Sherlock Holmes: A Plot of Shadows
So it saddens me to no end that I can't write full reviews like I used to but just watched Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows last night and thought that I should post some thoughts:
SPOILER WARNING
The Good: Robert Downey Jr continued to impress as the manic and somewhat crazed Holmes who also just so happens to observe the most minute details and be able to make the most startling deductions based upon them. He attempted to carry the film and at least partially succeeded but unfortunately he was about the only great thing about it.
The Bad: Where do we start? The plot is self-evident from the beginning. In fact after the brilliant first movie undercutting my expectations and then giving a surprising twist I was hopeful that this movie would tell me that what we thought the story was about would turn out to be something else entirely. The fact that Moriarity is trying to set the world at war isn't even mysterious yet we go through tedious lengths in the movie to prove to the characters that it is so. I suppose that my biggest problem with all of this is that there was no mystery to solve, no double-bluff. I didn't have to use my intelligence and try to figure out what was going on like I did in the first movie. That in itself was a huge tragedy.
I am saddened by the death of Irene Adler even though I am greatful for them providing a bit of continuity between the first film and the second. I can't say that I'm to impressed with this Moriarity either. The shadowy figure that we saw in the first film seemed more...impressive. This was just an old man and while I realize that appearances can be deceptive he just didn't give any kind of threat or menace although I did appreciate that they showed that his intellect was about equal to Holmes' own.
Ultimately the movie would have been better off if they'd left it with Holmes and Moriarity dying by each others' hand. If they wanted to do yet another sequal they could have always explained how he survived or made it a prequal (as indeed Conan Doyle himself did to write further Holmes stories after killing him off). Having Holmes survive with no explanation (and I'm sorry there's no way that you could survive that high of a fall into near freezing water which is of course why they didn't try to explain it) was a major copout and made the ending feel really week. If this is the last Holmes movie in this series, people will always look back on it as a weak ending but if Holmes had been left dead they'd have appreciated the sense of closure and the courage that the studio showed in giving a definitive ending to their own franchise. The only movie that I can think of with a copout on this level in recent history is Star Trek: Nemesis which similarly killed off Data only to show that he lived on in B4 thus negating any emotion created from his act of self-sacrifice.
As one review put it, "its not the Holmes that we need, but the Holmes that we deserved". Unfortunately Hollywood apparently took the wrong notice from the popularity of the first film and gave us a sequal that's just a bunch of people running around Europe with big explosions everywhere while the views watch on as if waiting for paint to dry. If I want a psuedo-historical action-adventure I'll watch League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. If I'm watching Sherlock Holmes I want to use my brain and thus movie didn't have me do that at all.
SPOILER WARNING
The Good: Robert Downey Jr continued to impress as the manic and somewhat crazed Holmes who also just so happens to observe the most minute details and be able to make the most startling deductions based upon them. He attempted to carry the film and at least partially succeeded but unfortunately he was about the only great thing about it.
The Bad: Where do we start? The plot is self-evident from the beginning. In fact after the brilliant first movie undercutting my expectations and then giving a surprising twist I was hopeful that this movie would tell me that what we thought the story was about would turn out to be something else entirely. The fact that Moriarity is trying to set the world at war isn't even mysterious yet we go through tedious lengths in the movie to prove to the characters that it is so. I suppose that my biggest problem with all of this is that there was no mystery to solve, no double-bluff. I didn't have to use my intelligence and try to figure out what was going on like I did in the first movie. That in itself was a huge tragedy.
I am saddened by the death of Irene Adler even though I am greatful for them providing a bit of continuity between the first film and the second. I can't say that I'm to impressed with this Moriarity either. The shadowy figure that we saw in the first film seemed more...impressive. This was just an old man and while I realize that appearances can be deceptive he just didn't give any kind of threat or menace although I did appreciate that they showed that his intellect was about equal to Holmes' own.
Ultimately the movie would have been better off if they'd left it with Holmes and Moriarity dying by each others' hand. If they wanted to do yet another sequal they could have always explained how he survived or made it a prequal (as indeed Conan Doyle himself did to write further Holmes stories after killing him off). Having Holmes survive with no explanation (and I'm sorry there's no way that you could survive that high of a fall into near freezing water which is of course why they didn't try to explain it) was a major copout and made the ending feel really week. If this is the last Holmes movie in this series, people will always look back on it as a weak ending but if Holmes had been left dead they'd have appreciated the sense of closure and the courage that the studio showed in giving a definitive ending to their own franchise. The only movie that I can think of with a copout on this level in recent history is Star Trek: Nemesis which similarly killed off Data only to show that he lived on in B4 thus negating any emotion created from his act of self-sacrifice.
As one review put it, "its not the Holmes that we need, but the Holmes that we deserved". Unfortunately Hollywood apparently took the wrong notice from the popularity of the first film and gave us a sequal that's just a bunch of people running around Europe with big explosions everywhere while the views watch on as if waiting for paint to dry. If I want a psuedo-historical action-adventure I'll watch League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. If I'm watching Sherlock Holmes I want to use my brain and thus movie didn't have me do that at all.