I first saw Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves when I was not yet a teenager and it made a deep impression on me. For some reason I was thinking about the movie recently and I realized that it’s a strange movie.

Part of this is that, these days, I tend to look at movies through the lens of “do I want to show this to my children?” It’s a question that brings a lot of things into focus. Children grow up (relatively) quickly and we only have so much time with them; how one wants to spend it is an important question. Some movies are absolutely worth it. The Errol Flynn movie The Adventures of Robin Hood is an unquestionable yes (already have with the oldest).

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is a modern twist on an ancient tale. To paraphrase Nietzsche: that is to say, it’s a bad twist. The basic premise is that Robin Hood was a spoiled rich kid who got captured in the crusades and was forced to grow up while in prison, escaped, made his way back to England, and then assembled a ragtag band of misfits to overthrow the tyranny which had taken over England. It’s a joyless retelling, where everyone is dirty and unhappy. No one has faith in what they’re doing, they’re just desperate and have no other real options. Maid Marrion is pretty in a technical sense, but completely unappealing, while Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood was heavy and plodding. The two had a sort of anti-chemistry where it made no sense for them to be together.

I know a lot of bad movies get made in Hollywood, including a lot of big budget bad movies. It remains perplexing every time why people would make such obviously bad choices. (I don’t mean all of the bad choices; some things—both good and bad—only become obvious in final cuts, after all of the color-correction and with the music.)

One good thing did come from this movie, though. Because of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Mel Brooks made Robin Hood: Men In Tights. Despite being a Mel Brooks slapstick parody, it’s actually a better Robin Hood movie than Prince of Thieves and even a better adventure movie. Plus, this was the only time that Carry Elwes played Robin Hood, which was a role he was clearly born to play.