Sherlock Holmes, the Game of Shadows
Dec. 18th, 2011 07:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
castiron(Does anyone else keep wanting to call it Sherlock Holmes: The Game of Thrones?)
Saw it. I enjoyed it more than the first one, but definitely because I went into it with the right mindset: see things go boom, pretty pretty destruction.
If you're in the mood for explosions in the late 19th/early 20th century, it eventually delivers.
If you're looking for a Sherlock Holmes story, it's even less of one than the first one. Though there's a couple nice canon quotes (one of which made me scratch my head and say "wait, you're missing some of your antecedents here", but hey), and I liked the use of the pages of "The Final Problem" in the end credits.
If you're looking for something with emotionally gripping characterization, you'll want to hold out for season 2 of BBC!Sherlock. I did, however, find Moriarty an interesting and compelling character. (Someone *must* have drawn fanart by now with the various Moriartys sitting around and bitching about their respective Holmeses.) And by the middle of the movie, I was rooting for Sebastian Moran; if they make 3 and he's the major villain in that one, I'm totally going to be watching that one as "The Tragic Ending of Sebastian Moran" rather than "The Heroic Return of Sherlock Holmes". Mary Morstan Watson also gets a couple moments of awesome. In fact, what say we skip Holmes and Watson entirely for 3 and do Morstan vs. Moran? I'd pay damn good money to see that.
Mycroft: Complete waste of Stephen Fry's talent. Yes, that one scene was funny, and he played it very well, but still. (Hmm. I was going to say it didn't fit the movie, but actually, with the cross-dressing Sherlock Holmes bit, it's in the same vein of humor.)
And farewell to a botched version of Irene Adler. (The *real* Irene Adler wouldn't have gotten into that mess.)
Plot: On balance, I probably spent less time in this one going "what the hell is going on here???", but I also didn't have the same "ah, and here it all comes together" at the end. I could see Conan Doyle writing the general plot of the first movie, but this? Nope.
The two parts of this movie that worked very well for me: the segment in the ballroom, like the restaurant segment from the first movie, where we get the sense of how much sensory input Holmes is coping with all the time, and the Holmes/Moriarty interaction at the end -- Holmes running scenarios, Moriarty doing the same.
I enjoyed the Don Giovanni clips (and Moriarty's clear enjoyment of the opera), as well as Holmes and Watson's joint deductions about the gunman afterwards. Watson's BAMF-with-big-gun-and-I-really-mean-big-gun moment was entertaining; the cinematography on the race through the woods was visually interesting; if I was supposed to feel any suspense or sorrow at bit characters dying, it didn't work. (And on that note: if a large chunk of your audience laughs at Reichenbach? You may have failed to convey what you intended.)
The Holmes/Watson relationship, oddly, didn't work as well for me in this one as it did in the first one. The first one had a very strong portrayal of an interestingly warped relationship; in this one, it seemed more like you were supposed to take it as given; without the first movie and the cultural weight of Holmes-Watson as the OT(platonic or otherwise)P, I'd have been going "why is Watson putting up with this crap again?" And when they're about to go into the factory, Holmes's question of "Are you happy?" should have been a lot more powerful than it actually was for me.
Good thing I was detached at the point with the hook, because if I'd been thinking about it or if I'd immediately realized what Moriarty was doing with it, that would have been really disturbing. (And now that I'm thinking about it, ick, that's disturbing. Also, clear example of action movie injury; I can't imagine him being remotely functional for some days afterward.)
So overall, worth seeing if you're in the mood for 19th century technology, guns, and explosions, or if you like staring at Downey and/or Law, or if you want to see an interesting Moriarty, or if you're willing to sit through ninety minutes of stuff going boom to see a really good Holmes/Moriarty confrontation. Not worth seeing if you want a compelling overall story, or if you want a Sherlock Holmes story, or if you like to really care about your protagonists, or if you're offended by the wholesale slaughter of innocent trees.
Saw it. I enjoyed it more than the first one, but definitely because I went into it with the right mindset: see things go boom, pretty pretty destruction.
If you're in the mood for explosions in the late 19th/early 20th century, it eventually delivers.
If you're looking for a Sherlock Holmes story, it's even less of one than the first one. Though there's a couple nice canon quotes (one of which made me scratch my head and say "wait, you're missing some of your antecedents here", but hey), and I liked the use of the pages of "The Final Problem" in the end credits.
If you're looking for something with emotionally gripping characterization, you'll want to hold out for season 2 of BBC!Sherlock. I did, however, find Moriarty an interesting and compelling character. (Someone *must* have drawn fanart by now with the various Moriartys sitting around and bitching about their respective Holmeses.) And by the middle of the movie, I was rooting for Sebastian Moran; if they make 3 and he's the major villain in that one, I'm totally going to be watching that one as "The Tragic Ending of Sebastian Moran" rather than "The Heroic Return of Sherlock Holmes". Mary Morstan Watson also gets a couple moments of awesome. In fact, what say we skip Holmes and Watson entirely for 3 and do Morstan vs. Moran? I'd pay damn good money to see that.
Mycroft: Complete waste of Stephen Fry's talent. Yes, that one scene was funny, and he played it very well, but still. (Hmm. I was going to say it didn't fit the movie, but actually, with the cross-dressing Sherlock Holmes bit, it's in the same vein of humor.)
And farewell to a botched version of Irene Adler. (The *real* Irene Adler wouldn't have gotten into that mess.)
Plot: On balance, I probably spent less time in this one going "what the hell is going on here???", but I also didn't have the same "ah, and here it all comes together" at the end. I could see Conan Doyle writing the general plot of the first movie, but this? Nope.
The two parts of this movie that worked very well for me: the segment in the ballroom, like the restaurant segment from the first movie, where we get the sense of how much sensory input Holmes is coping with all the time, and the Holmes/Moriarty interaction at the end -- Holmes running scenarios, Moriarty doing the same.
I enjoyed the Don Giovanni clips (and Moriarty's clear enjoyment of the opera), as well as Holmes and Watson's joint deductions about the gunman afterwards. Watson's BAMF-with-big-gun-and-I-really-mean-big-gun moment was entertaining; the cinematography on the race through the woods was visually interesting; if I was supposed to feel any suspense or sorrow at bit characters dying, it didn't work. (And on that note: if a large chunk of your audience laughs at Reichenbach? You may have failed to convey what you intended.)
The Holmes/Watson relationship, oddly, didn't work as well for me in this one as it did in the first one. The first one had a very strong portrayal of an interestingly warped relationship; in this one, it seemed more like you were supposed to take it as given; without the first movie and the cultural weight of Holmes-Watson as the OT(platonic or otherwise)P, I'd have been going "why is Watson putting up with this crap again?" And when they're about to go into the factory, Holmes's question of "Are you happy?" should have been a lot more powerful than it actually was for me.
Good thing I was detached at the point with the hook, because if I'd been thinking about it or if I'd immediately realized what Moriarty was doing with it, that would have been really disturbing. (And now that I'm thinking about it, ick, that's disturbing. Also, clear example of action movie injury; I can't imagine him being remotely functional for some days afterward.)
So overall, worth seeing if you're in the mood for 19th century technology, guns, and explosions, or if you like staring at Downey and/or Law, or if you want to see an interesting Moriarty, or if you're willing to sit through ninety minutes of stuff going boom to see a really good Holmes/Moriarty confrontation. Not worth seeing if you want a compelling overall story, or if you want a Sherlock Holmes story, or if you like to really care about your protagonists, or if you're offended by the wholesale slaughter of innocent trees.