On evidence of the fact that Hugh Jackman’s own Robin Hood film bombed over the summer, Nottingham’s favorite eat-the-rich icon isn’t exactly Spider-Man when it comes to getting butts on seats. (At the end of the day, it seems the only Robin Hood movie anyone needs is the Disney one with the weirdly sexy anthropomorphic fox.) And yet that may not have stopped the late-stage rebrand of new Andrew Garfield movie The Uprising.
Directed by Paul Greengrass, The Uprising has long been sold as a historical drama about the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt, the bloody uprising against Richard II over poor living conditions and mammoth taxes. But this week, the marketing campaign for the movie zagged in a new and surprising direction, depicting the film as a Robin Hood origin story. “To the rich, he was an outlaw,” reads a promo tweet posted by the film’s publicity page on X.
“To the people, he was a hero.” The fresh marketing material also gave the film a new subtitle: The Rise of Robin Hood. The suggestion is that Garfield himself will don the feathered cap, with his character previously credited only as “Ploughman.” It’s a bizarre reveal for a movie whose theatrical release is just a couple of weeks away. According to The Hollywood Reporter, a new plot synopsis for the film was released in tandem with the head-scratching social post, reinforcing its newfound ties to the literary outlaw.
Set against the true events of the uprising
“Set against the true events of the uprising that helped inspire the legend of Robin Hood,” it reads, “[Garfield’s character] forms an army of the people to face the King’s might in a fight for justice.” Might said “army” actually be a band of… merry men? It’s worth noting, here, that The Uprising has been in development for a number of years. Reports of Greengrass working on a movie about the Peasants’ Revolt first emerged in May 2022, with Benedict Cumberbatch set to star.
Only it had a different title then: The Hood. Not to suggest that Sherwood’s finest holds a monopoly on head coverings—Little Red might like a word—but, with the apparent gear-change today, it does make you wonder whether this has been a stealth Robin Hood movie all along. An Empire interview with Greengrass was also published on Wednesday, wherein the director directly references Robin Hood, albeit in ambiguous terms.
The article still describes Garfield’s character as an “unnamed ploughman,” and one of the leading revolutionaries alongside Cosmo Jarvis’ Wat Tyler, the real-life frontman of the revolt. But Greengrass mentions that the film is also inspired by the 1377 poem Piers Plowman, noting that it is the “first moment the character of Robin Hood appears in print.”
Garfield’s character has gone unnamed, referred to only by his extremely Medieval-age occupation, suggesting that they’re hiding something.
Greengrass himself said he drew some inspiration
Greengrass himself said he drew some inspiration from the earliest-known literary reference to Robin Hood. That said, when asked by Metro, the UK distributor of the film denied that The Uprising has anything to do with Robin Hood. “The Uprising is a historical epic about the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, not Robin Hood,” they said. “The UK marketing campaign does not make any references to Robin Hood.
Marketing materials posted by other countries that may appear in the UK online and on social media referencing Robin Hood are not issued or approved by us.”
Fuck it. I’m gonna go hang with the cartoon fox. This story originally appeared in British GQ.
Source: www.gq.com
