I don't actually like the sound of this much.

[w_a_i_d]

Empire's review of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.

"Breezing into their next case, Guy Ritchie, Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law unapologetically stick to the formula. This robust sequel doesn’t gaze intently at its navel, or require you to have boned up on a bewildering mythos or, God forbid, go darker. There is very little sense of personal

Comments

[shezan]

Did you have ANY EXPECTATIONS of any sequel to that expensive turkey? When I saw the BBC Sherlock after the first Richie movie, it felt like that year when Forman's Valmont and Frears's Dangerous Liaisons came out practically at the same time, and all you could feel was mighty embarrassment for everyone associated with the Forman Disneyesque train wreck.

[w_a_i_d]

Yes, I had hopes. I enjoyed the 2009 film, as goofy fun with strong performances with a nice sprinkling of angst, and I loathe the BBC Sherlock on about 4000 different levels. It produces some good fic, and I like Martin Freeman, and some weary part of me hopes it might improve, but so far that's all I've been able to say for it.

[shezan]

YOU NO LIKE BEN "SHERGAR" CUMBERBATCH???

Well, you ASKED

[w_a_i_d]

(damn, LJ just ate my answer)

I think I like the actor -- I enjoy him in Cabin PRessure, anyway. I like the idea of him as Sherlock. But 1: I think the character is more aggressively, unpleasantly, bullyingly sexist than canon Holmes was IN THE 1880s (and Moffat, who has massive, tiresome issues with women, writes literally every.single.female.character to be useless, evil, stupid, helpless, humiliated-by-Sherlock or dead, usually a combination of several of those factors, which ACD the VICTORIAN did not do).

2) I think this Sherlock is also a WEAK-BRAINED MORONIC THICKO WHO CAN'T DEDUCE FOR TOFFEE. He chases a cab across town but he can't work out that cabs have drivers as well as passengers? He can't work out the ONE way an amateur astronomer could identify a painting of a night sky as a modern forgery? I could do that, a long way ahead of him, and I'm neither a detective nor even usually particularly good at working out the endings of crime thrillers

[shezan]

I just want it to be known that I thought of "European Anarchist bombings" as a plot ingredient first.

1. YES YOU DID.

2. Even if you'd thought of it second, your writing is SO FAR SUPERIOR that it doesn't even matter.

[w_a_i_d]

Heh, thanks.

[bk7brokemybrain]

I hated the first film so much, until I accepted it as having nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes. What's the title of that new Tom Hanks film? "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close"? I laughed to myself that that was the subtitle of the new Holmes movie. So, I have no expectations at all for the sequel. I fully expect it to be completely OOC and dripping with enough homoeroticism to make even a hardcore slasher gag. Can you believe how much certain franchises are pandering to the boy!touchers? Not that I'm complaining....
I hope Ritchie can develop Watson enough, at least, so we get a good reaction IF something bad happens. IF someone falls off a cliff (and I'm rooting for the cinematographer and sound editors), maybe we'll get something approaching human emotion.
And I cannot forgive Ritchie for allowing Holmes to have been involved with Adler. EW.

[w_a_i_d]

I think of it as very... alt-world Holmes, but an entertaining one. And I loved Law's Watson, I thought he was the best thing in it. I

I didn't actually find it as slashy as everyone said. Slashy, yes, and I think Downey really might have been playing "unrequitedly in love with Watson" as a deliberate acting choice, but I still didn't see these unprecedented blatant in-your-face levels of slash that other people did.

And I cannot forgive Ritchie for allowing Holmes to have been involved with Adler. EW.

What? Ew? Why ew?

[bk7brokemybrain]

EW because that was the straw that broke the camel's back as far as breaking completely with the original characterization. ACD Holmes was celibate if not asexual. He didn't have that kind of relationship with Adler. The only thing they got right was that Holmes was wary of her intelligence, wary of being vulnerable to her, but to have them in a sexual relationship made this Sherlock into any other guy with exes. Blerg. It also undermines his unrequited pining for Watson, and the constant sabotage of his relationship with Mary to keep Watson close and his partner. *sigh* So if RDJ was playing gay (and he said he thought Sherlock was gay), and pining for Watson and that whole wonderful mess of trying to break up his relationships and keep Watson as his own, then throwing sex with Adler into the mix makes no sense. Fortunately, I have written this 'verse off as little more than a garish cartoon. I'll see the new one, I suppose, but I know what to expect this time.

