Not Nottingham

I have written about "Nottingham" before, the upcoming film about Robin Hood being directed by Ridley Scoot ("Alien," "Blade Runner" and "Gladiator"), but now the film has a new name.

"Oh yes, I think we are just going to call it ‘Robin Hood’,” Scott said in an interview with MTV News. “We start in almost 2 months.”

One aspect that thoroughly confused me about "Nottingham" (maybe I should just start calling it "Robin Hood") was how did Scott want to have Russell Crowe, who is playing Hood, also play the Sheriff of Nottingham.

According to MTV News, "In an attempt to clarify all the confusion from a few months ago about Russell Crowe playing multiple roles, Scott was eager to say that he had changed his mind, and that Crowe will simply portray the famed archer who rises from an unlikely background. 'Robin Hood is in the army of Richard Coeur de Lion,' he said of how we’ll find the character early in the film 'He is a bowman in the army of Richard Coeur de Lion.'

'[Crowe as both Robin and the Sheriff of Nottingham] was an idea so far back, way back when at the time I had this proposed to me, and I read it and thought, ‘I don’t really know what it does for it, but it’s alright’,' Scott recalled of the now-abandoned idea. 'It is better to simply have the evolution of a character called Robin Hood, who will come out of a point in the Crusades which is the end.'

As a result, in Scott’s film the Sheriff will be 'less important; the Sheriff of Nottingham is always a kind of an amusing character in most of the movies, who represents the hierarchy in the story at that point,' Scott explained. 'The hierarchy and the wealthy always ruled over the under class, and fundamentally that doesn’t change, because Robin Hood is actually the person who finally - in terms of the overall classical idea of the film - will help the poor, probably taking from the rich.'

So, rather than the Robin-vs.-Sheriff showdowns we’ve come to expect from 'Robin Hood' movies, Scott has instead employed the history of the time to make an entire country the villain. 'It is from France. It is the French,' he insisted. 'The villain is much bigger in that sense; much more important, and much more dangerous.'

'[In] 1066 Harold II went against William the Conqueror. Harold took an arrow in his eye, and William the Conqueror took over England, and so France owned everything right through,” Scott explained of the turmoil of that age. “Even to the extent of changing the architecture of the churches from Anglo-Saxon to Roman, that’s French; they changed the arches in the churches.'"

So from having the Sheriff of Nottingham play an important role (I assume important because Crowe was going to play him as well as Hood), now we have him not being important and instead having the French as the villain. I wonder if this has anything to do with it being an American movie. Wonder if the French will appreciate them being turned into the bad guys.

And Slashfilm finally got the facts on who is being cast in the film.
"According to the latest issue of Production Weekly the cast includes not only Russell Crowe but also Oscar Isaac, Vanessa Redgrave, William Hurt, Saoirse Ronan and Cate Blanchett."