What is the best Robin Hood movie of all time?

Robin Hood. Steal from the rich to give to the poor. Maid Marian. The Sheriff of Nottingham, and/or Prince John as villains. Friar Tuck and Little John as allies. It's an old story with at least a dozen adaptations. But which one is your favourite? Do you think one of them stands head and shoulders as the best? And was it your first adventure through Sherwood Forest?

My first Robin Hood was probably the Disney one, but I never thought of it as the same story as the Kevin Reynolds film, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. I knew they were both Robin Hood, but they were vastly different stories. Different villains. And different target audiences. Disney didn't have an evil witch, an evil Sheriff, and Kevin Costner's bare ass. Or flaming arrows. Or Morgan Freeman or Alan Rickman. It did have cute animals, though.

So, for me, Prince of Thieves was like, the definitive Robin Hood, and one of my favourite movies of all time. Still ranks pretty high up there, actually. Even after learning Kevin Costner couldn't pull off an English accent, so Kevin Reynolds said "fuck it, just speak American." I don't care. I don't think most people did, except the British. Why does Robin Hood speak like a modern American? Gee, I don't know, Karen, why do Americans and Europeans speak Japanese in anime? Because it was made there. Same thing. So it's fine. It's an American Robin Hood tale. Plenty of productions have insisted upon using only British talent, such as Harry Potter. And Doctor Who, up until they opened it up with the Eleventh Doctor and had the American season.

A lot of people say it's Men in Tights, which was made to make fun of Prince of Thieves, much in the same way Weird Al Yankovic parodies pop songs and Spaceballs was made to parody Star Wars. That being said, it's a legitimate Robin Hood movie and is decent in its own right. Look past the jokes and the Prince of Thieves stuff, and you have a decent movie, if not a good one.

Then there's The Adventures of Robin Hood... from 1938. This one might be the best one, but I like Prince of Thieves's modern take, especially with the Directors Cut which explores the origin of the Sheriff and his real motives, which were only briefly hinted at. These days, I think that's the version that people are getting, but back in the day, you just had the regular one on VHS and DVD.

However, any Robin Hood after Men in Tights basically sucks. I will watch them all, but none have impressed me at all. I especially hated the 2010 version with Russel Crowe.

I wish Japan would take a crack at it. We do have the animated one from Disney, but I mean anime. The other really old story that has been adapted a dozen times (and also by Kevin Reynolds), The Count of Monte Cristo, has an anime. It takes place in the future, and the art style is kind of jarring, but it's a Count of Monte Cristo adaptation and it's actually quite good. (They also made a soap opera version called Revenge on ABC in the United States — not the Japanese, I mean an adaptation in general — and that was good, too. Outside my favourites, I think Monte Cristo fares better than Robin Hood — even the weird ones, like Revenge and the anime. But I feel like it would be way easier to cock up Monte Cristo than Robin Hood.

Anyone else got an opinion on Robin Hood movies?