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More People Will Probably Watch This Honest Trailer for Robin Hood Than the Actual Movie

"Journey to an all-new Nottingham, set in the Nordstrom Rack era of England."

“From the studio that knows how to combine hot actors with archery—it’s Robin Hood!” So begins the Honest Trailer for Robin Hood, a 2018 movie that cost 100 million dollars to make and is possibly recollected by 100 people. The film eventually grossed about $84 million worldwide and received an astonishingly bad 15% on Rotten Tomatoes.

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Last year, I cautiously covered some of the promotion for Robin Hood, starring Taron Egerton (“Rob”) and Jamie Foxx (“John”). I was wary of the 20,000th reboot of the classic tale, as well as the movie’s rather … nonconventional takes on history, costuming and, well, physics. But I love a Robin Hood story, and even if this seemed to be in line with Hollywood’s relentless hunger for “gritty remakes,” I hoped it might at least have some spark and fun.

Then Robin Hood seemed to vanish entirely off the map. I don’t recall seeing much if any advertisement—the studio, likely more than aware that they had a bad movie on their hands, didn’t waste another bag of gold on marketing the thing. In November 2018, Robin Hood‘s paltry box office numbers caused it to become one of the worst cinematic failures of the year. I flat-out forgot about its existence.

If, like me, you never actually saw the movie, this clever take from perennial fave Honest Trailers does a good job of covering why Robin Hood couldn’t win. “This is not just a boring copy of every Robin Hood movie you’ve seen. It’s also the worst version of every Batman you’ve seen,” Honest Trailers tells us. “So take aim with this wannabe franchise starter that missed the target by creating a cool fantasy world and filling it with a boring story, resulting in one of the biggest flops of 2018. Which probably pumped the breaks on the seven other Robin Hood movies in development.” Sweet Will Scarlet, let us hope those breaks were pumped.

If, like me, you also emerged curious as to why Robin Hood flopped as badly as it did, this video by Georg Rockall-Schmidt, which deems the film “a lesson in condescension,” does an excellent job of breaking down the many, many ways that Robin Hood fell short.

(via Honest Trailers, image: Lionsgate)

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Kaila Hale-Stern
Kaila Hale-Stern (she/her) is a content director, editor, and writer who has been working in digital media for more than fifteen years. She started at TMS in 2016. She loves to write about TV—especially science fiction, fantasy, and mystery shows—and movies, with an emphasis on Marvel. Talk to her about fandom, queer representation, and Captain Kirk. Kaila has written for io9, Gizmodo, New York Magazine, The Awl, Wired, Cosmopolitan, and once published a Harlequin novel you'll never find.

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