Hugh Jackman’s Gritty 126-Minute Thriller Is Officially HBO Max’s Biggest Streaming Hit

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Hugh Jackman plays an old, violent man living in the shadows of a legendary past as he protects a young girl representing the hope of a future of which he’ll have no part. No, I’m not talking about “Logan,” but “The Death of Robin Hood,” “Pig” director Michael Sarnoski’s latest film that premiered in theaters earlier this year.

Everyone knows Robin Hood, but his actual cultural purchase is low. (Video essayist Patrick Willems has argued this is why there are so many failed Robin Hood movies out there.) That makes right now an odd time for a film titled “The Death of Robin Hood,” which is all about not just ending Robin’s journey but tearing down the folk hero’s legend. Alternatively, perhaps that’s exactly what makes it a perfect time for such a story. “The Death of Robin Hood” appears to have finally found an audience, as it currently sits as the No. 1 streamed film on HBO Max after grossing less than $10 million during its theatrical run.

Unapologetically indebted to “Logan” and Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven,” “The Death of Robin Hood” finds Robin living as a recluse. He’s hunted by the friends and family of all the people he killed, and he kills them in turn. Injured while helping his old friend Little John (Bill Skarsgård) retake his farm and family, Robin convalesces on an idyllic island under the eye of Sister Brigid (Jodie Comer).

But this isn’t the swashbuckling Robin played by Errol Flynn (to see how that Robin Hood might have grown old, watch Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn’s 1976 “Robin & Marian”). The poster for “The Death of Robin Hood” declares that “[h]e was no hero,” and the film suggests his past as an outlaw was about killing for fun and profit.

As Hugh Jackman narrates in a promotional video recorded for “The Death of Robin Hood,” the Robin Hood stories that became ballads and then myth changed a lot over the centuries. Gradually added elements like Robin’s rivalry with the Sheriff of Nottingham or his romance with Maid Marian got away from the earliest recorded tales that cast Robin as a “wicked and murderous bandit.” 

The idea that Robin Hood “robbed from the rich and gave to the poor” isn’t present in those early stories, either, and is born more from romantic ideas about the outlaw life. Jackman’s Robin and Skarsgård’s John, having killed so many people that their exploits have blurred together, have trouble remembering which parts of the stories are fact or fiction. There are no flashbacks to Robin’s youth as a brigand, so we have only his word to go on.

But it’s less that Robin finally realized “wait, killing is wrong???” in his old age, and more that he’s had to live his years killing more and more people coming to kill him because he previously killed someone they cared about. The movie is about the practical consequences of living a violent life as much as the spiritual ones. At the beginning, Robin isn’t guilty per se, he’s simply tired, both of killing and having to explain he’s not the man of whom songs were sung. His thoughts only grow into true guilt as he sits at the priory with Brigid, and with John’s little daughter, Margaret (Faith Delaney).

There’s almost no violence in the movie after Act 1, and for anyone expecting Robin to die with his bow in his hand, “The Death of Robin Hood” has a more melancholic climax and conclusion.

The insistence in “The Death of Robin Hood” that Robin was a monstrous thief and murderer has earned some raised eyebrows. Wealth inequality soars higher everyday — higher than it was in the Middle Ages — and now is the time to insist the folk hero famed for robbing the rich to give to the poor was actually a villain? After going in with these hesitations, I was able to get on Michael Sarnoski’s quiet wavelength and enjoyed the movie. But critic Richard Brody of the New Yorker dismissed “The Death of Robin Hood” as “crude cynicism” for this very reason. 

“The Death of Robin Hood” will not be the end of the character’s time onscreen, either. “The Uprising,” director Paul Greengrass’ historical epic about the 1381 English Peasants’ Revolt, is also another abridgement of the Robin Hood myth even if Andrew Garfield’s unnamed “Ploughman” isn’t actually called “Robin.” “The Uprising” (read /Film’s underwhelmed review here) centers on the class war elements of the Robin Hood myth that “The Death of Robin Hood” disregards.

But I’d contend the most striking reimagination of Robin Hood for 2026 was not in film at all. Many equate superheroes with older folk heroes — even “The Death of Robin Hood” itself does that by borrowing from “Logan.” Regardless of whether you believe that comparison or not, DC Comics’ archer hero Green Arrow is undeniably inspired by Robin Hood. New comic series “Absolute Green Arrow” by Pornsak Pichetshote and Rafael Albuquerque recasts Green Arrow as a serial killer who targets billionaires to the public’s adoration. The book’s tagline? “We need a Robin Hood who’s less Errol Flynn and more Michael [Myers].”

2026 gave us “The Death of Robin Hood,” but also proof there may be new life in this legend yet.