This wasn't a rental but a film I got for Christmas (which shows how long I take to watch things and then write a review!).
I've actually recently been listening to the Sherlock Holmes stories on audio book while I do my walking. Only a handful of them are novel length, which I haven't been listening to, and the vast majority are short stories. As such you can kinda see why they tend to stick them together or come up with original stories when they make films.
In the case of these Downey Junior films in some way they're more of the "inspired by" the originals than adaptations. The Moffat BBC series is similar in this sense - the stories are inspired by Holmes and just take bits of the original plots and weave them together. One of the big differences is that the BBC series is set in the modern day where the Downey Jr ones are set in the correct time period - turn of the century England. This gives them both a distinct feel, but also makes you think the Downey Jr ones are somehow "closer" even though really they're more divergent.
However, one thing that has struck me about the originals is how inconsistent they are with each other. In the stories themselves the chronology of events is confused (cases are referred to in the wrong order of occurrence on multiple occasions - to the degree that it's really noticeable), but also the character of Homes is all over the place.
One thing I particularly noticed is that early on he's referred to as going round solving mysteries that relate to royal houses in Europe - something that would surely bring him a degree of fame - but in later he is shunning fame, going so far as to get Lastrade to pretend he'd solved cases, and later still he's so famous in the fictional world that everyone knows who he is.
A particularly frustrating thing for anyone creating an adaptation must be the inconsistency and short-lived nature of key characters. So Moriarty, the apparent arch-criminal and rival is basically only referred to in one story (Reichenbach Falls) in an active sense and then referenced as the ultimate bad guy in subsequent stories - yet he never appeared before that. Irene Adler, who is inflated to a love interest in a lot of stories, is in just one story. There are also the Baker Street Irregulars who pop up in a vague handful of stories but are inconsistently used and then basically forgotten about and then in later stories he acquires a page, an assistant and all sorts, even though many of these stories are apparently set during others where they're not mentioned.
I appear to have gotten very side-tracked. The point I was trying to make is that when you really read the stories you can kinda see where they're getting a lot of the stuff from in these films. In particular, the plot of this second film is grown out of short story that appears quite late on and dabbles with political intrigue. It blends this with Moriarty to form what is a quite satisfying story.
On that front, and in others, this film is actually much better than the first. By using Moriarty and tying it to a meaty plot it feels firmer and is more enjoyable than the first. There's also quite a bit more humour than in the first, some of which is surprisingly surreal, and the action is just that bit more satisfying.
One thing the first did well was that the action was often quite grounded and physical - people beating each other up, rather than flying through the air on wires - and this continues, but it's also tied with a more clever take in some scenes. There's also a part in a forest I won't spoil that is probably one of the best action sequences I've ever seen.
The only thing I was disappointed by was the treatment of the aforementioned Addler - the way that part ends is very unsatisfying. Again, I won't spoiler, but I thought it undermined the first film quite badly, though when you think about it, it wasn't definitive, so it could be developed further, but if it's taken as face value (and little hints otherwise) then I found it quite disappointing.
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