New Post on Tor.com: Thrust Upon an Unsuspecting Fandom: Sherlock Holmes Meets the Beekeeper’s Apprentice

The 2009 Sherlock Holmes movie was a box office hit, grossing over $65 million on its Christmas Day opening weekend in the US alone, and currently grossing over $500 million world-wide.

As you might guess, a sequel is now in the works.

Given that Sherlock Holmes had a plot that resembled nothing that ever appeared in the canon—or in any other Sherlock Holmes adaptation—it’ll be interesting to see what Guy Ritchie comes up with next.

Especially since the character of Mary Russell will officially become part of the new canon.

[I’ll let you get your pitchforks this time.]

5 thoughts on “New Post on Tor.com: Thrust Upon an Unsuspecting Fandom: Sherlock Holmes Meets the Beekeeper’s Apprentice”

  1. Ugh. I refused to even see the movie. Sherlock Holmes as an action-adventure character?? I didn’t care much for the Beekeeper’s Apprentice (and sequels). They were well-written, I suppose, but… just oh, so WRONG.

    Sigh. I suppose this comes from reading all the Conan Doyle stories multiple times before I even reached puberty… and watching Basil Rathbone every Sunday morning. ;-)

  2. I prefer my neurotic yet elegant Jeremy Brett over all other adaptations. The phenomenon of “my true Holmes” reminds me of Doctors in Doctor Who, actually. David Tennent, for instance, will always be the best Doctor to me.

    The movie I enjoy for its impressive snark factor. I love how it plays with everything in the canon, and actually does so with a flair that can only be achieved by someone who knows the canon inside and out. Plus, every time I think, “well, it’s not the Holmes I know” I then remember, “dammit, Doyle wrote stuff like ‘The Engineeer’s Thumb’ which actually would have benefited from the same kind of craziness as the New Movie, because that story was totally crazy.”

    Or you know, when I think about all the ‘SPLODE! in the New Movie, I remember, dammit, Doyle put in ‘splode in “A Scandal in Bohemia” too. And it would have worked better with more cowbell.

    I think the movie is worth watching to see the best Watson ever. Or perhaps the best co-dependent Holmes-Watson (not necessarily Holmes/Watson, though I think it is) interpretation ever. Or perhaps just simply the hawtest Watson ever.

    I really want to put Russian Holmes and Jude Law together all the time in my head now.

    Mary Russell never worked for me as a character, perhaps alas.

  3. Ok, to see the best Watson ever, I might break down and see it. If Netflix puts it on Instant Play. Or when I get through the other 400+ items in my DVD queue. :-D

  4. One of the things I liked about the Mary Russell books is how thoroughly and well Ms. King differentiated her world from that of the Arthur Conan Doyle stories. Every now and then, she throws in some little reference to those stories, with some note about how Watson was either completely misled (through his assumptions, unless I am reading into it) or deliberately misled his readers (at his friends instigation). Her Sherlock Holmes was a new character, consistent in her books (mostly), existing in a world where the stories exist and Sherlock Holmes is either thought to be a fictional character or is known only through the erroneous stories.

    When Ms. King wrote a novel in which her other detective found a manuscript written by Sherlock Holmes, in which Mr. Holmes is Ms. King’s Sherlock Holmes and not Mr. Conan Doyle’s, and when the Sherlockians in that story accept the manuscript as being echt Holmes, that ruined the whole thing for me. But maybe that’s just me.

    Thanks,
    -V.

Comments are closed.