15 Surprisingly Good Movie Adaptations About Public Domain Characters

There have been dozens of on-screen versions of Robin Hood dating back to the silent era, but none stand out from the crowd quite like the Mel Brooks spoof, Robin Hood: Men in Tights. Part of its appeal can be attributed to the starring performance of Cary Elwes, whose role as the dashing pirate Westley in The Princess Bride had been sufficiently muddied by his transition to character acting to make him believable as a tongue-in-cheek, fourth-wall-breaking Robin Hood. 

As the titular leader of the Merry Men, Elwes is a smart aleck who spends more time trying to unlock Maid Marion’s chastity belt than giving to the poor. It also benefited from timing. Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves was released two years before, and although it had done well at the box office, its humorlessness and wooden performances were perfect fodder for parody. 

Men in Tights succeeds by skewering the saintly version of Robin Hood found in most adaptations and filling the script with anachronisms and sight gags. In one scene, Robin’s blind family servant, Blinkin, sits on a latrine reading a vision-impaired version of Playboy in which the photos can be read by touch, like braille. Another scene parodies The Godfather with a character who mumbles and wheezes through a monologue, only to remove cotton balls from his cheeks - which Marlon Brando famously employed in his role of Vito Corleone - and explain that he’s just been to the dentist. 

Dave Chappelle plays one of Robin’s associates and sports Nike-like sneakers, while Brooks himself plays a Jewish version of Friar Tuck named Rabbi Tuckman. Men in Tights plays fast and loose with its source material, allowing the comedy to be front and center. This shamelessness makes it one of the more memorable and satisfying on-screen representations of Robin Hood.

Charles Dickens is one of the most highly-regarded authors in the English language whose stories are full of dense writing and memorable characters. There is plenty of humor throughout his novels, but not the kind that you might expect to perfectly dovetail with the 20th century’s most beloved puppet ensemble. 

And yet, The Muppet Christmas Carol was a success both by box office standards (despite formidable competition from Home Alone 2 and Aladdin) and by the test of longevity. In a genre packed with favorites, The Muppet Christmas Carol is a mainstay on family holiday watchlists. 

Michael Caine’s curmudgeonly Scrooge is a pitch-perfect foil for the puppets to work against, and the screenwriters took great pains to stick to Dickens’s story despite the trademark Muppet humor. Gonzo and Rizzo are on top form as Dickens and his sidekick, while Kermit’s mini-me Robin is adorable as a pint-sized Tiny Tim. The songs are catchy, the humor undermines the solemnity, and the ghosts are genuinely scary. 

They’re so scary, in fact, that Rizzo asks Gonzo if they should be worried about the kids in the audience. “Nah, it’s alright. This is culture,” he responds. The Muppet Christmas Carol manages to deliver both an excellent Muppet movie and an excellent Dickens adaptation all in one, making it the perfect option for holiday viewing that the whole family will love. 

Disney is best known as a total hit-making factory, but it occasionally misses the mark. Such was the surprising case for the 2002 animated movie Treasure Planet, which bombed at the box office despite its star-studded cast and has only recently enjoyed the credit it deserves. Based loosely on Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1883 novel Treasure Island, it follows Jim Hawkins (voiced by Joseph-Gordon Levitt), an unruly teen who is whisked off on an intergalactic adventure when he finds a map that leads to the titular Treasure Planet. 

Unlike Stevenson’s novel, which is set on the high seas, Treasure Planet is a retro-futuristic sci-fi fantasy that combines 2D and 3D animation to create a unique visual style inspired both by the 1800s and a space-travel version of the future. It also puts a spin on Disney’s love of talking animals, featuring a feline ship captain (Emma Thompson) and a dog astronomer (David Hyde Pierce) alongside a pirate cyborg and a few aliens. 

Directed by Disney stalwarts Ron Clements and John Musker, who had previously made The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, Treasure Planet is a surprisingly inventive retelling of Stevenson’s classic novel, with visually-arresting animation and colorful characters. It may not be the most faithful retelling of the book, but it justifies its liberties with pure spectacle. 

