oxfordtweed | Gave it another go

Found myself overcome by ennui and lethargy today, to the point that I grew bored enough to give Ritchie's Holmes another go. I'd only seen it once before, back in like January or something, so I decided to see if it was really as bad as I remembered.

My opinion is still unchanged. It's not that it's a bad movie. Quite the opposite, actually. I think if it were anyone but Holmes, it would have been a very enjoyable Victorian action flick. And there really aren't enough of those, so kudos to it for doing something about that.

It's just a bad Holmes.

Ignoring the fact that I just spent two hours watching Iron-man do a weird accent, Downey's interpretation of the character doesn't feel like Sherlock Holmes. Holmes was, depending on which story you read, dreadfully untidy, yes, but he was never dirty. He took great care to be as presentable and gentlemanly as possible, which you just don't get with Downey. Instead, you get some scruffy, graceless commoner in toff's clothing.

Mrs Hudson bugs me as well. I've always loved her. She's supposed to be able to hold her own against Holmes, and tell him off when he does something positively bone-headed (like shooting the wall). So why is she acting like she needs Watson around in order for her to be able to cope?

While it's nice to see that Mary Morstan is getting a bit more spotlight, she could have been handled better as well, I think. Her entire backstory has been re-written so that it negates the entirety of the Sign of Four. Maybe it's because that was always one of my favourites, but that really annoys me.

Irene Adler... just... what? Seriously, what? Why is it that in a film full of subdued colours, she's wearing bright pinks and blues? I hate visual cues like that. Just like Blackwood wearing leather. Why did he need to be wearing leather? I know he's the bad guy. He's obviously the bad guy. Please make it less obvious. Adler's form-fitting male dress bugged the snot out of me at all. It completely negates the maleness of the clothing. And why did she suddenly become a pirate at the end? I can handle a bit of re-hashing of the backstory, if they wanted to hetero up the story a bit, but they just went way to far with her. I don't think anyone disagrees with that, though.

Also, I bet Ritchie is kicking himself over the utter failure that was the Sherlock Scan. So many deductions could have been made so awesome, but I felt that a lot of them fell flat because we didn't get to see his thought process. That it was only ever used for the fight scenes felt like a terrible waste.

Watson was great. I still can't find a single fault with him. The plot was properly sinister and engaging. I even quite enjoyed Lestrade, and Holmes' relationship with the police in general. But I just have such a difficult time seeing it as a Holmes movie.

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I think Richie's (whoever the writer was) and RDJ's take on Holmes is really interesting, from a nerdy adaptation theory point of view, because they've really amped up this sort of self-destructive side of Holmes- a man who is brilliant but also a waster. I mean, we're also seeing him at a pretty bad stage of his life- he basically thinks he's being abandoned by his best friend, that much is clear. You can see this in the clothes he wears. When we see him at the end of the movie, he's still got the mad scientist hair, and he needs a shave, but he's properly dressed. Compare this to at the beginning of the movie when he's essentially in one of the 'black moods' that Watson often mentioned, he's badly dressed because he's basically convinced himself that Watson doesn't care about him any more. I think it's interesting that they did write a Holmes so dependent on his Watson- Richie's always been pretty into his bromances. As to the graceful, well, I guess you gotta look at the situations where he's given the opportunity to be graceful. In the fights, he showed an awful lot of poise and balance- I think it's difficult to be graceful when you're being chucked across a table or bouncing off a cart, although I agree he crashed about his flat quite a bit. It was almost like when he did have the opportunity to be you know, balanced, he tossed a coin. Sometimes he was allowed (fighting, being cut down from the noose, checking the safe when Adler showed up and I would argue creating his disguise through the circus) and sometimes he wasn't (putting on a false nose, jumping into a cart, sleeping on Watson).

And then you can compare him to Brett!Holmes- this Holmes was always in complete control, at the top of his game. Whilst Watson was a dear friend, he was less likely to lose it if Watson left. Having said that, we never saw him in the aftermath of Watson marrying- or very rarely. Similarly, he was too lacquered to be overtly self-destructive, or go bouncing around London like RDJ does. You couldn't imagine Brett!Holmes killing a ship, even with a car. They're kind of opposite ends of the spectrum.

Then we get to Cumber!Holmes. He sort of occupies the middle ground- he can't work out which way round his t-shirt goes, but he keeps himself shaved. I think at the prospect of losing John, he would go into a self-destruct kick, but less on the scale of RDJ!Holmes. If the man is willing to fire an illegal gun in his own house, I see no reason why he wouldn't think it perfectly reasonable to sulk indoors for weeks because John is actually moving out.

...I have no idea where I'm going with this. Uh. Blah?

Gave it another go

Now I'm not tired.