No spoiler warning necessary: The Death of Robin Hood does indeed end with the death of Hugh Jackman‘s not-so-merry version of the bow and arrow wielding medieval outlaw. As in the original legend, Robin’s life ebbs away following a course of bloodletting administered by the prioress of a nunnery, played here by Killing Eve‘s Jodie Comer. But director Michael Sarnoski reveals to Gold Derby that he initially planned for one more shot that would follow Robin’s final breath.
“I had this idea for a final shot of an arrow being fired out the window of his chamber,” the filmmaker behind Pig and A Quiet Place: Day One remembers. “But then we filmed Hugh’s last close-up, and I realized, ‘We have to end on this.’ It would have been a waste to cut away to anything else.”
To be clear, the film’s final moments do still co-star an arrow; before expiring, Jackman’s Robin instructs Comer’s Sister Brigid how to properly nock his signature weapon and tells her to let it fly. But Sarnoski specifically avoided shooting any medieval art-style tableaus of that last archery lesson or a look at the arrow’s final resting place.
“For me, that whole death scene is less about what’s happening and more about getting inside the characters’ heads,” he says of his choice to emphasize close-ups over wide shots in a scene that only features three actors — Jackman, Comer and Faith Delaney, who plays Little Margaret, the daughter of Robin’s compatriot, Little John. “It was an eight or nine page scene, and I wanted to put it in the actors’ hands by keeping the shooting simple and didn’t get in the way of their performances.”
In this as-told to account, Sarnoski walked us through how he crafted an unexpectedly quiet end for a larger-than-life legend, why he avoided rewatching Logan before directing Jackman through another hero’s death, and whether a fall release date would have better suited his moody, contemplative film, which will be available on digital services on July 21 after wrapping its summertime theatrical run.
While Robin Hood’s death scene wasn’t the last scene filmed, Sarnoski did save it for the later in the production, and devoted an entire shooting day to getting it right.
What you see onscreen mirrors the script pretty closely. The thing that always attracted me to the “Death of Robin Hood” legend was just how quiet and spiritual it was. Here’s this adventurous hero who ends up dying in a bed in a church; you can’t think of a calmer way to go out. So I knew I wanted to capture that kind of transcendent calm. It was one of those scenes that you write on the page hoping it’ll work onscreen, and I always knew that Hugh was really going to have to land it to make the end work emotionally.
We filmed the whole scene in one day, and it was also our last day on that bed chamber set. We filmed it in long takes to let us run through the whole thing. Even when we were filming the coverage of Little Margaret, we would run through the whole scene. There is this one shot in the middle of the sequence with all three of them in the frame, and that’s definitely a nod to the “Passing of Robin Hood” painting that a lot of things in the film were inspired by.
Once we get to the priory, I used a lot of close-ups, which is why the latter portion of the movie is in 1:66:1 — that aspect ratio really lends itself to those kind of intimate shots. The film is ultimately about people half-lying to each other, while also trying to be both honest and not honest about themselves, so those really confined close-ups where you’re reading every expression and you’re living in that intimacy was really important to me.
I rarely shoot with multiple cameras, so we just shot with a single camera for the death scene. We did try to leave some room on the day for a little bit of play, but otherwise we were very specific about everything we were going to get. And we didn’t really do a lot of coverage; part of the reason why we used a lot of close-ups was to skip the medium shots and ensure that we wouldn’t have to shoot the whole scene from a particular angle if we knew it was just for one thing. You’re just in this kind of heavenly space, and you’re really in the characters’ faces.
For me, this movie was always about stripping away some of the legend — I wanted people to feel like these are living, breathing people and help them understand how they’re feeling and what their relationship to the world around them is at this time in history.
There was always this element in the original legend that was a little bit simple; the nun was evil and she betrayed the good guy, who took his death like a champ. But there are easier ways to kill people than bloodletting, and knowing Robin to be this kind of strong person, I always wondered why you would kill him in a way that gives him the option to fight back. So it always felt to me like there was something more complicated going on. That’s why I started thinking, “What if the prioress is actually a healer, and that’s what she wants to do?”
