Unofficial SCIENCE! movie: Sherlock Holmes

Drooling Iguana

No, not the 2009 Guy Ritchie movie starring Robert Downey Jr. I'm talking about the more recent direct-to-video film from The Asylum (makers of such classics as Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus and Transmorphers) starring the British guy from Enterprise and Ianto from Torchwood. I'm going to be watching this movie next weekend and posting my thoughts on it, and invite any of you who have the time and inclination to do so to do the same.

After all, what's the point of having a story about the greatest dective in all of fiction if he doesn't have any dinosaurs and robot dragons to fight?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaHvM9KVpcw

mario

"Unofficial" be damned! I'm hereby officiatin' this shiznit.

Drooling Iguana

Yay!

Drooling Iguana

Overall impressions: Not that bad, actually. The low budget was obvious throughout the entire thing, but it was still fairly entertaining. They really should've gotten a better actor to play Sherlock, though. The other parts were reasonably well-cast but Sherlock himself was a bit wooden. The writers also seem to have forgotten that Sherlock already has a brother in the canon stories, so they didn't need to invent one here. Still, I seriously doubt that we would have seen a fight between a balloon-o-copter and a robot dragon in any "serious" Sherlock Holmes production, so it balances out.

Thoughts written during the movie below. May contain spoilers:

0:03:00: Just started it and I think I can safely say that the CGI is absolutely awful (if it is CGI, it might actually be some really fake-looking miniatures depicting London, there's so little movement that I can't be sure.) There's only been one dialogue scene so far and it seemed reasonably competently-done.

0:04:00: Couldn't afford a wind machine for the ship set, I see.

0:05:05: And they accused the Ritchie movie of cashing in on Pirates of the Caribbean...

0:09:25: Sherlock sounds like he has a cold. I can barely hear him.

0:12:50: A finer display of over-acting I've yet to see.

0:19:40: It would seem that Watson doesn't, in fact, have very good arms.

0:23:00: Don't move! It can't see you if you don't move!

0:28:30: It's a Foley artist! Run for your lives!

0:33:45: Dinosaurs have mastered irrigation! We're doomed!

0:40:00: Wow. He managed to turn the windows off, too. That's quite the trick.

0:41:40: A seven-shooter. Impressive.

0:50:20: They couldn't afford any real explosions in this movie, could they?

0:55:30: "No, I'd rather stay up here and die if it's all the same to you."

0:55:10: Looks like the people making this movie forgot which Robert Downey Jr. movie they were trying to rip off.

0:58:45: "I'm Batman."

1:10:10: The bird was a robot? I think I'm starting to like this movie.

1:13:30: Well of course a balloon-o-copter would have machine guns on it. I mean, why would you even bother to build a balloon-o-copter otherwise?

1:16:00 Robot-girl. Saw that one coming.

mario

Netflix says I'll get the DVD by Tuesday, should be posting my thoughts soon afterward. But from what you've mentioned so far, I'm pretty pumped. It's gotta be better than The Terminators at least.

mario

Watched last night. WOW. I wasn't a big fan of the Holmes actor but everything else was a delight. I always knew something was missing from Sherlock Holmes stories, and that something turned out to be making all the enemies robots or cyborgs. After having seen a few The Asylum movies, I feel like this one was the classiest of the bunch. There's a great attention to detail in the costumes and sets (love all the levers and switches in the dragon ship) and (relatively) less dependence on CGI. As bad as the acting generally was, the writing was decent and the Holmes/Watson exchanges felt true to their characters, and the ridiculous clues Holmes picks up on (and his equally ridiculous leaps of logic) made sense within the narrative.

Dominic Keating's Iron Man-esque steampunk metal suit kicked ass. As did the clockwork android.