NEARLY 705 years ago he relied on a spider to help him win the day.
But in the past week, King Robert the Bruce has been aided by a rag-tag ensemble of agitated keyboard warriors to help him win his latest battle, this time against Cineworld and not the pesky English army.
Reaction to the decision by the cinema giant not to screen the latest film about The Bruce was utterly predictable and says a lot more about modern Scotland than any big screen biopic about an ancient hero can ever hope to do.
READ MORE: Angus MacFadyen and Carol Monaghan slam Cineworld 'ban' of new Robert the Bruce movie
To those who can only view life through the prism of independence, the Cineworld decision was a dastardly British establishment plot to prevent the screening and scupper the inevitable march towards a ‘free’ Scotland.
For them, Bruce is the ultimate Scottish hero covered as he was in chain mail, riding a horse, carrying a big sword and of course he emerged from a cave to slay the English ‘enemy’ and set Scotland on the road to independence.
At times, the online ‘outrage’ about Cineworld’s decision could have come from the plot of a Carry On film with Kenneth Williams in the lead role screaming ‘infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me” and Charles Hawtrey cast as the hapless Edward II or Cineworld in the 2019 version.
However, Carry On films are meant to be funny and the events surrounding the Bruce ‘snub’ are anything but as it became embroiled in bizarre conspiracy theories. According to one ‘expert’ on Twitter, the UK Government had actually issued a ‘Section D’ order on the new film which banned anyone from even mentioning it, let alone actually seeing it on the grounds of national security.
All this about a film charting events in 1314 and which is known by every Scots primary school pupil.
READ MORE: Film review: Robert The Bruce
But I wonder if there would have been the same outrage if the film had been about any other notable Scots, for example, Alexander Fleming.
Fleming’s invention of penicillin is arguably the greatest feat by a Scot in a long line of world-changing Scottish achievements. It has saved millions of lives across the world and continues to do so today.
However, unlike Robert the Bruce, Fleming was a mild mannered chemist in a lab coat who discovered penicillin in a mouldy old dish. Not great cinema admittedly, but worthy of a biopic surely.
However, in reality, many Scots will not even have heard about Alexander Fleming and his role in saving countless lives from a chance encounter in the lab. Whereas virtually every Scot has heard the stirring tales of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, more modern heroes such as Alexander Graham-Bell, John Logie-Baird and Fleming are largely ignored and are not even deemed worthy of having a film made about them that Cineworld could subsequently decide not to show.
We all know the reason for that. These were brilliant men, who along with countless others of both sixes, changed the world.
But in the eyes of some of their fellow Scots, they are not worthy of serious acclaim because unlike Bruce and Wallace, they didn’t defeat the English. And that is just wrong.
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