The last character in my collection with enough variety of approaches to warrant a comparison article is the oldest of the lot. I toyed with the idea of a comparison article for King Arthur but honestly there isn't nearly as much to work with there as you might imagine. Robin Hood on the other hand has been filmed and televised in a pretty wide variety of ways.
I have to admit that unlike my Zorro, Batman and Superman collections, my Robin Hood collection is not as complete as I normally strive for. I own copies of a dozen movies and four television series, but there are many, many more out there. Once I had collected the most well known Robin Hood productions, I stopped actively pursuing the collection to completion. Like Sherlock Holmes (another largely but not totally complete collection of mine) there are a huge number of small budget movies and television productions featuring the character and finding all of them is damn near impossible. The obscure stuff is often pricey as well since fewer copies were pressed on release, if the show or movie ever even had a dvd release in the first place. Still, every once in a while I stumble on a dvd that I don't already own and can actually afford, so this list may well get an update one day, although the gaps in my collection tend to reflect those lesser productions and so don't likely have much of "the best of" to add. Still, you never know...
Robbing from the rich, giving to the poor. Splitting arrows. Hiding in the greenwood. Unironic tights!
Who did it best? Read on!Once again, when it comes to bringing a great Robin Hood story to life, like any action movie or show, the casting of the villains is often the make or break element. If the Sheriff of Nottingham, Guy of Gisbourne or Prince John aren't worthy opponents, no amount of charm, adventure or lycra will make the project work.
Prince John
Of all the Prince Johns there have been, none was Prince John-ee-er than Peter Ustinov in the Disney animated version of the tale. Sure, he's a lion but he's a cowardly, mane-less lion who has a head two sizes too small for the crown he's usurped. Plus, he sucks his thumb...
...and he is the ONLY Prince John I know of that has a theme song. A pretty catchy one, too.
Guy of Gisbourne
Guy of Gisbourne isn't the first villain you think of when you hear "Robin Hood" but he's often the most dangerous opponent to Locksley. It's a role regularly filled by actors who could easily play the leading man rather than the villain. The villain is usually as sauve, confident and dangerous with a sword as Robin Hood.
When it comes to sword-play, let alone confident leading man-ness, no Guy of Gisboure can beat the late, great Basil Rathbone. If you've read my previous article about the Best of Zorro, you're aware that Rathbone was at the time considered the best screen fencer in the world, so skilled that he made his screen opponents look better at the art than than they sometimes were. He could and did play leading men and it isn't tough to imagine him in the role of Robin Hood himself.
The Sheriff of Nottingham
The Sheriff is most often THE villain of the piece and has been played by a lot of notable actors over the years. Malcolm McDowell vexed the female Robin Hood (Kiera Knightly) in one version, Matthew McFadyen played him opposite Russell Crowe, Tony Robinson brought an inept schemer to the small screen and many great British character actors have portrayed him in every variant from deeply evil to cringing coward.
For all that, the best is an easy pick. I'm not a fan of much in the Kevin Costner version of Robin Hood, but Alan Rickman's Sheriff of Nottingham is so wonderfully evil that he belongs in a whole different production. There's pretty much him and then a bunch of mediocre crap that they arranged around him.
Special mention to John Finnemore's Sheriff of Nottingham.
A whole episode of John Finnemore's Souvenir Program is ALWAYS worth a listen but the relevant skit about the Sheriff of Nottingham starts at about 14:05 with the line "Me? Oh, I'm a copper, actually."
"Why, thank you good Sir Robin..." Four hilarious minutes in Nottingham.
The Merry Men
Once you've got your villains sorted out, you need to give Robin a gang of Merry Men to lead.
There have been several approaches using different line ups for the gang but the at least 2 of the core outlaws show up in most versions, often mixing in more obscure Merry Men like Alan A'Dale and Much the miller's son.
Friar Tuck
The Friar is probably my favourite character. He's most often under-used and little more than comic relief but he's also a hero who isn't cut from the traditional hero cloth. Fat, bald, middle aged men aren't usually the first guys cast in an action movie, but it's tough to do Robin Hood without one.
I dig a bunch of Friar Tucks from a lot of productions over the years, but Mike McShane gets the nod here for his delivery of one line in Robin Hood - Prince of Thieves.
Will Scarlett
Will Scarlett is on of those characters we all know of but most of us would be hard pressed to name an actor that has played him. To pick the best of such an obscure lot is a task of some difficulty. So in this case, I'll give the nod to the most persistent.
