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This could use more bullet time. 

DerGolem wrote:

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Shonokin wrote:

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Oh yeah and if it was in 3D and had a soundtrack by Rage Against the Machine, that would keep this hip and cool.  And switch out Downy with Will Smith and make Watson a chick.  Oh and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Moriarty. Definitely add some zombies for trend factor.  Oh oh oh, and have the Baker Street Irregulars played by the cast of Twilight.

Perfect!  Now we're talking Sherlock Holmes!

When do we get to update Poirot?

I'm sorry if I don't get your point....

Hehe, wow. I'm sure if you take such jests and sarcasm as literal suggestions then it would seem pretty crazy. And that is exactly the point: None of those suggestions are good ideas!
I think Downey Jr is a fine actor, I've always liked him and think he could play Holmes as well as any character he takes on.  Of the few movies of his I've seen, Ritchie seems to be a fine director.  This sarcastic rant was my visceral reaction to seeing in the trailer what was already a bad idea in corrupting Holmes' character in the first movie to moving it into the land of the Matrix, full of bullet-time exploding action nonesense.  At this point, Asylum's Holmes movie with the robot dinosaur seems less and less over the top.

What makes Holmes fascinating and amazing is that he could be a man of action if he needed to be, but his weapon of choice is his brain!  That is what makes the character.  If one chooses to make him an action hero, dodging slow motion explosions and slow motion bullets, and slow motion whatever else etc, then what makes this character impressive is no longer there.  Let's take Superman: what is it that makes him recognizable? He's an alien, he's super strong and he flies. OK, well, let's make a movie about him being a human fry cook at McDonalds. That's the whole movie, him working at McDs.*  That would be really interesting and cool, right? We'd all like to see a Superman movie like that!**

*This is in jest, not being serious, making an example of something that is a dumb idea.
** This is sarcasm... obviously I hope.

edit: BTW, since the tone of my posts do not always seem to be apparent, this is all being said in good humor. Please take it as such.  Though I do not understand why someone would possibly think this tack for the movies is a good idea, I do not condemn them for liking it.  I can be jesting or jokingly sarcastic, but my intention is never to be caustic.

DerGolem wrote:

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I understood that your original post was in jest and that you were using hyperbole to make a point. I just didn't think it was very good one. I also understand better now what your point is. But I'm still a little confused. You say you have an issue with them making Holmes into an "action hero." I don't really feel this is a fair description. In the first movie (which is all we have to go off of since the trailer for second movie is just that - a trailer - and will obviously privilege action scenes over other scenes) Holmes does just as much detective work as he does fighting or dodging explosions, same as in the original books; see The Sign of Four for a fine example which even includes a chase scene by boat with characters shooting guns at each other.
  
Also you said you liked Detective Dee in a another thread. Detective Dee is also a detective movie with a lot of action, much more then the first Ritchie Sherlock Holmes movie. Now unlike Holmes I haven't read the original Detective Dee stories, though I would like too, but I gather from your review of them, which I did read, that the original Dee didn't go around doing kung-fu and swinging a sword like in the current Tsui Hark movie. So why is this OK but when Ritchie has Holmes do it, it's not? 

And why can't you use bullet time in a movie set in the Victorian Era? I think it works quite well here, since it shows how Holmes' mind works even admits chaos.

Bullet time is a fad, just like 3D, moody teen vampires, all zombies now, white patent leather shoes and bellbottoms. Bullet time was cool in the first minutes of the Matrix and the point of diminishing returns started from that point onwards.  A couple of weeks ago I watched the Pang Bros sequel to Storm Riders. Basically a 20 minute jumble of nonsense stretched out to 2 hours via lots and lots of bullet time. I've had my fill thanks!

I grew up with Sherlock Holmes, but I didn't grow up with Detective Dee* or Kaijin Niju Menso.  So I understand what my own expectations are when seeing an adaptation of Holmes. I'm like all the other fans who gives their Holmes pedigree, I've read all the stories over and over and what my interpretation of Holmes is, are mine. To me I see that of course there is some action and fights in ACDs Holmes.  But I guess some people think "Lovecraftian" means stuff with tentacles, which is not what I take from it. Are there tentacled monsters in Lovecraft? Sometimes.  Is that what Lovecraft is about? No, I don't think that cosmic horror=tentacled monsters.   Does Holmes have action and fights in it? Sometimes. Is that what Holmes is all about? Not in my book.

Do I think all adaptations have to be canon?  No. I liked Young Sherlock Holmes and outre collections like Shadows Over Baker Street. Stuff like that is off the rail so it works as it's own thing.  But even then, the base idea of his character is usually in tact. Same thing with the new Sherlock on BBC. It's not canon but they sure nailed the characters pretty well.   Personally I don't see that character in these movies. If you do, then I'm honestly glad that it will hopefully be something that you enjoy.  I will hazard seeing it, like I did the first.  Actually the first time I saw the 2009 movie, my expectations were super low and I didn't mind it, but when I tried watching it again recently, I couldn't even get through it.  Maybe the second will be better, but I have every right to mock a bad, took a wrong turn at the Matrix trailer!

*BTW I just got the DVD set of the 2010 Detective Di Renjie TV series in the mail.  Screening the first episode, it looks like a really nice, high quality show.  Great music, production values and acting.  This is I think the fourth Di Renjie series in the past several years.

edit: Oh and to answer your question more fully about why it's okay for Dee and K-20 and not for Holmes to be taken out of context like this. How do I know that they are? These are new-ish information to me, I didn't grow up with them. Also Di Renjie is a character of historic cultural gestalt. There seem to be enough different interpretations of this figure as to make it difficult to come up with any type of comparable canon in China.  And if there is, then it's not very accessible to a non-Chinese speaker in order to make such an informed judgement. If you go by Gulik's Judge Dee, then yes, if they were adapting one of the stories from his canon, then maybe it would be more grating if not handled well. Hark's Detective Dee is not an adaptation of a Gulik book, it's adapted from a book by Lin Quinyu which I have not read since afaik it's only in Chinese.

I also didn't grow up with Rampo's detective Kogoro Akechi. Tales of Mystery and Imagination has a couple of Akechi stories in it.  But none of the material with Kaijin Niju Menso has been translated to book form... yet!  There's not much for me to go on or have kinship with in order to say if K-20 wouldn't have suited me. I can't say how well it is adapted from Sho Kitamura's book as it hasn't been translated to English either.