The myth—or rather, the idea—of Robin Hood has resonated across the world since stories of him first emerged in the mid-17th century. His schtick is sublime in its simplicity: he robs from the rich, gives to the poor and has a lot of fun doing it. He’s a rabble-rouser, a deadly archer, a protector of justice and a smooth-talking ladies’ man. An all-around good dude.  His brand of clean-cut heroism has gone out of fashion in recent times, however; these days, stand-up heroes like Robin Hood are treated like a joke. It’s a crying shame.

1938’s terrific, jaunty The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring an improbably chipper Errol Flynn, is playing on July 4th as a part of TIFF’s “Dreaming in Technicolor” film showcase. It’s a treasure that all should see, though it’s the kind of lighthearted hero’s tale mainstream audiences have sadly lost an appetite for.

We’ve grown too cynical and in love with mayhem and revisionism to take seriously a man in green tights swinging on vines and letting out a big “A-HA!” as he pushes his fists into his hips and puffs out his chest. Romantic swashbuckling is difficult, I’m afraid, for the average 2015 moviegoer to take un-ironically. Ridley Scott‘s 2010 Robin Hood ran in the opposite direction of the Flynn version, painting a dreary picture of 13th-century England for Russel Crowe‘s “Robin Longstride” to brood around in because, these days, gloom is all the rage.

Our generation’s Robin Hood, arguably, is the Dark Knight himself. Batman is the perfect example of the kind of hero people crave today: psychologically damaged, shrouded in darkness, defined by tragedy and loss. No superhero, not even the bright and shiny Marvel ones, can contend with his superpower-less, black-on-black hipness. His look has evolved over the years, getting scarier and scarier with each reboot of the movie franchise, to the point where the latest version of the Bat, played by Ben Affleck in the upcoming Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, straight-up looks like evil incarnate. We’ve come a long way from Robin of Loxley and his funny little hat.

In The Adventures of Robin Hood, directed by Michael Curtiz (and, to a lesser extent, William Keighley), we see Flynn’s Robin stride into the malevolent Prince John’s massive banquet hall, plopping down a (very illegally) poached royal deer in front of the interim king. Surrounded by an army of armed men, Robin accuses John of treason and vows to avenge the missing King Richard and fight for the poor. What courage! What honor! For centuries, this was the epitome of heroism.

Batman treats evil-doers a bit differently, to put it mildly. He’s an intimidator who lurks in the shadows and strikes fear in his enemies from behind a mask, a symbol that hides his true identity (as a billionaire, another subversion of the Robin Hood myth). He’ll do anything to gain an advantage (short of killing, of course). In a classic comic book version of the Batman/Superman confrontation (found in Jeph Loeb’s Hush), Bruce Wayne defines his true nature. “If Clark wanted to,” he says internally as Superman pulls his punches, “he could squish me into the cement.” He suddenly smashes Superman in the face with a ring made of kryptonite. But Superman’s got an even bigger weakness than the glowing green stone, as Bruce explains. “Deep down, Clark’s essentially a good person. And deep down, I am not.”

Where’d all the good guys go? A remnant of Robin Hood’s youthful spirit does exist prominently in Batman lore. His famous sidekick, Robin, was clearly inspired by Robin Hood. In fact, “The Boy Wonder” was a direct homage to Errol Flynn. Robin is the last glimmer of innocence in Bruce Wayne’s world, a playful young ally designed to bring a bit of levity to the Batman comic book series.

The character’s gruesome death is a darkly poetic sign of the times, now more than ever.

Jason Todd, the second to take up the “Robin” identity, is brutally beaten with a crowbar in front of his own mother (who’s just sold him out), his medieval yellow cape and green boots soaking in a puddle of his own blood. Mother and son are restrained, a ticking time bomb plunked beside them. Jason throws himself onto the bomb to shield his mom, despite her betrayal, in a final act of heroism. With Robin’s bright light snuffed out, only darkness remains for the mourning “caped crusader.” Written by Jim Starlin, the story was called “A Death in the Family.”

