{"id":1086,"date":"2010-06-09T15:05:10","date_gmt":"2010-06-09T15:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/2010\/06\/robin-of-the-hood--the-prequel.html"},"modified":"2010-06-09T15:05:10","modified_gmt":"2010-06-09T15:05:10","slug":"robin-of-the-hood-the-prequel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/06\/robin-of-the-hood-the-prequel.html","title":{"rendered":"Robin of the Hood— the Prequel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"russell-crowe-robin-hood-set1.jpg\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

R?dley Scott has a penchant for mak?ng b?g mov?es w?th sweep and
\ngrandeur and th?s ?s definitely one of them despi?te some of the ludite
\ncr?t?cs reviews who either don’t much know or don’t much care about
\nEnglish h?story.  This mov?e has all the elements of a truly great
\nfi?lm:  1) excellent actors at the top of their game (Crowe, Blanchett, Hurt,
\nVon Sydow and others)  2) an ep?c story to tell about a well known
\nlegendary f?gure and yet an unfamiliar story  (Robin….the early years)
\n3) spectacular c?nematography ?n a gorgeous country (England ?n spr?ng and
\nsummer), 4) an unlikely romance, 5) drama where there is a d?scernable
\nd?fference between good and evil and 6) plenty of act?on but also humor, 7) a
\nlovely mus?cal score, and f?nally 8) a d?rector who knows where and when to
\nend a huge tale. Th?s ?s a movie I went to see three times to
\ntake in all its d?alogue and depth. and I would say this mov?e ?s the
\npick of the summer flicks thus far. 
\n 
 
\nAs for part?culars, in a telling interview done by Russell Crowe he stresses the variety and quantity of sources, often with variant traditions, about this man. He is right about this, and it is the merit of this film that it focuses not on the more familiar ‘rob from the rich, give to the poor’ tale which covers a later period in Robin’s life, but rather the Crusader period of the man’s life and the ascension to the thrown of John after the untimely death of Richard Lion Heart. <\/p>\n

If you want to see another period film that fills out the picture in important ways with equally excellent acting, watch Lion in Winter. ( the Peter O’Toole, Katherine Hepburn film, which has Anthony Hopkins as Richard Lion Heart in his first feature film role).  There are some scenes in this most recent Robin Hood film which do not work (e.g. the wild boys being led by Maid Marion on ponies charging the French in the final battle scene), but on the whole this film is miles ahead of the lackluster Kevin Costner depiction of Robin in films of the last couple of decades.  Some will have to cleanse there minds of other Robin Hoods (e.g. the show on TV from my early childhood) in order to appreciate this film, but there is much to appreciate here, and I hope it will have a better fate and audience than Costner’s Robin Hood. <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

R?dley Scott has a penchant for mak?ng b?g mov?es w?th sweep and grandeur and th?s ?s definitely one of them despi?te some of the ludite cr?t?cs reviews who either don’t much know or don’t much care about English h?story.  This mov?e has all the elements of a truly great fi?lm:  1) excellent actors at the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nRobin of the Hood- the Prequel - The Bible and Culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/06\/robin-of-the-hood-the-prequel.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Robin of the Hood- the Prequel - 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A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies. Witherington has also taught at Ashland Theological Seminary, Vanderbilt University, Duke Divinity School and Gordon-Conwell. A popular lecturer, Witherington has presented seminars for churches, colleges and biblical meetings not only in the United States but also in England, Estonia, Russia, Europe, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Australia. He has also led tours to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Witherington has written over thirty books, including The Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies works by Christianity Today. He also writes for many church and scholarly publications, and is a frequent contributor to the Beliefnet website. Along with many interviews on radio networks across the country, Witherington has been seen on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Discovery Channel, A&E, and the PAX Network.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/author\/bwitherington"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1086\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}