![]() Ritchie makes his heroes equally rough-and-tumble, accentuating the fact that Watson spent time in the army. For a long time, audiences were used to Watson being a bemused sidekick, lagging behind the slender, unfazed Holmes. This apparent edge serves to lighten the heavier, more dramatic moments in either movie, but it also provides a believable dynamic for their friendship. Both movies have a consistent "buddy cop" tone running through them as well, with Holmes and Watson often swapping quips or, more often than not, Holmes inconveniencing Watson. Richie manages to vividly recreate France, Germany and Switzerland of the past, expanding Holmes' adventures beyond 221b Baker Street. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows takes Holmes and his best friend/partner in crime (solving), Doctor Watson - played by the pitch-perfect Jude Law - across the entire continent of Europe. Using CGI in ways big and small, London of the late 1800s comes alive like never before in both installments. Ritchie's films are period pieces - an approach that most Sherlock Holmes TV shows and movies take - but the London depicted in these movies is a veritable maze of cobbled streets and shadowy corners, echoing the mysterious settings of the source material. Besides the slo-mo, both movies featured spectacular, immersive action set pieces that helped distinguish these cinematic interpretations from any other big-screen version to date. The legendary character's genius intellect is as iconic as Batman's utility belt or Superman's cape Ritchie and company felt it was time to underscore Holmes' lesser-known characteristics - and they did so with exciting results. Sherlock Holmes and its sequel certainly didn't reveal Holmes' methods of deduction as overtly as the BBC series tried to do, but this wasn't a gaffe on the creative team's part. In a way, the two iterations were soon competing for fan approval, with many viewers preferring the emphasis Sherlock placed on the detective's complex thought process and clue analysis. Sherlock received almost immediate, widespread acclaim for its attention to detail, its skilled modern update on the Victorian-era stories and its high-caliber performances. Sherlock Holmes came out only about a year before BBC's Sherlock - which starred Benedict Cumberbatch as the titular sleuth and Martin Freeman as Doctor Watson. Arthur Conan Doyle established Holmes as a skilled fighter in several disciplines from the very beginning, with this trait popping up time and again in both the novels and short stories. Taken in this direction, using character-specific super-slow motion to accentuate Holmes' fighting methodology, Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes films highlighted an often-overlooked aspect of the original stories. Helmed by Guy Ritchie, a director mostly known for his kinetic, stylized crime movies like Snatch and The Gentlemen, Downey's Holmes turned out to be just as good at hand-to-hand combat as he was at solving crimes. Although met with a modicum of doubt at first - why would they cast an American to play Sherlock Holmes? - Downey soon proved his acting chops both in terms of the British accent and his physicality. Robert Downey Jr., who has cemented a place for himself in modern pop culture by playing Marvel's Iron Man, ventured into a different territory with Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes and its sequel, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.
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