Collating some Sherlockian content
Jan. 16th, 2012 02:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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 onarboretum'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.
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.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-17 01:25 am (UTC)I also six degrees know a person who knows the 2nd RDJ movie scriptwriters and they insist, insist!, that Holmes and Watson are not gay for each other but are just like, two dudes with a really close friendship. (To which I say, yeahhhh sure, pull my other one while you're at it.)
no subject
Date: 2012-01-17 04:20 am (UTC)Maybe S3 will begin with Sherlock in the countryside KEEPING BEES. I will laugh so hard if that turns out to be the case.
Movieverse: well, fair enough, that just means the person who read Katie Forsythe was Robert Downey Jr. Which is possibly funnier. XDD
no subject
Date: 2012-01-17 04:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-17 04:33 am (UTC)Copper Beeches is my favorite story, and I would love to see them do it. I'm on the fence about how Violet would be handled, though. On the one hand, Sherlock is learning to be more of a person, so having him interact with a Violet character — a brave and sensible girl who really needs his help — would be a terrific emotional beat for the second episode of the third series. On the other hand... I don't always trust this creative team to handle female characters properly. I do a lot of the time (and I loved how they treated Irene), but not all of the time.
But really, any way it works out, I'm going to love it.