It’s an apt parable for what’s happened, culturally, to exuberant, grinning movie heroes like Flynn’s Robin Hood. Jason Todd was murdered by The Joker, a demented cackler with a sick sense of humor who applauds and giggles at the sight of brutality and pain. Sound like anyone you know? If Robin represents Robin Hood’s chivalric valor, the Joker symbolizes modern audience’s regurgitation of such classical ideals. He’s more interested in Batman; they’re a reflection of one another, both messed-up social outliers with a penchant for violence. “I don’t wanna kill you,” Joker tells Batman in Christopher Nolan‘s The Dark Knight. “What would I do without you?”

As moviegoers, we owe it to ourselves to not let pure, lighthearted heroics fall into extinction at the cinema. The reason Zack Snyder‘s The Man of Steel sucked was that it wasn’t any goddamn fun. It was a de-saturated, over-produced drag obsessed with mining darkness out of a character who should inspire wonder and make kids cheer. Batman v Superman looks to offer more of the same, depressing superhero action.

Get excited about The Adventures of Robin Hood instead. It’s everything The Man of Steel isn’t: fun, full of laughter, bursting with life (in Glorious Technicolor) and punctuated by thrilling, plain-spoken action sequences. If we would just let go of our snarky aversion to unclouded optimism every once in a while, perhaps Robin could live once again.

It’s Christmas in June for cinephiles at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. Starting this Friday, TIFF will be launching their new summer series “Dreaming in Technicolor.” For those unaware of the Technicolor process, if you’ve seen any of the films in this series, you should already know about the gorgeous images and colours Technicolor produces. And for all of us here at Way Too Indie, we couldn’t be more excited about this series. TIFF has put together a fantastic lineup of classic films, along with an impressive list of special guests who will introduce special screenings, along with a master class from filmmaker Guy Maddin (My Winnipeg).

The series runs from June to August, and if you happen to be around the TIFF Bell Lightbox this summer, you shouldn’t have any excuse for missing out on these legendary films. Check out the full line-up below, and keep your eyes peeled throughout the summer for some features we’ll be writing about a few of our favourites in the series. To buy tickets, and find out more information about the series, be sure to visit TIFF’s website.

June 19th, 6:30pm – Singin’ in The Rain (35mm print)

“One of the most famous and beloved musicals of all time, Singin’ in the Rain is set in a 1920s Hollywood on the cusp of the sound era, where a swashbuckling matinee idol (Gene Kelly) falls in love with a bright-eyed newcomer (Debbie Reynolds) while trying to duck his jealous, narcissistic onscreen romantic partner (Jean Hagen), whose parrot-squawk of a voice makes her distinctly unsuited for the new talking pictures.”

June 20th, 2pm – Lawrence of Arabia (4K restoration introduced by Grover Crisp, head of film restoration at Sony Pictures)

“Peter O’Toole became an instant star in David Lean’s sprawling adventure epic as the eccentric and inscrutable British officer who rallies the nomadic desert tribes against the Ottoman Turks during World War I.”

June 20th, 7pm – Rope

“Filmed on a single set in a succession of long takes to simulate the sensation of one continuous shot, Alfred Hitchcock’s insidious drawing-room (or rather, dining-room) thriller was one of the director’s most stylistically daring endeavours.”

June 21st, 4pm – Becky Sharp (restored 35mm print)

“Miriam Hopkins received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress as William Thackeray’s indomitable heroine in this sumptuous adaptation of Vanity Fair, which was the first feature film shot entirely in the newly developed three-strip Technicolor system.”

June 21st, 6:30pm – Meet Me in St. Louis

“Minnelli’s much-loved musical classic spans a year in the life of the sizable Smith clan in turn-of-the-century St. Louis, whose youngest members — preening beauty queen Rose (Lucille Bremer), winsome, romantic Esther (Judy Garland), and pint-sized firecracker Tootie (Margaret O’Brien) — are eagerly awaiting the arrival of the 1904 World’s Fair in their city.”

June 23rd, 6:30pm – Bonnie and Clyde (35mm print)

“Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway became instant icons as the famed Depression-era outlaws in director Arthur Penn’s zeitgeist-altering masterpiece.”

June 25th, 8:45pm – Heaven Can Wait (35mm print)

“A recently deceased playboy recounts his lifetime of amorous adventures to a bemused Satan, in Ernst Lubitsch’s charming comedy-fantasy.”

June 27th, 3:30pm – The Wizard of Oz (archival 35mm print)

“The classic fantasy film looks even more spectacular in this magnificent 35mm print, struck during the last revival of the Technicolor dye-transfer process in the 1990s.”

