Screen Takes

Sorry I’ve been away for a while. I’ve been having fun. Doing exactly what, I’ll get to in a moment. But first a little background.

While working on my last post about Robin Hood, I did some prowling around the internet and found this interesting story about “the other two writers.” You know, the two guys who aren’t Brian Helgeland. Names are Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Vorhis and the story goes that they wrote a screenplay called  “Nottingham” which made the rounds in Hollywood and had tons of buzz on it as this great screenplay. It was eventually bought (by someone, maybe Brian Grazer, maybe the studio, I forget who) and then Russell Crowe signed on and he wanted Ridley Scott brought in to direct. So then it’s pretty much a go. But when Scott got hold of this hot property he immediately started changing it, and changing it, and changing it, and Brian Helgeland was brought in (I don’t know by who). But the long and short of it is that by the time the film reached the screen it had virtually no resemblance to the initial screenplay that had originated the project. And what a travesty! How typical Hollywood! To take a great screenplay and utterly destroy it! (Just trying to represent here the tone of the reports I was reading.)

All of this, of course, made me curious. A great screenplay? Really? Ruined by Ridley Scott? Are you sure? Hmm. Think I’d like to get a look at that screenplay and see for myself. Prowling a little further, I found the original easily accessible and downloadable, and so did just that, then printed it out (I like to scribble in margins) and settled in on my couch for a good read.

. . .

So, now having read it, I can attest to the fact that there is indeed just about zero resemblance, other than a few legendary characters, between the screenplay titled “Nottingham” by Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Vorhis and the film titled “Robin Hood” that also bears their names. As for all the buzz it got, I would not call this a “great” screenplay. I would call it an intriguing idea that needed more work. For those of you who have more important things to do with your time than download, print out and read unproduced screenplays that are about to fade into obscurity, I have decided, as a sort of public service, to summarize the main points of the story here.

Nottingham
By Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Vorhis

Sir Robert Tornham, Sheriff of Cyprus, gets word that he is being reposted to England to become Sheriff of Nottingham. He arrives in Nottingham to learn of the notorious Robin Hood, a lesser nobleman of Saxon descent, who has been robbing, pillaging and murdering nobles of Norman birth, heralded as a hero by the common folk because of his largesse with them.

Tornham examines the scene of a recent double murder learning they were guests at a party held by Lord Fitzwater for his daughter Marian. He interviews Marian who tells him she was about to be married to Robin Hood when he was unjustly outlawed for coming to the defense of a miller who had killed one of the king’s deer to feed his starving family.

While Prince John is out hunting deer, he is suddenly pursued by a wild boar until Lady Marian shoots it dead. Marian takes off on horseback, Tornham goes after her and is ambushed and taken hostage by Robin Hood and his men. Robin tells Tornham he is not the murderer he seeks.

Freed by the Merry Men, Tornham goes to see Marian. An alarm is sounded and Tornham learns of another murder. He inspects the scene of the murder and tells his squire it wasn’t Robin Hood who killed the man because he was with Robin Hood when the murder happened. Tornham is told in confidence by Queen Eleanor that King Richard has been taken hostage by the Austrians and they are holding him for ransom. Taxes will go up and it will be Tornham’s job to collect them. But Prince John will try to keep the money from being delivered to the Austrians. She makes him pledge his loyalty to King Richard.

Prince John announces that the King is reported to be near death so all ransom money will be delivered to him. Tornham surreptitiously delivers gold to the Archbishop of Canterbury to be used to free the king. He then tells Lady Marian he plans to catch Robin Hood by ambushing him at the abbey of Friar Tuck the following Sunday.

Marian sneaks out in the night to warn Robin Hood, and Tornham follows her. He tells Robin Hood he doesn’t believe he’s responsible for the murders but needs his help in finding who is. He shows him the arrowheads he’s been collecting from the corpses with the initials S.P. chiseled into them. Hood tells him it stands for Sagitarii Pedestri, which means “Foot Archer” and indicates that the arrowheads came from Prince John’s infantry archers.

The camp is suddenly surrounded by the soldiers of Prince John led by Guy of Gisborne, who was tipped off by Tornham’s squire. Robin Hood is captured and Tornham is given credit for it. At a celebration, Prince John tells Tornham Robin Hood will be executed. When Tornham insists on a trial, Prince John agrees to a test of combat against Guy of Gisborne. Tornham then asks Gisborne to defeat Robin Hood but not kill him to give him a jury trial so he doesn’t become a martyr. Gisborne refuses.

