I just don't get the point

The problem is also that there isn't actually a legend of Robin Hood in the same way as, say, St George and the Dragon - there isn't actually a specific story attached to him, only a vague set of incidents that have been cobbled together over the centuries. The overall idea is of an outlaw (who might or might not be the dispossessed son of a Saxon nobleman) living in Sherwood Forest with his Merrie Men, robbing the rich and giving to the poor and generally subverting the reign of King John until Richard the Lionheart comes back from the Crusades. The fact that the original folk tales describe someone living in the reign of 'Edward' (i.e at least 70 years after Richard's death), is blithely ignored. The point is that the legend of Robin Hood is insubstantial, to say the least, and that there is no real story to mess about with in the first place, so this effort, apart from its glaring historical (rather than legendary) inaccuracies, is probably as valid as anything else.

There is barely any reference to Arthur as an historical figure so what we have is the evolving legend but if you're starting from the point of Arthur living with his Dad and his traditional mentor Merlin being even younger hiding his powers etc and taking a lot of s**t while performing magic everyone choose to ignore then I think you are utterly lost already. I'm not going to argue about the fact that individual incidents in the TV programmes were taken from Arthurian legends but these did to happen after Arthur became king. The limited writing there was about the "real" Arthur suggests that he was of Roman descent and led an army in the 5th century although I'm unclear exactly who he was fighting since the only battle he was mentioned of being at was in Carlisle so maybe the Scots.

I remember researching possible candidates for being the "real" Robin Hood and I came to the conclusion that it was some nobleman who wouldn't pay their taxes so went and hid in the forest. The name Robin Hood does seem extremely generic so it's entirely possible it could have referred to several people including the usual suspects, of which the guy I favoured wasn't actually one. Incidentally the BBC's recent "Robin Hood" seemed to be fine from what I could tell.

There was a real person named Robin Hood, I think that might be what the fictional Robin Hood is based off of.

Actually there are records in several different places and different times in the Middle Ages that mention outlaws named Robert, Rob or Robin Hood; it seems to have been a traditional alias. Whether these medieval outlaws had taken the name of a real historical person or a character from folklore (there’s a theory that the original ‘Robin Hood’ was a woodland spirit, like Robin Goodfellow) is anybody’s guess.


I think this was supposed to be more realistic.

I think so too, but if that was the intention it was a dismal failure. Let’s face it, it’s neither realistic in the sense ‘this is what the Middle Ages were like’ or in the sense ‘this is how things happen and how people behave in real life’. It’s as much a fantasy as Men in Tights, just a lot less funny.

It's 'based ON'.

The story's failure is blamed on the screen writer, who also bastardized Dumas's Musketeer tales with his "To prevent a war" BS with flying galleons and martial arts King's Muketeers. The man is a nut job, and he and his work are the worst I've ever seen by any screen writer anywhere.