June 28th, 3:30pm – Fiddler on the Roof (introduced by director Norman Jewison)

“Norman Jewison’s beloved, Academy Award-winning adaptation of the internationally acclaimed musical has become a classic for film and theatre lovers alike.”

June 30th, 9pm – All That Heaven Allows

“Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman star in this classic May-December romance which is considered the summit of director Douglas Sirk’s magnificent Technicolor melodramas.”

July 2nd, 6:30pm – Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

“Baby-voiced blonde Marilyn Monroe and brash brunette Jane Russell embark on a European cruise in search of love and loot in Howard Hawks’ classic musical comedy.”

July 2nd, 8:30pm – Charade

“Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn luxuriate in early-’60s chic in Stanley Donen’s Hitchcockian comedy-thriller.”

July 4th, 1pm – The Black Pirate (35mm print)

“The third feature to be shot in the early, two-strip Technicolor process, this high-seas adventure is one of the last great action epics from the swashbuckling sovereign of silent cinema, Douglas Fairbanks.”

July 4th, 4pm – The Adventures of Robin Hood (35mm print introduced by Scott Higgins, author of Harnessing the Rainbow: Technicolor Aesthetics in the 1930s)

“The incomparable Errol Flynn stars as the bandit of Sherwood Forest in the definitive Golden Age swashbuckler.”

July 5th, 3:30pm – The Naked Spur (35mm print)

“A driven bounty hunter acquires unwanted partners as he tries to escort a wanted killer out of the wilderness, in the third and best of five classic westerns pairing director Anthony Mann and star James Stewart.”

July 7th, 6:30pm – Black Narcissus

“A young Mother Superior (Deborah Kerr) struggles with a maelstrom of carnal passions in a mountaintop nunnery near Darjeeling, in this glorious Technicolor fever dream from legendary writing-directing duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.”

July 11th, 6:30pm – The Red Shoes (4K restoration introduced by Bob Hoffman, VP of Marketing and Public Relations for Technicolor)

“Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s tale of a beautiful ballerina caught between her art and her love for a young composer is simply one of the most gorgeous colour films ever made.”

July 12th, 6pm – The Tales of Hoffmann (4K restoration introduced by Bob Hoffman)

“Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s dazzling cinematic envisioning of the Jacques Offenbach opera is even more ambitious and formally adventurous than their celebrated The Red Shoes.”

July 16th, 8:45pm – Bigger than Life

“A gentle schoolteacher (James Mason) is turned into a malevolent monster by the side effects of a cortisone treatment, in Nicholas Ray’s searing critique of 1950s conformity.”

July 18th, 6pm – Magnificent Obsession (Technicolor Master Class taught by filmmaker Guy Maddin)

“A spoiled playboy (Rock Hudson) finds redemption when he sets out to cure the blindness of the woman he loves (Jane Wyman), in this first of Douglas Sirk’s luscious colour melodramas for producer Ross Hunter.”

July 25th, 3:30pm – Rear Window (archival 35mm print)

“James Stewart and Grace Kelly star in Hitchcock’s nerve-wracking study of voyeurism, obsession and murder.”

July 26th, 5:30pm – Apocalypse Now Redux

“Francis Ford Coppola’s hallucinatory Vietnam epic is one of the most ambitious and awe-inspiring war movies ever made.”

August 1st, 3pm – The River (restored 35mm print)

“Jean Renoir’s Technicolor masterpiece chronicles the everyday lives and growing pains of three young women growing up on the Ganges.”

August 2nd, 1pm – The African Queen (4K restoration)

“Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn star in director John Huston’s classic comic adventure film.”

August 2nd, 6pm – The Godfather

“Marlon Brando won (and famously refused) his second Best Actor Oscar as the dignified Don Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s Shakespearean portrait of a powerful Mafia family.”

August 9th, 1pm – Ohayo (Good Morning) (35mm print)

“A remake and update of Yasujiro Ozu’s marvellous silent I Was Born, But…, this delightful satire of fifties consumerism is one of the great Japanese director’s best-loved films.”

August 13th, 8:45pm – The Four Feathers (35mm print)

“Charged with cowardice by his friends, an upper-class non-conformist adopts a native disguise and plunges into the maelstrom of the Madhist war in Sudan, in this spectacular Technicolor adaptation of the venerable adventure novel by A.E.W. Mason.”