Tornham sneaks into Gisborne’s chamber, finds a secret passageway and makes his way through underground tunnels. Above, the fight between Robin Hood and Gisborne begins as King Richard approaches the castle. Below, Tornham finds a chamber with arrows matching the arrowheads from the dead bodies and a list of names of the murder victims. Above, the fight proceeds until King Richard’s horsemen gallop up to the castle gate. Tornham leads the king’s men through the tunnels into Gisborne’s chamber for a surprise attack from within. A great battle ensues. Gisborne grabs Lady Marian and gallops off with her. Tornham races after them. He finds Marian and battles it out with Gisborne, finally getting the better of him.

Tornham, recovering from his wounds, is told by Queen Eleanor that the people are saying that Gisborne’s murder, Prince John’s overthrow and King Richard’s return are all to Robin Hood’s credit. “People need heroes,” she says. Then she tells him the king is auctioning off his key positions to raise money for his next French campaign. But she assures him they have a post for him in the king’s army. Robin Hood, now Lord of Locksley, offers to buy him the position  of Sheriff of Nottingham but Tornham refuses. Robin leaves for his wedding to Lady Marian.

Clearly, the idea here was to invert the well-known legend to tell it from the “bad guy’s” point of view while adding the ironic twist at the end that Robin Hood gets all the credit for the Sheriff’s accomplishments. Ain’t that just the way things go. There’s always a more complicated truth behind the popular account. But I can’t help feeling there’s a bit of a “So what?” factor here. What have we gained by learning this? Some poor schlump got shafted again. So what? In my observation, the significance of the more-complicated-truth-behind-the-popular-account story usually has to do with an underdog who’s not being properly credited due to his (or her) disempowered status. For me, that’s when stories of underlying truth get interesting, even if only liberally imagined.

But before I get carried away on my disempowered underdog soapbox, let me back up for a minute to consider some practical matters of structure. What we have here is a detective story within a political power struggle. These are the two most common structures for a plot-based story – the solving of a mystery and the triumph over an enemy. Most plot stories are either one or the other, but these writers have managed to pack the two into one. Maybe that’s why this screenplay was deemed to be so great among Hollywood script readers. And I certainly grant it that as well – the external tension is definitely increased by the interweaving of these two different narrative forms.

I just have one small problem with this approach. What we’re doing here is taking a plot idea and simply adding more plot to it, which keeps everything happening on a superficial level of external conflict rather than going deeper into character and theme. Robert Tornham has about as much depth and complexity as Robert Langdon in The Da Vinci Code. And as for Robin Hood, he’s just a big blank spot running through the middle of the story. We are given very little sense of who he is and why he does what he does. In fact, Robert Tornham’s predicament – needing to solve a mystery in order to topple a corrupt king – could have easily been told without the context of the Robin Hood legend. This is made clear by the fact that Robin Hood’s primary purpose in the legend – that of stealing from the rich to give to the poor – is significantly sidelined. It is only mentioned at the beginning to provide a reason for Robin Hood to be persecuted and framed for murder. The unfortunate result of this deprioritizing is to strip the story of its thematic potential, leading to the “So what?” factor. In short, the plot aspects of murder mystery and power struggle have been used to drive the story at the expense of developing the character and thematic elements.

So there I was, lying on my couch, contemplating “Nottingham” and planning what to say about it on my blog. One thing I’ve discovered in these months of blogging is that, while I love to pull apart and analyze great stories (because you can just keep going deeper and deeper into them), when it comes to lesser works, my usual process is not nearly as much fun. In fact, it can be quite dull and discouraging. And since no one is paying me to write this blog (yet), the fun factor is paramount. I soon discovered that a much more fun approach to problematic works is what I have come to call the here’s-how-I’d-rewrite-that-screenplay technique. If you’ve been following my scribblings for a while now, you’ll know that I have done theses revisionings with It’s Complicated, Avatar, Father of the Bride, and, to some degree, Robin Hood.

