5 questions with The Death of Robin Hood director Michael Sarnoski

Michael Sarnoski never set out to make the anti-Logan, but that's exactly what happened.

The Death of Robin Hood stars Hugh Jackman (Wolverine himself), as a grizzled old version of the legendary folk hero as he nears the end of his life and begins to mentor a young orphan. So yes, it sounds a lot like the critically acclaimed 2017 Marvel movie, Logan. But unlike in that film, Jackman's character here isn't some cranky old hero — he's a violent, murderous bastard making a last-ditch effort to atone for his sins.

Sarnoski's new film subverts both the legend of Robin Hood and the reluctant father-figure trope seen in Logan, The Last of Us, and countless other movies, TV shows, and video games. This version of Robin may steal from the rich, but he never shares with anyone except his even more deranged sidekick Little John (Bill Skarsgard), and he's the last person you'd want raising your child.

Sarnoski also has a tendency to undermine whatever trope he's working in. His breakout film, Pig, took the revenge-saga subgenre established by John Wick and reimagined it as an emotional, mostly bloodless journey of redemption starring Nicolas Cage. His follow-up, A Quiet Place Day One, took the sci-fi blockbuster premise and infused it with Charlie Chaplin energy, transforming the original film's sound-based monster premise into a silent film homage.

And yet, the writer-director swears he never sets out to subvert any popular trope or genre, let alone Robin Hood or Logan.

"I don't think I ever set out to be like, Okay, how am I gonna subvert this? For me, everything comes from character," Sarnoski tells Polygon. "My first step is, I need to have a character that I'm fascinated by, that I understand enough, but also like is right on the edge of my understanding and I wanna kind of unpack them. Then I build the world around them."

The Death of Robin Hood begins with Robin and John on a rampage across the English countryside. After decades of murder, the duo have many enemies, and they spend much of their time fending off various people out for revenge — while also continuing to kill and pillage as much as possible.

Eventually, Robin meets his match and nearly dies in combat. John saves him before dropping his almost-dead friend off at a nearby island priory (like a monastery) led by a prioress (like a nun) played by Jodie Comer. Surrounded by nuns, children, and other invalids, Robin has no choice but to accept a more peaceful life as Sarnoski settles into a leisurely character study that dominates the bulk of the film's runtime.

The Death of Robin Hood is a beautiful, slightly indulgent film full of S-tier acting, rugged scenery, stunning violence, and heavy themes of death and legacy. So I had plenty to ask about when I connected with Sarnoski over Zoom. Below, you can read his answers to five questions I had after watching the movie. There are no real spoilers here beyond the one contained within the title, but you'll likely enjoy our conversation better if you've seen it for yourself first.

1 Where did the idea for The Death of Robin Hood come from?

The original Robin Hood's Death tells a very different story in which an evil prioress betrays a wounded Robin and kills him by draining too much blood. So why choose this downer of a story to begin with? The answer has its roots in Sarnoski's difficult childhood.

"I've probably been thinking about it for about 30 years," he says. "I loved Robin Hood growing up. My dad and I loved Robin Hood. He was a really outdoorsy guy, and when he passed away, I was nine. I had this neighbor, sort of mentor who became a surrogate father figure, and he gave me his old childhood copy of Robin Hood from, like, the 1940s."

It was a revelation that changed his entire perspective on both the character and the world.

"That was the first time I read the full mythology of Robin Hood. I loved Prince of Thieves and the Disney Robin Hood was my favorite movie, but this was the time I read the more mature mythology, and it ends with The Death of Robin Hood story. As a nine-year-old reading that right after your dad died, it's like, What? The happy guy in tights just has this quiet, very human death? I was going through a moment where you're kind of assessing how these male figures that I thought were immortal aren't, and it really stuck with me.

"It's funny because a lot of people aren't that familiar with that story, but when I thought of Robin Hood, that was always the story I thought of. For a long time, I just enjoyed it. I wasn't planning on making a movie about it. But I just sort of decided, right before Quiet Place, I was like, I gotta get this out finally, for better or worse.”

2 Why make Robin Hood a violent, murderous bastard?

The version of Robin Hood in this movie is unlike anything we've seen before. From the original folk tales to popular movies of the 20th Century, Robin is always a hero who steals from the rich and gives to the poor — even if his exact methods vary from story to story. So why make this version of Robin Hood a murderous brute?

