Robin Hood and the Art of Editing

Two nights ago, to my great excitement, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) was shown on Channel 5. I texted my friends. Strains of Bryan Adams manifested in my ear. I have seen few, if any, films more times – but I had to watch it again. Unnoticed or unappreciated aspects queue up to present themselves with each viewing. This time, however, was different: I really did see new things.

This, it turned out, was Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves: Special Extended Edition.

The Film: Was Already: Amazing. I couldn’t even calculate how amazing the same film but Specially Extended might be.

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

The extra scenes amounted to only a few minutes, but managed to include Satanism, religious discrimination, torture, and sexual violence. Classic Robin Hood themes marinated in Red Bull for a harder, grittier, deeper kind of epic? Sadly, no. The most impressive thing about these scenes was how efficient they were in deflating the film by adding detail. The Sheriff of Nottingham is transformed from arch villain to the victim of terrible parenting. Satanism is briefly questioned in a way that makes it not threatening but ridiculous. The adrenaline-pumping capture of the taxes and the friar in Sherwood Forest has a bucket of cold water poured over it when, in slapstick style, Azeem forces Robin to leap from a moving carriage by directing it into the river. Religious difference goes from an uncrossable cultural divide to a pretext for squabbling. The unmentionable but pervasive threat of sexual violence that provides much of the tension in film’s last act is slackened by the clumsy observation of one henchman that he’s “never seen the breasts of a noblewoman” before.

Did we need to know precisely how the Sheriff’s New World Order would take shape, that Great Britain would be divided into seven sections along the lines of a pentacle, the seventh section being a left-over bit between two of the star’s legs? Or that the witch Mortianna is really Darth Vader the Sheriff’s mother? That she murdered the old Sheriff, his wife, and their baby in order to secretly supplant their line with her own heir, all so that that child could grow up to be a rebellious Sheriff who could in turn fight his way to the throne and legitimately put a grandchild of hers on it through marriage to the royal line?

There's always room for one more

Like the executioner who gleefully insisted “there’s always room for one more” whilst dribbling all over Christian Slater’s face, whoever decided these extra scenes should exist should be shot in slow motion with Kevin Costner’s Flaming Arrow of Justice.

The original edit clearly understood the principle that a delicate breath on the cheek can be more distracting than a yelling crowd of unwashed men. The Special Extended Edition brings out the disappointingly abrupt Axe of Detail when we were getting along very happily with the dull Spoon of Implication.

Distracting

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is still one of my favourite films. I will remember how slick it was in the beginning, how every secondary scene shored up the arch plot without stealing the limelight, and I will try to forget all mention of swapped babies, infanticide, and the breasts of noblewomen. The lesson to all film editors is clear and simple: keep the stitches small.

The way I want to remember the Sheriff