So, I figured I would use that technique to illuminate the shortcomings of Nottingham. I soon discovered, however, that I wasn’t getting any creative juices going on it. I opened the portals to my imagination but nothing came out. Dry as a bone. No movement whatsoever. In fact, it just gave me a weary feeling to think about it. Then I had a radical thought: Maybe I should write my own action film. Just for fun. My own action-packed retelling of a historical story. But mine, of course, would be from a woman’s point of view. So whose story would I tell? Joan of Arc? (Too well traveled.) Florence Nightingale? (Too respectable.) Hildegard von Bingen? (Already coming to a theater near you this October. Margarethe von Trotta, writer/director.) Then it hit me – Maid Marian! What could be more obvious than that? The floodgates opened and the creative juices began to flow.

So this is the fun I’ve been having the last few weeks (in my spare time), sitting in my bean bag chair contemplating my magnetic whiteboard propped up against my office wall. At first, I stared at a bunch of marker scribbles on a time line. Then I started making top to bottom rows of little slips of paper, scenes of Marian written in red, Robin Hood in blue, King John in black, held up by magnets, adding more and more each day, until the marker scribbles had to be erased to make room for all the paper slips. Eventually the paper slips took over the entire board, with rejects spilling onto the carpet, along with scissors, blank paper, more magnets and markers of many colors. I can’t think of a more heavenly place on earth to be than this, except, of course, for those moments when it becomes torture. But, if you hang in, those moments pass and then it becomes heaven again, or at least more fun than you’ve had in a long, long time.

(BTW, there was an article in the New York Times the other day reporting discoveries on the part of brain researchers that daydreaming has measurable benefits to the creative process. Duh!)

Then came the point when I realized I was tinkering with it too much. Trying to make it just right, trying to get it perfect. That’s when I knew it was ready for posting. The point of this exercise was not to write a perfect story. It was to have some fun taking a wild shot at something way out of my normal scope and, hopefully, illustrate some points of character and theme in the process.

So, if I were to retell the Robin Hood story, here’s how I would do it:

Marian
a treatment
c. Jennine Lanouette 2010

Lady Marian kneels in a chapel, praying. Friar Tuck asks what troubles her and learns she is praying for God’s help in winning the archery tournament in the upcoming May Day games, which her father, the Norman noble Sir Hugh Longchamps, promised her she could compete in if she taught her little brother, Thomas. The next day, however, when it is announced that King John will be in attendance, Sir Hugh goes back on his promise, telling Marian he can’t risk having her win over her little brother, which she surely will, and, besides, it is unseemly for a woman to compete. In a fit of anger, she runs away from the festivities.

Sir Robert Locksley, a brutish brawling Saxon noble who controls the local flour mill, meets Sir Hugh at the fair and accuses him of trying to encroach on his corner of the market by building a new mill. When Sir Hugh tries to have Sir Robert thrown out of the festival, Sir Robert decks the first guard who approaches, setting off a wild fracas among the crowd. A trumpet heralds the arrival of King John and the fighting immediately stops. Everyone runs around, getting ready, as the king’s cortege is seen approaching from the distance.

Meanwhile, deep in the woods, Marian, in her state of pique, has become lost. She comes upon a shack and is taken in and fed by a peasant family who have little to spare. She is shocked to see how they suffer, even more than she, from her father’s tyrannical nature.

As the games are about to begin, King John announces, amidst much fanfare, that he is launching a campaign to recapture his lost territories in France. The assembled crowd cheers as the young nobles prance around on their steeds. The games proceed with a greater fervor as everyone is eager to demonstrate their battle prowess.

Finding her way back to the castle with the help of the peasant family, Marian sees more destitute families. This is eye-opening to her since, before this, she has only been outside the castle walls to go on the hunt with her father. One of the families has a little boy who is very sick. She looks him over and promises them some medicinal herbs from the castle garden.

Marian comes in to the castle yard to find the jousting tournament underway. She tells her peasant escorts to wait at the castle’s back entrance where she will bring them the herbs. On her way to the garden, she cuts through the stables and encounters Sir Robert suiting up for his match. He has not laid eyes on the daughter of Sir Hugh since she became a young woman and is immediately smitten. As he postures on his steed to impress her, she tries to take her leave to tend to her more important errand. Once her errand is complete, she prepares herself for a scolding from her father. But he is too elated with Thomas’ triumph in the archery competition. He didn’t even notice she was gone.

