Written and directed by Michael Sarnoski
La Salle University, Philadelphia
harty@lasalle.edu
On Thursday, June 18, 2026, the wire services carried the sad news that Sherwood Forest’s Major Oak had died. Long ailing and suffering from multiple misguided attempts to preserve it that only hastened its demise, the oak was the stuff of legend, in no small part because of its association with yet another legend, that of Robin Hood, who was said to have hidden his treasure and maybe even himself in the tree’s hollow. Estimated to be anywhere from 800 to 1200 years old, the massive tree with its twisted trunk measuring more than 36 feet in circumference finally succumbed to its own legendary popularity. The ground surrounding it had been trampled down so firmly by centuries of human visitation that the oak’s roots could no longer absorb the water and nutrients needed to sustain it.
On Friday, June 19, 2026, US film audiences were treated to the death of yet another figure of legend—one associated with the Major Oak—Robin Hood himself in writer/director Michael Sarnoski’s The Death of Robin Hood, a film that charts the death of both the man and his legend. Absent here is any hint of swashbuckling or derring-do. There is not even a hint of greenery. The film’s first half takes place in a cold, rock-strewn mid-thirteenth century England riven by blood feuds, not by conflicts between Saxons and Normans, or rich and poor. If this world seems at all familiar, it is because it summons up that of Robert Eggers’s 2022 film The Northman with its never-ending, senseless violence. Children have their throats cut or wander by on the screen with an arrow through their eye and sticking out of the back of their skull; farms are raided; families are burned alive. Lurching through this miasma of violence and destruction—and an endless cycle of revenge and retribution seemingly lifted from a medieval Scandinavian saga—where no one protects the meek is the hulking, yet much diminished, figure of Robin Hood (Hugh Jackman looking more like a wizened Gandalf than any of the dashing screen predecessors who assayed the role of the leader of the Merry Men of Sherwood). Indeed, there is no band of Merry Men—save for Little John (Bill Skarsgård)—no steely Maid Marian, no cruel Sheriff of Nottingham, no absent King Richard, no calculating Prince John, no corrupt bishop or abbot. The only traditional villain to survive is Guy of Gisborne (Murray Bartlett), though he too is literally unrecognizable, reduced as he is (spoiler alert) to a dying leper bandaged from head to toe.
Jackman has been down this cinematic path before in the James Mangold’s 2017 film Logan, where he also played the title role of legendary hero—the mutant Wolverine—in his last battle to defend a young, orphaned girl from those who would use her to satisfy their own evil ends. The film not only added to the Marvel X-Men series, but also anchored itself in another revered film genre, the Western, by providing Logan with a eulogy quoted from the ending of the classic 1953 George Stevens film Shane. Sarnoski too nods to the Western, providing viewers with separate but linked lengthy chases in his film’s two parts about a man in need of redemption. In a respite from the bleakness of the film’s first half, Little John deposits a badly wounded Robin at the Priory to St. Clement presided over by Sister Brigid (Jodie Comer).
The priory is located on an island long associated since Druidic through Roman to Christian times with healing. Gathered at the priory are any number of orphaned children, and the sick and wounded in need of care, including the leprous Guy of Gisborne who has appointed himself ferryman and protector for the island. Soon enough, the now-dead Little John’s daughter Margaret (Faith Delaney) arrives, followed not long afterwards by Arthur/Godwyn (Noah Jupe), a teenager robbed of an eye by Little John’s long staff who is intent on murdering Little John’s daughter and Robin to continue the blood feud in which they all are caught up. Hiding one’s identity is a key narrative element throughout the film given such endless feuds, thus Arthur is really Godwyn, Randolph is really Robin, and Edward is really Little John. Sister Brigid will also be linked to such a feud when we (and she) learn that years ago Robin burned her husband and children alive.
As the film opens, Little John seeks out Robin for helping in rescuing his wife, Maragret of the hair red like a sunset, from farmers who have kidnapped her—Little John having himself stolen their land. If Robin is unapologetic about his violent past, Little John is nostalgic for a past that never was. He asks Robin, in a nod to the ballad tradition about the hero, whether they killed or simply stripped the potter naked. Robin’s response is that there was no potter. Nods to other ballads inform the film’s narrative. In the film’s version of “Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne,” Robin cuts off the ear of his nemesis, but doesn’t kill him. Its version of “The Death of Robin Hood” turns the murderous vengeful Prioress who bleeds Robin to death into Sister Brigid, at first vengeful but then grateful that Robin’s violent past made her present life of healing possible. Here her allowing Robin to die is an act of mercy, that recalls Audrey Hepburn’s Marian’s poisoning herself and Robin for the same reason at the end of Richard Lester’s 1976 film Robin and Marian—a film originally entitled The Death of Robin Hood.
But Sarnoski’s take on the entire legend is that it is all fake, all made up. Robin was a thief, a brigand, a murderer. He never robbed the rich and gave to the poor. He defended no one but himself. He did not oppose illegitimate authority; as a figure of anarchy, he undermined all authority. The attempt to rescue Little John’s wife proves to be a fiasco. She is killed; the farm is burned; and Robin is badly wounded. Soon after, Little John himself is killed, leaving his young daughter, also named Margaret, at the mercy of those who would exact endless revenge for feuds real and imagined. Only Robin, and refuge with Sister Brigid, can save her. Young—or, as she is called, Little—Margaret comes to play a traditional role in Robin’s death, firing an arrow into where sea and air meet at the moment of his passing. Tradition has it that, on his death bed, Robin fired an arrow out a window asking to be buried where it landed. Other odd medieval bits pop up in the film such as a voice off screen singing “Sumer is icomen in,” and the Leper’s telling Robin the story of Boethius’s encounter with Lady Philosophy before his torture and death.
Umberto Eco pointed out that we are always messing around with the medieval to meet current needs. The history of screen Robin Hoods dates to at least 1908; his television counterparts, to at least 1953. The three really great Robin Hood films—the Fairbanks, the Flynn, and the Connery/Hepburn—all nod to the wars surrounding their release. In the minds of many, we live today in a world without real heroes, a world where fake news elevates the villainous to the pseudo-heroic. Perhaps, this is the point Sarnoski is attempting to make. Helen Cooper once said that each age reinvents the King Arthur it needs. Maybe the same is true of Robin Hood. David Lowery recently gave us a reconstruction of a segment of the story of King Arthur in his 2021 film The Green Knight. Sarnoski takes matters a step further. He does not reconstruct; he deconstructs, presenting viewers with a frightening journey into a Greenwood that never really existed. How satisfying that journey ultimately is will depend upon the individual viewer. But those interested in a more interesting, and successful, deconstruction of the myth of Robin Hood might want to turn to Amy S. Kaufman’s wonderful 2025 novel The Traitor of Sherwood Forest.
The Death of Robin Hood, written and directed by Michael Sarnoski; starring Hugh Jackman as Robin Hood, Jodie Comer as Sister Brigid, Bill Skarsgård as Little John, Murray Bartrlett as the Leper/Guy of Gisborne, Noah Jupe as Arthur/Godwyn, and Faith Delaney as Little Margaret; produced by Lyrical Media and RPC; distributed by A24; US release date June 19, 2026; running time 122 minutes.
