Partially cross-posted from my personal journal.

I have seen the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes trailer, and DO NOT WANT!! *

That is not Holmes. I’m sure it will be a lovely, action-packed period piece by Mr. Ritchie, full of cinematically pleasing anachronisms, and more CGI than you can stick up your butt and waddle home with. But. It. Will. Not. Be. Sherlock Holmes.

Besides he totally got the casting backwards. Downey should be Watson, and Law should be Holmes.

Will I see it? Not in theaters, but probably at some point. I completely expect it to be Snatch 1890. Seriously, just change the character names and call it something else. Please.

Now, I’m not so much a purist that I can’t enjoy non-canonical films. I loved the X-men films, and most other films Marvel’s done (Electra sucked like a Hoover). I fully expect to like the new Star Trek. And I ADORE the A&E Nero Wolfe stuff. Hell, I even like the modernized Nero Wolfe from network television in the late 70s. But, at the risk of sounding like the nerd ragers at my comic store when the new Enterprise schematics were released, there’s this thing about staying true to character concepts, which GUY RITCHIE DUZ NOT HAZ.

I like Guy Ritchie’s films.  I do.  I loved Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch.  Loved them.  However, having seen those films and knowing about Mr. Ritchie’s penchant for a little bit of the ultra-violence, who the bright blazing blue fuck thought this was the guy to make a film about a character that spends 90% of his time locked in his own head?  Seriously?  Has he read the books?  And, ok, it’s been a while for me, but I seem to recall that, much like my beloved Scooby Doo, when Holmes took on a case with supernatural elements, at least 95% of the time it turned out to be a guy under the mask (Hound of the Baskervilles anyone?).  Give what I’ve seen of the trailer, how the hell is he going to stay true to that? 

Also, Holmes was an academic, who very grudgingly respected only one woman in the canon of the books, and sure as hell wasn’t out cavorting with loose women.  Granted, I like looking at women in pretty Victorian undergarments as much as the next girl, but really?  Holmes is an arrogant asshole, a condescending prick and a drug addict, but he isn’t a womanizing doofus, ok? 

Sigh.  At least this time I KNOW it isn’t going to be a true adaptation, unlike when the Coppola abortion he called Dracula came out. 

So, yes, I will probably enjoy it when I do get around to seeing it.  But I’m going to have to work awfully hard to dissociate it from the source material. 

*My Dad read me the Sherlock Holmes books as bedtime reading when I was very small.  I have seen the Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett interpretations, as well as Christopher Lee’s interpretation of the role for Hammer.  I have read the books multiple times, and have at least two collected volumes, as well as an assload of other works by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  And 221B Baker Street was my favorite game ever as a child.  My friends and I didn’t play cops and robbers, we played Sherlock Holmes.