I think the idea of Robin Hood is so tied up historically in terms of,
"Was he real?" I believe he was real.
And those were my marching orders from Ridley, and we went from there.
Half the battle, honestly,
on any film process, is not the filming, it's actually the writing.
And every time, I spend more time with a writer at a table,
struggling through everything,
thickening the plot, the detail, bringing it forward
to where we can call it a blueprint upon which we budget a new film.
Then, still, once you hit that, there's still a lot of adjustment.
The film starts to evolve on a basis of not so much...
This is the film on frame one in the first four minutes.
We are going to meet a person who is going to call himself Robin Hood.
The entire two hours and nine minutes is going to show
the building and the growing and the evolution of this man
that eventually we will understand is Robin of the Hood.
So you're really setting up the idea of Robin Hood.
That's why at the end of the film...
This is the last caption, I think. "And so the legend begins."
So you're watching his journey through to find out where he will be and who he will be.
And I think he's fairly international 'cause he's captured everyone's imagination
by being the definitive, athletic warrior
who has the rights of men always as part of his main principles.
But the while, you've got to constantly remind us that we are doing a legend,
and a character that people have expectations for,
and we can't disappoint them.
The thing that I've always found most valuable to me was art school.
And I could always visualize everything.
And I'm in a valley of pines and I'm seeing Richard Coeur de Lion
having to raid a siege.
We are at the time when Richard Coeur de Lion, Richard the Lion Heart,
who was always perceived as the one of the great English kings,
is returning from France. They're returning from the Crusades.
And on the way back... Because he's fundamentally broke.
He is broke. He's broken the royal coffers, he's broken the royal bank
on wasteful wars in North Africa against the Muslims.
That's familiar, isn't it?
And as he comes back, he is collecting all the debts on the way back,
in hoping of returning to London with something in his box.
This is true, by the way. This is not us making this up.
In the 10 years he's been away, the Prince Regent of England
who's been running England is a guy called Prince John.
So when his brother dies, which is gonna happen in about three minutes here,
his brother bored an arrow in his neck,
being, as usually, suicidally brave in battle.
The great quality about him is he was great riding into the breach.
His physicality really puts him right in that position, and his intelligence.
I believe anyone who is a leader like Robin Hood
had to have been really political and clever.
Any leader like that's gotta be clever.
'Cause William Marshal, at 18 or 19,
would compete in village and small town shows,
where young knights would actually fight each other in the arena for money.
He became so celebrated that he got spotted by the aristocracy,
and then he was asked by some baron to fight on his behalf,
and 'cause the baron was elderly, fight on his behalf with this other person,
and he got paid for that. So now he becomes a mercenary.
By now he's 21 or 22.
Henry II sees him and says, "You, you gotta come into my household,"
and he then eventually ends up running the army for Henry II,
and eventually then sees Henry II into the ground,
protects the back of Richard Coeur de Lion,
sees him to the crusades and then he comes back.
Then, Richard dies. He then sees John onto the throne.
By now, he's in his 70s and then John finally passes on.
But William Marshal has been there, at the signing of the Magna Carta,
then takes John's young son, Henry III,
and will see him on to the throne, will function as the Prince Regent,
alongside the young Prince, the young King, until Marshal died.
It's an amazing story.
I'm so enthused to play, I can't tell you. I have never been this excited
about playing a character based on a real person.
William Marshal is an absolutely remarkable character.
I didn't hesitate to join Ridley on this,
and I took William Marshal. "Okay, I'll play him.
"It's on the page, seems great, why not?"
Then I find out who Sir William Marshal actually was,
and he was an amazing, amazing character in history, an actual human being.
We shot one scene, it was a five-page scene,
it ran seven to eight minutes long in the master.
It was an interior scene with me and Mark Strong and Dame Eileen Atkins,
and Oscar Isaac and Léa Seydoux. We shot, exposed 36,000 feet of film.
I've never, ever done that before.
We loaded 39,000 and we exposed 36,000 feet of film.
It's incredible is what it is.
The romance of Robin Hood really lies in his evolving relationship with Marion,
which is pretty damn good.
She and he are really, really, really excellent,
and it comes from a real place, which is always better.
Then his larger-than-life behavior will lead to his legend.
So, I think the sincerity of this is what holds it up.
It's that you're able to tell this kind of love story.
Yeah.
In a funny kind of way, the center of the film, if he can pull it off, is a kind of love story,
even though it isn't all about Robin Hood.
