As Russell Crowe’s expanding waistline has dominated the headlines surrounding the release of his last two films, “Body of Lies,” and “State of Play,” entertainment industry writers have not failed to seize on the weight gain as Crowe’s first step off the A-list (the New York Times even going as far as running an entire piece on the affair of tumescent leading men in their Arts section). But the star has temporary silenced those critics with the first release of a set photo from Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood,” that features the Aussie looking like the studly Crowe who drew massive crowds with “Gladiator.”
The L.A. Times Patrick Goldstein, not content with Universal’s explanation for the photos as simply promotion for the film, has his own conspiracy theory which links the “Robin Hood” stills to the recent grumblings about Crowe’s weight. Goldstein via his blog claims that the picture was not put out to act as a promo for the film, but may have been an attempt by Crowe to save face and exercise some damage control by showing the press the fruits of his recent weight loss.
We think the interesting story behind the promo picture isn’t the possible existence of weight loss conspiracy theories but the fact that as Robin Hood, Crowe appears as though he is simply reprising his role from Ridley Scott’s massive hit, “Gladiator.” Apparently the similarities may not be a coincidence as Jeffrey Wells claims to have a source that said, “Everthing in Robin Hood– the hairstyles, the music and the aesthetics — will make it play like an unofficial sequel to Gladiator. This is no accident. It’s a commercial mandate and was part of the scripting delay.”
Ugh (“Gladiator” is fun, though way overrated too). But it makes sense, the audiences have spoken and it is clear they don’t want to see Crowe actually act, but would much rather him recycle to same, like totally badass character over and over again, regardless of dramatic relevance, for the rest of his career (for the record he’s excellent in both ‘Play’ and ‘Lies,’ dare we say underrated in both). Sigh…
The “Untitled Robin Hood Adventure” has a tentative release date of May 14th, 2010.