"The Big Anachronism isn’t a particularly a subtle instrument, but it’s a versatile one. Used over and over in rapid succession—as in Mel Brooks’ Robin Hood: Men In Tights — it works as a form of (low) comedy. Tossed in casually, at the edges of the main narrative, it rewards the older, better-informed, or more-attentive viewer. Set up artfully, it can draw that viewer’s attention to things that are uniformly funny on the surface and subtly thought-provoking beneath it. It can even work, quite successfully, in an awkward, clanking train wreck of a movie like Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991).... Big Anachronisms exist to overcome uncertainty, and to eliminate any question of whether or not you’re supposed to notice."