She's gonna play into it quite strongly, Cate.
First of all, she... Again, I love when an actor can bring, effortlessly, such reality.
I always come from that direction anyway
'cause that's when you get fully engaged and there's no bullshit.
It's real, the person is real.
She falls into the role of Marion, where she's coming from,
falls into the strength of Marion to enable herself to run her life and the estate.
She's completely real and I had her shoeing horses and then I had her...
First time we meet her, she's actually measuring him
for a shoe, and so she's working in the smithy,
and then, when he comes in, she stands up, and he thinks she's a worker,
calls her "girl," which she finds very amusing,
and then they meet inside and it suddenly dawns on him,
"Oh, my God, this is the lady of the house."
I mean, look, I think a lot of relationships are based on testing,
and there's game-playing that goes on that's,
hopefully, quite delicious for an audience to watch.
There's a buoyancy that exists between them.
And ultimately, I think she sort of sets these series of tests
that Robin continually passes and so I think probably that turns the corner for her.
So, it gradually evolves so they don't particularly like each other
or acknowledge each other.
That grows, too, in a good way, not the usual way.
And what I was really pleased about was her sense of humor,
which she can bring to bear on the screen,
just great humor, great, really loose, relaxed. Really great.
Ridley, he tested me out, he said, "Look, you can do this if you're game for it."
He set the challenge.
When someone says, "If you're game for it," you're not gonna say, "No, I'm not."
And I wouldn't say I'm a master horsewoman, but I do like riding a horse,
and Marion gets all chain-mailed up and rides off into battle.
That's really thrilling to do, and you don't get to do that everyday.
That's the joy of making a film like this,
is you get to do these things that are really adrenalin-based.
Godfrey is Mark Strong, who I actually worked with already on
a film called Body ofLies with Leo DiCaprio and Russell.
After Body of Lies,
and working with Ridley, I kind of...
He's one of the great directors of all time.
So, he mentioned that he was doing this, and I said I'd like to be involved,
but there was a very loose script at that point and a kind of vague synopsis.
And I think in the original, my character was Guy of Gisbourne,
a much more traditional role.
He's kind of morphed through a character called Conrad
into a character called Godfrey, Sir Godfrey.
There's been a lot of change since I've read the original thing over.
Well, it's probably two years ago now.
In this one, he's playing such a bastard,
which he also loves.
So I thought, "Why not? Let's go again."
Also, he's a great horseman, extremely good with sword, broad sword,
and just loves to put the armor on.
Every good story has a bad guy.
Every good morality tale has a good guy and a bad guy,
and essentially, Godfrey's job in this,
in broad strokes, is to be Robin's nemesis.
The man we love to hate, the man that the good guy deals with,
and therefore, all is well with the world.
We evolved him as a very important character,
because he will see through the French plan,
which is the subterfuge that will bring us right through and round to
extreme bad behavior in the provinces where he goes up with his stormtroopers,
they're almost like gestapo, and collect rent, collect tax on behalf of John.
Because in those days, there's no cell phone or word of mouth,
John doesn't realize how brutally he's leaning on the people.
'Cause John now needs money to pay for the returning army from Jerusalem,
who will need paying and looking after, so he increases the tax.
Godfrey goes in to collect tax and just creates hell.
That's the plan.
So the people are now turning against John and England.
So then Godfrey is the one who picks up his cell phone and says,
"Tell the King to get his ass over here now."
I thought, "Dover Castle, 13th of June, make sure you're there."
That's what happens.
Yeah, Oscar I met on Body of Lies, and I'd seen him on an HBO movie,
playing a Russian gangster in a red leather suit.
I thought, "Blimey, this guy's very interesting."
So then I met with him and said,
"What are you doing next?" He said, "I'm gonna play Hamlet in the park."
And I said, "What part are you playing?" He said, "Hamlet."
I said, "Okay."
And the theater in the park's very important, isn't it, in New York?
So, after that, I thought, "You know what, he's gonna be John."
Because Oscar is like Al Pacino. He's a powerhouse.
I play John, who starts off as Prince John, and becomes King,
King John. He definitely doesn't have a good reputation, even now.
He didn't have one while he was King and definitely doesn't have one now.
I actually went up to visit his tomb, up in Worcester.
And that's where he's laying, right there, and right next to his tomb,
there's a little placard that describes him,
and it just says all the horrible crap that he's done his entire life.
So, even the place where he's resting, he can't catch a break.