[bk7brokemybrain]

Oh, and as much as they are pandering to the slashers, they are also throwing in het where it doesn't exist. Sex for sex's sake, even where it doesn't fit in. It struck me as a bit homophobic, like they had to show that Sherlock was 'normal', chasing after women. That they had to actively involve him in a het relationship instead of leaving him private and mysterious. So it annoyed me on that level, too.

[wraithwitch]

I'm hoping that the new film will surprise and delight me just as much as the first did.

(I wasn't keen initially on the whole 're-imagined' SH thing - although I found the BBC Sherlock a thousand times more painful than the Richie one.)

Then I watched it and thought the Richie film was rather like the old StarWars or Indianna Jones stuff - preposterous, sure, but very nicely done and surprisingly entertaining even if you're not 7ys old any more =P

I'm looking forward to the new film - and desperately hoping my father gets sent a BAFTA copy I can steal!

[w_a_i_d]

THANK YOU. I love Jeremy Brett most of all, of course, but as Cleolinda pointed out, JEREMY BRETT'S HOLMES EXISTS AND IS NOT UNDER THREAT. IT's okay for there to be something else. And I think there was nothing wrong with a reminder that Holmes and Watson weren't all sitting about delicately deducing things in drawing rooms, they really could and did kick all kinds of arse physically (though not THAT much, and I'm really not looking forward to MORE fighting).

Anyhow, I came out of the cinema all "heee!!! That was silly and Blackwood was ridiculous. And RDJ was Holmes-NotHolmes-Alt!Holmes?? I am confused. Why couldn't he at least shave? PURISM!! But aww, Watson jumped into the path of a runaway... barge-thing for Holmes, and then got blown up, but then there were very few angsty consequences. I WONDER IF THE INTERNET CAN PROVIDE ME WITH ANGSTY CONSEQUENCES."

And thus I got into slash fanfiction.

Sherlock's just... well, I told poor Shezan above. Apart from everything else, he's stupid. RDJ!Holmes was a bit too gurning and

[lathaina]

You're probably the first person I know that's not into the Game of Shadows. I think people (& Empire for that matter) need to be a little bit more rational around RDJ and his apparent "hotness" because, honestly speaking, he's not that good an actor. And neither is Stephen Fry, actually. He does stand up comedy well but not acting. (I used to be on the Fry bandwagon, but now, not so) I think that the comedy in AGoS is overly slapstick, too American and exceedingly farfetched for the source material.

I found BBC Sherlock quite alright. The graphics were excellently used. But now that you point it out, there should be a proper (read: intelligent) female character in the series, which it is currently lacking. I have not seen enough of Moffat's work to see whether he has a problem with females but the current situation in BBC Sherlock is decidedly not on.

[w_a_i_d]

Have you already seen it, then?

I wouldn't say I'm "not into it" as such, I have much more interest in it than the second series of Sherlock. I like RDJ as an actor -- but his performance as Holmes could easily tip over into caricature. I'm completely with you Fry (though, to be fair, Mycroft might be a pretty good fit for him).

Anyhow, I *want* AGoS to be good -- still playful and adventure-y, but with a little more depth than the first on -- and that review isn't what I wanted to hear.

Moffat really does have serious problems with women and writing female characters. He does, I think, genuinely try to work on these problems, and sometimes the results are excellent, but I feel like Sherlock is where he goes when he's tired of trying and wants to relax into a world where only men are important, competent or virtuous presences and women, if they're lucky, make the tea.

[tweedisgood]

Also, just read that Moffat Scotsman excerpt. Ewwwwww. What a load of utter, woman-hating tosh. This girl for one never *once* "played at being married", not to mention the fact that if one is continually told "that's what 'real' girls like" and "the sole end of your life is to get a man because you are worth nothing otherwise" what the hell else does he expect?
Totally surprised he managed to get married to a woman with as many brains as Ms Vertue seems to have.

[lathaina]

I'm sure most upperclass males could do "vaguely creepy" (see Gatiss as Mycroft in BBC sherlock) so it's not that far a stretch actually.