Late that night, Marian and her two trusted servants, Will and Little John, sneak into the grain stores to steal her father’s precious barley seed. She instructs them to make sure to steal enough so he will notice that. They take the sacks into the woods and leave them on the peasant family’s door step. Sir Hugh is livid when he discovers his loss and immediately has the Sheriff of Nottingham scour the countryside for the culprit. The family is terrified to be caught with the goods, so they return the seed to the castle in the middle of the night. Sir Hugh takes it as a threatening message from Sir Robert.

Holding court in Sir Hugh’s Great Hall, King John boasts to the local nobles about the fleet of ships he will build to defeat France and then agrees to hear grievances from his subjects. Much the miller’s son is brought in, who was arrested for poaching deer against the edict of the king. Sir Robert comes to Much’s defense since he is in his employ. Sir Hugh, in turn, portrays Sir Robert’s action as the subversive defense of poaching from a Saxon. Other nobles chime in. Sir Robert protests that the Saxon peasants are being made to endure undue burdens. Marian listens intently to Sir Robert. But the King is not interested in the petty squabbles of local nobles. He dismissively sentences Much to “punishment” and leaves the hall. As the door closes behind him, Sir Robert loses his temper at Sir Hugh and starts another brawl.

Sir Hugh tells the Sheriff of Nottingham he wants to prove to the king that Sir Robert is the one who stole his seed and appoints him to investigate. Marian asks Nottingham if she can come along when he goes to interview the peasants. In the peasant village, Marian sees the daughter, Mathilda, about her age, from the peasant family who helped her. She takes Mathilda aside to ask why they returned the seed and is told that if they had been caught with it they would have been tortured. Marian is incredulous. Nobles steal from nobles all the time. King John is about to go to France to steal land from King Phillip. Why should peasants be treated so harshly? Mathilda says it’s not the same for peasants. They are left to starve, and when they try to feed themselves, they’re tortured.

The King leads a hunting party in the Sherwood Forest, including Sir Hugh, Thomas, Marian and other local nobles. Marian shoots a deer. King John congratulates her on her beginner’s luck. He tells her it is hers and then asks what she will do with it. “I think I’ll send it to the peasant village,” she says. Amidst a collective gasp, Sir Hugh intervenes. “My daughter is a joker, Your Highness. Of course, we give it to you as a symbol of our gratitude.” King John accepts the gift. As the hunting party proceeds, Marian lags behind. She sees another deer and shoots it, too. Thomas comes after her, asks if she got it. She tells him no, she missed and it got away. As she follows her brother back to the hunting party, she leaves a scarlet kerchief on a tree branch.

When Sir Hugh confines Marian to her chamber as punishment for offending the king, she asks to see her confessor. Friar Tuck arrives and Marian tells him where to find the second slain deer to give to the peasants. Tuck is grateful but says if she wants to help the peasants, get her father to build them a hospital. Marian tells Sir Hugh that she will give up archery if he builds a hospital for the peasants and lets her run it. He agrees it is a much more suitable pursuit for a young woman, but he is not sure he can afford it. Hosting the king is expensive. He is running out of flour and other food stores. Marian suggests he ask Sir Robert to contribute some flour, to share the burden of taking care of the king. She thinks he’d be willing. But when Sir Hugh follows Marian’s suggestion, Sir Robert refuses, insisting he pay full price. Sir Hugh vents his anger at Marian for making him humiliate himself with Sir Robert.

King John announces he will need Sherwood Forest lumber for ship building. Sir Hugh must give up the lumber for building his new mill. He tells Marian there can be no hospital either. She resolves to make a mobile hospital in wagons instead. Sir Hugh agrees as long as she brings along her servants Will and Little John to guard against bandits. Marian and Friar Tuck make their rounds in the mobile hospital with Will and Little John. As they tend to the sick in peasant villages, they also distribute small packages of food from their second wagon. They are summoned to a shack on Sir Robert’s land where they find Much the miller’s son gravely wounded from torture.