And in this one, I think, we've tried to show him as a more three-dimensional figure,
someone who really had a hard go of it.
You know, he wasn't someone that was respected.
He was someone that had been beaten down his whole life, particularly by his mother,
and he was the youngest out of all the brothers.
He was never meant to be King.
He really wanted it and I think he was a particularly...
And I think what we've tried to do is show his intelligence.
That he had a real idea of what it meant to be a great King.
King John seems to be part of the Robin Hood legend.
King John existed and King John was the unfortunate younger brother
of Richard Coeur de Lion.
Unfortunate in that he inherited a bankrupt kingdom,
which was, essentially, bankrupted by the shenanigans and doings
and the rock and roll of his elder brother, Richard Coeur de Lion,
that was spending, fundamentally, the money,
leading the country into absolute debt.
So the point in history which would circle the point
at which John would come to the throne,
which was because of Richard, his brother's death,
is the beginning of the film.
Sheriff of Nottingham was always the guy that goes "ha ha," you know, twiddling.
And always fancies Marion and is always getting rebuffed.
So there's always that jealousy.
We're a bit more serious with comedic undertones, just real humor.
And the Sheriff, in this instance, is a guy who straddles either side of the fence.
He's a man for all seasons, but not in the glorious sense of the word.
He's a survivor. He's kind of a little oily.
And he will do the best he can for himself.
I don't believe you know my husband, Sir Robert.
My lord.
Allow me to introduce the Sheriff of Nottingham.
I had the honor of taking up office just before you left for the Holy Land.
Welcome home, Sir Robert.
You make your mark quickly by rescuing the King's ram from drowning.
I play the Sheriff of Nottingham.
He's a bit of a naffer, really.
He's sort of morally pretty corrupt.
He'll sort ofjump on whichever ship isn't sinking fastest.
And then his hand gets pinioned by an arrow out of nowhere,
which of course comes from Robin, so...
It's sort of nicely set up, but there's a real animosity in it.
This is the beginnings of a feud.
If we do a sequel, he'll really come into his own.
In this one, he's kind of introduced as the person who runs Nottingham,
and has got his eyes on Marion, but he's a very strong character.
In the small amount he had to do, he's fabulous, Matthew Macfadyen.
Great.
I was kind of worried about Wales 'cause it was nine days
and it's entirely impractical 'cause you got moving water, moving boats,
horses, troops in armor.
So if you fall down in seven feet of water, you're gonna drown.
And all the English troops on horseback. It was a nightmare.
Because of that, I was paying attention
and I actually redrew some really detailed boards,
and you then go through that with an excellent first A.D., Max.
And when all the boards are laid out, Max looks at the master plan and says,
"Right. Day one, day two, day three." You'll have a knock-off system.
"I better get to here in day one, otherwise I am in trouble.
"Day two, I got to get to here." So then, whatever, you gotta get that.
You go one, plus all this coverage, to get him to here.
Then we'll probably have on this one, one, two...
- How many cameras have we got rolling? - Four or five.
Use every camera you've got after this setup.
- On this set, you'll use three. - Yeah. We got...
If you got five cameras rolling, you have to do that in two takes.
We're on continuous day, so we're doing 10 hours continuous at this location.
So let's see, you should be done this by 9:00 or 10:00.
Around the bend,
and then we decide whether we move in to...
Well, I felt that the end needed something,
like all films, big and dastardly.
In the third act, Philip comes to England
with his landing craft with 3,000 or 4,000 men, plus horses, led by...
By then Robin Longstride is now a leader of the pack.
Approved by William Marshal and reluctantly by King John.
So he's leading the pack of the British 2,500 against the French 4,000.
That's the end.
Fear and adrenaline.
You actually think, "Oh, my God, I've brought this about."
I think, honestly, by the time we do this whole blue screen, green screen,
it ends up costing more money. Have you noticed that?
It's not cheaper, it's way more expensive
because you're going in not really knowing what you want.
And so you stick up whatever you're gonna do
and have 12 horses galloping, which will later become 3,000.
And there's a tendency for it to look not organic.
It doesn't matter how good it is, you sniff it, you smell it, some of that's not real.
And I think that's why you've gotta use effects really discriminately,
so that you retain the reality of what's happening.
When an explosion is too big and you think,
"That guy couldn't have survived that explosion," it makes it silly.
I'm always very careful with what I use in effects.
And actually what's happened is, ironically, we came in under budget.
Which surprised me. They didn't tell me until too late.