We Need to Discuss the Animal Kingdom Hierarchy in Robin Hood (1973)

If you’re an 80s baby by any stretch, chances are you grew up with Disney’s Robin Hood on your television screen. You might’ve watched it over and over (because it’s delightful), and if you’re like my ladyfriend Hannah, you wore towels on your head so you could pretend to be Maid Marian.

Though they’d already been established as an animation powerhouse at this point, Robin Hood was slightly fresh territory for Disney. They had done stories based on folk tales, and they had done stories with talking animals, but they’d never really done a story based on a folk tale where all of the human characters are played by talking, anthropomorphic animals.*

But I’m not here to talk about how Robin Hood was groundbreaking or anything like that. I’m here to tell you that I wish I had been in that writers’/animators’ room when they were deciding what animals should play the characters of the Robin Hood legend.** (Imagine getting paid for such a task. Some folks have it all.)

Some film critics will tell you that “the casting—in terms of which animals are chosen to portray which figures of legend—is perfect.” Other film critics will ask how Maid Marian, a fox, has a lion for an uncle. And I think these are questions worth asking, especially in a newsletter such as this one. But let’s start from the top, shall we?

It’s hard to argue against Robin himself. They nailed it. We learn to associate foxes as clever, craft animals at a young age, and Robin’s appropriate charm and wit make him endlessly endearing.** It makes sense that his love interest is a fox as well. It does not make sense, however, that Maid Marian’s lady-in-waiting, Lady Kluck, is a hen. I don’t need to tell you how that relationship would end between real animals.

There are a few other choices that should be registered as home runs, slam dunks, or whatever sure-fire sports metaphor you prefer. Like Prince John and King Richard, who are lions, because they’re the kings of the jungle. And Alan-a-Dale, the merry man who serves as the narrator and minstrel, who is a rooster.*** Since, you know, roosters like to sing to us to wake us up. (Why am I explaining animals to you? Moving on.)

It gets a bit trickier after that. Largely because you have wilderness predators on both sides of the fight. Prince John’s sidekick is a snake named Hiss? Okay. The Captain of the Royal Guard is a crocodile? Fine. Soldiers are played by rhinoceroses? As I discovered yesterday, they’re actually herbivores, but sure, they look mean, I guess.

But three of the fiercest animals on the planet are in different corners of the equation. Given that Disney’s The Jungle Book was released just six years prior, I can buy that Little John, Robin’s best friend and the only merry man of real consequence, is played by a bear.**** But Friar Tuck, who is a citizen of Nottingham more than ally of Robin in this case, is played by…a badger? One who cares for creatures as small as church mice? I think we all know that a badger would never be a man of the cloth. They have to be pretty high on the heathen scale.*****

It’s the Sheriff of Nottingham that I object to the most, though.****** Making the biggest, meanest bad guy a wolf was an easy choice, but that doesn’t make it the right choice. I know it’s merely a children’s film from 1973, so I can’t be too mad, even if it’s promoting negative stereotypes about these beautiful animals. But I just hate seeing wolves get an unfair shake, especially when they were all but extinct in our country by then. (You know what else happened in 1973? We passed the dang Endangered Species Act, that’s what!)

Okay, I’ll put away my soapbox now. I can’t be too mad at a film that makes a turtle and a rabbit childhood friends.

*In this way, I think we owe Robin Hood credit for paving the way for The Lion King’s enormous success. Jeremy Irons playing a lion playing King Claudius is almost as perfect as Roger Miller playing a rooster playing Alan-a-Dale.

**My editor John would like for me to point out that “being horny for the cartoon fox Robin Hood” is a thing. And also this movie was partially born out of Disney wanting to adapt Reynard the Fox, and that is why Robin is a fox. 

***A real missed opportunity here to have Alan-a-Dale and Lady Kluck hit it off at the end of the film. Even though we all know Maid Marian would’ve eaten her.

****John also found in his research that the director, Wolfgang Reitherman, wanted the film to be a buddy picture “like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” So there you have it. “Cassidy and Sundance walking through the forest, oo-de-lally, oo-de-lally, golly what a film.”

*****Feels pertinent here to point out that I’ve written about Disney badgers before.

******What I don’t object to, however, is the voice casting here. It makes absolutely no sense that an English tax collector from days of old would have an Alabama accent, but shouts out to Pat Buttram, who attended my alma mater (Birmingham-Southern College). And shouts out to George Lindsay, his Alabama compatriot who plays the goofy vulture Trigger. Roll Tide, etc.

Robin Hood is now streaming on Disney+, and it is available to rent elsewhere.