Collating some Sherlockian content

[petronia]

(originally posted to Tumblr)

Onto cheerfuller topics! Season 3 speculation then? :D;

1) The Empty House: de rigueur, plus they have to clear Sherlock’s name and reverse public opinion and all. Supposedly Moffat’s been making noises about covering Watson’s marriage? Which, OK, no one’s done trufax-ACD-canon Mary’s attitude of utter laisser-faire complaisance toward Holmesian shenanigans. But it would still not be trufax-ACD-canon because POST REICHENBACH. ...hich, so is movieverse at this point, and Mary is still alive there, but movieverse is clearly headed for the “fuck it, OT3” gambit. Maybe it will be the story of Watson’s six divorces told in flashback, because Moffat is a troll. In any case, there is well enough material there for 90 minutes.

2) Gatiss has said he wanted to do Red-Headed League, and for all the jokes in S2, that throwaway gag was signally resisted. Of course, it would be easy to telescope that with Three Garridebs, since ACD basically recycled his own plot but more whumpage. Heist movie! This will probably be the “cheesy second episode out of three”.

3) If S3 airs at Christmas time again I’d say Blue Carbuncle, but if it’s summer then not (besides, not TWO WHOLE YEARS mein gott). Copper beeches? Another fusion of a whole bunch of stories, I’d guess.

***

(originally posted somewhere on arboretum's journal)

My reading of Why The Ritchie Holmes Movies Are As They Are(tm) is that... the original original pitch that sold must've been a much more heteronormative story about men behaving badly? Like Shaun of the Dead or Withnail and I or a million Hollywood comedies, cf. protagonist dude (Watson) is torn between the life stage of having immature adventures with his charming but eternally adolescent bro (Holmes) and the life stage of settling down, getting married, and being responsible.

And then RDJ and Jude Law got involved, and decided they were going to play this as Holmes is gay and Watson is divorcing him for being bipolar (but not for being gay).** Downey is a diva about demanding script changes to suit himself, with no upper limit when the director/producers don't fight him. Counter-intuitively, this happens a lot more with multi-million-$ action franchises, because the scripts for these things are a genuine afterthought, always open to changes, and beholden to technical budget and release dates. There were a lot of script delay problems with Iron Man, and I think Hollywood discovered by accident with that film that RDJ is no worse at on-the-fly rewrites than any actual script doctor, and they don't even have to pay him twice.

Ritchie likes a bit of manly-man gangsta homoeroticism in his movies. More to the point, he's a director of localized flash effects, not a "everything must fit my grand vision" guy - all his films are random cool bits strung together on a string. As long as it works, he's going to run with it. So basically his reaction to this was not "can we stick to the original plan," it was "LOLOLOL okay dickwads gchat RP some moar, next take in five".

Then the first film (riding on reasonably low expectations) made buckets of cash, for reasons that probably had as much to do with lucky timing as the actual contents of the film. So when it came to make the sequel, everyone's strategy from the studio on down was "Okay okay, do whatever you did for the first one, but AMP IT UP."

And I really think someone-or-other read Katie Forsythe in the interim. Possibly even the scriptwriters (an entirely obscure duo).

TL;DR summary:

--1st movie writers: did not mean it to be gay
--RDJ and Jude Law: think Holmes is gay and they are starring in a romantic comedy
--Ritchie: TROLOLOLOL
--studio: DNGAF, raking in the $$$
--2nd movie writers: were first in with their treatment because they wrote it in 48 hours by ripping off Katie Forsythe


** There is almost definitely some IRL bleeding into this. Both dudes are pretty probably bi, RDJ is attention seeking, and JL makes poor personal life choices. I don't think they're sleeping together but I suspect they started off their IRL relationship by flirting and took their act public because... they are only getting positive reinforcement for it wherever they turn. = =+

***

According to the Chinese fandom, it is possible to cut off a wrist pulse temporarily by squeezing a stress reliever ball under your armpit the right way. You know: THAT STRESS RELIEVER BALL SHERLOCK WAS PLAYING WITH HALF THE EPISODE FOR NO REASON. Apparently this is a mainstay of Japanese procedurals.

Comments

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Clearly Molly and the homeless network (fake paramedics, truck drivers, passers-by, etc.) were in on it, and the first time Sherlock went and stood on the edge of the roof to look down was the GO signal. John had to stand where he was standing not only to keep him in a blind spot vis Sherlock's fall, but to put Moran in a blind spot as well, since he would need to keep John in range and a visual on Sherlock simultaneously.

Which leaves the question of what Sherlock thought Moriarty was going to do; I doubt it was that.

[incandescens]

That makes sense, with Molly, the Network, John, and Moran.

I'm not sure what Sherlock expected from Moriarty. It was reasonable to predict that Moriarty would at least want to gloat face to face. And Sherlock had the "suicide" planned to coincide with John's return (nice parallel with the original story, with Watson being decoyed off to attend to a "sick traveller").

I think that Sherlock must have planned his "suicide" to take place after Moriarty had left the scene, one way or another. It wouldn't have fooled Moriarty. The man would have deconstructed it, worked out how it was done, and added Molly to the "to shoot" list. I cannot see any way that Sherlock intended Moriarty to leave that rooftop alive.

Sherlock was red-queen-racing, with half a dozen balls in the air, but he did have his escape route planned. I can imagine him as setting the start of the scene ("Moriarty and I are both on the roof") and the end ("I jump and 'commit suicide', unless I can pull something game-changing out of my hat"), and intending to handle the rest of it on the fly. He just had to outthink Moriarty.

But then Moriarty pulled the "jump right here and now card or I shoot your friends" card. No time to go with the careful setup. Moriarty would look down and see it. He'd have to jump and die for real. Unless he could find a way out of the either/or situation. And then Moriarty pulled the trigger on his gun, knowing that he was locking Sherlock into it.

(And the only thing that saved Sherlock, and had let him set all this up, was one person's illogical and not particularly reciprocated affection and friendship.)

[perseid.livejournal.com]

Can I just say this is my head canon now, and I'm looking forward to how much of it will be proven true in the new season (which really, cannot come soon enough)

[incandescens]

Thank you!

(And I agree. It cannot come soon enough.)