In the 1956 Richard Greene Robin Hood series, a clean shaven Paul Eddington took the role of Will Scarlett in the 4th and final season. You might recognize Eddington from his most famous role, that of Jim Hacker, first as a newly minted Minister of Parliament in Yes, Minister and then as Prime Minister James Hacker in Yes, Prime Minister.
Before he landed the role of Scarlett in the fourth season, Eddington sported a bewildering array of facial hair as he played more than 20 different roles as a guest star. Eddington played a minor Merry Man, a poacher, a variety of nobleman villains and even Jewish elder Aaron, sporting a clean shave, a dandy moustache or a full beard and every glued-on chin decoration in between, Eddington has to get the "best" Will Scarlett nod just from shear stick-to-it've-ness.
Little John
It's a safe bet that Little John is the most well known of Robin's Merry Men. A whole host of big, burly actors have played the outlaw with a staff of oak and a heart of gold. For me, Alan Hale who played him in the Errol Flynn version is the most memorable, mainly for his resemblance to his son, Alan Hale Jr. who played the Skipper on Gilligan's Island. But this is a "best of", not "most memorable" list.
In my humble opinion, Phil Harris wins this one. He's the voice actor who played the big bear of a man as an actual bear in the Disney animated version. Harris's Little John was stalwart, mighty and looked great in green, even if he couldn't quite fit into a pair of tights...
I do have to wonder why he wore NO pants in his regular costume but rocked the pink polka-dot underpants in the dress.
If you think he looks a bit familiar, you can be forgiven for that. He does.
It seems that Disney was the original recycler. They used the same voice actor, Phil Harris, for Baloo in the Jungle Book and his doppelganger Little John in Robin Hood. Interestingly, there's a LOT of reused and over traced animation in Robin Hood that most folks assume was done that way to save money. That's a VERY 21st Century way of thinking. Back in the early 70s when Robin Hood was made, there was as yet no easy way to retrace footage the way we would see later from companies like Filmation who really pioneered animation on the cheap. It turns out that reusing footage this way actually took longer and cost more at the time. They did it because they knew that these character designs and animation beats worked on film and preferred to stick to things they knew would work. Creatively un-creative...
Special mention to Mike Edmonds who plays a version of Little John in Maid Marian and Her Merry Men from the BBC. Tony Robinson created a goofy, musical version of Robin Hood where the real leader was Marian. It's mainly aimed at the younger set and not really my cup o' soup, but the central conceit of Marion as the brains and Robin as a foppish clothes horse is delicious.
Their version of Little John was the un-ironically named Little Ron, played with violent abandon by little person Mike Edmonds.
The Saracen
The first example I can find of adding a Saracen (or Moor) companion to Robin Hood comes from Robin of Sherwood from ITV in the mid 80s. The character was presumably added to broaden the colour palette of the Merry Men which up to then had ranged all the way from white to paler white. Given the time, it was pretty forward thinking and most every major Robin Hood production since has included an other than Caucasian friend of Robin Hood met somewhere on his travels outside England, returning with him to add some diversity to Sherwood Forest.
Morgan Freeman is the natural choice for "Best" of the Merry Men of Colour. He's a superb actor and for most people outside Britain he is the first example of the addition of a Saracen (Moor in his case) to the band. Too bad he's wasted in the mediocrity that is Robin Hood - Prince of Thieves.
Honestly, I have yet to see any Robin Hood except Robin of Sherwood pull off this bit of retrofitting with any great effect. It most often feels like tokenism to me since it's so glaringly just ONE person of colour in the midst of an entirely white cast. While I applaud the intent, it seems like an impossible task to diversify a property that would have been "historically" a monochrome affair.
The television series, Merlin, faced with a similar problem of historically and traditionally all white cast in an all white "historical" property simply said "Fuck it," and mounted their production with actors from a variety of ethnic groups. After the initial "hmmm?" factor wore off, it worked just fine for the run of the show. Likely we'll see something similar in Robin Hood productions in the future, making this particular distinction moot.
So to name a "best of" in this role, I prefer to go a different way here. Since the character isn't a set one, having different names in different productions, I choose to think that we're looking to name the best non-white character in a Robin Hood production. For me, there's only one "best" of in that category.
