"Why is Robin Hood so popular? Every single time entertainment technology takes a leap forward, one of the first things we adapt is Robin Hood. Stage plays, printed ballads, printed books, silent films, animation... why is he our go to? Well, broadly, I think it's because of something you might have noticed through this video: We don't actually have a lot to go on with him. People keep writing about him, people keep trying to nail down his life story, and it never sticks. Robin Hood's life is very loosely defined — At some point, for some reason, he becomes an outlaw. He acquires a band of colorful characters including the large Little John, the friendly Friar Tuck, the whimsical Alan-a-Dale, and the shockingly self-reliant Maid Marian. Robin Hood and his merry men have assorted adventures, but heads with the evil but sorta pathetic Sheriff of Nottingham and the smaller-scale villainy of Guy of Gisborne, win brownie points from King Richard while confronting the machinations of Prince John, and then maybe Robin dies. That's not a lot of concrete plot points to work around, but it gives an aspiring writer a full cast to work with. You've got a hero, a handful of villains, a Love Interest, a colorful suppourting crew, even a distant Big Good guy off at the crusades to swoop in when the situation gets dire! A bunch of fully-developed characters with interesting dynamics and no ironclad plot points to work around? That's a writer's dream!
And Robin Hood is a very versatile protagonist. He's a paragon in his own way, with a strict moral code and all that jazz, but he's also roguish and clever with a propensity for tricks and stunts and showing off. He loses a lot and frequently gets helped or saved by his posse, meaning he's not indestructible, but he also gets to pull off some pretty clutch victories, so he's not consistently the butt of the joke. The characters have interesting dynamics already, but a huge chunk of his Merry Men are completely undefined, so you can basically put whatever characters you want in there. And Robin Hood is a canonical busybody who keeps butting into people's lives and solving their problems when they turn out to be too angsty to rob. If the setting is vaguely medieval and vaguely English, he can just show up and help out the good guys. That's what happened in Ivanhoe! I'm pretty sure Robin Hood has stayed so popular because he's this perfect combination of great core characters and almost no plot. The only consistent plot point is "evil sheriff", and that just makes easy antagonism. And people do. A lot. A lot. A looooot.
And it seems like this keeps confusing people. Everyone keeps periodically trying to find some way to summarise everything in Robin Hood's life, and it never ends up making sense because the actual events hardly matter. The characters are why the story has lasted over 700 years. I mean there's, what, four different books from different eras all claiming to be the definitive story of Robin Hood. When are people gonna try and stop making one cohesive narrative over the life and development of this one charact- Oh. Oh, no!
And Robin Hood is a very versatile protagonist. He's a paragon in his own way, with a strict moral code and all that jazz, but he's also roguish and clever with a propensity for tricks and stunts and showing off. He loses a lot and frequently gets helped or saved by his posse, meaning he's not indestructible, but he also gets to pull off some pretty clutch victories, so he's not consistently the butt of the joke. The characters have interesting dynamics already, but a huge chunk of his Merry Men are completely undefined, so you can basically put whatever characters you want in there. And Robin Hood is a canonical busybody who keeps butting into people's lives and solving their problems when they turn out to be too angsty to rob. If the setting is vaguely medieval and vaguely English, he can just show up and help out the good guys. That's what happened in Ivanhoe! I'm pretty sure Robin Hood has stayed so popular because he's this perfect combination of great core characters and almost no plot. The only consistent plot point is "evil sheriff", and that just makes easy antagonism. And people do. A lot. A lot. A looooot.
And it seems like this keeps confusing people. Everyone keeps periodically trying to find some way to summarise everything in Robin Hood's life, and it never ends up making sense because the actual events hardly matter. The characters are why the story has lasted over 700 years. I mean there's, what, four different books from different eras all claiming to be the definitive story of Robin Hood. When are people gonna try and stop making one cohesive narrative over the life and development of this one charact- Oh. Oh, no!
