Does this red-hot project deliver? Load up those arrows and let’s find out!
Genre: Drama/Period
Premise: Robin Hood, who in this iteration was a robber and serial killer, is seriously wounded after a battle, forcing him to get his injuries treated on an island led by a nun.
About: This script/package just came together a couple of weeks ago. It will star Hugh Jackman and Jodie Cormer. It’s written and directed by Michael Sarnoski, who made that Nicholas Cage movie, “Pig,” and just finished “A Quiet Place: Year One.”
Writer: Michael Sarnoski
Details: 98 pages
When a new Robin Hood movie is announced, there’s a symbolic meaning to it that digs deep into one of the many issues within Hollywood. Which is that the town cannot ignore free IP. They would rather make a bad movie and lose a ton of money off publicly available IP than leave the IP alone and keep their money.
It’s weird that they keep making this mistake over and over again. Cause let’s be real. The Robin Hood IP is deader than Blockbuster Video.
Luckily, there are still three ways to revive dead IP. The first is to come up with an angle so fresh, it reinvents the material. The second is to execute the script so well that we’re captivated by the story. And the third is to hire a director with a really unique vision who presents the story in a fresh new way.
I can tell you whether the first two criteria are met as I just read the script.
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A young girl walking through the countryside dressed as a boy to avoid attacks, stumbles upon a 50-something hermit who gives her food & shelter and tells her to be careful on her journey. That night, the girl attempts to slit his throat while he’s sleeping. But he was still awake, knowing she would do so, and mercilessly kills her.
The next day, an old friend of his, the burly Edward, comes by and says that a family stole his farm and kicked him out. He wants it back but he needs help. Robin and Edward head to the farm, where they kill everyone, unfortunately losing Edward’s wife in the battle.
When word gets to the local warlord that Robin Hood is around, he and his men head to the farm and engage in battle with them. Both Robin and Edward barely defeat them. But Robin is on death’s doorstep.
Edward puts him on a boat and takes him to an island run by Sister Brigid, a sort of hybrid healer/doctor/nun. She takes in whoever comes and nurses them back to health. So, for the next 80 minutes, Robin does just that. The end. No, I’m not kidding. That’s the whole movie.
To this script’s credit, it nails Revival Option #2.
It completely reinvents Robin Hood. That cannot be disputed. So kudos for doing that because it’s clear that that was why this movie got greenlit.
Another thing the screenplay did was help me discover a new type of screenplay opening.
Actually, the opening has always been around but I’m just now realizing that it can be categorized.
I call it the “We mean business” opening.
Basically, what you do is you write something so shocking that the reader has no choice but to sit up and pay attention. Now, I want to be clear here. You can’t fake a “We mean business” opening. Remember the opening of The Sixth Sense? A former patient breaks into Bruce Willis’s home and stabs him.
I read that type of opening all the time. It’s not a bad opening but it’s not a “We mean business” opening.
A “We mean business” opening is what they did here. They had Robin Hood, one of the most beloved heroes ever, violently kill a 14 year old girl. That’s a freaking “We mean business” opening. It’s the kind of opening that makes the reader go, “Whoa.” It stuns them.
And it worked! You can tell by my review intro that I was skeptical of this script. But that opening scene made me think, “Okay, maybe this is going to be better than I thought.”
By the way, note the skill involved in executing the “We mean business,” opening. It wasn’t just following an old Robin Hood through the streets, seeing some girl, then killing her. Sure, that would’ve met the criteria for We mean business, but it also would’ve felt forced and artificial.
Instead, we get this little story of this lost girl and she meets this hermit and asks for his help. Then, when they’re asleep, she sneaks up on him to kill him as it turns out she came here to assassinate him all along. But he was ready for her and able to turn the tables. It gave us the We mean business moment yet we don’t despise our hero afterwards. He’s still worth rooting for.
This “We mean business” vibe continues for another 15 pages. And, at that point, I was sharpening my pen, getting ready to anoint another [x] impressive.
But then this script falls off a freaking cliff.
And oh how spectacularly it falls.
It fell so far so quickly, I had whiplash.
How could this have happened, I asked myself.
And that’s when I saw it:
Writer-director.
As I’ve chronicled before, very few directors can also write. I mean… we’re talking a narrative engine so inert here that the script stands in place for the last 80 pages. It’s stunning how boring the story that follows is.
What sucks is that this is Michael Sarnoski, who directed one of my most anticipated movies of the year: Quiet Place Year One. Now I’m worried that movie’s going to disappoint too!
So why, specifically does this script fall apart? Well, for one, it becomes a “waiting around” script. These are scripts where your characters just wait around the whole time. These narratives are incredibly difficult to make entertaining. Because movies are great at celebrating active-ness. They like when characters charge forward and take the story with them.
A hero can’t do that if he’s lying around for 80 minutes.
Your one respite in that situation is conflict. If we’re waiting around in a situation ripe with conflict, it can still be entertaining. Heck, we just saw this YESTERDAY! In my review of The Last Stop in Yuma County. Characters were all waiting around for a fuel truck to show up. But the difference was, there was an insane amount of conflict due to the hostage-situation.
Here we just… wait for Robin Hood to get better. And he doesn’t even have a goal he’s trying to achieve after he gets better. He’s just… trying to get better.
But this script violates a much bigger issue: It pretends to be a reimagining of Robin Hood but I have the sneaking suspicion that the original drafts of this script had nothing to do with Robin Hood and that, in the last couple of drafts, Sarnoski changed his main character’s name to Robin Hood to capitalize on the IP and have a better chance at getting it made. Which, to his credit, is exactly what happened. Talk about a “What I Learned.”
But yeah, I kept waiting for Robin Hood mythology to work its way into the story in clever ways but that never happened. There are a few moments where minor Robin Hood lore is brought up, but it’s presented in a manner by which it’s conceivable it could’ve been thrown in there at the last second.
I have to say, this is one of the most spectacular nosedives I’ve seen in a screenplay. It starts off SO STRONG and then it’s as if someone who’s never written a story before mumbled out 80 pages of jibberish.
And it’s not like it couldn’t have been saved! That’s the frustrating part. Late in the script, we learn that Sister Brigid’s family was killed by Robin Hood. Why not learn that earlier and then play up the suspense of whether she’s going to kill him? At least then we’re building towards a showdown.
But Sarnoski, oddly, runs away from conflict whenever the possibility presents itself. Brigid tells Robin she knows he killed her parents but, you know what, she’s okay with it. She still wants to heal him.
Wow.
Just wow.
It sticks a dagger into the center of my body when I see writers making these giant movies who possess so little storytelling ability. It sucks! Because what it means is we’re going to get this beautiful-looking movie with this cool trailer that’s going to focus on those first three violent scenes and then people are going to show up to the movie and say, “What the f**k was that???” Cause nothing happened for the last 80 minutes. Literally nothing.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Take a well known beloved hero and make them bad (Robin Hood). Or take a well known beloved villain and make them good (Wicked). Tried and true method for reinventing classic stories.
