So, there's a new Sherlock Holmes movie coming out, directed by Guy Ritchie and staring Robert Downey Jr. as the eponymous hero. Jude Law is playing Watson. So far so good right? Promises not to be a redux of all those silly Basil Rathbone films....
But here's the thing. I saw a trailer a while back and doesn't seem to resemble anything that might have sprung out of Arthur Conan Doyle's brain. Now, this isn't necessarily a bad thing - I like gritty, dark interpretations of Victorian crime solving (From Hell was awesome). But I do feel that if you're going to appropriate someone else's characters, especially one as beloved as Holmes, then you have a bit of a duty to interpret that character through the lens of the original work.
This isn't to say that you have to slavishly do what everyone else has done, but there are certain things about Holmes that make him Holmes. For example, Holmes is not socially at ease. In fact, he's a pre-Autism portrait of a brilliant, autistic savant. He's a hard, controlled man who puts his work and his intellect above the expression of human emotion. He does drugs because he gets bored and depressed when he's not working.
The Holmes that I'm seeing in the trailer is a Holmes that bare-knuckle boxes in pits for fun (granted, the Holmes of the canon is able to box and swordfight and do martial arts, all very well, but one gets the sense that it's for practical and cerebral purposes of discipline and not because of raw, animal combativeness). The Holmes of the canon does not dally with women. In fact, there is only one woman in the entire series of stories that makes an impression - Irene Adler. She appears in one of the first stories and then is never seen again. In the trailer, we see Holmes and the actress playing a re-written Irene Adler seriously going at it, we see Holmes entirely at ease handcuffed and naked in a bed, we see him quipping and generally very socially fluid. This just isn't the taut, razor-minded detective that I've come to associate with the name Sherlock Holmes.
Granted, this is only a trailer and I haven't seen it yet, so the jury is still officially out. But let's just say that I'm not as excited as I wish I was.....
Jeremy Brett would be rolling in his grave. I feel perfectly satisfied shooting anyone involved in this movie. :)
ReplyDelete... and Jude Law was in one of the Grenada Holmes episodes, HE SHOULD KNOW BETTER!
ReplyDeleteaaaaaarg!
You're right. I think it'll be better for our general lack of aaaaarg! to skip this one....
ReplyDeleteI did like the thowing the smaller hammer at the man with the big hammer bit, though.
ReplyDeleteI don't understand why movie makers feel they ALWAYS have to reinvent a character. True, it worked great numbers-wise for the superhero genre, but for literary figures? Maybe not so much. Not EVERYTHING is broken or needs Hollywood fixing.
The hammer bit was legitimately funny.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is that adaptations are fine, but if you're going to use someone else's creations, be reasonably faithful. If you turn them into something unrecognizable but keep the names, then you're just cashing in on someone else's work and misrepresenting your own.
I don't know... I mean, I don't get this riled up about Dracula ( I actually really liked Wes Craven's Dracula 2000 and that was crap). Holmes is different though. Dracula's so iconic, he's always been appropriated. Holmes isn't iconic in the same way - the character is very specifically and uncompromisingly the character. Maybe I'm just too much of a literary fangirl.....
No, I get what you're saying. It was like "Troy" for me. I LOVED that story, and then they made this drivel where the appropriated all the names of the legends, but got rid of all the guys and made Achilles a LIKEABLE guy and BOTH kings these simpering, short sighted caricatures of the actual story. I was LIVID.
ReplyDeleteAnd, sadly, I think I would have liked the darn thing IF they hadn't billed it to be Homer. I like Homer enough that EVERY glaringly, blantantly obvious thing simply made me hate the movie that much more. The only thing, really, that Troy had that resembled the Iliad other than the character names was the Helen got kidnapped by Paris, and that Achilles killed Hector. And it was totally the type of movie I would have loved, I just couldn't get passed that they were messing up the Iliad. But I think I digressed...:P
I am right there with you on the Dracula point. I really enjoyed Dracula 2000, too, even thought it WAS crap. :)
Wow, that should have said "but they god rid of all the GODS", my brain out ran my fingers...
ReplyDelete"but they got rid of all the gods"
ReplyDeleteYEESH. Miss some sleep...
I was totally thinking of Troy too! Fun movie - not much to do with Homer. I was working in a bookstore when it came out and I actually had a teen-ager try to return The Illiad because "it was nothing like the movie" :-)
ReplyDeleteLOL! That is TOO funny. Did you laugh? I'm not sure I would have been able to keep from laughing..
ReplyDeleteOh, don't get me started on Troy... I had a long and involved email exchange with James on this one back when it came out. I was quite incensed about it.
ReplyDelete