4400 reboot in the works

[Christopher]

Yes, but I was just being facetious.

Obviously, which is why I thought it was worth pointing out that it's not just a joke scenario, it's something that actually does happen.

Yep. Especially since the first two movies were set in Victorian times before the series moved to Universal.

And they were actually the exceptions. It's weird -- in the first half of the 20th century, nearly all Sherlock Holmes screen adaptations were set in the then-present day. After all, the stories were still coming out as late as the 1920s, so they were an ongoing series when the first silent film adaptations were made, and so Hollywood got into the habit of treating them as a present-day series, with only a few exceptions like the 1916 William Gilette silent film and the first two Rathbone-Bruce films (and the radio series that spun off from them). So the modernized setting of the Universal Holmes films was the norm rather than the exception. Yet after 1950, as if a switch had been thrown, suddenly every screen adaptation of Holmes treated him as a period character from the Victorian Era. It wasn't until Sherlock and Elementary that we got a modernized Holmes again, more than 60 years after the last one.

I swear, the world was a happier place before fandom discovered the word "canon."

Although it was Sherlock Holmes fans and critics who invented that usage of the word -- the "Doyle canon" as distinct from the Gilette play and other adaptations and pastiches.

 

[JD]

I didn't realize the Bruce-Rathbone Holmes movies were set in what was modern day at the time, I had assumed Sherlock was the first time Holmes was modernized.

Not only that, the Bogart movie was the third movie version in ten years.

And today's fans complain that modern reboots are "too soon!"

And to think, people were having a fit because Spider-Man: Homecoming came out so soon after the Amazing movies and the Toby Maguire/Sam Raimi movies.

 

[Greg Cox]

I didn't realize the Bruce-Rathbone Holmes movies were set in what was modern day at the time, I had assumed Sherlock was the first time Holmes was modernized.
.

The first two were set in Victorian times, but then World War II broke out and they updated the movie series to the modern-day world of the 1940s so Holmes and Watson could join in the war effort and help track down Nazi spies and such. (The series also switched studios around the same time, from Fox to Universal.)

Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942) was the first of the World War II-set movies, coming out less than a year after Pearl Harbor.

 

[JD]

I really should check them out sometime.

 

[Christopher]

I didn't realize the Bruce-Rathbone Holmes movies were set in what was modern day at the time, I had assumed Sherlock was the first time Holmes was modernized.

As I said, most Holmes adaptations in the first half of the 20th century were set in the then-present. It was the norm then, and period pieces like the first two Rathbone films were the exception.

After all, though the Doyle stories were generally set a few years in the past of their publication, they were basically portraying the present day, and indeed were quite cutting-edge, with Holmes innovating methods of forensic investigation and scientific detection that even the real-world police had barely begun using or hadn't even invented in real life (so that the stories bordered on science fiction at times). And the first Sherlock Holmes film adaptation was made in 1900, while the original Doyle stories kept coming out until 1927, and the majority of them were published after 1900. So in the early decades of cinema, it was natural to see Holmes as a present-day character, and that persisted into the '30s and '40s.

The first two were set in Victorian times, but then World War II broke out and they updated the movie series to the modern-day world of the 1940s so Holmes and Watson could join in the war effort and help track down Nazi spies and such. (The series also switched studios around the same time, from Fox to Universal.)

Ironically, the reason Fox stopped making Holmes films after their second one was that they didn't think wartime audiences would be interested in period detective stories and would rather see present-day stories about fighting Nazi spies and saboteurs. Somehow it didn't occur to them to do what Universal did, and just update Holmes and Watson so that they were fighting Nazi spies and saboteurs.

Although it's really only the first three Universal films that have war-based plots. The next two are more conventional mysteries with only token references to the war -- e.g. the fourth is a mystery at a convalescent home for wounded veterans, and the fifth has a climax involving a shooting gallery with targets based on the Axis leaders -- and after that, the rest of the series, while remaining in the present, completely ignores WWII, except for a retroactive reference in the final film in 1946. I guess the early push for propaganda films gave way to the audience's desire for escapism.

 

[Greg Cox]

Yep, although the Universal pics never went back to the Victorian setting, they got less War-centric as the years passed, going back to more conventional mystery plots that just happened to be set in the 1940s. A spooky old mansion is still a spooky old mansion, regardless of whether the story is set in 1890 or 1946. The only real changes, as I recall, are mostly cosmetic: Holmes is more likely to hail a cab than a hansom buggy, that kinda thing.

 

[RandyS]

I really should check them out sometime.

I recommend them. They are available on DVD.

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-She...541725198&sr=8-5&keywords=sherlock+holmes+dvd

 

[Christopher]

The only real changes, as I recall, are mostly cosmetic: Holmes is more likely to hail a cab than a hansom buggy, that kinda thing.

The first Universal movie has Holmes using cutting-edge technology for the era, like radio triangulation to find the source of a broadcast, and an electric torch (flashlight to us Yanks) at the end of his walking stick. Which is in keeping with how he was written in the stories, as a pioneer in scientific detection. Sherlock and Elementary have maintained that same spirit by having Holmes be tech-savvy, good with the Internet and texting and such.