"None of it was to poke at the eye of Robin Hood," Sarnoski says. "I love Robin Hood. I was trying to think of what might that man have actually been like and how would he have felt about these stories that people are telling about him?

"A lot of the early ballads are very brutal and he does some pretty grotesque things in them. It's sort of played for fun. He's still portrayed as a hero-ish. But I got to thinking, OK, a lot of these earliest ballads were recorded 300 years after Robin would have existed. That's a long time for things to get whitewashed and simplified and turn him into a classic folk hero, but the brutality's there. The life of a medieval bandit would have been pretty brutal. Violence would have been sort of like an ever present thing. So it's about this guy who lived a life of violence because that's just what you did back then. And then he's aged out of that to the point where he's finally reflecting on what he's done and he has regrets."

3 What did Hugh Jackman bring to the role that wasn't in the original script?

Sarnoski didn't set out to cast Jackman as Robin, but he says the actor brought an unexpected layer of warmth to what could have been an even bleaker portrayal of the character in another performer's hands.

"I never write parts for actors," Sarnoski says. "If I'm writing it for a specific actor, even subconsciously I'm gonna start sort of like thinking about their mannerisms, thinking about what they mean to me.

"I always like to write the script so that I feel like the character on the page feels full and alive and complex. And then I want to find someone who understands that character and can bring something so unique to them. Hugh was that in spades. He was so into that script and that character. He was really brave to take on a character that's not likable. You know, Hugh Jackman's got a reputation to keep up. But he was like, No, screw it. Like I wanna dig into this guy.

"Hugh is literally like the nicest guy in the world. He's so warm and curious about other people and kind to other people. The coolest thing was to see that, even through all the darkness, he has those moments of warmth. It comes from a truly deep well because it is something he really lives with inside of him. He managed to bring both the intense brutality of the character, but then find such quiet humanity as well."

4 How did Bill Skarsgard transform into Little John?

When the credits rolled, I was surprised to see Skarsgard's name next to the character Little John, Robin's ironically named sidekick who manages to be even scarier and cruder than Robin in this movie. According to Sarnoski, I'm not the only one who didn't recognize Skarsgard onscreen.

"I have been seeing a lot of people be like, 'Wait, Bill was in the movie?’ You see him play Pennywise and Nosferatu and you're like, 'Okay, he disappears in the character because he's wearing all his makeup. That makes sense.' But then you realize, no, actually it's because of how he finds these characters. Even if he was wearing no makeup, those are unrecognizably different characters and voices and ways of moving. He's like an insane chameleon."

In particular, Sarnoski praises Skarsgard for his physical performance, which helped solve an issue brought up by the film's casting.

"Bill and Hugh are both tall guys. They're the same height. But I wanted Little John to feel big. Some of that was that we made sure he had a nice bulky costume, but like a lot of that is just how Bill carries himself. I remember when he walked in in his costume. He was carrying himself like this giant baby. He's like this ogre. He found something so specific. It was mind blowing."

5 What's the deal with Jodie Comer's bowl?

Finally, I asked Sarnoski about a very specific detail in the film, the metal bowl used by the prioress to draw blood from Robin Hood. The bowl has a metal face carved into its interior, which lets the prioress measure how much blood she's taken. Turns out, there's a detailed historical explanation for where that bowl comes from, and its story peels back another layer of this world.

"We needed a blade and a bloodletting bowl," Sarnoski says. "That was a thing that people did back then. But that specific design for the bowl grew out of Jodi's research. She got really into healers and herbalism and its connection to spirituality back then. There's this goddess of health and healing, Salus, and Jodi was like, 'I'm really interested in this goddess.' And then I started researching her and it turns out one of her symbols is this specific bowl called a patera that had this face carved into it. In statues, Salus was always holding this bowl. It was part of her iconography.

"I loved the face idea because I was like, 'Oh, that actually will be a really useful way to track when she's over bloodletting him; when it's done for healing and when it's not.' But I also love the idea that the priory is this place that transcends Christianity and modern Medieval times. The prioress talks about how it dates back to ancient Celtic times and then the Romans came. So even though the prioress is seemingly like a Christian figurehead, she honors a lot of those old traditions.

"So in my mind, this is an ancient Roman bowl that she takes care of. When you go into her bed chamber, in the scene where they're eating soup together, you can see her room is filled with artifacts and scrolls and books. She's this keeper of history beyond history. So it all kind of swirled together that way."

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The Death of Robin Hood releases in theaters on June 19