Headscratchers / Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

• How does Marian fight Robin to a standstill in her first scene, then turn into a Neutral Female when captured by the Sheriff? That inconsistency always bothered me.
  • It seems pretty simple to me. Against Robin, she's armed, armored, and attacks him from ambush. With the Sheriff, she's unarmed, and wearing no more armor than a nice dress.
    • And it mostly seems to be the ambush, it's not like she's busting out kung-fu moves in her fight with Robin, she's just got a knife held on him at first, manages to wrestle around with him a bit since she's already at close range, then cheap shots him because she's conveniently in position to do so.

• What did Azeem do to Fanny?
  • What was done to Macduff's mother to make Macduff a man not of woman born? It was a C-section! A medieval C-section!
  • Fanny was far too spry in the days afterward to have had any sort of surgery. Far more likely Azeem manually repositioned the child or, less likely, he gave Fanny an episiotomy.
    • Had not considered this, honestly. I suspect his comment about 'seeing it done on horses' was meant to confirm a C-section. But can confirm that a repositioning (external cephalic version) is possible and could certainly work.
    • I think (it's been a while so I could be wrong) that there is a line where he heavily implies that he is indeed repositioning the fetus, because the way it's positioned when he first examines her it has no chance of being born healthy. Something about getting the child to 'turn over,' if I remember correctly.
  • If all he did was reposition the kid, why would he have asked Marian for needle and thread?
    • There's nothing to say he actually used the needle and thread - he could have just been asking for it in case there was a tear around the cervix and she started bleeding heavily.
    • Actually still entirely reasonable. An episiotomy is actually just a way to try to direct a tear. If the baby's head is large, the woman will likely tear. Not at the cervix, but at the vaginal opening. The primary danger at that point (that the episiotomy is supposed to prevent) is tearing into the rectum. If Azeem has to keep his hand in there while the baby is coming out, the chances of her tearing are very high. While this troper heartily agrees with a troper above that Fanny was too spry for a C-section (while acknowledging that action films rarely have an accurate representation of healing from a C-section), her action level is entirely reasonable for a woman who tore during childbirth to the point of needing stitches.