In the 2010 film “Robin Hood,” directed by Ridley Scott and starring Russell Crowe, the opening scene is supposed to feature the text, “In times of tyranny and injustice when law oppresses the people, the outlaw takes his place in history.” Recently, this version of the film became a topic of discussion on internet forums and social media platforms.
The discussion was triggered when viewers noted the apparent removal of the introductory text in the streaming version available on Amazon Prime Video. A post on social media platform X, which gained over a million views, mentioned that Amazon had edited out the opening exposition text from the film. Other posts on the same topic also went viral, receiving hundreds of thousands of views.
The conversation extended beyond X to Reddit, where users discussed the missing text, with one post in the subreddit r/movies garnering nearly 4,000 upvotes. The issue was even brought up in the official Amazon forums by concerned users.
Images and recordings comparing the original introduction with the version on Prime Video were shared by users to highlight the discrepancy. This situation led some to speculate whether Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, was involved in this editorial decision. In recent months, Bezos had made headlines for influencing editorial directions at The Washington Post and for his financial support of Trump’s inaugural fund.
Online speculation questioned whether removing the anti-authoritarian message from “Robin Hood” indicated potential censorship. However, a source at Amazon clarified the situation to Mashable, explaining that those who noticed the missing text were likely viewing the Ultra High Definition version of the film. According to the source, the film distributor provided a version without the opening quote when sending the film in 2020. Amazon has since requested and obtained the correct version, which now streams with the original introductory text restored on Prime Video.
