the game's afoot!
Dec. 16th, 2011 03:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotesseAs expected, stayed up to 5:00 am last night & produced over a thousand words of Sherlock Holmes fic. Homg new movie! Wtfyuletidebears!
So I have no idea how I'll feel about this movie when I am less sleep-deprived, but oh my goodness did I ever enjoy it last night. The plot was just different enough from canon that I kept tensing up over the knot of textual pain that is Reichenbach, but was never entirely sure how it would play out, which was very fun.
The plot was not - clear, but then again I kind of thought the plot in the first one was a bit of a cheat, because it kept secrets that the viewer couldn't possibly know it was keeping. And, trope-wise, I thinking Impending WWI tops Orientalist Magic.
If I was actually supposed to believe that Irene Adler's dead, FAIL. Am stubbornly refusing to do so. Also, no Bechdel pass, which gave me a sad. I thought that the gypsies were pretty well-handled. The fact that the main gypsy char. was a female fortuneteller was a bit tiresome, but the whole French anarchist subplot was pretty damn cool.
I found the Holmes/Watson emotional throughline very satisfying - tragic, and heartbreaking, and achy and hopeless in a lovely way. I loved that the situation between them had clearly continued to degenerate, that Sherlock was obviously growing more and more desperate and maybe even starting to give up a little. Almost doing that thing where you stop loving someone eventually after you've begged for their affection for too long.
And holy object porn! The film was very visually centered on processes, which was cool. The costuming was, I think, even better than the first time around - Holmes' shirts continued to be beautiful, but the women's costumes read as much more satisfyingly period to me. Noomi Rapace gets way better bling than Kelly Reilly did. And better hair design.
Mainly, though, I just - RDJ's eyes, people, wtf. How they do that.
So I have no idea how I'll feel about this movie when I am less sleep-deprived, but oh my goodness did I ever enjoy it last night. The plot was just different enough from canon that I kept tensing up over the knot of textual pain that is Reichenbach, but was never entirely sure how it would play out, which was very fun.
The plot was not - clear, but then again I kind of thought the plot in the first one was a bit of a cheat, because it kept secrets that the viewer couldn't possibly know it was keeping. And, trope-wise, I thinking Impending WWI tops Orientalist Magic.
If I was actually supposed to believe that Irene Adler's dead, FAIL. Am stubbornly refusing to do so. Also, no Bechdel pass, which gave me a sad. I thought that the gypsies were pretty well-handled. The fact that the main gypsy char. was a female fortuneteller was a bit tiresome, but the whole French anarchist subplot was pretty damn cool.
I found the Holmes/Watson emotional throughline very satisfying - tragic, and heartbreaking, and achy and hopeless in a lovely way. I loved that the situation between them had clearly continued to degenerate, that Sherlock was obviously growing more and more desperate and maybe even starting to give up a little. Almost doing that thing where you stop loving someone eventually after you've begged for their affection for too long.
And holy object porn! The film was very visually centered on processes, which was cool. The costuming was, I think, even better than the first time around - Holmes' shirts continued to be beautiful, but the women's costumes read as much more satisfyingly period to me. Noomi Rapace gets way better bling than Kelly Reilly did. And better hair design.
Mainly, though, I just - RDJ's eyes, people, wtf. How they do that.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 07:38 pm (UTC)I very much swooned over the several scene where Holes loads/preps a weapon, hands it to Watson, and Watson grabs it without looking and fires. Just--they're so utterly and completely in synch.
Not to mention, they get to DANCE (so much squeaking) and Holmes does not let Watson think he's dead for 3 years.