Sir Robert sees unfamiliar wagons on his lands and follows them. He confronts Little John on a foot bridge and takes him on in a cudgel fight until Marian breaks them up. Surprised that the wagons belong to her and learning of her mission, Sir Robert wants to know why the daughter of a Norman would be interested in the welfare of Saxon peasants. She is only interested in alleviating suffering. He then offers to escort her on his land. The Sheriff of Nottingham, meanwhile, has been spying on Sir Robert as part of his investigation. Seeing Sir Robert with Marian, he turns and rides away on his horse. Arriving back at the castle, Nottingham reports to Sir Hugh that Sir Robert is courting Marian, effectively conspiring to steal her, too.

Marian’s mobile hospital is ambushed by bandits. While Sir Robert, Will and Little John fight them, hand to hand, Marian climbs a hill to a high perch and shoots each bandit in the arm to disable them. She hides the bow and sneaks away as Sir Robert dashes up the hill in pursuit of the shooter. All he finds is Marian. Back at the wagons, Marian whispers to Will where he can find his bow and quiver. Marian tells the bandits she will tend to their wounds if they agree not to ambush her hospital again. Anytime they need food or medicine, they can just ask for it. They agree and Friar Tuck starts cleaning and binding their wounds with medicinal herbs as they proceed on their way. They arrive at Sir Robert’s castle to discover that his mill has been invaded and his flour is stolen. Sir Robert confronts the bandits about it, but Marian points out that the timing doesn’t add up. One of Sir Robert’s servants tells him it was Sir Hugh’s men. Marian tells him it serves him right for not sharing the burden of hosting the king with Sir Hugh.

Nottingham announces new taxes on the peasants to support the campaign against King Phillip. The peasants speak to Marian of fighting back. Marian urges them not to and gives them what little money she has. But it is not enough. Marian asks her father to ask the king to ease up on the peasants. He refuses.

Sir Hugh hosts a banquet for the King, inviting all the local nobles, including Sir Robert. But he is mortified when Marian makes a plea to the king on the peasants’ behalf. The King lectures her on the natural order of things and then announces to the gathered nobles that he will need more help from them for the French campaign to be a success. They pledge their support but express outrage behind his back. The king orders the music to start and Sir Robert asks Marian to dance. Marian glances at her father who is watching her from across the room and rejects him flatly. Sir Hugh observes with satisfaction. Just then, the peasants march in to the castle yard demanding repeal of the taxes. The King’s men take on the peasants with relish, clearly enjoying the brawl. The nobles, including Sir Robert and Marian, come out to the castle steps to watch the peasants fight the king’s men, laughing at the fray. Nottingham makes a slur against Saxons and Sir Robert reacts. A macho melee begins among the nobles above while the peasants fight for their lives below. Marian takes her leave.

Marian watches the fight from her chamber window. It is starting to get ugly. Blood flows as wounded and unconscious are dragged out. Arrows come in from above as Marian looks for their source. She gets her bow and quiver, proceeds down a long hall to another chamber window and shoots the shooter in the arm. She shoots another shooter, and another and another, disabling them one by one. She stows away her weapon and returns to her chamber, needlework in her lap. Guards burst in, then apologize for disturbing her.

The next day, Marian and Tuck tend to the wounds of the rebel peasants. Sir Robert brings bread to Marian to distribute on her rounds. She won’t speak to him. She saw him brawling. So primitive. So unrefined. Sir Robert asks how is he supposed to get his message across without brawling? Marian says she would like to meet the man who was shooting people in the arm to disable them. Back at his castle, Sir Robert practices his archery.

Nottingham announces tax collection will be done two weeks hence. Failure to pay will mean imprisonment. Marian, Will and Little John go to the bandits and ask them to help steal seed from her father. They creep into his castle in the middle of the night and successfully pull off the heist. Marian then meets with a French monk, a contact of Friar Tuck’s, to sell the seed. She asks him if he can get her arrowheads. Sir Hugh, meanwhile, discovers seed missing from his storehouse, assumes it was Sir Robert and invades his castle to steal back the goods. Sir Robert comes to Marian for help in getting her father to believe he is not the one stealing. Marian suggests he and Sir Hugh get together and pay the peasants’ taxes. Sir Robert exclaims he cannot even pay his own taxes. He will have to sell land.