So then it slowly turned into this kind of mercy killing or assisted suicide that she and Robin discover together. I liked the idea that neither of them were quite sure as they were going through the process if this was what they wanted. But then by the end, they’re almost supporting each other through it. A lot of the movie takes place in this moral gray area, and even in the moment where she starts bloodletting him, she kind of can’t go through with it. I love Hugh and Jodie’s performances there, because you see Jodie try to steal herself while Hugh slowly realizes what’s happening and accepts it. Watching them discover thing that’s hard to put into words was part of the challenge and the fun of the ending.
Hugh was always excited by the emotional and philosophical underpinnings of Robin Hood, and wanted to explore that — especially that transition from extreme violence to serene calm. We did discuss some of the similarities to Logan, but he also found this character and story extremely unique. It doesn’t go into the kind of expected version where he’s fighting people at the end, and he was really excited to lean into that. This isn’t a movie about getting to the next action scene — it’s about sitting with the characters and meditating with them.
I’ve seen Logan a bunch of times and I love that movie, but I avoided rewatching it while making this film. I also still haven’t seen Robin and Marian because I didn’t want to be influenced by it! I have my memory of Logan, so I just tried to acknowledge it and then not think about it. I find that even if I’m trying not to attempt to do something another movie did, you’re still letting that movie taint your own expression in some way.
I remember that the whole crew was crying while Hugh was performing his final scene. Afterwards, I looked at the producer and we were both like, “I think we landed that.”
Everyone has their own relationship to the Robin Hood character, and sometimes people get a little pearl clutch-y about it. But in some ways, this is very authentic to the legend — Robin goes to a priory and the prioress bloodlets him to death! But this movie is also about stripping away certain things from the legend.
What always struck me about the “Death of Robin Hood” stories when I read them at a young age right after my dad had passed away is this idea that someone who was supposed to live forever could just die suddenly in a bed. Wrapping my head around that and understanding that both things could be true was upsetting and also challenging. It taught me how I could appreciate and love these fun stories, but also acknowledge the human side to them as well. And certainly, some of the greatest movies ever made end with the hero dying!
Still, nobody likes seeing the main characters die. I remember that being a big thing on A Quiet Place: Day One. [Note: The film ends with the implied death of the character played by Lupita Nyong’o.] We would show it to people at test screenings, and then hand them cards that ask, “What’d you think of the ending?” And they’d be like, “I’m kind of bummed that the main character just died.” Then the studio reads those comments and goes, “Well, we need to find a way for her to live! They hate that she dies.” We’d have to tell them, “No, they’re just affected by it.”
So that ended up being a constant conversation with Paramount. But that character was also a hospice patient, so even if she lived it was always going to be a thin victory. I know that people don’t like to see characters they care about die or suffer, but that’s also what stories are about: watching people suffer and overcome things, and grow through the process. And inevitably, all of our stories end with death — at least until we figure out a way to download our brains and get charged a monthly subscription fee to stay alive! [Laughs]
I really didn’t want to release The Death of Robin Hood in the summertime; it’s definitely more of a fall movie. I think if you go into this film with summer movie expectations, those naturally come with the feeling that it’s an action thriller of some sort, which primes you to interact with it in the wrong way. It’s a quiet, slow, thoughtful, and dark grown-up drama. We definitely had those conversation with A24, but there are so many moving parts that go into those decisions. If a film gets released at the perfect time, that’s the luck of the draw to a certain extent.
I do hope that people will keep watching as it comes out on VOD. We’re also doing a very slow international release because the World Cup, so it’s not coming out till September in a lot of places, which probably is more of an appropriate time. Not that great movies don’t come out in summer, but when you’re going to see a Robin Hood movie in the summer, you expect a certain kind of Robin Hood movie, and this is certainly not that! This is a movie that’s meant to be sat with on its own terms.
I’m also not saying this film is the truest representation of Robin Hood’s death, but that’s not really what it’s about. It’s about how these stories affect us, how we use them, how we understand them, and how we integrate them into ourselves. I liked the idea of a main character who is assessing his own history at the end of his life, because we’re doing the same thing. Most of our memories aren’t actual memories; they’re just stories we’ve told ourselves over and over to the point where we honestly can’t remember what was an actual experience and what was the narrative fiction you created around it. If I tried to make a movie about what exactly happened to Robin Hood, it would go against the point of the film.
This interview has been edited and condensed
