The cinematic world is about to get a very different look at the Robin Hood folk-tale. Gone are the men in tights and instead the new version hitting cinemas in just a few weeks sees Robin of Oxley became a stylised action hero… and it works remarkably well. And while the film starring the likes of Taron Egerton, Jamie Foxx and Australia’s own Ben Mendelsohn is still a few weeks away HEAVY Mag was able to sit down and talk to the film’s director Otto Bathurst.
“When the job first appeared I was really doubtful about it,” says Bathurst when I ask him what made him decide to direct a stylised a version of Robin Hood. “Why would we want to make another Robin Hood because my understanding of the Robin Hood story was pretty limited to a couple of movies and a couple of cartoons and I hadn’t really thought about who this guy was and what he was and for me it is always about ‘what is the purpose of telling a story.’ I started to think do I really want to pull out this old English fairy-tale an regurgitate it? Why now? What is the revelance? Then I dug into him a bit more and investigated a bit more because in my humble opinion you don’t become a hero for four or five hundred years just because you stole a couple of bags of money from rich people and gave it to some poor people. In my mind this guy was a serious kind of revolutionary, a visionary and an arrow, excuse the pun, an arrow of truth. He was a man who was willing to stand up against corruption.”
As our conversation continues he says, “That corruption was in the crown, it was in the Church and there was the corruption of whatever Government was ruling at that time, this was a man who was prepared to say ‘no that is not okay and I’m not going to tolerate that.’ That got me quite interested and now with the state of the world that we are in now the idea of a non-superhero superhero I thought was really fascinating. Because now in the movies all our heroes are very unconnectable because they all have these crazy super powers where as Robin Hood is just an every man, I mean yeah he is a shit hot archer but other than that he is just you and I. And for me now more than ever we need those people to stand up and say ‘no this is not okay!’”
Robin Hood is in cinemas on November 22nd. You can listen to our full interview with Otto Bathurst on the Spreaker player on this page.
