The Adventures of Maid Marian

It's a shame about all the hassle.

The costumes aren't bad at all, and the forest setting fits.

But then you hear the dialogues, see the bad staging and the weak actors.

Well, truth be told, then I wasn't exactly expecting a whole lot from writer and director Bill Thomas's 2022 adventure movie "The Adventures of Maid Marian". I mean, the concept of the storyline just oozed pointlessness and felt rather unnecessary.

But still, I will say that the movie's cover/poster was actually interesting enough to get my attention, and with "The Adventures of Maid Marian" being a movie that I hadn't already seen, of course I opted to give it a chance.

And as luck would have it, then "The Adventures of Maid Marian" was as you would assume it to be. Yeah, this movie was not really an outstanding movie experience, and it certainly wasn't one that was particularly necessary in order to expand upon the lore of the Robin Hood legend.

The storyline was mediocre at best, but I never really did submerge myself fully into it, as the movie just never caught on with my particular interest. So it writer and director Bill Thomas didn't exactly churn out a movie that was overly entertaining for me.

The acting performances in "The Adventures of Maid Marian" were adequate. Needless to say that I wasn't familiar with a single performer on the cast list here. That is usually something I enjoy when I watch a movie, but since the actresses and actors in "The Adventures of Maid Marian" virtually had nothing interesting to work with, this just didn't have all that much of an appeal.

Visually then "The Adventures of Maid Marian" was actually okay. The costumes and props were adequate and definitely felt like something adequate for that particular era. It was perhaps a bit too clean and dandy, maybe some dirt, grime and weathering would have made it all the more realistic and believable.

I am sure that there is an audience out there for a movie such as "The Adventures of Maid Marian", perhaps a merry bunch of live action role-playing people will get a kick out of this movie.

My rating of "The Adventures of Maid Marian", since I wasn't particularly impressed or entertained, lands on a four out of ten stars.

Oh, have we run out of ideas? Well then, let's take an old famous story so we can skip paying any writers and lets rehash it AGAIN. Are we going to do anything original with it? Why no, of course not - why bother?

This is quite simply TERRIBLE. Whoever was involved in this, hang your heads in shame.

AVOID this boring pile of tripe. My one-star rating is for the camera person who had to film this garbage, it deserves a minus tating.

The only good thing about this movie is its length. I've seen better acting at a kid's nativity play, and the script might well have been written by a kindergarten attendee. At the time of writing this there were 9 reviews on IMDb, 8 of which gave 10/10 and were all first time reviewers, quelle surprise! Avoid like the plague.

Nice to see a woman lead who is competent in fighting and who rescues the damsel in distress (Robin). Bravo.

But this is an overtly amateur production for a number of reasons.

1. Clothes are too new and unused.

2. Marian wears overt makeup - in AD1199 - after being in an abbey for 3 years. Yeah.. she hid her mascara in her habit so the abbess wouldn't shout at her, I assume.

3. Huts etc look too new and unused. Three years, they need to be dusty and/or dirty etc.

4. Weapons etc generally do not draw blood or kill, even sword slashes etc. Only one wound seems to draw blood.

5. Robin survives too many wounds to be believable. He'd most likely be killed by any of them, within minutes.

6. The characters are generally incompetent in battle except Marian, and only, right at the end, does she turn it around and become a more superhero-like character. However, given that Robin has spent 3 years in battle and he survived, how can he be THIS helpless? I get that they want the movie to be about her, and make the woman the hero, but objectively, he should not be that clean shaven and pretty and ineffectual. He should at least be able to fight if he didn't die after 3 years crusading.

7. The sound of a crowd cheering at the "Execution" scene is weird given that there are like 10 people in attendance and that Robin is still known as a hero of the people.

8. No idea who most of the baddies are, or why they want to kill Robin, except Sheriff of Nottingham, who we know wants to kill him. E.g. The weird bishop guy, the Sheriff's flunky, his lieutenant guy with the beard, - all of them need some backstory to explain why, in the absence of the Sheriff, they still have it in for Robin, and why they hold off murder when they do have plenty of opportunity.

9. Forest scenes are confusing, they feel like a horror movie or "The Village" but then switch to medieval battle. It has to do with the trees and atmospheric sounds i think. And the drone footage. But it makes it unclear what the genre is meant to be for a few seconds.

10. It opens with Marian wearing a cool superhero type uniform and being accurate in her shooting, but she doesn't go back to that level of cool till right at the end, but she doesn't break out her cool uniform more than the opening scene. Which is kinda disappointing, if you're familiar with superhero movies - you except the hero to put on their uniform again when going back into superhero mode.

11. Home alone traps? Just not very effective. Why bother if they're not effective?

I'd say do watch it, mostly to get an idea of just how used to specific styles of film you are used to, so you can see just how it can be ... er... offbalanced. Also, because finally a woman is the hero. But apart from that, it just feels like a group of friend got their iphones out and made a cool project on a low budget.