Sherlock Holmes: a Game of Shadows
Dec. 17th, 2011 12:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
joiedecombatThe new RDJ Sherlock Holmes movie actually kind of sneaked up on me - I didn't realize it was coming out until we started making plans to go see it. I blame my lack of cable.
Overall I liked it better than the first one, thanks primarily to the plot not being the same kind of glorified Scooby Doo hoax, so yay for that. I'm still not quite 100% sold on RDJ's Holmes - Jeremy Brett, still my favorite, although I give RDJ full credit for playing Holmes just as generally obnoxious as he ought to be - but Jude Law as Watson remains one of my favorite things ever and he gets to be pretty awesome in this movie.
My biggest issue: they stuffed Irene Adler into the fridge. Granted, I'd be a lot more upset about this if I liked basically anything they did with Irene in these movies; as it is I was kind of relieved that she wouldn't be playing a major role in the story. But still.
But they did, I thought, a very good job with Moriarty and the parts of the plot that they lifted from "The Final Problem." There's a lot of "take Holmes' word for it" involved in the original story regarding why Moriarty is so bad and so dangerous, so it's nice to get to actually see two terrifyingly smart people being terrifyingly smart at each other. Murdering Irene the way he did at least served as a very good early indication of just how scary a guy he is. As soon as Mycroft mentioned Switzerland my inner Holmes fangirl was pinged, and the climactic scene over Reichenbach definitely did both characters justice.
Also, Stephen Fry as Mycroft. I'm of the opinion that having him walking around naked went a little too far; the Diogenes Club would have been kookiness enough.
Extra points for showing so many plot points lying around, some of them well before they paid off - you know that the book and dead plants in Moriarty's office will be significant a long, long time before you get it explained to you how they are significant. The magical plastic surgery was pushing it a bit, but what can you do.
(Other things that were pushing it: Holmes and Watson dancing together. Or rather, Holmes and Watson dancing together and nobody seeming to bat an eye. If they were looking for excuses for HoYay, they'd already passed up a perfectly serviceable chance to have Watson give Holmes artificial respiration. I am just saying.
Funny, though.)
I liked Simza.
In other news, the trailers, and my thought processes.
Jack the Giant Killer: Hmm, interesting.
This Means War: Chris Pine and Tom Hardy as CIA agents? Woo! - except that the whole plot appears to be about them competing for a woman who's two-timing the both of them. Fail.
Battleship: I remain convinced that this whole thing is some kind of extremely elaborate and expensive joke. Seriously, it's Battleship: The Movie. It's taking itself way too seriously not to be a stealth parody.
The Hunger Games: Guess I should get around to reading those books, huh.
Overall I liked it better than the first one, thanks primarily to the plot not being the same kind of glorified Scooby Doo hoax, so yay for that. I'm still not quite 100% sold on RDJ's Holmes - Jeremy Brett, still my favorite, although I give RDJ full credit for playing Holmes just as generally obnoxious as he ought to be - but Jude Law as Watson remains one of my favorite things ever and he gets to be pretty awesome in this movie.
My biggest issue: they stuffed Irene Adler into the fridge. Granted, I'd be a lot more upset about this if I liked basically anything they did with Irene in these movies; as it is I was kind of relieved that she wouldn't be playing a major role in the story. But still.
But they did, I thought, a very good job with Moriarty and the parts of the plot that they lifted from "The Final Problem." There's a lot of "take Holmes' word for it" involved in the original story regarding why Moriarty is so bad and so dangerous, so it's nice to get to actually see two terrifyingly smart people being terrifyingly smart at each other. Murdering Irene the way he did at least served as a very good early indication of just how scary a guy he is. As soon as Mycroft mentioned Switzerland my inner Holmes fangirl was pinged, and the climactic scene over Reichenbach definitely did both characters justice.
Also, Stephen Fry as Mycroft. I'm of the opinion that having him walking around naked went a little too far; the Diogenes Club would have been kookiness enough.
Extra points for showing so many plot points lying around, some of them well before they paid off - you know that the book and dead plants in Moriarty's office will be significant a long, long time before you get it explained to you how they are significant. The magical plastic surgery was pushing it a bit, but what can you do.
(Other things that were pushing it: Holmes and Watson dancing together. Or rather, Holmes and Watson dancing together and nobody seeming to bat an eye. If they were looking for excuses for HoYay, they'd already passed up a perfectly serviceable chance to have Watson give Holmes artificial respiration. I am just saying.
Funny, though.)
I liked Simza.
In other news, the trailers, and my thought processes.
Jack the Giant Killer: Hmm, interesting.
This Means War: Chris Pine and Tom Hardy as CIA agents? Woo! - except that the whole plot appears to be about them competing for a woman who's two-timing the both of them. Fail.
Battleship: I remain convinced that this whole thing is some kind of extremely elaborate and expensive joke. Seriously, it's Battleship: The Movie. It's taking itself way too seriously not to be a stealth parody.
The Hunger Games: Guess I should get around to reading those books, huh.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-12-18 03:23 am (UTC)Now, normally this is pretty good.
But Irene Adler is Irene Adler even in the movies -- and she actively chose to meet with Moriarty when she did, knowing that Moriarty's thugs had seen her interactions with Holmes, and knowing exactly how Moriarty disposes of people.
In the back of my head, that scene was actually Irene Adler opting to convince Moriarty that she was dead in order to go and lie low until he and Holmes had finished having it out...