Tax collectors arrive to collect from the peasants. Nottingham oversees the operation. The peasants pay and order is restored. Marian, Will, Little John and Friar Tuck, wearing hoods, then ambush the tax men. Marian shoots them in the arm. Will and Little John tie them up and take their money. Friar Tuck cleans and binds their wounds with medicinal herbs. Later, at the local inn, the tax men tell tales of the formidable bandits that overtook them. They make them sound bigger and scarier than they are, while noting that the leader was silent the whole time.

Sir Hugh tells King John that he suspects Sir Robert of being behind the tax theft since he wasn’t able to pay his own taxes without selling land. King John sends his men out to take over Sir Robert’s flour mill and give it to Sir Hugh. When Sir Robert finds out he has been falsely blamed again, he threatens to kill whoever is stealing. For Marian’s part, she learns of Sir Robert’s mill being taken and feels bad. She tells Sir Hugh it couldn’t have been Sir Robert because everyone knows the thief is an expert archer and Sir Robert, being a Saxon, has to be a terrible archer. She suggests to her father that he challenge Sir Robert to a match to find out. When Sir Robert finds out about the match, he practices even more rigorously so he can win to impress Marian. Sir Hugh boasts that he will beat Sir Robert handily, but Sir Robert wins. Sir Hugh is again furious at Marian for humiliating him, and his suspicions of Sir Robert are re-inflamed. Marian, on the other hand, has a change of heart about Sir Robert.

Friar Tuck tells Sir Robert that he knows who is stealing and smearing his name. Sir Robert demands to meet this man for a duel. The meeting is arranged and Sir Robert arrives at the appointed place and time ready for a big confrontation. He demands his foe show himself. Out from behind a thicket of bushes, steps Marian, completely unarmed, an angelic apparition if ever there was one. Sir Robert thinks they are playing a joke on him. She could not possibly be the mysterious archer and thief. Marian pulls out her bow and quiver and quickly demonstrates her ability. He is shocked, but suddenly it all makes sense. He then is in the position of having to reason with her to convince her to stop stealing. He tells her stealing is cheating. “You have to win your reward,” he says. “That’s the honorable thing to do. Fight and win.” But she responds,  “Fighting to win is just stealing by killing, which is a sin against God. I steal without killing.” He tries every argument he can think of to get her to agree to stop stealing with no success. Finally, he proposes to her. “Be my wife and stop stealing for my sake.” She is caught by surprise, unwittingly revealing her feelings for him. He leaps in at the revelation. “Tell me I have not won your heart!” he exclaims. “Yes, you have won my heart,” Marian admits, “but not my body and soul.” “Then let’s have a shooting contest,” he proposes, “so I can win all of you – body and soul.” “You think you can win a shooting contest against me?” she asks with a laugh. “Yes,” he says, “I do.” “Then let’s find out,” she says.

They shoot at various targets around the forest – a tree trunk,  a tuft of grass, a bird’s nest – the targets getting smaller and farther away. Finally, Robert says, “How bout the little tiny bird on that distant tree branch?” “Are you planning to eat that little tiny bird?” asks Marian. “No,” says Robert. “Then it is not a fit target,” she insists. “So, then, that knot, about the size of a little tiny bird, on the trunk of that distant tree,” suggests Robert. “As you wish,” says Marian. Sir Robert then draws back his arrow, studies his target carefully, and finally lets go. The arrow hits firmly in the middle of the knot. “Ha!” he says. “Tell me I have not won you now!” A flash of anger crosses Marian’s face. In one fluid movement, she pulls up an arrow from her quiver, draws it back in her bow, lowers her sites to her target and releases. The arrow sails through the forest and hits in the exact same spot, splitting his arrow in two. She turns to him. “This is not a game, my friend,” she says. “As long as there are people starving, I cannot promise to stop stealing. Come, Tuck. We will leave now.” Marian turns and strides away. Tuck follows. Sir Robert watches helplessly as she goes. He looks to Will, who gives a “that’s Marian” sympathetic shrug.

Marian goes to her father Sir Hugh to say that she has decided to join a nunnery – the Order of the Virgin Mary in France. He is relieved that she will no longer be around to embarrass him. She begins her preparations for leaving. As she is packing her trunks, there is a commotion in the castle yard. Nottingham is reading a proclamation that all men and boys over the age of 14 will be conscripted into military service. An arrow comes in from nowhere to shoot the proclamation out of Nottingham’s hand and onto the wooden door behind him. Everyone looks around for the shooter. They only see women looking out of nearby windows, Marian among them. A few days later a procession of wagons, accompanied by Will and Little John, leaves from the castle to transport Marian to her nunnery in France. Sir Hugh waves ruefully as they disappear over a hill.

