Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood: A Spoiler Sandwich

Do you know the difference between Robin Hood and Sarah Palin? If you answered no, you just might be Ridley Scott. Scott’s reimagining of Robin Hood borrows so little from the original legend that most buzz of the movie is based upon its departure from the script, but its real novelty lies in its political underpinnings. The story is a new one: it begins in roughly 2003.

Robin Hood is an archer in Richard the Lionheart’s army, returning from a middle eastern crusade that has bankrupted the kingdom both financially and morally. When Richard the Lionheart falls in battle, the crown falls to his younger brother, John, who is an effete (and mysteriously swarthy) upstart, who is literally in bed with the French (the niece of the King of France, a “betrayal” of the Kingdom). John announces a plan to increase taxes on a population we are shown to be taxed into starvation. Oh, the taxes. Medieval trickle-down economics anyone?

Maid Marion, a war widow, tends to the family estate. She works the fields and frets over trying to care for her peasants despite voracious tax collectors stripping the estates wealth. King John does not heed the he warnings of the court that his new taxes will be bleeding a stone”- harming not just the wealth of the estate holders but those poor peasants who depend on their largesse. Remember: the “Tea” in Tea Party stands for “taxed enough already.” Tax the rich, and the poor starve. Without the capitalist’s beneficence, we are all at a loss. Who is John Galt, indeed?!

When the government comes to collect wealth from a noble, he laments he has nothing left to give, they have taken it already: they commence to sack his castle, burn his land and murder the peasants. The evil tax collector, when trying to rape (literally) Maid Marion, espouses Obama’s alleged philosophy of wealth redistribution: “No one person should have 4,000 Acres.”

Robin Hood Galvanizes the overtaxed nobles to support the King in a war against the French on the condition that the King agree to halt taxation without representation. He also throws in some strangely specific demands for rights, like due process, and, why not, several mentions of liberty and a demand for a written constitution. Only when the Government refuses these rights does Robin Hood accept his patriotic duty to take up arms against his over-taxing oppressors.
This Robin Hood does not rob from the rich and give to the poor. He takes up arms against the government for overtaxing the rich, and therefore, starving the poor. There is a quote, “you cannot help the poor by destroying the rich,” recently and falsely attributed to Abraham Lincoln. Why not Robin Hood, eh?