We just saw the Harry Potter movie, and one of the trailers beforehand was for the upcoming Sherlock Holmes movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUQbmFAE5WI&feature=fvw
The damn thing looks like Sherlock McClane! What makes Guy Ritchie think he has to turn Sherlock into an action hero? I just hope it’s one of those misleading trailers!
Previous thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=518175&highlight=sherlock
My only complaints about the trailer:
Looks like fun. For canon, I have Jeremy Brett.
I don’t have any philosophical problem with an action hero/womanizing/Vampire fighting/Kung-fu Holmes, but that trailer still makes me think the movie will suck.
Looks too…goofy or something. Way too much knowingly winking at the audience I guess. Hopefully the actual film will be better.
I know just the thing to really jazz up the Holmes mystique – bullet time!
How do you think Holmes learned baritsu? Gained the strength to unbend a steel fireplace poker? Chess?
I have rarely been more confindent that a movie will bomb. Mark my words.
Didn’t he actually bend one in a Holmes story, as a way to show up a thug?
I like Robert Downey Jr and I like Holmes, and I will likely see this - eventually. I don’t have high hopes for it though. Also, my experience with movies that are released Christmas Day is - they suck.
Still, as I said, I’ll likely see it.
It certainly appears to be taking liberties with the Holmes genre. But then, Basil Rathbone had him fighting World War II, so it’s not totally unprecedented to bend the rules…TRM
No, the thug bent the poker as a way to threaten holmes. In response Holmes straightened it again.
As for the OP, Sherlock has always combined action and intellect. The original stories have many such scenes in them.
I don’t think so. Robert Downey Jr. is wildly popular right now, and most people will be happy to go see him in a fun, silly action film and not care about how Holmes’s character is presented. As long as it’s fun, it will do well.
Also, RDJ and Jude Law acting opposite each other as one of the slashiest literary duos of all time? The internet, at least, will show up in droves.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s slash-dar went off when he saw the preview.
That was my exact thought when I saw the trailer.
It’s too late to worry about turning Holmes into an action hero, because Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle already did it. The womanizing concerns me a little more, since Holmes never had a spark of emotion towards anyone but Irene Alder, but might still work if it’s just an act he’s putting on to get information out of the ladies (that, too, is a tactic that Holmes was known to use in the books).
Unlike pretty much every movie released this year, it looks like this will be fun and exciting. Hell yeah I’d pay for that.
I’m willing to make a friendly bet with someone that this will bomb at the box office. We will have to agree on a definition of bomb.
No deal if the budget turns out to be $40 million or less.
No cash terms.
If I had a kid I would start him from the moment he started speaking to practice a gravelly faked deep voice. It seems like that is the single most important factor in becoming a multi-million dollar action hero these days. Of course he can’t go super-gravelly, then he will be pigeon holed into henchman roles, only 8 out of ten gravelly maybe.
I was hoping they’d do a new Holmes movie with Hugh Laurie.
Irene Adler is the female love interest in this film, from my understanding - Rachel McAdams, the one who seems to have cuffed him in the trailer (not sure for sure) is credited as Irene at IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0988045/