Russell Crowe's Robin Hood 2010

They say that each generation gets its own particular Robin Hood, and now the 21st Century prepares to see yet another interpretation of the medieval legend about an outlaw with a bow and arrow. The Internet is red hot with video clips and interviews about 72 year old Sir Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood which gets released today! Australia is already releasing stamps showing scenes from the new film. My regular readers will be aware that during this movies long build-up, I have posted quite a few times about various stages of its production. From what I have seen from the teaser trailers, it does looks very good and I am looking forward to it.

The newspapers have been full of articles about the making of this epic, including its possible release in 3D-a sequel (if the film is successful) and on Russell Crowe’s voice training, while he was preparing for his starring role.

Crowe, 45, was born in New Zealand and brought up in Australia but will play the new role with an ‘English’ accent. Ridley Scott hired three voice coaches: Judy Dickerson, Sara Poyzer and Andrew Jack, who worked with other cast members, including Cate Blanchett, who plays Maid Marian. Veteran film director, Scott, wanted to make sure the movie sounds as well as looks ‘accurate’, so Crowe’s Robin will be pronouncing Nottingham as 'Noddinham.’

But this ridiculous fuss over ‘Robin Hood’s accent' continued today (Friday) after some papers have reported that Russell Crowe stormed out of a BBC 4 interview recorded at London’s Dorchester Hotel in Park Lane, with Mark Lawson. He apparently flipped when Lawson suggested that Crowe had ‘hints’ of Irish in his portrayal of the outlaw from ‘Nottingham.’ The New Zealander raged: “You’ve got dead ears, mate – seriously dead ears if you think that’s an Irish accent.”

Voice Coach, Sara Poyzer later insisted that she taught him the Nottinghamshire accent, and that he did a pretty good job. But according to the press, Judy Dickerson contradicted this and said she coached him to speak like someone from the Rutland area!

            Leon Unczur, Sheriff of Nottingham

Councilor Leon Unczur, the current Sheriff of Nottingham, said that Crowe’s accent was “not bad,” although, some jester, interviewed after seeing the movie thought he turned out sounding more like an Aussie doing an impression of Jim Bowen from ‘Bullseye!’

VisitBritain has teamed up with Universal Pictures and other tourism agencies to promote the film and some of its locations, which include the East Midlands, Pembrokeshire and the Ashridge Estate in Hertfordshire. VisitBritain chief executive Sandie Dawe added: "We know that 40 per cent of our potential visitors would be ‘very likely’ to visit places from films and thoroughly enjoy visiting film locations they see on the big screen."

People staying in holiday lodges in the Midlands can head to Nottingham Castle and the Sherwood Forest Visitor Centre to see the exhibition ‘Robin Hood – The Movie’. They will be able to see props, costumes and also some film memorabilia. The existing forest center exhibition about the history of Robin Hood's Sherwood Forest has also been given a complete makeover.

All the exhibitions are free and throughout the month, known of course as ‘Robin Hood Month,’ medieval and Robin Hood themed events will take place all over Sherwood Forest and the surrounding communities. Nottingham County Council, together with Rufford Abbey Country Park and Sherwood Forest National Nature Reserve, have thrown themselves into the celebrations with gusto!

Director Sir Ridley Scott said: "It was fundamental to the project that this motion picture was filmed in Britain – it was extremely important to catch the real essence and feeling only British locations in particular could achieve. The only way we could achieve such a successful production was with the authenticity of the locations Britain and the East Midlands had to offer.’

Russell Crowe says he has loved the story since he was a boy, “I watched the Richard Greene TV series, but when you see the episodes now, they’re a bit creaky, and it’s basically the same story every week. I saw the Errol Flynn version and the Douglas Fairbanks one when I was really young. But I really disliked ‘Prince of Thieves’ with Kevin Costner. I thought it was like a Jon Bon Jovi video clip-all the mullet hairdos.”

This was the 1991 version which is chiefly remembered for Costner’s broad American accent, the most hilariously camp Sheriff of Nottingham ever, in the form of Alan Rickman, and Morgan Freeman’s use of a telescope about 400 years before it was invented.

“I still think there has never been a cinema Robin Hood who could have really existed,” Crowe says. “When you do the research you discover that the Robin Hood story is based on 24 to 30 different real people who were born in lots of different places. So you can take the time period, use the core message and put a different take on it.”

“Part of the recalibration of Robin Hood,” Crowe continues, “is to put him into a place where he’s a real man with a real job. I wanted to take out the fairytale, superhero aspect. He’s got at least ten years of military experience behind him. Our attitude was that all the politics, the philosophical aspects, the romance, all grow out of the story of a real person.”

For the first time, Crowe is credited as a producer, he has been involved in every aspect of the production-from the script, to the costume he wears, in this case a battered tunic and a chain mail over worn leather trousers. As I reported in an earlier post, he got himself in to peak condition for the part. His daily routine included bike riding, gym time and hours learning archery on his farm near Coff’s Harbor in New South Wales.

“Archery is a beautiful thing when you get it right, Crowe explains. “I love it and I’ve continued with it. I have a collection of bows from the film and I go out back and drag out the target and shoot off 50 arrows or more for relaxation.

Crowe did most of the action scenes himself. This is movie making on a grand scale, there’s one spectacular sequence where Robin Hood leads his band to repel an invasion by the French. This scene (see my earlier post), was filmed on a beach in Pembrokeshire (which is meant to be Dover), was a nightmare to film. The tides are fast and potentially treacherous. Scott had to marshal 130 horsemen on the beach-including Crowe - and a landing craft disgorging French fighters on to the shore under a cloud of arrows. Crowe described it as ‘all anarchy, violence and adrenaline. It was intense.’

“You’re in a cavalry charge with a 130 horses going as fast as they can,” he says, “and you smash in to 500 men on the ground and have seven or eight fights. And it has to take place at exactly the right time.” According to Crowe there was about 15 people taken from the field. Some of them went to hospital but were OK.

The script is written by Brian Helgeland (LA Confidential) and it places Robin Hood in the familiar reign of Richard the Lionheart (Danny Huston) as a battle-hardened, middle-aged archer. Robin has three ‘merrie men,’ Little John (Kevin Durand), Will Scarlet (Scot Grimes) and Alan A’Dayle (Alan Doyle) along with Mark Addy as the bee-keeping, mead swilling Friar Tuck. The rather spiky widow, Marian, is played by Cate Blanchett who has to resist the amorous attentions of the Sheriff of Nottingham (Matthew Macfadyen). Richard’s newly crowned brother; King John (Oscar Isaac) defies the advice of his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine (Eileen Atkins). The design team was led by Arthur Max.

Mike (one of our Whistling Arrows), has already been to see it, and described it as: “.........gritty muddy, good action and good characters. I was not disappointed and they have left themselves wide open for a sequel because this film ends where the others begin. The sets, the thousands of props, were fantastic, dialogue gets a little hard to hear, and eventually, when the Blue Ray version is out it will be a joy to see it again.”

If you see this new version of Sir Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood, please get in touch at disneysrobin@googlemail.com or comment below and let me know your opinions of it. I will be very interested to read them.

My new visitors might like to know that I regularly post; not only on the films, television series, places, ballads and images associated with Robin Hood, but also about the research into his real historical existence. I have been studying the legend for over thirty years. Please click on the Labels in the right-hand column to see the relevant posts so far. And please stick around to see plenty more!