The Cannes premiere and international opening are only a few weeks away, and we’re starting to see more and more from Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood.” Despite the troubled production (the film was shut down and completely retooled, while rumors of clashes between Scott and star Russell Crowe were flying, although both explained these away recently), a featurette appeared a few weeks ago that showed some promise, and the last few days have seen more tidbits from the film.
Firstly, the final one-sheet for the film debuted in the last few days, and it’s pretty weak. On the upside, it doesn’t have any floating heads, but it does show the next worst thing; vertical bars showing the stars’ heads in close up (as traditionally seen on romantic comedies, as Ultra Culture pointed out). For a character as iconic as Robin Hood, you’d think that Universal would have been able to come up with something stronger, but as, on current form, the studio wouldn’t be able to market a Megan Fox sex tape to a crowd of 13-year-old-boys, it looks like we’re stuck with this.
The good news is that the three clips are, to varying degrees, a little more promising. We mentioned our concerns when the featurette appeared that the picture looked a little dour, but the clips from both Moviefone and MSN Movies show a lighter touch, evidence of the rewrite by the great Tom Stoppard (who, we hear from someone who worked on the movie, was present on set for every day of the shoot tinkering with the dialogue). The first scene shows some flirtation between Crowe’s Robin Hood and Cate Blanchett’s Maid Marion, while the second shows the Merry Men ambushing a coach in Sherwood Forest, including the unusual sight of Mark Addy’s Friar Tuck going all John Woo with a pair of crossbows.
The final clip, courtesy of Yahoo, shows an action scene from near the beginning of the film, with Crowe & company storming a French castle, including our first glimpse of Danny Huston as Richard the Lionheart. It certainly backs the most common complaint about the film — that it’s visually close to Scott’s recent historical epics, “Gladiator” and “Kingdom of Heaven.” But you know what? Both of those are pretty good, (if you haven’t seen the director’s cut of the latter, it’s a vast improvement, albeit still stricken by having Orlando Bloom in the lead), and we can think of worse ways to spend a couple of hours than with Scott and Crowe chasing past glories. MSN don’t seem to be aware that it’s 2010, and haven’t enabled embedding, but the other two videos can be watched below. Kudos to Empire for collating the clips, and for premiering the poster.