icarus_chained (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
icarus_chained) wrote2012-05-12 01:34 pm
icarus_chained) wrote2012-05-12 01:34 pm
Entry tags:
Holmes
I watched Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows last night. *grins* And sort of loved it. Both the Guy Ritchie movies are probably terribly offensive to purists, but ... well. *smiles sheepishly* I've never really been that. So long as no-one does anything too terrible to the characters and character interactions, I'm pretty much fine.
In terms of character interactions, I think what the movies are trying to do with Holmes is make him as visibly manic and bohemian and socially-inappropriate to a modern audience as the original would have been to a Victorian one. He's still recognisably Holmes, and Holmes and Watson are recognisably Holmes and Watson (though John is more snippy than most adaptations - which I'm pretty fine with, actually). And Moriarty ...
Okay. First. The major problem with watching any Holmes adaptation involving Moriarty when you've actually read the stories is that a) you know Reichenbach is coming, but b) you know Empty House is coming, too. And all credit to Game of Shadows, they played with the first (I'm guessing anyone who saw the Granada series in particular had a horrible moment at the factory when Holmes sent Watson away, and then sat down to write a letter - no waterfall in sight, but it wouldn't be the first time an adaptation had done away with the literal waterfall ... And then it was (mostly) fine, but they're heading to a castle in Switzerland that sits on top of, guess what, a waterfall), and didn't try to leave suspense about the second (though the '?' after 'The End' on Watson's manuscript was quite nice).
Moriarty himself was pretty awesome, actually. Creepy and genteel and spiderish, so much more publically respectable than Holmes, and the mutual respect and mutual disappointment between them (Holmes for Moriarty's lack of morality, Moriarty for Holmes' lack of vision) was lovely. Actually, one of the better version of Moriarty I've seen, I think. The invisible chess game was a lovely metaphor at the end, and running it into the predicted fight to the death was awesome, especially when it then never happened because they both ran through the moves, and Holmes determined it useless. Heh.
Irene Adler ... Okay. She is pretty much always a problem for me in adaptations. I understand wanting to give Holmes a love interest (well, aside from John, anyway), and she's strong and savvy enough to match up to Holmes, but ... Whenever the adaptations try to increase their involvement in order to make her a love interest, it seems to me they either end up a) killing her, or b) making her less good than she was, or c) both. In the originals, she came in, knocked Holmes' intellectual socks off, wrested what she wanted from them, and left to return to the man she'd done all that for (who is a lucky, lucky man - how many people have a lover that will take on royalty and Sherlock Holmes both, and win, to protect them?). It's part of the difference between her and Moriarty, the other person to come close to defeating Holmes - there's no crescendo between them, no building animosity, no intellectual rivalry. Irene didn't care about Holmes, save as a potential impediment (though she came to respect him). And I suspect that's a large part of why she won, and Moriarty lost. If you make it personal with Holmes, he will make it personal back.
Though ... speaking of love interests ... I did like Mary Morstan/Watson in this version. *grins* She's not sanguine about things, but she does pull John's gun on the train and tell John to open the outside door, please. She goes into mild shock immediately afterwards, but that's fine, because she handled the crisis first. Of course, then Holmes and a bunch more enemies show up, and she gets tossed out of the train, but ... *smiles* She was rather gleeful about helping rob Moriarty blind, there at the end, too. *grins at her*
And the wedding was ... rather lovely. For Holmes, for Watson, for her. She didn't at all mind that John arrived looking like he'd gotten into a fight in a gambling hall (he had), and Holmes had genuinely, despite it all, done his best to get John there on time, in more or less one piece, and with the ring. *smiles* I did like that.
And John himself ... I love that this movie shows him a) as a soldier - the battle scenes with him are fabulous, as was his knowledge of Moran, and b) as a doctor - putting Holmes back together, and even remembering Holmes' (adrenalin?) shot to bring him back, that was nice too. And I loved John's combat pragmatism in the factory scene. He can't match Moran as a sniper, but, hello, heavy artillery!
I did kind of like that Moriarty was essentially trying to set off WWI twenty years early. I also loved that he said that it was as easy as it was for a reason, and sooner or later, Europe would start a war whether he was involved or not. I loved that Holmes couldn't refute that. I love that that was partially because he knew Mycroft, and that was part of the reason Sherlock never followed his brother into politics to start with. It was horrible and dark, particularly layered over the early bombardment scene - I loved John. John broke my heart in those scenes. John was in Afghanistan, he was a soldier, he knew war the old way, and his reaction to the artillery and the chemical weapons that are calling forward ... especially since book!John then had to actually see WWI. It was ... horribly poignant.
Um. Huh. Essentially? I loved it. Both the movies in the series. Holmes adaptations are always interesting, especially at this point where quite a lot of them shout out to each other as much as the originals, playing off the expectations built up by other adaptations. It's fascinating. This version is ... brassy and wild and more in-your-face than many, but I also kind of like that. Heh. It's new and interesting.
