Howdy kids! Welcome back to The Book Report.
Before I go anywhere, I should tell you that preorders for the Mythoi: Birth graphic novel went on sale yesterday. You can download all the issues for free, but the graphic novel has some great goodies that you’ll otherwise miss. Besides, I like holding a book in my hands better than viewing it on a screen.

Last weekend Ridley Scott — a favorite director of mine — released a new take on the Robin Hood legend, starring Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett. Check out the trailer:

This new version was entertaining, to be sure, but I felt something was missing. It just didn’t quite work as the movie it wanted to be. Sgt. Angle talks about it better than I can in yesterday’s post, and besides, I’m not here to talk movies, I’m here to talk books.

The name Robin Hood first appeared in print in England around 1228C.E. in the rolls of the English Justice system. Robinhood, Robehod, Hobbehod, and Robunhod are all names used in criminal trials, though there is much agreement that these names did not refer to the same man. In 1605 British Secretary of State Robert Cecil branded Guy Fawkes and his accomplices “Robin Hoods”.
The first clear literary reference to Robin Hood appears in William Langland’s allegorical narrative poem Piers Plowman, written in the mid– to late-14th Century: “I know not perfectly the Paternoster as the priest sings it/But I know the rhymes of Robin Hood. (translated from Middle English)” This suggests that by then there already was a literary tradition of Robin Hood, though whether it was determined fact or fiction we have no idea.
The earliest existing ballad of Robin Hood is “Robin Hood and the Monk”, written around 1450C.E. The first printed collection of stories is “The Gest of Robyn Hode” (c. 1475).
Sir Walter Scott’s 1819 novel Ivanhoe, is one of the more influential pieces of literature to shape how modern audiences view Robin Hood. It is because of this work that we tend to associate Robin Hood with the name Locksley. A key theme in Scott’s novel is the Saxon-Norman conflict in England, for which Robin Hood became famously associated with. For the first time, Robin Hood is placed as a contemporary of King Richard I (The Lion-heart), most works placed him two centuries later. Robin’s feat of splitting a competitor’s arrow with one of his own appears for the first time in the novel as well.

One of the other major influences on modern audiences was Howard Pyle’s The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, written in 1883. The book was actually a compilation of many of the old Robin Hood ballads, reworked into one long narrative and illustrated for children. This book was the culmination of many other authors’ attempts to romanticize the outlaw, creating more of a philanthropist rogue than highwayman and brigand. In fact, the Douglas Fairbanks silent film, Errol Flynn’s technicolor masterpiece, the Disney film, and the Mel Brooks spoof Robin Hood: Men in Tights, all owe much of their imagery and characterization more from Pyle’s book than anywhere else. Though I suppose Mel Brooks owes his imagery and characterization to Pyle second hand, through the films he’s spoofing.

My favorite piece of Robin Hood literature breaks from tradition almost entirely. In the 1991 novel Sherwood, author Parke Godwin sets the story even earlier than the Richard I tradition, during the invasion and invents after William the Conqueror in 1066. Rather than setting Robin Hood at the middle of the Saxon-Norman conflict, Godwin places him at the beginning of it.

I think this change from the typical Robin Hood story is effective for a couple of reasons. Godwin writes the characters well, he presents the conflict leading to the emergence of Robin as an outlaw in an intelligent way, and the story itself is a damn good yarn. But really, Godwin could’ve given us almost the exact same story without breaking from the traditional Robin Hood time period. But breaking from the tradition to set the story in the middle of the 11th Century allows Godwin to really highlight the political and religious differences of the English and the French-speaking Normans.
Prior to the Norman invasion, the English political system was a kind of democratic monarchy called Witenagemot. In this system, the land-owning earls would meet in public council with the king to discuss important policy, such as taxes. They had the power to ‘depose’ an unpopular king, and generally, monarchs were elected into power by the earls as well. These meetings allowed fluidity into the government. If harvests were bad during a particular year, the earls could agree that taxes should be lower, so they could afford to buy more grain from elsewhere.
After William I conquered England, he did away with the Witan and established the much more rigid feudalism the Normans inherited from France. For the English, it was as if any kind of common sense was removed from the law. Taxes, or any other public policy, shifted at the whim of the King.
Religiously, although England had been Christianized, there was still strong ties to the land, in part due to vestiges of Celtic druidism hanging on in the countryside, where the influence of the Church was not as strong. The Norman invasion, backed by pope Alexander II, brought with it stronger ties to the Church.
This is the historical setting into which Godwin inserts his Robin Hood story. The main character is Edward Aelredson, nicknamed Robin by his mother after the forest lord Robin Goodfellow (Shakespeare’s Puck). He is a small countryside landowner whose life is turned completely upside-down by the Norman invasion. All the mainstays of Robin Hood literature (excepting Richard I and King John, of course) make appearances, with the Norman Ralf Fitz-gerald providing a perfect foil for Robin as the Sheriff of Nottingham.
Another fun aspect of the book is that Godwin writes in many of the traditional Robin Hood stories, but makes interesting changes, so that you almost get the sense that you are reading the stories that inspired the legends. Like any legend, the details gradually embellish over time to become the ballads we know and love.

