Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows
Tuesday night is Dollar Theater Night! But Monday Night is 75cents theater night if you have at least three people. So we collected Justin and went out to see the second Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes film.
What to say... well, for one thing, it was at least three times better than the first one. I would happily have paid a full dollar for this movie. It actually had a vaguely Sherlock Holmesy plot, unlike the last one. Oh yeah, and it was the second gayest movie I have ever seen.
So, one of the first good things they did was shove Irene Adler in a refrigerator. Seriously. She is now dead. The end. And then they replaced her with a random gypsy.
Of all the potential candidates for gratuitous nakedness, what we actually ended up with was Stephen Fry as an inexplicably-nudist Mycroft Holmes. More awesome than it sounds...but on the other hand, I don't think anybody really wanted to see him that naked. Although fortunately we were spared a Hodor...just.
Moriarty was good. And apparently telepathic? I mean, the pre-Reichenbach duel was awesome, but...it was a little weird when the Holmes voice-over was suddenly Moriarty...also in voiceover. It was like, wait, you guys realize you're not saying any of this out loud, right? It was bizarre. He was certainly a very traditional Moriarty, but a particularly well done one, especially given what I would normally expect from this particular interpretation.
I also liked Col. Moran, and was intrigued to note that this is the second time in a week I've seen a Moran set up as a deliberate parallel to Watson. (Interestingly, the BBC Sherlock did not do this, because it's significant in story that Moriarty hasn't got his own Watson.) But it's always interesting when you see a common story element that is not from the source material.
For instance, Holmes' decision to go over the falls in both this and the BBC Sherlock (but not the Conan Doyle) is made explicitly to protect Watson (and the new Mrs. Watson, in this version). For that matter, in both cases it is a decision, and we actually see him go over, whereas the point in the originals is not that he found some way to survive the fall, but rather that he never went over in the first place. Of course, genre savvy modern viewers would never buy the idea of him dying offscreen. Honestly, we're not going to buy him dying at all, which may be why both this and the BBC episode finished up with the Reveal that he had miraculously (or at least mysteriously) survived. One major difference, though, is that in this version he actually clues Watson in on the fact that he's not actually dead, whereas the BBC version is truer to the original in keeping Watson in the dark. (This version also crucially lacked the Watson-at-the-rock dynamic). At least part of this is that this is fundamentally a much sillier work.
Really, what it comes down to is that this was just a fun goofy movie. With lots of things blowing up and more homoerotic subtext than you can shake a strangely appropriate anagram at. But Mary Morestand continues to be awesome.
And I really need to read these books again.
OH! And Unnecessary Don Giovanni was pretty awesome as well.
What to say... well, for one thing, it was at least three times better than the first one. I would happily have paid a full dollar for this movie. It actually had a vaguely Sherlock Holmesy plot, unlike the last one. Oh yeah, and it was the second gayest movie I have ever seen.
So, one of the first good things they did was shove Irene Adler in a refrigerator. Seriously. She is now dead. The end. And then they replaced her with a random gypsy.
Of all the potential candidates for gratuitous nakedness, what we actually ended up with was Stephen Fry as an inexplicably-nudist Mycroft Holmes. More awesome than it sounds...but on the other hand, I don't think anybody really wanted to see him that naked. Although fortunately we were spared a Hodor...just.
Moriarty was good. And apparently telepathic? I mean, the pre-Reichenbach duel was awesome, but...it was a little weird when the Holmes voice-over was suddenly Moriarty...also in voiceover. It was like, wait, you guys realize you're not saying any of this out loud, right? It was bizarre. He was certainly a very traditional Moriarty, but a particularly well done one, especially given what I would normally expect from this particular interpretation.
I also liked Col. Moran, and was intrigued to note that this is the second time in a week I've seen a Moran set up as a deliberate parallel to Watson. (Interestingly, the BBC Sherlock did not do this, because it's significant in story that Moriarty hasn't got his own Watson.) But it's always interesting when you see a common story element that is not from the source material.
For instance, Holmes' decision to go over the falls in both this and the BBC Sherlock (but not the Conan Doyle) is made explicitly to protect Watson (and the new Mrs. Watson, in this version). For that matter, in both cases it is a decision, and we actually see him go over, whereas the point in the originals is not that he found some way to survive the fall, but rather that he never went over in the first place. Of course, genre savvy modern viewers would never buy the idea of him dying offscreen. Honestly, we're not going to buy him dying at all, which may be why both this and the BBC episode finished up with the Reveal that he had miraculously (or at least mysteriously) survived. One major difference, though, is that in this version he actually clues Watson in on the fact that he's not actually dead, whereas the BBC version is truer to the original in keeping Watson in the dark. (This version also crucially lacked the Watson-at-the-rock dynamic). At least part of this is that this is fundamentally a much sillier work.
Really, what it comes down to is that this was just a fun goofy movie. With lots of things blowing up and more homoerotic subtext than you can shake a strangely appropriate anagram at. But Mary Morestand continues to be awesome.
And I really need to read these books again.
OH! And Unnecessary Don Giovanni was pretty awesome as well.