Death of Robin Hood,\u201d the first thing we hear is…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":882066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[28],"tags":[171,1020,239903,351144,53,351145,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-882065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-filmmaker-toolkit-podcast","tag-michael-sarnoski","tag-movies","tag-the-death-of-robin-hood","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116786463244730301","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=882065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/882066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=882065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=882065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=882065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}