The Death of Robin Hood (Michael Sarnoski, 2026)
To the folks decrying this film as a rather untimely condemnation of the proletarian vigilante I implore a second watch. This is neither a criticism nor a deconstruction. Rather it explores the elastic nature of myths while interrogating how and why they necessitate a degree of obfuscation and fabrication. And in portraying the brutal savagery honest to the period, sarnoski essays what is in fact omitted: the toll on the soul of those that are conscripted into mythology.
Jackman is very much in Logan mode here but that’s a feature not a flaw. Besides, unlike Logan, he isn’t jaded; a life of violence has curdled his memory alienating himself from his own lauded virtues. Unlike Logan he doesn’t see failure, only sin. That the film constantly confronts Robin Hood with the ghosts of his past — the collateral damage of his many campaigns — suggests Sarnoski’s pointed observation: reasons for violence notwithstanding killing another human being exacts a price so steep that it can’t ever be paid.
The film front loads the barbarity only to deposit us into purgatory. But this is where the film blooms into something transcendent; rather than confront Robin (and by extension us) with a tally of his sins, it urges us to reconsider what violence perhaps cannot accomplish: it cannot create. In Sister Brigid we see how we might instead gather and share and that out of grief what can emerge is perhaps something less bitter more luminous.
A better, grittier, luminescent version of the Odyssey.