A fox stealing from the rich, a bear dressed as a duke, and a lion throwing tantrums while sucking his thumb. One animated movie has all these things and more. Disney’s Robin Hood is a wonderfully strange interpretation of the classic English outlaw, and 53 years after its November 8th, 1973 release, it’s hard to imagine the studio’s animated history without it. Yet this was the first animated feature developed entirely after Walt Disney’s death, and not everyone was convinced the studio could survive without him. Gene Siskel gave the movie one-and-a-half stars out of four, dismissing its animation as “Saturday morning TV cartoon stuff.”
What Siskel saw as a step backward would help shape the future of Disney animation. From TaleSpin to Zootopia, the studio would return to the idea of an entire civilization populated by animals. And while Robin Hood borrowed more than a few dance moves from earlier Disney movies, it also established a personality that was entirely its own.
Walt Disney had several projects underway by the time of his death on December 15th, 1966. The Jungle Book, released in October 1967, was the last animated feature to benefit from his creative involvement. Next came The Aristocats, released in December 1970, although Walt had approved the project and been involved in its early development. Then came Robin Hood. This time the studio was making an animated feature without Walt being involved in its development at all.
It was still connected to his earlier ambitions. Walt had been considering adapting the medieval tales of Reynard the Fox as early as the 1930s. The project never materialized, in part because Reynard was a cad who was difficult to turn into a sympathetic Disney hero. Animator Ken Anderson helped eventually create Robin Hood with a more appealing fox as the hero. Director Wolfgang Reitherman also took inspiration from an unlikely source, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Robin Hood and Little John were meant to be a similar pair of easy-going outlaws. That’s why Robin (voiced by Brian Bedford) spends so much of the movie outsmarting Prince John in a casual way instead of behaving like a conventional action hero. He is a dashing rogue with a talent for relieving the wealthy of their possessions.
The studio was also under financial pressure. Reitherman recycled animation from earlier Disney movies, particularly in the musical number “The Phony King of England.” Maid Marian’s dances are based on those of Snow White, while Little John and Lady Kluck are based on The Jungle Book choreography. The similarities become particularly obvious when you play the sequences together. You can watch the recycled clips below. While some reviewers, including Siskel, pointed out the animation’s questionable quality and compared it unfavorably to Disney’s earlier masterpieces, they left out what it tried to do differently.
For decades, Disney had been entertaining audiences with stories of wackier talking animals. Icons like Mickey Mouse had become cultural symbols, and films like The Jungle Book showcased the depth of personality that animators could infuse into animal characters. However, Robin Hood ventured into new territory. In Robin Hood, the characters were not just animals coexisting with humans or living in a wacky world where physics and gravity didn’t matter. Prince John, a lion, ruled over a kingdom of animals, while the Sheriff of Nottingham, a wolf, enforced tax collection. Robin Hood, a clever fox, stood against an unjust political system while making time to romance Maid Marian.
Disney continued developing the concept through animated television, most notably with 1990’s TaleSpin. The series reimagined Baloo from The Jungle Book as a cargo pilot living in Cape Suzette, a bustling city populated by anthropomorphic animals. Baloo had already provided the template for Little John in Robin Hood, with Phil Harris voicing both characters. TaleSpin took that familiar Disney bear and gave him a job, a business to work for, and an entire animal civilization to navigate. Twenty-six years later, Zootopia would bring a similar approach back to the big screen.
It’s easy to imagine Nottingham existing somewhere in the distant medieval history of Zootopia. Disney’s 2016 hit built an elaborate modern society around similar ideas, with animal characteristics informing everything from character design to social relationships. Robin Hood wasn’t the first animated movie to explore anthropomorphic society, but it was an important example of how the concept could sustain an entire Disney feature.
The film even has an unexpected place in history. In his Illustrated Chronology of Furry Fandom, historian Fred Patten identified Robin Hood as a movie that many early furry fans remembered as a formative influence. Disney’s charming fox had apparently made quite an impression. For an entire generation, Robin Hood was the Furwakening.
To judge Robin Hood by the studio’s previous successes is to miss what makes it special. The movie isn’t trying to be Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or Pinocchio. It’s a lighthearted outlaw comedy with great characters. And it introduced an approach to anthropomorphic storytelling that still feels fresh five decades later. Walt Disney never saw Robin Hood. Fifty-three years later, it shows that his animators were still able to keep moving forward without him. Even if they borrowed a few shots along the way.
