So you’re Robert Downey Jr, perhaps the biggest movie star around right now. The world’s your oyster – so what’s your next move?
After the gigantic box office haul of Iron Man – one that’s likely to be repeated once Tropic Thunder is released later this summer – Robert Downey Jr can star in any movie he wants. But what movie has Robert Downey Jr decided to star in? A Sherlock Holmes movie, that’s what.
No, not the Sacha Baron Cohen/Will Ferrell Sherlock Holmes movie that was triumphantly announced earlier this week. Another Sherlock Holmes movie. A Sherlock Holmes movie where Sherlock Holmes is a musclebound action hero. A Sherlock Holmes movie where Sherlock Holmes is a musclebound action hero directed by Guy Ritchie. And there was us thinking that Robert Downey Jr had stopped taking drugs.
Occasionally two movies about the same subject will come out at the same time, and one always fares much better than the other. For every Dante’s Peak there’s a Volcano. For every The Prestige there’s a The Illusionist. For every Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves there’s another Robin Hood that’s both princeless and thiefless.
And it looks like we’re about to see another likeminded movie clash, because two Sherlock Holmes films are getting ready to go head to head.
One, announced this week, will be produced by Judd Apatow and throw together Sacha Baron Cohen’s Sherlock Holmes and Will Ferrell’s Doctor Watson. It sounds hilarious and is bound to be a giant hit. And then there’s the other Sherlock Holmes movie which will star Robert Downey Jr and sounds, well, cack. E! Online reports:
In addition to Conan Doyle’s tales, the film will also incorporate the Sherlock Holmes comics series, which painted the detective as more of a muscly action hero who just happened to be far more brilliant than his peers—and, most importantly, his adversaries.
OK, so it’s a Sherlock Holmes movie with a kickass Sherlock Holmes. That’s vaguely sacrilegious, but it will star Robert Downey Jr so it’s still probably worth the benefit of the doubt. That’s unless there’s another mitigating factor as to why we shouldn’t go and see it, like if Guy Ritchie’s directing it or anything stupid like that.
Which. He. Is.
So, in summary then – Robert Downey Jr’s first big film after Iron Man is a Sherlock Holmes movie that’s in direct competition with a much better-sounding Sherlock Holmes movie, his version will feature a steroid-crazed Sherlock Holmes and it’s all going to be directed by Guy Ritchie, meaning that it’ll basically have all the production values of a Cillit Bang advert and everyone will talk in shouty cockney voices like that bald knob from Masterchef.
Fingers crossed that Guy Ritchie hasn’t got divorced by the time he starts filming – this could well the only movie in history that gets better because Madonna‘s got a cameo in it.
David Bryden says
I think the Cillit Bang ads are pretty damn good. You didn’t forget the name Cillit Bang, did you? Objective achieved!
p.s. is Barry Scott deaf?
Harry says
There are two kinds of movies that are usually a little hard to watch. One is a film that has a British actor trying to fake an American accent, and the other is a film that has an American actor trying to fake a British accent. Either way, it sounds like a person who has no accent at all and grew up nowhere, not even in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. The effect of this anti-accent gradually becomes more and more penetrating until the whole movie begins to ring as false as a wooden nickle. However, Mr. Downey has shown some skill in the past with mimicking accents and maybe he can build on that in this film. But still, a muscle-bound Holmes elbowing his way through London? A mafioso Watson and Moriarty in drag? Let’s do it.
Gilbert Wham says
Sherlock holmes is Jeremy Brett. When he’s not Basil Rathbone, obviously. He most certainly is not some dreadful, jumped-up colonial. The ignominy!
mug says
I bet you felt like an idiot for writing this once the movie came out.