I saw it today and thought it was quite good- perhaps a little dark, but certainly an enjoyable film with some great effects.
Also, the film’s armourer did an excellent job too, IMHO- all sorts of nice touches there for people who were really paying attention.
My only misgiving was Jude Law as Dr. Watson- I just didn’t think he had the character quite right. Downey Jr was excellent as Holmes, though.
I loved it.
I thought the bad guy was a little weak and Amy Adams was ok, but overall, I loved it.
Much ditto. Also I was afraid that Holmes would be doing kungfu or something ridiculous, but their fighting looked pretty contemporary. And just because the stories never talked about huge fights doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. Wasn’t Doyle always praising Holmes’ fighting skills? Only fair we see them.
[Tiny spoiler]: We didn’t need TWO slow revelations of Holmes address. Yes, it’s 221B Baker Street. Don’t use the same shot twice. Sloppy. [/spoiler]
Rachel McAdams. And I thought she was very flat, probably the only thing I didn’t like out of the movie. More sexual chemistry between her and RDJ (and maybe a bit more naughtiness, just to add to the feel of the movie?) would have been icing on the cake.
Agreed. Also for those afraid of an Adler love plot, I think people in this thread have been quite right that Holmes-Watson seemed to be a closer pairing (though slashers are funny). Holmes seemed to go out of his way to not get involved romantically with Adler. And the movie was very insistent in showing Holmes’ skills in reason.
A fun movie for sure. Did it have significant differences from my own impression of Holmes based on the handful of stories I’ve read and my general familiarity with the character from popular culture? Yes. And I can’t say they were improvements. The plot was a little too Da Vinci Code, too, and they went a little overboard with the fighting. And the way they used Moriarty made the whole thing feel a little like a $12 commercial for the sequel.
All that said, I enjoyed the movie for sure. Downey and Law were both very good. The movie was entertaining and they did a pretty good job emphasizing Holmes’ deductive skills. The comedy was mostly funny. And when we got home from the movie, we stumbled across an older Holmes movie and saw the scene with the flies and the chromatic scale had been lifted from there. So that was either a nice tip of the hat or an act of plagiarism, depending on how you choose to look at it.
You know, of all the possible roles to get typecast as, this would be one of the more fun ones for an actor, I should think. Tony Stark, Sherlock Holmes…maybe next we’ll get a Nikolai Tesla action flick.
Have you read the stories? Holmes and Watson are constantly ejaculating at each other.
We must be reading different Sherlock Holmes stories. The ones I’ve read have Watson as being either happily married (or a widower) and Holmes being an eccentric private detective with a healthy respect for women.
Not everything written in the Victorian era has undertones of repressed sexuality, folks.
I think it was a joke: “‘What on earth does this mean?’ I ejaculated after I had twice read over the extraordinary announcement.”
Holmes and Watson in the movie live together and bicker. They are a Victorian odd couple, and just as in “The Odd Couple,” the similarity between their relationship and that of an old married couple is played for laughs, not as a serious representation of a homosexual coupling.
No, it’s actually quite true to the BOOKs. It’s not true at all to the *Basil Rathbone *series of movies. In that series we come up with the stuff like the deerstalker hat, and the idiotic witless Watson. The film went back to the literary source for the fairly clever (but no match for Holmes) Watson, rather than the bumbling straightman to gasp at Sherlock’s deduction.
wiki “Watson is described as an intelligent man, if lacking in Holmes’ insight. He serves as a foil to Holmes: the ordinary man against the brilliant, emotionally-detached analytical machine. Doyle created a clever literary pairing: two vivid characters, different in their function and yet each useful for his purposes…In a number of film adaptations, in particular those featuring the comic skills of the actor Nigel Bruce, Watson became more of a caricature than a character. Far from being the able assistant as presented by Doyle, the Rathbone-Bruce films portrayed Watson as an incompetent bumbler.”
The elements of the occult fit fine, based upon the ending. If you actually saw the film, you’d know that. :dubious:
Next Irene Adler was “the woman” for Holmes- wiki "The only woman to impress Holmes was Irene Adler, who was always referred to by Holmes as “the woman”. Holmes himself is never directly quoted as using this term—even though he does mention her actual name several times in other cases. Adler is one of the few women who are mentioned in multiple Holmes stories, though she actually appears in person in only one, “A Scandal in Bohemia”.
