Sherlock Holmes

[GeneChing]

elementary...

Sherlock Holmes with a Kick (http://www.thecelebritycafe.com/features/18834.html)
11-Aug-2008
Written by: Dean Stattmann

This Sherlock will have more than a magnifying glass up his sleeve.

With Robert Downey, Jr. fans still distracted by the actor’s exhilarating portrayal of Iron Man, let alone his hilarious role as Kirk Lazarus in Ben Stiller’s summer comedy, Tropic Thunder, the less than malleable superhero has something a little different in store.

The actor’s current project (and by no means the only one) is a revival of the world’s most famous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes. But while most people will claim to have the good Sherlock all figured out, Downey’s character will not be so elementary.

“It will be director Guy Ritchie's take on Sherlock Holmes,” he told the Chicago Sun-Times. “It's a contemporary version of a classic tale. But we're not telling one of the stories from the books.”

That’s right. And you know what contemporary version means: action, action, action . . . and probably some sex.

“The cool thing about Sherlock is he's a very skilled martial artist,” Downey said. “So it's not just about his deductions. This movie will also be a very action-packed version of Sherlock Holmes.”

Luckily for us, action is Downey’s recently adopted middle name, and the star is more than up to the task of playing an intellectual ninja. “I'm always training. I'm big into martial arts,” he told the Sun-Times. “We're putting together a team of people to do something more transcendent with the fighting for the movie.”

“I love bare knuckled boxing,” he continued. “It's real balls to the walls brutal stuff. Guy is a martial artist and I'm a martial arts student. So you'll get all the Sherlock stuff, but hopefully much more fun.”

[SimonM]

Holmes having martial arts training is referenced in at least one of Conan Doyle's stories.

Unfortunately I forget which story and which martial art.

[X_plosion]

He said it was "Baritsu" (sic), probably meant to refer to the Bartitsu derived from JJJ.

It was in that story after his staged plunge to death in the waterfall.

[SimonM]

That's the story!

Thanks!

[冠木侍]

One of my favorite reads. I remember taking on the entire volume at one time. But that was some time ago. I still have a limited edition copy that I put away somewhere. Anyhow, great read.

I remember reading about the waterfall incident but not what he studied. He knew something...although not known much for his physicality, I don't doubt that it was always a trump card. He

What got me interested in the first place was Basil Rathbone's portrayal. I liked his series of SH the best out of the others. The audio tapes of his radio show were fun to listen to when I was younger (yeah tapes).

I find that a lot of people don't appreciate the good ole' B & W movies anymore...

I never doubted Downey Jr's acting ability, even though he was going through some rough patches in his personal life. It hard to tell how things will turn out.

[GeneChing]

Do you think there will be wire work and CGI fights? :rolleyes:
Early look: Downey/Law are elementary to new 'Sherlock' (http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2009-05-05-sherlock-holmes-main_N.htm)
Updated 14h 53m ago
By Susan Wloszczyna, USA TODAY

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — The renowned London residence at 221B Baker Street has temporarily relocated to the Marcy Avenue Armory.

On a sound stage inside the cavernous building, time travels back to 1891 as two men in Victorian garb occupy a second-floor flat. Strewn about is all manner of masculine-type clutter — investigative tools, dusty books, souvenirs from exotic lands, anatomical drawings, rotten apple cores, crushed walnut shells, neglected plants and preserved animals parts.

MORE: Get clued in on Downey's shabbier Sherlock

Jude Law's dapper Dr. John H. Watson, preparing to leave both his bachelor and sleuthing days behind, packs up his belongings in the tidier portion of the apartment. Robert Downey Jr.'s wiry Sherlock Holmes, deeply perturbed by his friend's pending departure after a decade together as crime-fighting colleagues, answers a knock at the door.

Suddenly, a recently deceased body is dropped on a table in the middle of the room by two constables.

Watson: "Who is he?"

Holmes: "That's my new roommate."

You won't find that chummy exchange in any of Arthur Conan Doyle's exploits of the great detective. Nor does it lurk in the script for Sherlock Holmes, the Dec. 25 release that marks the first major big-screen adaptation of the private eye's adventures since Michael Caine's comical sham of a Sherlock in 1988's Without a Clue.

Downey, 44, and Law, 36, jazzed up the dialogue on the spot, with an assist from director/writer Guy Ritchie, the artist formerly known as Madonna's husband and a specialist in nimbly paced gangster capers (1998's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, 2000's Snatch, last year's RocknRolla) that rely heavily upon male interaction and relentless cursing.

The language has been tamed for this PG-13 outing. But manly bonding between bohemian Holmes and bourgeois Watson is at the core of the story. Trendy types might even describe it as a "bromance," especially when Downey's detective bristles at the very thought of his friend's nuptials coming between them. But the relationship takes its cues from a long line of what used to be known simply as buddy films.