The 1922 silent classic Nosferatu is one of the greatest horror movies ever made and set the bar high for future adaptations of Bram Stoker’s gothic novel Dracula. Over the following decades, multiple on-screen adaptations of the story were released, but even Bela Lugosi’s portrayal of the mythical vampire failed to be as unsettling or cinematically innovative as F. W. Murnau’s work. In 1992, however, Francis Ford Coppola brought his signature style of exhaustive filmmaking to the table and proved that there was more life (and blood) in the story than had yet made it to the screen. 

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is in a league of its own. From Gary Oldman’s over-the-top performance as Count Dracula to the costumes and the wild in-camera special effects, it oozes with excess that at times spills over into camp. Coppola created a version of the story that capitalizes on every facet of the cinematic medium. The soundscape creaks, whooshes, and shudders, the costumes are made of twice as much fabric as necessary, and the performances (aside from a miscast Keanu Reeves) operate at a fever pitch. 

The director opted to use only in-camera special effects, using makeup and time-honored tricks to create a horrifying and timeless spectacle. He also chose to set the film at the turn-of-the 20th-century, with Dracula posing as a devilishly handsome foreigner whose luscious locks and blue-tinted sunglasses wouldn’t be out of place at the Grammys circa 2018. 

The sexual undertones of Stoker’s novel are also dialed up to the maximum setting, and the various combinations of seduction, demise, and rivers of blood are almost certainly more grotesque than anything that could have appeared in the author's nightmares. Throwing everything at the wall doesn’t always work in movies, but Bram Stoker’s Dracula proves that when it does, the results can be overwhelming in the best ways.

Alexandre Dumas published The Three Musketeers in 1844, long before movies were a part of everyday life, but he may as well have written it directly for the screen. Set in the 1600s, the swashbuckling story of three swordsmen (and one wannabe) is full of adventure, gallantry, and humor and has proven to be endlessly inspiring to filmmakers. 

In fact, movies about the Three Musketeers encompass the history of cinema itself, from the 1911 production made by Thomas Edison’s studio to versions starring everyone from John Wayne and Christopher Walken to Charlie Sheen and Orlando Bloom. There have been so many adaptations that it’s hard not to roll your eyes when another one gallops into theaters. Of all of these movies, however, the 1973 version has stood the test of time, not only because of its stellar cast but because it revels in its source material. 

Starring Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, and Frank Finlay as the Three Musketeers alongside Michael York, Raquel Welch, Charlton Heston, and Faye Dunaway, the movie bursts with energy, humor, and romance. While the plot resides firmly in the 17th century, the presence of '70s movie stars like Welch and Dunaway, as well as an appearance from comedian Spike Milligan, make the film feel fresh and a little brazen, even as it reverently follows Dumas’s story. There have been many more productions of the classic tale before and since, but the 1973 version of The Three Musketeers still holds up as a classic.

Over the years, more than a dozen movies about King Arthur have been given mainstream releases. Some have tried to tell the legend as faithfully as possible, while others (Monty Python and the Holy Grail comes to mind) have taken a more loose approach. Out of all of these efforts, John Boorman’s 1981 epic Excalibur has stood the test of time. 

Based on Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d'Arthur, it stars Nigel Terry as King Arthur and a host of British actors in supporting roles, including Helen Mirren as the evil sorceress Morgana and a young Liam Neeson as Gawain. It takes a sweeping approach to the tale, starting with Arthur’s origin story and following through to the bitter end. It’s an operatic family drama as much as a tale about knights in shining armor. Full of deception, and unfaithfulness, it doesn’t pull its punches. It also features some of the most visually stunning imagery of any Arthur film despite the rudimentary special effects. 

Boorman never shied away from discomfort, and Excalibur is just as harsh and unsentimental a movie as you’d expect from the man who brought Deliverance into your nightmares. There’s gore, impalement, eyes getting plucked out of cadavers, and a lot of mud. But the darkness is tempered by some first-class scenery chewing, particularly from Nicol Williamson as Merlin, who takes hold of every scene with a vice-like grip and wrings out every last syllable. Add to this a unique visual style in which everything is shrouded in a dreamlike haze punctuated by gleaming metal, and it’s hard not to appreciate Excalibur for its relentless intensity. 

Where other retellings of the legend struggle to be more than formulaic costume dramas or choose to change the tone of the familiar story entirely to appeal to contemporary audiences, Boorman’s Excalibur has all the grime and bone-crunching of the Middle Ages, and none of the Hollywood glossiness that undermines so many other cinematic portrayals of Camelot.