It's also pulp entertainment, and I think a lot of people forget that so was the Strand. *grins faintly* Holmes has always been about popular demand and the audience of the time. Otherwise, he'd have died at Reichenbach the first time around, and stayed dead. *smiles faintly*
Okay. First. The major problem with watching any Holmes adaptation involving Moriarty when you've actually read the stories is that a) you know Reichenbach is coming, but b) you know Empty House is coming, too. And all credit to Game of Shadows, they played with the first (I'm guessing anyone who saw the Granada series in particular had a horrible moment at the factory when Holmes sent Watson away, and then sat down to write a letter - no waterfall in sight, but it wouldn't be the first time an adaptation had done away with the literal waterfall ... And then it was (mostly) fine, but they're heading to a castle in Switzerland that sits on top of, guess what, a waterfall), and didn't try to leave suspense about the second (though the '?' after 'The End' on Watson's manuscript was quite nice).
Moriarty himself was pretty awesome, actually. Creepy and genteel and spiderish, so much more publically respectable than Holmes, and the mutual respect and mutual disappointment between them (Holmes for Moriarty's lack of morality, Moriarty for Holmes' lack of vision) was lovely. Actually, one of the better version of Moriarty I've seen, I think. The invisible chess game was a lovely metaphor at the end, and running it into the predicted fight to the death was awesome, especially when it then never happened because they both ran through the moves, and Holmes determined it useless. Heh.
Irene Adler ... Okay. She is pretty much always a problem for me in adaptations. I understand wanting to give Holmes a love interest (well, aside from John, anyway), and she's strong and savvy enough to match up to Holmes, but ... Whenever the adaptations try to increase their involvement in order to make her a love interest, it seems to me they either end up a) killing her, or b) making her less good than she was, or c) both. In the originals, she came in, knocked Holmes' intellectual socks off, wrested what she wanted from them, and left to return to the man she'd done all that for (who is a lucky, lucky man - how many people have a lover that will take on royalty and Sherlock Holmes both, and win, to protect them?). It's part of the difference between her and Moriarty, the other person to come close to defeating Holmes - there's no crescendo between them, no building animosity, no intellectual rivalry. Irene didn't care about Holmes, save as a potential impediment (though she came to respect him). And I suspect that's a large part of why she won, and Moriarty lost. If you make it personal with Holmes, he will make it personal back.
Though ... speaking of love interests ... I did like Mary Morstan/Watson in this version. *grins* She's not sanguine about things, but she does pull John's gun on the train and tell John to open the outside door, please. She goes into mild shock immediately afterwards, but that's fine, because she handled the crisis first. Of course, then Holmes and a bunch more enemies show up, and she gets tossed out of the train, but ... *smiles* She was rather gleeful about helping rob Moriarty blind, there at the end, too. *grins at her*
And the wedding was ... rather lovely. For Holmes, for Watson, for her. She didn't at all mind that John arrived looking like he'd gotten into a fight in a gambling hall (he had), and Holmes had genuinely, despite it all, done his best to get John there on time, in more or less one piece, and with the ring. *smiles* I did like that.
And John himself ... I love that this movie shows him a) as a soldier - the battle scenes with him are fabulous, as was his knowledge of Moran, and b) as a doctor - putting Holmes back together, and even remembering Holmes' (adrenalin?) shot to bring him back, that was nice too. And I loved John's combat pragmatism in the factory scene. He can't match Moran as a sniper, but, hello, heavy artillery!
I did kind of like that Moriarty was essentially trying to set off WWI twenty years early. I also loved that he said that it was as easy as it was for a reason, and sooner or later, Europe would start a war whether he was involved or not. I loved that Holmes couldn't refute that. I love that that was partially because he knew Mycroft, and that was part of the reason Sherlock never followed his brother into politics to start with. It was horrible and dark, particularly layered over the early bombardment scene - I loved John. John broke my heart in those scenes. John was in Afghanistan, he was a soldier, he knew war the old way, and his reaction to the artillery and the chemical weapons that are calling forward ... especially since book!John then had to actually see WWI. It was ... horribly poignant.
Um. Huh. Essentially? I loved it. Both the movies in the series. Holmes adaptations are always interesting, especially at this point where quite a lot of them shout out to each other as much as the originals, playing off the expectations built up by other adaptations. It's fascinating. This version is ... brassy and wild and more in-your-face than many, but I also kind of like that. Heh. It's new and interesting.
It's also pulp entertainment, and I think a lot of people forget that so was the Strand. *grins faintly* Holmes has always been about popular demand and the audience of the time. Otherwise, he'd have died at Reichenbach the first time around, and stayed dead. *smiles faintly*