Elementary, My Dear Watson…You Dolt (TQP #0056)
Recently an announcement was made that there would be a new Sherlock Holmes movie. Reading that sentence – if you keep up with any entertainment magazine or blog, anyway – one of two press releases popped into your head.
Either it was the announcement of an Apatow-produced comedy starring Sacha Baron Cohen as Holmes with Will Farrell as Watson, or it was the news of a fast-paced, Guy Ritchie-directed revamp starring Robert Downey, Jr.
Which popped up first probably depends on which sounds like the more entertaining idea (or, if you’re like a lot of message board posters, which sounded like the lesser of two evils).
I’m sure the studio executives are already pulling their hair out trying to figure out how to avoid concurrent release dates, but for my money (which I suppose I mean literally, since I’ll likely catch both of them), I’m in favor of releasing them at the same time.
It wouldn’t be the first time two films with similar high concepts were neighbors. Deep Impact and Armageddon showed audiences two distinctly different yet equally crappy visions of a world faced with the threat of a giant meteor; First Daughter and Chasing Liberty asked America to pick which president’s daughter they’d prefer: Mandy Moore or Katie Holmes.
(My uniquely useless ability to recall details of movies I’ve never seen led me to realize not only do I remember the leads, I remember who played the youthful secret service agents AND who played the president-dads. So I’ll put this question to you: Who would you rather vote for – Mark Harmon, or Michael Keaton? Discuss.)
Anyhow, I think the reason I’m so enamored of this dual release (aside from the fact that I like both production teams and casting choices) is that I love seeing how differently an icon can be interpreted while still being recognizable as that icon.
For the sake of full disclosure, I’ll admit I’m not a huge Sherlock Holmes fan. I like the idea of Holmes, but my brief experiences with him in literature gave me the impression of the character not as an eccentric genius so much as a fickle asshole who surrounds himself with remarkably stupid people to make himself feel smarter (to the extent that I wonder who handed a numbskull like Watson a medical license).
There’s no singular movie-Holmes in my mind, either. Sure, visually Basil Rathbone is the icon, but I’ve never been enthusiastic watching any movie featuring the character, aside from a cheap-looking USA pilot with a younger actor (the bland Hugh Dancey), and a fairly decent BBC deconstruction of the character in his waning, drug-soaked years (the always dependable Rupert Everett) – both attempts to re-envision Holmes through a more modern lens.
But, ahhh. Reinterpretation, reevaluation. Beating the dust and dirt off a hundred-year-old character to find out why he’s still sticking around. Finding new angles and sharpening worn-down edges. This, I can get into.
I don’t think I even care so much about the movies themselves, so much as I am in love with the notion of reinterpreting. As a writing exercise, it’s a blast, even if – sometimes especially if – you don’t have any particular affinity for the material.
Loyalists hate this notion. I’m a comic reader, so I get to see vitriolic reactions whenever a new writer without a professed obsessive love of the source gets on board, say, Batman, or Superman. (One of my fears is that my ostensible fantasy novel gets published, and I get to hear the backlash when people realize I don’t particularly like the genre.)
But when a lover of the character climbs on board, it’s not to do anything new. It’s usually a return-to-basics approach, because they believe there was nothing wrong with the character in the first place, he just needs a bit of a spit-shine to make everyone see that.
Back in 1995, Karl Kesel took over Daredevil, and being a 60’s loyalist, took the character back to his bouncy, upbeat-swashbuckler roots. Kesel even went so far as to get him back together with his 60’s girlfriend, Karen Page – who, during Frank Miller’s prior revamp, became a junkie porn-star and sold Daredevil’s secret identity for some smack. In this case, the earlier redefinition actually made the original intent of the character unusable.
(I digress even more at this point to invite you to Karen Page’s Wikipedia entry – yes, every fictional supporting character gets his or her own Wikipedia page – for an example of “reinterpretation as literary whiplash.” Read the Character History section, and see if you can spot the moments when a new writer started working on her – it’s fun, in a mildly grotesque sort of way.)
