Why Robin Hood Just Flopped So Hard
Does anyone really care about a Robin Hood legend retold?
In one of the most predictable developments of the entire year - if not the decade - Otto Bathurst's Robin Hood has started poorly, to say the least. Saddled with poor reviews and a general lack of buzz, the film has crashed to a disappointing opening weekend across the global box office (even despite opening on Wednesday in the UK).
Having cost $100m or so to make and probably the same again to market, the opening global take of $22m is a huge concern for Lionsgate, who have banked that budget on foreign markets mostly (so American underperformance isn't all that telling). Even then, the European performance so far hasn't been great and it's unlikely we're going to see a great deal of profit (if any at all) when it opens in the remaining territories. Unless they somehow have some greater interest in Robin Hood than the UK, where he's supposed to be one of the most famous heroes ever.
It's fair to say this is a flop - both commerically and critically - and it's important to delve into why...
10. The Critical Mauling
It might be 2018 and the great Critics Versus Fans war may have already raged to its embers (thanks mostly to the DCEU), but critics still do shape the pre-release perceptions of a movie in its potential audience. People might bemoan the influence of aggregator sites (primarily Rotten Tomatoes), but they're the easiest way to turn hype into a quantifiable number. And at the end of the day, that's what we all want in this age of instant consumerism.
Unfortunately for Lionsgate, the number that matters for Robin Hood is 13, which puts it right in the bottom rung of film releases in 2018. That sort of critical response is an unfortunate embarrassment and the added difficulty comes when the audience score on there is so dismal - it's not like Lionsgate can claim a disconnect between audience and critics this time.
It's not like the critical mauling isn't justified, either, because Robin Hood is not a good movie. The script is terrible, the reimaging is both insistent and unoriginal (despite claiming to be revolutionary), the casting is odd and misshapen and the performances - particularly the accents - are wild and unconvincing. Tim Minchin (a delightful man) has about four different accents in the space of one sentence, at times.
This is very much a case of a poor score earned, and even if it wasn't that sort of Rotten response would kill any film's potential.