sovay: (PJ Harvey: crow)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote 2018-07-30 07:32 pm (UTC)

the sequel fridges Irene Adler right off the bat, and casting Stephen Fry as Mycroft Holmes is one of those things that ought to have worked, but which collapses under a lot of heavy-handed comedy.

That's disappointing. I wonder if I heard about the fridging at the time and that's why I stayed away, or if I was just doing something else in 2011.

Their Moriarty, however, is a not-bad variant on the usual portrayal – rather than being an obscure genius known only among mathematicians and astronomers, this Moriarty hides in plain sight as a famous intellectual who gives popular math lectures and is friends with the Prince of Wales – Harris plays him as sort of a cross between George Bernard Shaw and Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Okay, that is a neat idea and I haven't seen it; it reminds me of the local Othello where Iago was such a loudmouth that you wouldn't believe he could keep enough secrets to plot a man's downfall.

It does somewhat lesson his motivation for being a supervillain when he’s already famous and admired, though; and his ultimate scheme, though evil, is pretty banal (and was already used in the movie of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.)

I understand the impulse to fail better with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but the villain's motivation was one of the parts I already wasn't impressed with! Oh, well.

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