Holmes!
So, there is a Sherlock Holmes movie coming out next year, staring Jude Law as Watson and Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes. While surfting the web today and not working on my novel, I encountered the expected hostility towards anything that you get from the thing's fandom. In this case, though, the complaints struck me as unusually bizarre, given the source material. The primary arguments were:
- Holmes shouldn't have a love interest: this, in reference to Rachel McAdams being cast as Irene Adler. This argument not only ignores the fact that McAdams is a fine actress, it ignores the fact that Doyle (through Watson) described Adler as the only woman Holmes would be capable of loving. Just because you're shipping for Watson/Holmes love scenes doesn't invalidate Adler being there.
- Robert Downey Jr. will make a terrible Holmes: I couldn't find any explanation of why this would be the case, just lots of repitition that it would be. I will say that Downey wouldn't be my first choice if I was casting a Sherlock Holmes story (I think he'd be better suited for Mycroft Holmes, but that's beside the point). Downey is a fine actor, and has already established that he can play a substance-dependent, violent nerd in Iron Man. What's one more?
- Jude Law will make a terrible Watson: The complaint here seems to be that he's not stocky enough to play Watson. The tricky point with that is that Watson is never really described that way in Doyle's stories. Anyways, Watson's a tricky character in the first place. He has an essential role in the stories as narrator, but that doesn't usually get transferred to film presentations of Holmes. If they have Watson doing a voice-over narration, Law's got a great voice for it; if not, you need an actor who can serve as a sounding board for Holmes without appearing oafish.