Judging it on nothing but the typical measuring sticks used to define success, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves would appear to be a widely-beloved blockbuster that doesn’t have a polarizing bone on its body.
After all, it netted $390 million at the box office in the summer of 1991, churned out one of the biggest musical hits of the decade thanks to Bryan Adam’s “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You,” and boasts what is without a doubt one of the greatest performances you’ll ever see in a big budget adventure thanks to Alan Rickman’s legendary turn as the scenery-chewing Sheriff of Nottingham.
Of course, that isn’t quite the case, because you don’t have to travel very far or look very hard to find somebody who completely, wholly, and utterly detests Prince of Thieves with a passion. To be fair, it’s a very easy film to dislike when it boasts Kevin Costner’s woefully wooden and hilariously miscast central turn, an unncecessary 143-minute running time, and the aforementioned Adams song which is nothing short of excruciating, with Rickman seemingly the only one who understood the assignment.
As you can imagine, then, a Reddit thread boldly stating that Prince of Thieves is in fact one of the greatest blockbusters to emerge throughout the 1990s – the decade that gifted the world with Speed, True Lies, The Matrix, Con Air, Face/Off, The Fugitive, Jurassic Park, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Independence Day, and Men in Black to name just a small few – has generated precisely the reactions you’d imagine.
Folks are entitled to enjoy what they enjoy, but one of the decade’s best? Get the f*ck outta here.