What we end up with is a Robin Hood novel different from any other, yet still feels familiar. It is full of politics and violence, but also never abandons the values of love and family that each character — whether they be English or Norman — holds dear. Sherwood is an excellently written, thoroughly entertaining read about a man willing to remain unbowed and tell a king to his face that he’s wrong.
And if you really enjoy it, Parke Godwin wrote a sequel, titled Robin and the King, which expands the history and themes covered in the first book, culminating in the Charter of Liberties, an agreement by Henry I which was the inspiration for the Magna Carta.

Until next time,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_

Sgt. Angle reporting for duty!

You may remember a time when the movie of a legend meant something more than cliched war scenes and epic battles.

I am epic. Look in my eyes.

When Braveheart graced global eyes, we swooned at the rhetoric of the main character and at the love story that we all, as men and women, wish to obtain. When Gladiator appeared, we gave it a hearty clap and went on our merry way, knowing that Maximus could save our day.

With Ridley Scott’s rendition of Robin Hood, we cock our heads to the side and wonder: who the hell is this sword-toting warrior, and why am I watching him?

(*Minor spoilers ahead*)

Robin Hood gives us a Middle Ages wartime take on a beloved character, and spends almost every minute of screen time building up the great leader only to tear away his leadership in the resolution, and subsequent “sequel setup” comprising of a few last minutes on the screen so we can finally utter, in two words of realization, “Oh, yeah.”

(*End minor spoilers*)

The problem with a movie like Robin Hood is that, as a movie, it’s not all that bad. The acting is pretty on the ball, the fight scenes are expertly shot and the comedic moments are, for the most part, timed properly. The violence isn’t brutal (though the pG-13 rating is a bit light), and the villains are properly built with motivation (OK, Godfrey’s reasoning isn’t exactly explained, though Mark Strong’s cockeyed tooth kind of makes up for it).

The problem lies in the filmmaker’s assumption that we’re automatically familiar with the story that will happen…later. It’s esoteric, it’s for anyone familiar with the Robin Hood legend already.

Except that it’s not. And therein lies the problem. The film doesn’t know if it should be the type of “expositional epic” that will explain something in “part II,” or if it should be a stand alone story about a guy happened to be named Robin, who can shoot a mean arrow.

At the start, I just wanted to get to Robin Hood and the familiar man/myth I’ve come to know and love through fox re-enactment and Disney. By the middle, I was anxious to see how the outlaw would be born. Not once did I think that this movie would stand on its’ own without the legend in the back of my mind. I don’t think there is a way to enjoy the movie without knowing about Robin Hood to begin with.

Some might say that Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, that stellar Kevin Costner adventure film from the early 90s — is also a prequel for the Robin Hood legend. It is, except that it explores the characters and villains we know — Sheriff of Nottingham, for one — and also takes us deep into the life of Robin Hood, starting with the Crusades and ending with him in the midst of his thievery.

A man becomes an outlaw because the king has declared it so. But the outlaw becomes a hero when the people declare his bounty unjust, and his actions just. Walking into a classic story meeting our character already an outlaw, it’s easy to find him endearing, and easy to root for him. We invent his backstory, we invent where he came from and what brought him to make these decisions, and we see the outcome.

Prequels rarely work. See: Phantom Menace. See: Red Dragon (film). See: X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Upcoming, we’re going to have the prequel to Planet of the Apes (NOT a reboot, which Tim Burton already destroyed years ago).  Caesar:Rise of the Apes will be directed by Rupert Wyatt, and the apes will be mostly CGI, with many story and name nods to the original film.

We’re also seeing the Alien prequel, to be directed by Ridley Scott — who also recently stated that there will actually be TWO films, the storyline leading up to his original Alien. Again, we’re faced with possibly zero characters (ahem, Ripley) who would have appeared in later films, but we’ll get a sense of the first people to actually meet the alien species, and possibly get a nod to the ships that we eventually meet in the original films. But we’re also not going to have to bother with a “Lt. Ripley origin story,” something that might’ve just ruined her as a character.

We may, though, get a version of the chest-popper scene more similar to this one:

When I think of ruining the mythology of a series, I also think of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.  Terminator: Salvation just added insult to injury. Keep in mind, though, that these two films aren’t necessarily terrible on their own, it’s just that they take the world of their respective stories too far. Terminator 2: Judgment Day expanded upon the already set universe in a unique way, advancing present day technology and proving the point that the first film tried to make. T3 and TS took the mythology set up and squeezed every last ounce of imaginative juices out of it all, ruining any hope we had of creating that future for ourselves. One thing we love about movies and all stories, as humans, is the exercise of our own imaginations.

See, movies, unlike books, have a start and a definite end — or are supposed to — and leave the rest of the characters’ lives to our imaginations. It’s the only time, while experiencing movies, that we really get to stretch our creative muscles and imagine. You read a book, you see it all in your head. You read a comic, you can imagine the voices, the tone, the ambient noise. You watch a movie, everything is on the screen, within the frame. But when the frames stop rolling, you can only imagine what will happen next.

This happens with television shows, too — jumping from season to season, or when a show ends too soon, you hope for the best for your characters — or the worst, depending on your view.

Back to Robin Hood. I know the myth and legend of Robin, I know about the Sheriff, and King John, and Maid Marion, Little John, etc. What I didn’t know was how he came to be the outlaw hero. And now that I’ve seen it…it’s too much history. The mystique gives his aura an invincibility that only helps tell his story. Mystery is good. It’s time to stop explaining everything and leave a little mystery.

May you remain mysteriously at ease, soldiers.

Sgt. Angle.