And it still fits my parameter because Worf had been forced to play a member of Robin Hood's Merry Men in Q's production and he's quite obviously not white. So Worf, not Michael Dorn who played him, is my pick for Best non-white actor in a Robin Hood production. He's delightful.
Interestingly, if you look a the Star Trek - Next Generation version of the Merry Men of the future, it's probably the most diverse version of the gang ever on film, comprising three Caucasian men, one playing a golden skinned android, two women, one of whom is Greek, and two African American men, one playing a blind man and one playing a minority of one, the only Klingon in Starfleet.
Star Trek for the diversity win. Again.
Before we get to the two main characters of the mythology, a couple of special mentions.
Best music
I haven't generally bothered delving in to the nuts and bolts side of movie and television making that is part and parcel of bringing fantasy and sci-fi characters to life. I could have cited the music from the 1977 Superman movie, the superb practical and matte sets from Tim Burton's Batman and many more technical details in these comparison articles but for the most part that stuff doesn't interest me enough to write about. I'm more of a big picture kind of guy.
Still, in the case of Robin Hood (and the as yet to be comparison articled Spider-Man) there's a musical element that simply cannot be overlooked.
It's fairly rare these days for a television or movie theme to be memorable, but back in the 60s and 70s it was practically a legal requirement. Very few themes are as catchy or as memorable as the one from Rocket Robin Hood. While the sci-fi rethink of the classic tale doesn't generally age very well, the music remains as catchy and ear-wormy as ever.
So, that'll be stuck in your head ALL day. You're welcome.
And isn't it amazing that there hasn't been a big budget sci-fi Robin Hood movie yet? It's such a fertile concept either for a serious or smarmy take on the character and yet no one has Flash Gordoned Robin Hood in the modern era. Pixar could make a mint on the idea.
The look and feel
When you put a property like Robin Hood into the hands of filmmakers and give them budgets that rival the GDP of a small country, you tend to get slick, beautiful, perfectly choreographed product on the screen. For me, that sometimes makes it tough to suspend my disbelief even if the movie or show is brilliantly entertaining.
Back in the 80's, the ITV version of Robin, Robin of Sherwood, created a version of Robin that was impressive despite a relatively small budget. Interiors were dark and dingy, the way you would expect medieval homes and castles to be, the fights were brawls, rarely appearing slick or over choreographed and the whole production felt more authentic than pretty much any other before or since. The show mixed in some pagan mysticism that never felt out of place in the slightly magical Sherwood they created. The music by Clannad set a Celtic moodiness over each episode that enhanced the genuine feel of the show as well, even if it wasn't quite Rocket Robin Hood levels of catchy.
If I had to pick one version of Robin Hood to represent the character and mythology to future generations, Robin of Sherwood would be the one. If you've never seen it, I strongly recommend hunting it up. It's not as slick as some recent incarnations, nor as fun as the Errol Flynn version but for purity of spirit and execution it cannot be beaten.
The big two.
Maid Marian
In the old Robin tales, Maid Marian if often just a McGuffin for Robin to rescue and marry at the end, her only job to pine away for her man in his tights. She might get a chance to warn him of a trap laid by the Sheriff, but that's often the extent of her contribution to the adventure.
I cannot tell you how much I hate that.
There have been more than a few Marian portrayals that bring some life and fire to the character but it is important to remember that she is a character from 12th century Britain, with all the repressive sexist baggage that goes along with that, so having her be a super-heroine isn't terribly effective either. For my money, Judi Trott brought us the most believable, charming, strong and not to mention beautiful version of the character, ever.
Trott's Marian starts out as a typical 12th century woman without much agency over her life, but over the course of the series she evolves into a strong, independent and capable woman. She learns to fight, shoot and even lead without the unlikely conceit that she would be a physical match for a man in a straight fight. Plus, she's the romantic interest for two different Robin Hoods over the course of the series.
Robin Hood
Robin Hood is the original rogue, the model for many action heroes that followed him. There have been broody, goofy, dark, silly, contemplative, bland and even female versions of the character but there's really only one version of the hero himself that comes off as the best of the lot. Honestly, this is probably the easiest pick in the whole property.
Errol Flynn. He may not technically have been the first to play Robin but he truly is the classic.
Nobody, but NOBODY has had more fun in a pair of green tights. I cannot imagine how daunting it must be to step into the role of Robin Hood knowing that no matter how you play him you will ALWAYS find your performance compared to Flynn's effortless, graceful, gleeful Robin of Locksley.
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