New Sherlock Holmes: explain to me the appeal

I was impressed that they didn’t gloss over Holmes’s drug use in the 80’s tv show. Although it doesn’t play a major role until later in the series (which it is more directly addressed during a particular episode I won’t spoil), Watson is always either catching him in the act or giving him a hard time about it. The resulting chaos in Holmes’s life because of his obsessive tendencies (be it drugs or total obsession with a failing case) was handled well throughout.

I’m a huge fan of the series, but like gameoverman mentions, by the later episodes Jeremy Brett is consumed by the illness that eventually kills him.

Sherlock Holmes was meant as badass pulp fiction of its time. Not keeping to the stuffy Victorian tone doesn’t really change the appeal of Sherlock Holmes for me personally, as long as RDJ and gang can still pull feats of incredible deductive observation and reasoning, clever wordplay and interesting crimes.

See, this is something I think a lot of people miss, there’s a reason Holmes can get away with such clever wordplay, especially in the face of someone who would wish him harm, he has the means to back his words up with a deadly punch to the face. He was more than just a private detective, he was a bad ass that could intimidate people mentally and physically if the need arose. It looks like there will be consequences to hit biting remarks in the movie, and his skills will be put to the test.

Oh, and Holmes does duke it out in the TV show.

Boxer and swordsman, ok. But dual-wielding?

I’m pretty sure they remembered the -4 penalty to hit.

I’m sure Holmes has the ambidextrous trait.

I’ve been reading all the original stories over the past couple years, and I’m really excited about this one. Holmes and Watson were certainly not one-dimensional as written by ACD, but there was also a lot left-up to the imagination too. My feeling is that “classic” Sherlock Holmes that people identify with was the figment of a silver-age movie personality (i.e William Gillette), and there is a lot of wriggle room for growth in the 21st century.

The complaints here remind of the complaints about the “new” James Bond of the last two movies. People complained this James Bond was not the “real” Bond of gadgets, etc. However, the Bond of nearly all the movies was the creation of producer Cubby Broccoli, not Ian Fleming. The new Bond is much truer to the original source…

FWIW, I’ve read the script and not only is it a cracking read it’s also remarkably faithful to the source, moreso than many other TV and film adaptations, and I consider myself something of a Holmes geek, at least to the extent of having read every one of the original stories. The people I’ve spoken to who’ve seen it all loved it and said the chemistry between RDJ/Jude alone is worth the ticket price. I heard they cut my favorite line from the script out of the movie, though.

And yeah, people who post “LOL Holmes doing martial arts” are only demonstrating how much they haven’t read the books. You know he never wore a deerstalker in the books either, right?

The first episode was great, thanks for the intro to this. I was expecting something that had that distinctive low budget BBC feel, but there was not a hint of that anywhere thanks to the acting and the care given to the filming.

There seems to be a misconception that I’m a Holmes purist. I’m not. I read 2 (maybe 3 or 4, hard to remember) books as a teen. I don’t really recall him being any sort of stud, that wasn’t the focus I remember.

Moreover, if you polled 100 random people and asked them to describe Holmes, I really doubt much of any of them are going to pick martial artist, boxer, or otherwise master of ass kicking.

I’m happy to hear the script is good. That answers my question on why someone would find it appealing. Well, at least for you, though very, very, very few people are going to have read the movie script. My question was more in expectation of that 100 random people.

I suppose I’m always up for Rachel McAdams though.

Small point but the Brett TV movies were not BBC productions but rather ITV, if I remember correctly.

That is a great standard for creative decisions.

That makes sense, then. I’m still traumatized from that 80’s BBC spy show I went out of my way to get when I was all excited about the first few seasons of MI5. It looked like it was filmed on stage in a middle school auditorium.

aside from the drugs, and the obsession with crime and criminology, holmes was freaking weird. i mean, he shot queen victoria’s initals into his wall. who does that? and wasn’t it a rental?

sigh, my point has either completely gone over your head or you’re being obstinate. The point is I don’t think people think of Holmes as an action figure, which makes it a very odd choice to bill him as such.

Maybe it works, if so, that’s great. I don’t see Holmes in that light I really have a hard time building any sort of enthusiasm about the movie. If it weren’t for the cast, I wouldn’t even consider it. Hence, I wondered what motivated anyone else that was interested in the movie.

So far, I’ve heard pretty resoundingly, the cast. I haven’t heard anything about how brilliant a creative choice it was to envision Holmes as an action hero.

Who cares that a lot of people don’t know the source material very well? As Gary Whitta said, 100 people would probably say Holmes wore a deerstalker hat, which is wrong (not that I care what kind of hat he wore either).

I mean, you’re basically arguing “Never do an adaptation of source material that varies from the most conventional popular perception of that source material, or that varies significantly from previous adaptions of that source material. Go traditional or go home”

Yeah Holmes was pretty much a wretched degenerate misanthrope with all kinds of appalling habits but the people around him had to tolerate it because he was unbelievably good at the things they needed him to be good at.

I’d love to see Hugh Laurie play him someday, but in a sense he’s already been doing it for the past five years.

Maybe they’re emphasizing the action bits because it’s easier to advertise? That’s really my only hope for the film. We have enough brainless action heros without making Sherlock Holmes one of them.

From day one, House always struck me as the doctor equivalent of Holmes, a connection many others have drawn as well. As perfect as Laurie would be in an interpretation of Holmes that fits the polling of 100 people, you’re absolutely right that it’d just be something we’ve already seen.

Andit seems that was indeed deliberate - From the mouth of (House creator) David Shore:

…Anytime one says ‘puzzle’ and ‘brilliant deduction’ in the same sentence, one can’t help but think of the great fictional detective Sherlock Holmes and his trusty sidekick, Dr. Watson. And indeed, Holmes – and the real-life physician that inspired him, Dr. Joseph Bell – were very much inspirations for ‘House.’"

…Shore also hopes to draw more parallels to Holmes by drawing House’s best, and likely only, friend, oncologist Dr. Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard), into the Watson role.

“We’re looking for Wilson to step up in that regard, as House’s everyman, leaning over his shoulder and going, ‘How’d you do that?’ And more important, ‘Why’d you do that?’…”

I’d see the movie before you cast judgment. The trailers have been cut to play up the action element but it’s really just a classic mystery in the Holmes tradition, just realized on a huge budget and with Holmes’ more physical abilities pushed a little more to the forefront. Holmes was often in the kind of precarious, life-or-death cliffhanger situations that were the Victorian literary equivalent of today’s Hollywood action movies.

strangle cry of frustration. The point isn’t whether people know the source material, it’s the general perception of the character. You wouldn’t really get excited about “Orphan Annie: The Ass Kicking Years”. The point is I don’t think most people are going to identify with an action hero Holmes and so it won’t resonate.

That was all. I give up at this point. Between you and Lizard King, the original discussion point of who the film appeals to is getting hopelessly lost.