Sherlock Holmes (film)/Fridge: Difference between revisions

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* Blackwood {{spoiler|kills the ginger dwarf with cyanide (which deprives the body of ''air''), and buries him in the '''earth'''. He kills his father in a bathtub filled with ''fire''-heated '''water'''. He kills the American lodge member with by setting him on '''fire''' with what said member thought to be ''rain''. And finally, his machine, beneath the ''earth'', would poison the very '''air''' Parliament breathed.}} ''It's elementary.''

** {{spoiler|Lord Blackwood's death}} ended up being an unintentional replacement for {{spoiler|the parliament}}. How, you ask? {{spoiler|Lord Blackwood died by hanging, in the '''air''', from a bridge, which connects two pieces of ''earth''}}.

** Even better, Holmes's creator Conan Doyle, specialised as an Opthalmologist (eye doctor) in real life.

 

* The [[Chess Motifs]] throughout the film cast Holmes and his allies as the black pieces, and Holmes takes the black side when he and Moriarty play chess in the [[Grand Finale]]. This clashes with the general [[Color Coded for Your Convenience|color-coding of pop culture]], which mandates that [[Light Is Good]] and [[Dark Is Evil]]. But in chess, white and black have nothing to do with good and evil, but rather with offense and defense. White moves first, and is therefore on offense, while black moves second, putting them on defense. And Holmes is very much on defense throughout most of the movie.

** A rule in chess is that if a pawn makes it to the other side of the board, it is promoted to a queen. Mary was pretty much a 'pawn' in the game since she didn't have much of a role in the case except as Watson's wife. However, at the end, she was instrumental in taking down Moriarty's organization because Moriarty was too busy with Holmes and Watson to notice her. In other words, Holmes turned Mary from a pawn to a queen.

** That is a bit of a stretch - Brighton's (well deserved, bless it) reputation for gayness is modern and in fact the more obvious connotation of the town, to British viewers at least, is that Brighton is the traditional destination for the 'dirty weekend'. It's exactly where young couples, whether married or no, headed for rumpy-pumpy.

* When Holmes and Moriarty meet in Moriarty's classroom, both make perfectly clear that they'll stop at nothing to oppose the other. At first, I was scratching my head and thinking [[Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?]] - to ''both'' of them. Then I realized, this is ''[[Great Detective|Holmes]] and [[Evil Counterpart|Moriarty]].'' It's completely in character for both of them to ''want'' the challenge of a [[Worthy Opponent]].

* At first it seems anachronistic for guns like the Mauser C96 to be appearing in 1891, and simply an example of a [[Cool Guns|cool]] and [[Rare Guns|rare]] gun being shoehorned into a Victorian story. It's perfectly plausible for Moriarty's weapons business to be involved in advanced weapon design, and the Maxim machine gun that formed the basis of semi-automatic research was almost a decade old at the time of ''Game of Shadows.'' After Moriarty's death and the collapse of his empire, the plans would have been taken and developed into the C96 model half a decade later.

* At first, many of the weird, steampunk-like things appearing in both films appear to be merely [[Anachronism Stew]] designed to appeal to fans of 21st century action movies. But when you take a closer look, many of the elements--weird weaponry, concerns over foreign invasions, and stories about phony supernatural events--are exactly the sort of stories Victorian fans of Arthur Conan Doyle's works would have seen in other popular stories and novels of the day. This isn't a case of [[Did Not Do the Research]] on the [[Victorian Era]], but a careful reconstruction of the tropes found period pulp fiction that eventually inspired our current action movie cliches.

 

* It's horrifying enough that Moriarty manipulates a man {{spoiler|into committing suicide}} by threatening to kill his wife and children, who are being held hostage. Then you realize that, given Moriarty's policy of "no loose ends," he almost certainly [[Complete Monster|had the man's family killed ANYWAY]].

* Bear with me here, but there is a distinct possibility that {{spoiler|MORIARTY IS ALIVE. Holmes is shown to survive the fall from the castle by using the oxygen device he ostensibly took from Mycroft. This got me wondering - why on earth would Mycroft have had one in the first place? Simple - the altitude of the castle meant the air would be thin. Thus, all the guests of summit would likely have had such a device - including Moriarty.}}

 

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