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MacXoftheMounted wrote:

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>if you didn't.... well no comment required.

Really? That's a little presumptuous, isn't it? I'll continue to post comments on films I both dislike AND like in the future, thanks, as will others, I'm sure.

sirharryflashman wrote:

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Koukol 5 wrote:

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Since when did SHERLOCK stories become an "Action Thrill Ride" as advertised ?

On film? Pretty much right from the start of the character transitioning to the medium of film. Sherlock Holmes Baffled (1900) relies on a visual gag for its scant 30 second running time. Even the earliest of film makers realized armchair deduction doesn't exactly make for riveting viewing, which is largely why straight Sherlock Holmes adaptations rarely make it to the big screen. Sure the Ellie Norwood silents were fairly straightforward in adapting the material, but once talkies arrived all bets were off. You can get away with talky bits of business in an ongoing television series with each episode coming in under an hour, especially if you've got a compelling cast, but the same approach doesn't work terribly well in the 100 minute format, particularly when the storyline isn't a 'whodunnit', which is the case with most Sherlock Holmes stories.

There is also the issue of padding out a short story to fill out running time. As soon as you go down that road you deviate from the source material, so it's a no-win situation. As for adapting the longer stories, each has problems. The  most notable being that Holmes is off-screen for half the stories since each has long flashback sequences told by clients, victims or the captured villain. The exception being The Hound of the Baskervilles. In that case Holmes is off-screen for about a third of the story, yet Watson is there and all the atmosphere makes up for Holmes' absence, which is why HOUND is the most often filmed traditional Sherlock Holmes story.  Once you've adapted HOUND however, it's fairly slim pickings when it comes to good material for feature-length adaptations, although The Sign of Four could work nicely and has been largely ignored. To make my point,  Fox, after their solid adaptation of HOUND with Rathbone in 1939 followed it up with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which is every bit as revisionist as the Downey/Ritchie films in many ways. As a matter of fact, after seeing the new Downey flick I popped in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes DVD as a natural follow-up. Try it, I think you'll be surprised by just how sharply different it is from HOUND and how much it has in common tonally with the Downey/Ritchie films.

In terms of action not being a part of the Holmes canon, well, let's not forget half the stories were titled as "The Adventure of..." and none are titled "The Mystery of...". GAME OF SHADOWS draws  pretty damn heavily on Conan Doyle's The Final Problem. A story that starts with Holmes turning up in Watson's consulting room sporting bleeding knuckles from a scuffle with some roughs, has him leave Watson's place by clambering over the wall in his back garden and later introduces the idea that Holmes is a martial artist, specifically skilled in the art of Baritsu, which he exercises in a one-on-one battle with Moriarty. Sure the Downey/Ritchie films play up the action to a near absurd degree, but really, these films are really not a lot different in their approach to Holmes than the Fox/Universal films with Rathbone and Bruce. In some ways they get more right than any of the Universal films...and best of all, Watson isn't an idiot!