Which leads me to a question: at what point does a character get reinterpreted to the extent that “back to basics” is no longer an option? Can an iconic character be broken down a built back up so many times, that the character itself ceases to be? That there is no more “real” Sherlock Holmes, only bits and pieces, lopped off and accentuated and amped up to the point where it’s impossible to recognize what the character was “supposed to be”?
So who gets to say, definitively, who Sherlock Holmes is (and no, “Arthur Conan Doyle” does not get a say – the character stopped being his alone, even before he died)? Prick, addict, adventurer, intellect, eccentric, relic? Is Hugh Laurie’s Dr. House the epitome of the character, or a cheap knock-off? Did the late-90’s cartoon setting him in the 22nd century (complete with an easily-astounded robot Watson) damage the concept? What’s the bigger affront – a Sherlock by way of Ron Burgundy, or “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Holmes”?
Things to think about, when we get to see the results of two vastly different exercises in reinterpretation in the theatre next year.
(And I like to think it’s a sign of my maturity that I can consider this in terms of a philosophical discussion. If I’d written this back when, oh, say, Joel Schumacher’s reinterpretation of Batman was released, there’d be sooo much more swearing in this post.)
- jkh
July 17, 2008 at 3:30 pm
I don’t know about this. Holmes had a distinctly different process in creation than Batman or Superman did–comic books characters are designed to outlive their creators; they’re meant to be continuing series’ in which new writers take over and re-envision them.
Consequently, you can have fifty different interpretations of Batman without a “right” one.
But Sherlock Holmes–there’s no cognitive continuity between the interpretations. Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes is the original, and Alan Moore’s vision of him in League is different. But that later version has no effect or relation to the original one. No history is changed, there’s no retcon, they’re all just distinct variations on the original theme.
Also: I like Jeremy Brett’s Holmes.
July 17, 2008 at 6:08 pm
What are you thoughts on Dr. Who?
And let’s face it, as long as Sherlock has the hat, everything will be okay.
July 17, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Also, I want to point out that Robert Downey Jr. actually is a really interesting choice for Holmes…early on in the stories, Doyle established Holmes as a routine cocaine and heroin user.
(Apparently: he got really bored when he ran out of mysteries, and so had to shoot up to keep himself entertained.)
So, maybe a RDJ version of The 7% Solution? WHO CAN SAY?
What are your thoughts on Dr. Who?
July 17, 2008 at 6:39 pm
I don’t really have many thoughts on Dr. Who. But my Dad loves the older ones, and I know they’ve made a few remakes. As far as I can tell, the “new adventures” of Dr. Who are always done present day. I tend to love when remakes (or in some of these cases, continuations) are done as period pieces. I would hope that the new Holmes movies are done as period pieces, but I’m not holding my breath.
July 17, 2008 at 9:59 pm
I’m a big fan of the current “Doctor Who” series, though I have too hard a time getting past the high school drama club-level production values to really enjoy the classic series.
That said, reinvention in that show’s terms was the most brilliant device the show ever came up with – “regenerating” the character as a different actor, and as such being able to tell different stories in different tones.
Chances are a write-up on “Doctor Who” will show up over at http://www.ispeaktv.com just in time for SciFi’s airing of the 4th season finale. Keep your eyes peeled (and this, my friends, is what we call “cross-promotion”).
-jkh
October 22, 2008 at 11:11 pm
Respect the reason for the character’s original appeal is all that is asked. Even Alan Moore thought better NOT to fuck around with Holmes, choosing to faithfully portray in League Doyle’s finale panel-by-panel. Moriarty, Mycroft, even Holmes’ predecessor Poe’s Dupin Moore used, but no passé deconstruction for The Detective. As a result, Alan Moore is even more respected, while Ritchie’s and the brothers’ efforts will be pirated as they pirate Doyle.
October 23, 2008 at 8:46 am
Hmmm. I think this is a point, but! There’s a lot of the early characterizations of Holmes that gets left out of recent film and television interpretations–in fact, a lot of what Doyle did with Holmes didn’t even survive until the end of his own stories.
I’m thinking specifically of the drug addiction; in the first story, Watson describes Holmes’ forearms as looking like they’d been savaged by a cat.
I think Jeremy Brett’s twitchy, almost autistic version of Holmes, despite cutting out the cocaine and morphine stuff, was really an interesting and evocative approach to the character.
Personally, I’m not going to write of Ritchie’s version just yet. It’s possible it’ll turn out to be, whatever, Snatch, Except in the 19th Century, but it may have redeeming value.
October 23, 2008 at 6:52 pm
If you’re looking for explicit needlework, Rupert Everett and the Case of the Silk Stocking 2004 telemovie. His evocation is a petulant “Sherlock Holmes himself shoots coke, who are you, leave me alone, I hate you, Daddy!”
Brace yourself that guarded optimism not be too badly bruised by an outcome more Van Helsing rather than The Dark Knight.
October 23, 2008 at 9:51 pm
Hah! It really could just go either way, couldn’t it? Well, I don’t think Guy Ritchie’s quite as good as Chris Nolan. Maybe it could go either Van Helsing, or, if we’re lucky, Iron Man.
I haven’t seen the Rupert Everett one, I’ll have to take a look.
October 24, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Speaking of Iron Man, I have one question. There’s this provocative hypothesis going round, don’t know if you’ve remarked on it. It says that part – a factor of undetermined quantity – part of the reason for Robert Downey Jr.’s 2008 acclaim is tranference of unspent energy originally reserved for the unanimous celebration of Heath Ledger’s retirement of the Joker.
It says that if Ledger had survived his performance, he would have had the most dramatic of traditional Hollywood top spots, a young underdog lead for whom all doors are open. Ledger would have been the biggest draw in Nolan’s reboot Part III and a Joker stand-alone spin-off would be a sure bet, at least from the studio’s point of view. Certainly, he was proving to be the biggest draw in this decade.
There was no shortage of ideas on how to critically impersonate the Joker and his relationship with his twin, from Moore’s Killing Joke to Morrison’s Arkham to the Timm and Hamill animation. Ledger’s feat was to not disregard any of the prime sources, while simultaneously standing his ground with his own uniquely developed
character.
In contrast, an alcoholic Tony Stark was Marvel’s obligatory response to Miller’s ushering in of the 90s grunge theme in comics. Falls from grace, undermining
the parent’s 1950 ideals of clean-cut, boyscout supers. “Human” and “Flawed” were probably the most popular
keywords, with “Conflicted” and “Schizophrenic” not far behind.
In the last memorable Marvel arc, Stark served as placeholder for the pernicious military-industrial complex in power. With looming elections, and a return to a
semblance of boyscout optimism, Stark’s (and America’s) struggle against him/itself loses its fatalistic attraction.
I’ve never seen Iron Man and have little enthusiasm to do so. My question is what one keyword captures Downey’s unique contribution to the character that Marvel writers, and anybody for that matter, never saw in Tony Stark until?
Thank you in advance.
October 27, 2008 at 11:50 am
Ah, good! I can do this. One word:
Wit.
I know it sounds glib, but there is absolutely no question that RDJ’s wit is what made Iron Man a worthwhile movie. Indeed, RDJ’s portrayal, which only sometimes hinted in the briefest way possible and a deep-seated self-loathing, was a great departure both from his angst-ridden portrayals in the past, and the dark and angsty counterparts in contemporary cinema.
It added another whole dimension to Tony Stark, and made the character full enough that I can honestly say I would have enjoyed the movie even without the Iron Man parts. He was just that enjoyable to watch, and human enough to make that watching worthwhile.