The King’s men come to conscript the young men for war. They are put in shackles and marched off. But the King’s men are ambushed and the conscripted peasants are freed by hooded bandits. Marian reveals herself to the freed conscripts and they pledge their loyalty to her. They are Mary’s Men. Tuck doesn’t want to tend the wounds of the King’s men. They are too dangerous. Marian tells him to think of what it will do to their mean disposition to feel someone being kind to them. Tuck approaches them as if they are lions ready to bite and claw. To his surprise, they are grateful for his help and pledge their loyalty to Marian.

Sir Robert gets word that he is being blamed for freeing the conscripts and the King’s army is marching on his castle. “Damn that Marian!” he says. Meanwhile, Marian and her Mary’s Men are hiding out in the forest, building an encampment. When she learns that Sir Robert is under siege once again for her transgressions, she rounds up all her men to go help him. As word spreads far and wide, men come from all directions – bandits, peasants and freed conscripts alike. Sir Robert sees a mighty, rag tag force coming his way with Marian at the lead, like Joan of Arc. They enter his castle and begin preparing and fortifying. “I cannot leave you to suffer for my actions,” Marian tells Sir Robert. They have a passionate embrace. Just then the king’s army is seen approaching. They all take their places on the parapet and Sir Robert tells Marian this is the real thing now. This isn’t just picking at bandits from tree tops. This is for keeps. He asks if she’s ready for it. She says, Of course!

However, as the battle gets underway, Marian discovers that when she shoots the oncoming invaders in the arm or the leg, it doesn’t stop them. They just keep coming. So she goes for the shoulder and that slows them down a bit. But nonetheless they continue to advance. Sir Robert sees her hesitating before she shoots. He yells to her above the fracas. “You must shoot them in the heart, Marian! It’s the only way to stop them!” Shing! Shing! Shing! The sound of arrows flying by their heads. Marian takes aim again, then stops. “I can’t do it!” she exclaims. “Yes, you can!” says Sir Robert. “You have to!” Shing! Shing! “I do NOT have to!” she says. “We need you, Marian!” he calls out. Shing! “I know you can do it!” Shing! Shing! “No! I WON’T do it! I won’t shoot to kill! I won’t!” Kablam! A battering ram hits the castle gate. “Marian!” he pleads desperately. “They’re gaining on us! Stop this nonsense!” But Marian walks away from the fray. With arrows whizzing by, he runs after her. She turns back to him. “I don’t know how you can do it,” she says, “and still live with yourself! They can have the castle if they want it so badly! I’ll go live in the woods. I’ll live on the deer and the fruits of my labor. But I will not kill another man!” Sir Robert tries to stop her. “How will you get arrowheads and ploughshare blades?” he asks.  She breaks away from his grasp. “I’ll steal them!” she says and stomps out. Her men see her leaving and begin to go with her. More and more follow, abandoning their posts as Sir Robert exhorts them not to. The king’s men begin storming over the parapet. Sir Robert sits heavily, head in hands, despairing. Finally, he resignedly grabs his bow and quiver and leaves the castle, as well.

Marian looks on with pride as Will, Little John, Much the miller’s son and the rest of the Mary’s Men put the finishing touches on a woodland hospital. They organize a stealth operation to raid the Sir Hugh’s castle for medicinal herbs and other supplies. Arriving incognito in the bustling castle yard, they hear the announcement that King John has put a bounty on the head of Sir Robert. As Nottingham holds up the proclamation to nail it to the castle door, an arrow comes in from nowhere to fix it on the door for him. He looks around in alarm but doesn’t see Marian receding into the background. “Women do all the work. Men get all the credit,” she says to Little John with a sigh. Just then another arrow comes in and splits her arrow in two. She looks around and sees that it is Sir Robert’s.

Lady Marian and Sir Robert are married by Friar Tuck in a forest glen. A French monk arrives with a shipment of arrowheads. Marian stops everything to make a deal with him. The monk then joins in the festivities.