It was the origin of Han Solo’s blaster, too: http://www.solware.co.uk/bb-guns/C96-Mauser-Han-Solo-Broom-handle-pistol.shtml
To continue the hijack, the stormtroopers’ arms were Sterling submachine guns.
A better candidate for what the machine guns feasibly could have been is the Madsen machine gun. Still past the time frame, and the ones in the movie were steampunked up with shiny brass, but they looked as big as the one that Jude Law was spraying at the bad guys. Bigger than a Sterling or a Sten anyway, though appearances can be deceiving. Fun movie, worth matinee prices, IMHO.
I wonder what existing gun the prop department ended up converting?
I don’t know - I remember seeing Law wrapping his entire hand around the magazine when reloading. That means pistol ammo.
Your memory is better than mine, Alessan. I don’t remember much about the mags, other than they were as brassed up as every thing else. They did look smaller than say, a Bren’s box, so I’m sure you’re right.
Came in to post this link to a wiki about the guns used in the movie. Sadly, it doesn’t have the one we’re talking about yet. Looking at the page’s section on Moran’s rifle, how weird is it that it didn’t have a set trigger?
Any artillery fans who are willing to make guesses about either the guns used, or the artillery shells in the factory?
We saw it today and enjoyed it. It was a great Christmas movie! I like everything Stephen Fry does, and my daughter and I were in stitches at naked Stephen Fry.
Things that didn’t make sense:
Why didn’t they just all jump off the train?
How could Sherlock Holmes know to draw a fish in the book, that answered Moriarty’s metaphor?
Why would Sherlock Holmes go outside to chat with Moriarty, when he could be contributing in stopping the killer?
That the clock in the chessgame was set to one hour, not 5 minutes.
The moves in the chessgame.
I didn’t even try to follow the plot. I just sat back and enjoyed the humor, the action, and the relationship between Holmes and Watson.
I could have done without the frequent super-slo-mo or rapid-fire shots, though.
Because they can just stop the train and get off and look for them, which puts Mary back in danger again. Throwing Mary off the train was intended to separate her from Holmes and Watson. By staying on the train, they can put a lot of distance between them and her, while also keeping Moriarty’s men away from her. Also, strategically, they’re better off if they can eliminate the team of assassins, rather than leaving them on the board so Moriarty can use them again.
At the beginning of the interrogation scene, Moriarty mentions that they’re listening to one of his favorite compositions, Schubert’s “The Trout.” Holmes has been following Moriarty for weeks, studying him, so it’s no stretch that he would have learned what Moriarty’s favorite tune, and decide to make his own fishing metaphor. Moriarty’s own metaphor could be taken as a coincidence, or it could be read as Holmes knowing the guy well enough to accurately guess at his rhetorical techniques ahead of time. The latter’s not all that hard, really. Here on the Dope, I can sometimes guess the content of a post just by looking at the poster’s name, and I’m no Sherlock. Then again, the people I’m dealing with aren’t exactly Moriarty, either. 
He doesn’t want Moriarty to escape, or worse, actively work against them before they can unmask the assassin. By playing chess out on the balcony with each other, they’ve essentially locked down the opposing side’s most powerful asset. If Holmes goes running off trying to take out some of Moriarty’s pawns, Moriarty is free to do the same to Holmes’ pawns. The final conflict between the two men comes down to which has trained the best support crew.
A couple of questions:
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Was the castle at Reichenbach Falls modeled on a real castle? It seems familiar, although I know that there’s not a castle at the real Reichenbach Falls.
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What was the point of the nude scene with Stephen Fry?
But by that time, they could be far away, and with Mary in a different direction.
So he can guess the whole thing ahead of time, because one of Moriartys favorite compositions is “The Trout”.
How could he work against them in the room though? And I think the risk of him escaping is not so important in comparison to the risk of world war.
It’s all somewhat acceptable fan-wank, but is Sherlock Holmes II really hot enough to deserve it?
It’s not a movie that can stand deep analysis (or any, really), but Jude Law being pinned down by a sniper did remind me of a similar scene in Enemy at the Gates.
I enjoyed it but thought that the silliness could have been reined back a bit.
Once it goes over the edge you can all too easily lose interest in the story and the characters.
What was a good movie, could have been with a little more restraint a great movie.
Also I don’t know why Holmes didn’t just kill Moriarty in the first place.
The first Sherlock with Downey was a good movie. This was Mission Impossible in 1891. No, seriously, they’re the same movie. There’s no way the two should be comparable in any way, shape or form.
When their idea of wit is having Mycroft Holmes wander around naked there’s simply no hope. Totally disappointing film.
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It didn’t look familiar to me.
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I guess it was to show how unbound by conventional behavior Mycroft was, as well as how totally unfamiliar he was with women, but I didn’t think it worked on either count. Mycroft is described by Conan Doyle as being totally plugged into the British government - at times he was the government, Sherlock says/brags. Even a polymath can’t rise to that level without having some grasp of the social niceties, including how to deal with (what was considered in Victorian times) the fairer sex. The basic answer is that it was inserted for cheap laughs and, for me at least, it failed. Worst part of the movie, I have to say.
