How “The Death of Robin Hood” ‘surprised’ Hugh Jackman with this unexpected ending (exclusive)

Key points

• Director Michael Sarnoski says The Death of Robin Hood is built around “a guy who’s searching for his right death.”

• When Hugh Jackman first read the script, he “felt it was building to an ending that didn’t happen.”

• Sarnoski says that he wanted the central character to realize that “maybe I’ve been sort of wrong about that death that I’m seeking.”

This article contains spoilers for The Death of Robin Hood.

The Death of Robin Hood‘s title gives away how the movie ends, but it’s still surprising how the titular hero meets his fate.

In the film’s final act, Robin (Hugh Jackman) reckons with a lifetime of murder and brutality in a number of ways. After mentoring Little John’s orphaned daughter, Margaret (Faith Delaney), Robin advises Godwyn (Noah Jupe) to drop his quest for vengeance following Little John’s (Bill Skarsgård) and Robin’s attack on his family.

Robin also shares a final conversation with the local leper (Murray Bartlett), who reveals that he is actually Guy of Gisbourne, an adversary Robin previously faced on the battlefield. In his parting words, Guy encourages Robin to reveal his true identity to Sister Brigid (Jodie Comer), the prioress who cares for them both at the priory. That revelation would undoubtedly shake his relationship with Brigid, as he knows that he killed her husband years prior.

Robin follows Guy’s advice and tells Brigid that he is Robin Hood. She’s stunned by the news and tells him to get in bed before cutting his arm to make him bleed as she accuses him of burning her husband alive. Robin then communes with Little John in a dream and declares, “I’m ready to finish it.”

The prioress tells Robin that she’s never taken a life before, and he compares it to the pruning of a flower. “Heal me,” he asks.

After Brigid cuts Robin again, he shares a tender moment with Margaret, telling her a story about her father. She fires an arrow out the window, and Robin dies in bed in the final shot of the film.

Director Michael Sarnoski tells Entertainment Weekly that Robin’s death comes from the original legend of the prince of thieves.

“I always loved that Robin Hood dies in a quiet, sunlit church bedroom, and it’s peaceful and weird, and this person who you’re used to hearing about all the grand adventures from had such a simple, quiet death,” the filmmaker says of existing myths about the folk hero’s demise. “I knew I wanted to find that, but find it from the world of violence in a way that made sense, but it also had to be rooted in Hugh’s character in the movie.”

Sarnoski was focused on making the movie feel realistic as it shifts from a rugged, bloody beginning to a quiet, intimate ending. “We wanted to be able to start in a brutal place that was so violent that it’s unpleasant, and then get to this ending that’s sort of serene and contemplative, but it needs to feel like a throughline that makes sense,” he explains.

Jackman tells EW that he was immediately attracted to The Death of Robin Hood because it upended his expectations for the finale. “It surprised me at every turn,” he says. “Even as it was going along, I felt it was building to an ending that didn’t happen. I think a lot of people will think that.”

The filmmaker wanted the character and the audience to embrace the surprising tone of Robin’s death. “That is what his character is grappling with: this is a guy who’s searching for his right death, and in his mind, in the same way as the audience thinks it, he thinks that’s going to be some grand death in battle, and it’s going to have a lot of swords and blood involved,” Sarnoski explains. “It’s him coming to terms with, ‘Oh, maybe I’ve been sort of wrong about that death that I’m seeking and maybe there’s another death that’s beautiful and maybe better than I even deserve, in some way.'”

Sarnoski recognizes that viewers might expect Robin to go out in a blaze of glory defending his new community. “The audience is expecting him to be on top of the priory, shooting arrows at a bunch of people attacking and all that stuff, and in some way, he expects that to be how he’s going to go out, too,” he says. “So seeing him sort of transition — that should be the same kind of transition of discovery that the audience is going through as well.”

Jackman appreciates how the film meditates on the thorny complexity of storytelling. “This is a real cautionary tale about the power of stories we tell ourselves about ourselves or about our life or about others or the stories that we are fed, whether it be stories about a country or a community or a religion,” he says. “And if they’re not examined, if we don’t examine our stories and who we are, or who we think we are, then we have to be careful.”

Sarnoski recognizes that the film grapples with the glorification of violence, but notes that it wasn’t an intentional thematic thread while he wrote the screenplay.

“I don’t know if I even set out writing the script to interrogate violence in any specific way, but it just became the very natural root that the story wanted to go down because that was what Robin Hood was doing,” he says. “He was dealing with his legacy of violence and understanding what role it had played in his life and how much it had defined his life. He starts this movie kind of seeing violence as the whole world. And so the movie sort of becomes about him seeing that there’s more to life than just that.”

Jackman reflects on participating in violent films throughout his career. “I’ve done action movies, and I’ve stabbed more people than I could tell you, taking heads off and limbs and all sorts of things,” he says. “I’m a big Joseph Campbell fan. Forms of violence have existed in every culture ever since the birth of time. So there is something in our nature. There is something … I mean, I think humans are responsible for the destruction of 98 percent of all species, whether it be animal or flora. There is a destructive side to us. I think it’s important that stories bear them out.”

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Sarnoski wanted the film’s depiction of violence to feel brutal and unrelenting. “The violence was something that I wanted to be critical of — I wanted it to be something that was unpleasant at times, that by the time you get through the opening that’s very violent, you kind of want to take a moment and step back from it,” he says. “I wanted to feel like these were human beings experiencing this.”

He continues, “It started from a place of just wanting to understand these characters as human beings in their time and place and the brutality of that natural world and of that time period. And then it became a question of: Well, how are these characters integrating that violence into their understanding of themselves and the stories they tell themselves about their own lives and the world around them?

Jackman is glad that the film’s violence feels troubling. “What I love about this is, as Michael says, it’s uncomfortable,” he explains. “It’s making us really look at it. What is the purpose of it? What are we doing? And if it’s unchecked, if it’s just this feeling of, ‘Ah, love it!’, it’s dangerous. So I think it’s wonderful to be part of something where you see — as anyone who’s really been around violence of any form [can attest] — it’s deeply unsettling and traumatic. And it doesn’t matter if you are the perpetrator or the victim. No one is unscarred by it. And I think that’s what this movie is exploring beautifully.”

The Death of Robin Hood is now playing in theaters.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly