After giving us such a brilliant and refreshing take on Sherlock Holmes, Ritchie seemed to have been less bothered with Prof Moriarty and gave us what can only be described as a stock version of the character.
I was honestly expecting something never and less predictable than this version. It didn't match Holmes very well and wasn't as interesting.
Sure it was acted finely but it could have done so much more with the role.
I thought Moriarty concocted genius plans in the movie, he even fools Holmes once, but maybe it's just me
shareI also loved Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes.
"Last week?! The school burnt down 6 years ago!"-Mr. Strickland (Back to the Future II)
I thought moriarty was better acted than holmes in the film. What do you want a Moriarty to be like? Like another "prince of crime" extravagant batman's Joker archetype ? That would be silly and has been done in all sorts of movies where villains were over the top.
I didn't like the take on Sherlock Holmes either. He is supposed to be more calm and calculating. They even show what the books describe, that he is an opium addict. People who are like that usually have low energy and wouldn't jump and hop around. But this Holmes acts like he smoked snorted cocaine and or various other stimulants. For me it is not consistent with the books I've read or other movies I've seen.
But I guess I do understand they needed someone animated like that so it would be more fun to watch.
Except Holmes dabbles in both opium and cocaine, mentioned in other novels such as The Seven Percent solution, amongst others. A small hint to that is also thrown into the movie when Mrs. Hudson says that he's been on a diet of "coffee, tobacco, and coca leaves"...the last of which are what cocaine is made of. Holmes uses cocaine when he doesn't have any cases and requires brain stimulation.
shareOoh, good point. That can explain it then. By the way, they show him pouring himself formaldehyde as a drink. I read online that it's poisonous to drink and I didn't find anything about people drinking it. Is there any basis for that detail?
By the way, when I was growing up I saw one particular Sherlock Holmes episodic series which was made by one of the Russian/Soviet movie studios. Back there, people who watched it were all familiar with the books they've been reading all childhood and all that. But the soviet censorship never put in the books that Holmes tools various drugs. I should rephrase. They took those parts out entirely. But anyways, I think even in the films they downplayed it and didn't add much emphasis on it as was done by the superior British 1984 tv series with Jeremy Brett.
I liked the professor in this; he was subtle and intelligent and not a petulant man-child like his depiction in a certain BBC series. I'd say for all the faults of this film it at least gave us probably the best depiction of the character since Eric Porter's ultra-accurate take in the classic Granada series starring Jeremy Brett as Holmes.
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Strongly disagree.
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