Yeah, I pretty much agree with the consensus. It was fun, and had some good bits but they really needed to heavily dial back the cartoonishness.
Ah well, hopefully the second set of episodes of the BBC Sherlock will live up to their predecessors better then Game of Shadows.
In the first meeting between Holmes and Moriarty, the prof puts on a piece of music by Schubert and just says its name in German. After the movie I asked my German-speaking (sort of–studied in high school) wife if he’d played The Trout during that scene, and she said he had. So it appears things went like this:
- Holmes heard Moriarty play The Trout.
- He recognized its thematic appropriateness to the relationship between himself and Moriarty.
- When he got the book, he drew a cartoon based on the song M. had played at their first meeting.
- M. decided to play it again during the interrogation scene; coincidentally, that was Holmes’s opportunity for a switcheroo.
I quite enjoyed the movie.
it’s just to be funny. There was some info being presented in the scene and instead of a dry boring scene or trying to be urgent, they made this a funny scene to give you a respite from all the action.
The drawing in the red book switch is just a reference to the scene at the office. The fact that Moriarty tells a story about it only adds to it. The fisherman in the cartoon didn’t muddy the water so it is not a reference to the tower scene.
I don’t think it would take that much time to stop the train. We’re talking about a heavily armed band of assassins. It’s not like they have to wait until they reach the next station. They just run up to the engine and shoot the engineer, then stop the train. Assuming the engineer isn’t already on their side.
Also, the whole point of throwing her out the window was so she wouldn’t be “with” them at all. Moriarty’s more than willing to target friends and spouses of the people who cross him. Being far away from the guys on the train, with Mary, still puts Mary in considerable danger. Having her vanish from a moving train in the middle of a running gun fight makes it a lot harder for Moriarty to figure out what happened to her.
Lastly, remember that throwing her off the train was entirely Holmes’ idea, and Holmes views Mary as an obstacle between him and Watson. Holmes doesn’t want to have Mary around. He wants her out of the picture so he and his friend can run around having Adventures. Even if having all three of them jump off the train was the best idea at the time, Holmes doesn’t always do the wise thing. This is a guy who gets his kicks by bare-knuckle boxing and drinking formaldehyde. For all his genius, he doesn’t always make the best decisions where his health and well being are concerned.
No, you misunderstand me. Like LHoD and Zebra said, he didn’t guess anything. Coincidentally, he and Moriarty both decided to use “The Trout” as the basis of an analogy about the other person. Neither did so expecting that the other person would do the same. Moriarty did it because he loves the music. Holmes did it because he knows that Moriarty love the music. There was no deduction involved.
Lots of ways, really - he’s a world renowned scientist and philosopher attending an international peace conference by invitation. Holmes is a deliberately obscure detective (remember the scene in the beginning of the first movie, where he covers his face when the reporter tries to take a picture?) who only got into the conference because his of his brother’s influence, and who showed up covered in bruises and scabs, and in the company of a gypsy woman. You don’t have to be a criminal mastermind to figure out a way to use that to make trouble for Holmes and company, and that’s ignoring whatever more subtle means Moriarty might have at his disposal.
Right, which is why he had Watson looking for the assassin, instead of helping him catch Moriarty. What this scene tells us is that Holmes trusts Watson’s competency. He knows Watson has the information and the tools he needs to stop the assassination on his own, without Sherlock looking over his shoulder.
Aside from that, arguably he doesn’t need to stop the assassination to stop the war any more. He’s got Moriarty’s little red book, which lays out all his plans and financial dealings. Even if the assassin succeeds, Holmes likely has enough evidence to lay the blame for everything at Moriarty’s feet.
I don’t actually think any of that (except possibly Holmes not needing to stop the assassin to stop the war) is a fanwank. I think it’s all intended meaning. I did think the explanation for “The Trout” was a bit of a wank when I posted it, but in light of LHoD’s post, even that seems to have been intentional.
But yes, I thought the movie was good enough to deserve a fanwank, regardless of whether it needed it. 90% of the draw of this franchise is the chemistry between Downey and Law, which was as good here as it was in the first movie. And I thought the plot was massively less contrived than the first one. It’s still pulp supervillainy in both cases, and not realistic by any stretch, but Lord Blackwood’s plans required a Rube Goldberg level of complexity to pull off that just was not plausible at any level. And it’s a lot easier to swallow a world famous polymath inventing the automatic pistol ten or twenty years early than it is to buy a dwarf living in a meat packing plant inventing WiFi in the 19th century.
I read it slightly differently. I think Moriarty very deliberately played that song at their first meeting: he was taunting Holmes with its metaphor (here are the words, btw). Holmes recognized the taunt and answered it with his flip-book. Moriarty’s decision to belabor the point during the tower scene just added to his later humiliation.