The literary Holmes also is a fighter of some skill "*Fist-fighting Holmes is described as a formidable bare-knuckle fighter. In The Sign of the Four, Holmes introduces himself to a prize-fighter as:
"The amateur who fought three rounds with you at Alison's rooms on the night of your benefit four years back." McMurdo responds by saying, "Ah, you're one that has wasted your gifts, you have! You might have aimed high, if you had joined the fancy."
Holmes engages in hand to hand combat with his adversaries on occasions throughout the stories, inevitably emerging the victor.[28] It is mentioned also in “Gloria Scott” that Holmes trained as a boxer.
Martial arts “The Adventure of the Empty House”, Holmes recounts to Watson how he used martial arts to overcome Professor Moriarty and fling his adversary to his death at the Reichenbach Falls. He states that “I have some knowledge, however, of baritsu, or the Japanese system of wrestling, which has more than once been very useful to me.” "
*
Can you show me where in the actual books by Doyle, Watson is described as being shorter? He* is* described as being thin, not portly as portrayed by Bruce.
Your ideas of who and what Holmes is is clearly based upon the Rathbone-Bruce films, not the actual canon.
Has the thread progressed far enough for an unspoilered discussion of…
…the radio controlled device? Because I was actually very impressed with the conceptualization of it. The top of the device had an obvious spark-gap receiver. It’s not as if any sophisticated control would be needed. One burst of broadband power from the only radio transmitter in the United Kingdom would trigger it.
Am I alone in assuming that an entire Telsa sub-plot explanation was excised from the script? The murdered inventor reminded me of Charles Proteus Steinmetz.
The steampunk peeps are going to wet themselves over this movie.
I agree. I thought it was remarkably faithful to the spirit of the original stories.
I’ve read some criticism where people have complained that there’s not much of a mystery in the movie, but that’s true to the books too. Conan Doyle wasn’t Agatha Christie. He didn’t lay all the clues out for the reader like a puzzle to be solved. Often Holmes would resolve the problem at the very end with a flurry of clever deduction, sometimes relying on information that only he had.
I loved how Holmes was shooting “VR” into the wall of the apartment with his revolver. That’s straight from the books… and it’s not something Basil Rathbone would do.
Do you recall which story?
Thanks!
You have misread and misunderstood my OP, and have leapt to conclusions about me that are inaccurate and insulting.
I do not consider myself a Sherlockian scholar (as I mentioned, that’s my father), but I have read the entire canon (most recently within the last year or two), and I’ve only seen one or two of Rathbone films, the last more than 30 years ago. Where did I say anything about deerstalkers (which *weren’t *original to the Rathbone films, BTW) or how Watson was portrayed?
If you had read my post, you would have seen this:
You are free to call these exaggerations “true to the BOOKS” if you wish, but if you were as familiar with the originals as you claim, you’d know that Doyle did not write comic books. The adventures are far quieter and more intellectual than Guy Ritchie’s movie. That was my point.
As for the occult, I challenge you to show me anything in the canon that suggests anything to do with witchcraft, magic, human sacrifice, etc., whether or not it is later shown to be explained naturally. (I think there is one tale in which a character is believed by someone else to be a vampire, and this, I’m told, is essentially the only hint of the supernatural in the entire canon.)
As for Holmes’ height, Watson constantly refers to Homes as “tall,” which he presumably would not do if Holmes were shorter than he. And as I wrote, this was the observation of a member of the Six Napoleons of Baltimore (a scion society of the Baker Street Irregulars), in a meeting with dozens of other Sherlockians whose knowledge of the tales I’d put up against yours any day. None of them disagreed.
If you want to see a version that is really true to the original tales, watch the Jeremy Brett series, which is universally considered in Sherlockian circles to be the most faithful adaptation of Holmes ever produced. This film is a far cry from that.
The Musgrave Ritual.
Did cocaine have anything to do with “queer humors”?
Thanks again.
Downey and Law had chemistry and did an excellent job as Holmes and Watson.
However, I wish the movie had not relied so much on action and effects. The CGI struck me as being very poorly executed.
Scenes of the ship sliding out of dry dock and sinking, and the effects at the incomplete Tower Bridge were so bad they took me right out of the movie.