Director and screenwriter Michael Sarnoski, as he began filming his new film, introduced the cast and crew to a beloved animation: Disney’s 1973 “Robin Hood.” In that version, the famous hero is a fox with a feather in his green hat, known for taking from the rich to benefit the poor.
This widespread representation, however, differs drastically from the deep and dark drama that Sarnoski proposes in “The Death of Robin Hood”.
Hugh Jackman plays a grizzled, battle-scarred, reflective Robin at the end of his life. The character is fully aware of the legend that surrounds him.
He meets a woman who extols the virtuous figure of Robin Hood, the vigilante, but he rejects the identification and refers to himself in the third person.
“He wasn’t a hero. He stole and killed for fun, nothing more than that”, he declares. In fact, this more violent view of Robin Hood and other revisionist interpretations of the character are more in line with the original medieval legends than the do-gooder stereotype we know today.
The image of Robin Hood has undergone major transformations over the centuries. Each change reflected the time in which its story was reinterpreted.
The darker versions of the 21st century, therefore, return to the origins of the narrative. However, their creators emphasize that they also echo the present.
The complex takes on the character challenge an often polarized world, where heroes and villains are often presented as exclusively good or evil, in the same simplified way that the legend of Robin Hood has become.
Uncovering the true origins of Robin Hood
Much speculation surrounds the existence of a real-life Robin Hood, but most historians agree that there was no specific individual behind the figure.
What actually existed was a society with profound inequalities, marked by rich landowners and impoverished peasants, a scenario that inspired the creation of the character.
The stories emerged as an oral tradition in the 12th century, but the first written accounts only appeared two centuries later. They were ballads that already portrayed him as a notorious figure.
In these early narratives he was not the noble Sir Robin of Locksley, as in later versions. He had no nobility, being a small rural landowner, just one step above the peasants.
Lady Marian would only be introduced into history in the 16th century. Although Robin could be benevolent towards the poor, his main motivation was not necessarily to help them.
His enemies were the corrupt clergy and landed nobles, who exploited their subordinates.
In an afterword to her 2025 revisionist novel “The Traitor of Sherwood Forest,” medieval historian Amy S. Kaufman describes the Robin Hood of early legend as a “morally questionable medieval conman” — “tricksterish, violent, and irreverent.”
One thing Disney got right: the opening ballads suggest that Robin was, in fact, as cunning as a fox.
A significant change in history occurred in the 16th century, during the reign of Henry VIII (1491-1547), a monarch who admired the legend and even dressed as Robin Hood. It was during this period, when the English king broke with the Catholic Church, that Robin’s devotion to the Virgin Mary disappeared from the narrative.
With the higher classes welcoming the character, Robin stopped showing hatred towards the nobility in the influential chronicles of the time, and began to be portrayed as a noble himself.
By assuming the position of a nobleman with upright morals, who fights against his dishonest peers, Robin Hood stopped questioning society’s power structure.
He was summoned to help good King Richard (1157-1199) retake the throne usurped by his evil brother, Prince John (1166-1216) — a parable included in the Disney production, which shows John as an ambitious, power-hungry lion.
Nineteenth-century children’s books helped transform Robin Hood into a less transgressive benefactor acceptable to the Victorian era.
And, in the 20th century, cinema consolidated this image with matinee idol Errol Flynn (1909-1959) playing the fearless Robin in the popular film “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (1938). The Walt Disney Company, in turn, would crystallize this heroic interpretation into global popular culture, becoming perhaps the most influential version. This phenomenon illustrates how mass media has the power to rewrite and fix narratives in the collective imagination, often simplifying historical complexities to create figures of universal appeal.
How can the same character have such different versions?
Sarnoski revealed to the BBC that the contrast between the Disney film and the original legend had captivated him since childhood, when he read a children’s version of the medieval ballad “The Death of Robin Hood”. In it, Robin meets his silent end, murdered by an evil prioress and her lover.
“I discovered Disney’s Robin Hood and then read The Death of Robin Hood, these two versions of the protagonist”, explained the director. “Trying to deal with that and understand how that could be the same character really stuck with me when I was a kid,” he added.
In Sarnoski’s film, Robin Hood is injured during a shocking battle. An arrow passes through a boy’s head from the back, exiting through his eye, and he is taken to a monastery to recover.
Jodie Comer plays the prioress, who is kind, unlike her portrayal in the ballad.
“I didn’t want the prioress to be just that evil nun, nor for Robin to be just that good hero”, explains Sarnoski about the complexity of his characters.
As Robin reflects on and begins to mourn his past, the film “really becomes a story about him facing his own legend and his desire for what would be a right death,” the director continues.
The distortion of legend is also a central theme in Kaufman’s novel. Like Sarnoski, his first impressions of the story were shaped by the Disney cartoon.
“I grew up with Robin Hood the fox,” she told the BBC. “Later, I delved into medieval studies, discovered ballads, and asked myself, ‘Where is my Robin Hood, who I know and love?'”
Her book focuses on the fictional character Jane, a peasant girl who falls in love with the legend of Robin Hood. She is enchanted by him and joins his gang, but begins to question whether the heroic image and Robin himself have deceived her with their seduction.
True to the character’s origins, Kaufman’s Robin is neither hero nor villain. She says that, in the ballads, “he is incredibly subversive, when you watch how he stands up against the people who hold power, like the kings, the nobility, the Church.”
“But in every ballad, he also has a tragic end or is a victim of his own imperfections.” In the 20th century, these more complex visions of Robin Hood were rare.
In film, actors such as Douglas Fairbanks (1883-1939), Kevin Costner and Russell Crowe played the role, and almost all maintained the stereotypical image.
A notable exception is “Robin and Marian” (1976), an elegant and intelligent film that deserves wider recognition.
Sean Connery (1930-2020) plays an aging Robin who, after decades, meets Marian (Audrey Hepburn, 1929-1993), now a prioress.
This Robin denies the veracity of the legendary stories about him and appears contemplative at the end of his life.
“I always think about all the deaths I’ve seen,” he confesses to Marian, questioning his true purpose.
Questions about power, the nature of heroes, and the way stories are told are precisely what makes revisionist views so pertinent today.
“The world is consolidating power in a way similar to the Middle Ages,” says Kaufman. “Some of the things they needed to study are the same things we will need to look at today.”
Sarnoski highlights how his characters use their stories as instruments of power.
“Robin used stories as weapons and as a way to perpetuate violence”, attracting followers, according to him. The prioress “uses stories to help and heal people.” These strategies are now ubiquitous.
“We are now immersed in narratives, between social networks, the internet and simply in everything that surrounds us”, continues Sarnoski. “We divide ourselves very quickly into villages and tribes, creating heroes and villains, and we don’t live in the gray area where life really lives.”
As stimulating as the new, darker versions of Robin Hood may be, it is likely that they will not be able to replace the image created by Disney in the popular imagination.
“Not everyone wants to see their Robin Hood costume destroyed,” explains Kaufman. “He has become a kind of Santa Claus, in the sense that he represents something greater than the original legend, whatever that may be.”
“The Death of Robin Hood” is showing in Brazilian cinemas.