Yesterday, I watched the recent Robin Hood film starring Russell Crowe on HBO. Having read and heard less than stellar reviews of the movie, I wasn't expecting much, but I found Robin Hood to be a very inventive and thorough depiction of the origins of the classic hero.
Most of our hero and superhero stories, especially the film versions, lack effective origins stories. In the first Superman movie, Clark Kent's transformation into the Man of Steel, which is assumed to take about 12 years, happens in a split second as Jeff East is suddenly replaced with Christopher Reeve. This is the manner in which most hero stories are told - so much time is devoted to telling who the hero is while little if any thought is given to how he or she became a hero.
To me, the origins is the most fascinating part of an hero story. That's why I'm such a big fan of the show Smallville and am already salivating in anticipation of next year's Superman: Man of Steel. Tim Burton's Batman films of the 1990s did a good job of sharing the origins of the Caped Crusader, but in general, paying attention to our heros' origins is a very recent trend initiated by Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins.
Ridley Scott's Robin Hood struck me as a truthful telling of the character's story. It effectively captured the history of the era and came up with plausible scenario (sort of) for how Robin Longstride became Robin Hood. The film wasn't great and reached its conclusion rather abruptly, but the attention to detail and the commitment to the character's origins make it a film worth watching.
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