10 Defining Rules Of Iconic Characters (That Came Later Than You Think)
6. Robin Hood Robs From The Rich To Give To The Poor
The original rich guy who fights undercover for the ordinary folk, Robin Hood has been the hero of countless movies and TV shows as well as the inspiration for a host of superheroes from Batman to, most obviously, Green Arrow.
No matter how revisionist they're being, all of these Robin Hoods have one thing in common, his one defining rule: rob from the rich to give to the poor.
With a history as a folk hero dating back to at least the fifteenth century, though, it's fair to say that the Robin Hood of Hollywood today doesn't always map neatly onto the Robin Hood of Sherwood past.
In the early ballads, plays and folk stories Robin was a roguish bandit and trickster, happy to rob from the rich, yes, but mostly just doing it to line his own pockets. (Robin was not himself generally an Oliver Queen-style rich kid in these stories).
It was only in the nineteenth century, in the wake of the French Revolution and with the influence of Walter Scott's blockbuster novel Ivanhoe, that Robin became interested in wealth redistribution and fighting for the common man. So, that's a good three or four hundred years of history before he got the rules that define him today!
Incidentally, Green Arrow himself wasn't always the more left-leaning socially conscious millionaire hero of the DC stable. That aspect of his Robin Hood-ishness didn't come in until the 60s, when it was used to contrast with the politics of Hal Jordan's Green Lantern (which were equivalently retconned to be far more conservative than before).