No Shit Sherlock

Village Roadshows and Silver Pictures are releasing a new movie called Sherlock Holmes at the end of the year, with Guy Ritchie at the helm of director, and stars Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law. You can watch the trailer on Youtube, but I'm not going to embed it here because I completely freaked out when I watched it.

From what I can gather in the trailer, the Sherlock Holmes in this movie is completely out of character with that of the books. Unlike that cool, efficient and deceptive guy from Arthur Conan Doyle, this Downey-Holmes is cheesy and full of bouncing and thumping. I mean, if Sherlock Holmes employs action, it is usually quick and to-the-point with deadly efficiency. Action seldom last longer than a brief struggle, and the longest is probably in Hound of the Baskerville which involves a chase and a few bullets.

According to its Wikipedia page, Ritchie was trying to be more authentic to Doyle's version of Holmes instead of the earlier screen adaptations which presents the image of Sherlock Holmes as a pipe smoking guy in an armchair predicting the precise movements of Watson. I am quite doubtful if he has achieved what he wanted. I mean, I never watched the earlier films, but the image of Sherlock Holmes in my mind, which is solely based on the books, comes nowhere close to that guy in the trailer. And they justified the action based on one quote from canon; pretty liberal interpretation, in my opinion.

To be honest, I think Ritchie and the screenwriters are portraying a Sherlock Holmes that they conceived in their mind based on the books, but he is not based directly on the books, if you know what I'm saying. Nonetheless I can't help having the feeling that they're just borrowing the fame of Sherlock Holmes to sell their movie.

I wonder what Hollywood has in mind next. A young Hercule Poirot with Taekwondo?