Yes, all the masculine, explosion filled delight your steroid-induced muscularity and Barbie Doll girlfriend can handle hits cinemas late this year, complete with a snappy title! (They're not too hard to come up with really, see title ~ Doris)
What is said title? Why, 'Sherlock Holmes' of course! (In courier uppercase, no less!)
Yes, the fabled master detective and his sidekick Watson will be flying haphazardly into a cinema near you this Christmas day (December 25th, just in case you celebrate Zambian Nibaholon). I've thoughtfully provided the trailer so you can check it out:
Now before going any further, I feel safe calling it before I've seen it - honestly it doesn't take much to make an assumption about what this film will be like - and I feel confident calling: Utter Garbage. I mean, I would like to say I'm excited for this one, but the helical horns of Aries I just can't!
Sure I may be slightly off the mark here - after all, it's still in production and things may change - but judging by this attention-seeking nightmare of a trailer, the movie seems to be a brilliantly accurate example of everything that's wrong with Hollywood today.
Gone is the dapper subtlety that transfixed me in Hound of the Baskervilles, the alluring slow-paced mystery that worked so well, and the charismatic yet quiet confidence that Holmes carried. Now it's a (somewhat disturbingly) ripped Robert Downey Jr. matched in theatrical magnitude by Jude Law, and offset awkwardly by Rachel McAdams, who as Irene Adler (Holmes' intriguing female acquaintance from "A Scandal In Bohemia") is confusingly ... well - alive, unless this movie is set before their initial meeting, which doesn't make sense (but intuition is telling me they just reeeeeaally wanted to throw her in as a love interest - which in itself is wrong, as Sherlock no love her, and please God don't let it be for Watson).
Why the rant 'zip? Well Blog, I hate seeing things I love mutilated beyond recognition. I hate sell outs, and believe in quality over quantity always and forever, and that appealing to everyone degrades the experience of everyone. Like mass-production dissolves want (and eventually value) of higher-quality goods, movies that are made solely to generate cash degrade public acceptance of anything other than cookie-cutter crap, and once people are dumber, they're more resistant to accepting anything that's different and truly interesting.
It's a pity they decided to sell out for the masses here too, because not only are the Holmes tales some of my favourites and will now consequently fall into the zombie-like consiousness of a generation of deluded youngsters as some kind of action-hero rather than an intellectual, it will also make a huge whacking truckload of money at the box office, and continue encouraging this kind of garp for years to come.
My message to Hollywood will doubtless never be heard by the right people, but I feel inclined to shout it into the digital void nonetheless; stop. For the love of Persius, stop what you're doing, and start funding films with substance again. No, you won't earn as much to begin with, but you can sleep well knowing that this snowball of mindless pyrotechnic idiocy is being halted, and can be reversed, in time.
/rant
Sorry to snipe your review here Timmy, just had to be said. ;)
Jimzip
7 thoughts are now mine:
I agree with you James--that juiced up trailer vaporizes all that I remember and loved about Sherlock Holmes. Unfortunately, I don't think Hollywood will be rushing to recalibrate their already well-greased money-making machine anytime soon.
Does this mean I won't be seeing you in the opening night line-up again at the Scotiabank cinema? :P
Hahaha, yeah not this time. Wolverine was a lot of fun though. I didn't particularly love it, but Gambit was awesome, and that was kinda what I was looking forward to!
Oh and I'm sorry I didn't recognise you on the night btw, it was kind of a blur and I didn't put two and two together when Skylar introduced you. I realised a couple of days afterward and felt like quite the goose. Haha.
Jimzip :D
Ok, I'm commenting without seeing the trailer because my internet's slow. All I can hope is it's not as bad as you say - trailers can be very misleading (Yes, I'm looking at you Phantom Menace trailer - how dare you make me think you'd be a good film!)
Still, perhaps a movie, even a bad movie will get kids interested in reading the books - I know after I saw 'Young Sherlock Holmes' as a kid, it resulted in me buying the books (and I'm pretty sure that movie was as unfaithful as this new one).
Now time for my rant:
Still, if you really want to know why Hollywood sucks - the answer is Wall Street. This makes me really mad - here we go: Pixar - the only studio that truly cares about story above all else, had it's share price drop recently. The reason: Wall Street decided UP will be a flop as kids don't care about old people so having a movie starring an old person is a bad choice. And because it lacks merchandise and franchise potential.
What happened to simply telling a great story!? No, now you need to have a franchise and a main character that lends itself to action figurines. And in this case, it's not the studio's fault - it's the idiots on Wall Street that know nothing about art or stories but think they know everything about everything!
In the future, they may be the ones deciding what movies get made. Here's hoping UP is a massive success and GI JOE a massive flop.
/End rant.
Wow, that is amazing. The same thing happens with Apple all the time though. 'Analysts' come up with these BS predictions that get everyone up in arms, the share price drops, etc.
Hopefully once UP comes out, it does really well and those morons learn to shut their yaps.
Woman's voice in background: "Don't they know they're messing with people's lives!!"
Jimzip D: (<- intentional reversal!)
Haha...no worries, James! It took me a couple of beats to fully clue in as well. "What? There's a living, breathing person behind this blog??"
...the curtain slides open to reveal the Wizard of 'Oz'. ;)
Agree whole-heartedly. Stuff is messed up. Just hope there's never a "Novellywood" that does something similar to books.
My word is "dizabled", and I thought up a story. :)
There's a group of high-tech museum thieves who have broken into a very fancy museum. They're talking to their thief-friends in the high-tech van outside, one of whom is typing away at a computer. The lights on the screen go green and the computer guy, called Diz, fist-pumps the air. The thieves inside the museum start taking stuff as Diz declares: "That shit's been Dizabled!"
I'm sorry. :)
Dale.
lol. Dale that was literary gold. ;)
Also Luke: I really hope it gets people interested in reading the books, but I just can't help thinking if they do they won't understand the language/tone/pace, and that - coupled with the lack of things exploding - will lead to them finding it boring ... I'm such an optimist, I know. :p
Jimzip :D
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