A trailer breakdown of “The Adventures of Maid Marian" (2022)

 

When the trailer unexpectedly dropped for The Adventures of Maid Marian in early January, I was shocked. I follow Robin Hood media news pretty carefully, and Maid Marian media is particularly important to me, but I hadn't heard a peep about this little indie film until the trailer was released. 

Let's say that I was cautiously optimistic when I started to look into it. The muddy and largely unsuccessful waters of recent Robin Hood films made me nervous that this one might follow a similar route. 

Robin Hood movies generally seem to stringently follow in the footsteps of their film predecessors, building a Hollywood version of Robin Hood canon since the beginning of motion picture history. The past two Hollywood Robin Hood offerings have been poorly received, to say the least. 

Ridley Scott's 2010 adaptation had a mixed reception and, when it wasn't being criticized, went largely under the radar. Eight years later, Otto Bathurst offered a confusing, steampunk-ish Robin Hood which didn't even make its budget back at the box office and is truly one of the worst Robin Hood movies I've ever seen. 

Meanwhile, Disney has promised a CGI "live action" remake of its 1973 animated feature, now in development, which seems ill-conceived and somewhat doomed to fail. (Personally, I was hoping their Robin Hood installment would be a genuine live-action and prove itself to be a fun little adventure flick.)

Meanwhile, the last truly successful Robin Hood film is Prince of Thieves, which was the second highest-grossing film of 1991, despite having a lasting reputation as a bad movie. 

With a track record like this, I get the feeling that Hollywood is generally not much interested in putting out an actually good Robin Hood movie. It's a depressing prospect for a Robin Hood enthusiast like me. 

All this is to say... I was surprised when this trailer dropped. And excited. I've often said that the pitfall of most Robin Hood films is that they follow the formula of every other Robin Hood film, and seem exceedingly reluctant to do something new and interesting. (Literary Robin Hood adaptations don't seem to have this problem.) 

When Margot Robbie's Marian movie was announced in 2017, I was thrilled, but there's been radio silence since the initial announcement, so I have a feeling the project was abandoned. But hope has not been lost for a Maid Marian movie and, at some point in 2022, we're finally getting one.

The Adventures of Maid Marian is directed and written by Bill Thomas and stars Sophie-Louise Craig as Marian. The summary on IMDb says: 

"After three years of hiding in a remote priory, news reaches Marian that King Richard the Lionheart is dead. Her lover Robin Hood is returning from the wars. Leaving her sanctuary she hurries to meet him but they discover all is not as it seems. William De Wendenal, the disgraced Sheriff of Nottingham, has returned from exile and is out for revenge. Ambushed, Marian and Robin fight for their lives and escape, but Robin is badly injured. Deep in the forest and miles from help and hounded by ruthless mercenaries, Marian must use all the skills at her disposal to keep Robin alive and get him to safety." 

So let's get into the business of breaking down this trailer. 

The trailer starts at a convent, where Marian has been in hiding, presumably after the familiar main events of the Robin Hood story, setting this film up as a sequel. Marian hiding in a convent isn't unfamiliar ground, and we've seen it before in Robin and Marian (1976), but here Marian doesn't appear to have joined the order herself and is only living there. 

With the news of the king's death (and Robin's return to England), Marian leaves the convent and goes into the forest and finds him. They both seem incredibly young, closer to the ages I would usually assume them to be during the main events of the Robin Hood story. Since the actors are fairly unknown, I couldn't find their ages anywhere online, but I think it's a good look regardless. It makes me think of Robin McKinely's The Outlaws of Sherwood which featured a mostly teenage cast of characters. Perhaps these characters were also younger during their initial years as outlaws? 

Rather than creating a sheriff of Nottingham, this film chose the historical figure, William de Wendenal who was actually High Sheriff of both Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire from 1190-1194. Although the trailer doesn't name him, the summary does. I always appreciate a bit of historical research to add to the worldbuilding of any Robin Hood story. Robin Hood is, by nature, anachronistic, but I definitely enjoy having enough historical elements to give it a firm, grounded sense of time. Based on the appearance of this trailer, I'm overall pretty pleased with the look of the film. It feels medieval without presenting itself as strictly historical. In my opinion, that's a good middle-ground for Robin Hood stories. 

It seems that this will be a more personal rather than political Robin Hood Maid Marian story, with less emphasis on charity and social equity. The summary implies that the driving force in the plot is about personal safety, and the trailer doesn't feature any common people at all. Since the movie is acting as an epilogue, I don't think this is inherently a bad thing, just something to note. 

As the summary implies this movie does appear to be a trope and role reversal, placing Robin in a position to be rescued by Marian from the sheriff. For the first Maid Marian movie, this is an interesting approach to take, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the story will unfold and use that theme within the narrative. I've talked before about how the damsel in distress trope does not bother me very much because there are plenty of examples of members of the Merry Men needing rescued, and it's not necessarily a problem expressly reserved for Marian. But it certainly is a stereotype for her character, so the flipped circumstances of this movie feel like an explicit choice. 

At the end of the trailer, Marian appears to be working solo to rescue Robin, and there's one clip that I have a hunch about. In what could be a dusty cave(?), we see Marian looking for a sword that she seems to recognize. I have a feeling this might be an old storeroom of some sort, which still houses gear and other remnants from their previous lives as outlaws in the forest. 

Since this is more of a sequel and epilogue, I would love to see some reminiscing and how this particular Robin and Marian feel about their lives. I'd also like to know where other Merry Men characters might be within the universe of this world since none of them make an appearance in the trailer.

My final comment is that I really enjoy the wide shots of the surrounding landscape. Oftentimes in indie Robin Hood movies, they tend to focus on one location that's easy to film. Medieval sets can certainly be expensive. This movie seems filmed almost exclusively in the forest, but it still has a good sense of scale, and the trailer featured two lovely wide shots, adding a much grander feel to the overall appearance. 

That wraps up my thoughts on The Adventures of Maid Marian so far. I'm eagerly awaiting a release date so I can add it to my calendar. Overall, I think I'm going to absolutely enjoy this movie. I get the sense that it's going to try something different, and I'm rooting for it to be a success.