A terrible shame, I think.
SHERLOCK HOLMES trailer now online!
- Thread starter JacksonArcher
- Start date
Your mom posts on TrekBBS?
I wish I had drunk something when I read that, because it would have been an awesome spit take.
*sigh*
And yet he fell/dove into Reichenbach Falls with Moriarty. This trailer actually changed my mind about the movie (although it does seem to make Holmes more superhero-ish than usual).
Err, no, we (and Watson) just thought he did. When Holmes "returned from the dead" in "The Empty House," he explained that he'd never actually fallen at all -- Moriarty went over the falls, but Holmes just went into hiding to escape the vengeance of Moriarty's associates.
(The irony is that Doyle intended to kill off Holmes permanently, but he wrote the story in such a way that made it easy to resurrect him, since the narrator, Watson, didn't actually see Holmes' death, merely inferred it.)
From the "edgy" trailer, it just occurred to me that there may be a high likelihood that this movie has a line like, "No shit, Sherlock!"
Please, please, universe, don't let it happen.
Please, please, universe, don't let it happen.
*smacks head* ...uh...oh, yeah...never mind.
Even so, as others have pointed out, there are enough references in the Doyle Canon (or is that Conan? Ba-dum-chhh) of Holmes' physical prowess that the jump into the Thames hardly seems out of character.
The preview looks like this is going to be a fun movie, kind of like how 'The Mummy' was fun. I don't see how this treatment of Holmes is any more wildly off base than other incarnations of Holmes in the past (Young Sherlock Holmes, the Nazi-era Rathbone films, etc.). And Holmes was athletic. Watson was not a bumbling elderly gentleman.
I wish I had drunk something when I read that, because it would have been an awesome spit take.
*sigh*
But then I would've owed you a new keyboard/monitor.
Oh, unquestionably. Holmes was definitely a physically capable man, as was Watson.
The one thing in the trailer I have the hardest time accepting is a stubbly-cheeked Holmes. It just doesn't look right. I think of Holmes as a very meticulous man. On the other hand, he was a man who was only meticulous about matters that concerned his work and was neglectful about other aspects of life. So I suppose it's possible that he was lax in his personal hygiene. Still, making him stubbly seems like too much of an attempt to modernize him, make his look conform to current American fashion.
As I said above, I suspect that this version of Holmes is being heavily influenced by Dr. Gregory House (of TV's House) who himself is heavily inspired by Holmes.
Those making this movie are probably banking on that connection and thus are circling the connections because some audience goers will expect certain similarities in the characters.
Looks interesting. As soon as I heard that Jude Law was cast, I knew we'd be getting a more competent than usual Watson.
In terms of the original stories vs. the popular image, one of the more notable things is how the original Holmes cases are pretty uniformly small potatoes. By which I mean, people expect someone billed as the "world's greatest detective" to be involved in matters of state, confronting diabolical villains with big designs, facing figures from history like Jack the Ripper, etc. Most of his actual stories, though, are pretty routine Law & Order stuff, some of them downright minor ("The Blue Carbuncle", for example).
In terms of the original stories vs. the popular image, one of the more notable things is how the original Holmes cases are pretty uniformly small potatoes. By which I mean, people expect someone billed as the "world's greatest detective" to be involved in matters of state, confronting diabolical villains with big designs, facing figures from history like Jack the Ripper, etc. Most of his actual stories, though, are pretty routine Law & Order stuff, some of them downright minor ("The Blue Carbuncle", for example).
And then there's "The Second Stain" where Holmes recovers a letter from a "certain foreign potentate" which could seriously harm Great Britain's colonial interests; "Wisteria Lodge" has Holmes on the trail of a South American dictator who has fled a revolution; "The Bruce-Partington Plans", wherein the blueprints of a prototype submarine are found before they can be made use of by a German agent--this latter case at the behest of Mycroft Holmes who, by Sherlock's own admission, is much smarter and "occasionally is the British government." And of course the story "His Last Bow", which is chronologically the final adventure, where he goes undercover to infiltrate a German spy network on the eve of The Great War. There are other examples.
You are right, though, in that a good many of the cases are personal matters for individuals, but that comes with the territory of being self-employed and also "playing the game for the game's own sake" (as he once describes his work). He doesn't much care who the client is as long as he has a puzzle to solve.
It it still "usual" for Watson to be portrayed as incompetent? I thought the Jeremy Brett series had pretty much put that convention to rest.
That's because modern criminology and forensics have advanced so far on the foundations that Conan Doyle built. Back in the era of the Holmes stories, such techniques as Holmes employed were still novelties. So he really was a greater detective than anyone else of his era, in terms of the advancements he made in the science of criminal investigation. Doyle's stories were essentially science fiction, with the science in question being forensic science. They portrayed a detective using methods of detection and deduction beyond what practically anyone else in the world was doing, even in real life. Doyle did a lot, both in his stories and as a real-world consultant, to promote new methods of crime detection that have now long since become standard.
Well, in Doyle's defense, this was before the establishment of the comic book rule that no one is dead until you see their body (and sometimes even then...).
I think Robert Downey Jr. looks like an interesting Holmes. I don't think he looks quite spacey enough. I always picture him as someone that doesn't live in our reality. He observes but he doesn't interact and seems very intellectually self-involved.
Now, Jude Law seems primed to give Watson the dignified treatment he deserves. I particularly like the bit where Watson bitches to Holmes about his lack of hygene, etc. I think most other adaptations gloss over the contradiction in Holmes' personality. He's the world's greatest detective but also the world's worst roommate.
Trope originator, maybe? Or was that Jesus?