"There are many duos we wanted to draw from," Law says. "Something as eccentric as The Odd Couple to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Withnail and I and Laurel and Hardy. It's the kind of friendship you can only have with someone of the same sex, a person you adore but who infuriates you."

A Holmes fan at the helm

After 73 days of shooting what Warner Bros. hopes is not only a holiday blockbuster but the launch of a franchise, the actors are comfortable enough in their personas that improvising in character is a breeze. "Initially, we were just infusing the dialogue with Doyle-isms," says Downey, who dons a jaunty fedora and oft-disheveled attire in a break from more conservative portraits of the gumshoe. Law, a rather trim Watson who is more of a brawler than a bumbler, kept a notebook handy with scribbled phrases from the original tales just in case.

"Now we tend to speak a little more on his behalf," Downey says, referring to Sherlock's inventor. "Truth be told, we have been working our tokheses off. We've been at it for a long, long, long time."

Yet the atmosphere is decidedly easygoing. Between takes, the star cracks jokes and affectionately hugs wife Susan, a producer on the film. Meanwhile, Mark Strong, the strikingly tall Ritchie regular who plays a satanic aristocrat of a villain named Lord Blackwood, strides by while incongruously toting a Bliss Spa bag.

"It's such a relaxed set, even if it's at the tail end of the shoot," Downey observes. Adding to the calm is fair-haired and boyish Ritchie, 40, as he strums his acoustic guitar like a Zen troubadour while waiting for shooting to resume.

If Ritchie is feeling under the gun as he oversees his first big-budget period piece while transitioning from laddish art-house romps to mainstream crowd-pleasers, there are no clues to support it.

Says Strong, who was in Ritchie's Revolver and RocknRolla: "He is exactly the same as he was on his last two movies. You only panic if you don't know what you are supposed to be doing."

Did Ritchie consider that he might be asking for trouble by messing with a literary icon?

"I didn't really think of the downside as much as I thought about the upside," the filmmaker says. "I was a Holmes fan when I was a child. They are the first stories I remember. I also liked the approach the studio was coming at. To me, it was the perfect segue from small independent films to something more ambitious and quintessentially English. So I've got my cake and I can eat it."

Not that it hasn't been a challenge for cast and crew both here and in England as they attempt to drag a well-etched 19th-century archetype, personified by a suave if snooty Basil Rathbone in 14 films in the '30s and '40s, into the 21st century for an action-hero makeover.

"Sherlock was perceived as stuffy and old-fashioned," says Lionel Wigram, a producer on the Harry Potter series who initiated the revival about a decade ago. "I thought the TV ones (including, most recently, those starring Jeremy Brett and Rupert Everett) were wonderful, but in a Masterpiece Theatre kind of way. It felt like there was a great opportunity to do something bigger than that."

To persuade those who "did not get it," Wigram wrote a graphic novel and had an artist depict Sherlock in comic-book form. The image that convinced the studio suits? The sleuth, scruffy and stubbly, with a whip in one hand and a sword in the other.

"We are trying to make a fun adventure movie," he says. "My favorites are the Bond films. Raiders of the Lost Ark. I want to make a movie like that."

Familiarity does breed box office. "The word of the day is 'branding,' " says Hollywood mogul Joel Silver, another of the film's producers and a force behind the Die Hard and Matrix series. "We are always looking for branded ideas. Audiences are interested in seeing something they know."

But with a difference, too. This Holmes is as brainy as ever but is a bruiser as well. Bare-fisted boxing, sword fighting and a mastery of martial arts have been added to his arsenal of weapons.

[GeneChing]

...from above
Upholding the traditions

Many of the Holmesian conventions remain, such as Sherlock's keen eye for case-cracking details and a playful fondness for disguises. He refrains from indulging in cocaine — a nod to the family-friendly rating — but still fiddles with the violin to fill the void between jobs. But any whiff of parlor-room gentility is blown away by flashily edited fisticuffs and dangerous derring-do in grungy sewers, a pig slaughterhouse and atop Tower Bridge — a large portion of which is replicated on a green-screen-shrouded set around the corner.

Tradition is also upheld. There is a mystery afoot, naturally, as Strong's industrialist, who holds sway over a cult of dark-arts practitioners and claims to possess supernatural powers, is linked to a series of murders. While Blackwood is an invention based on real-life occultist Aleister Crowley, Professor Moriarty — Sherlock's most notorious foe — puts in a fleeting appearance. As for a love interest, Rachel McAdams proves to be a tempting distraction as the deceptive Irene Adler, who outwitted the private eye in Conan Doyle's A Scandal in Bohemia and is the lone woman to ever earn his admiration.

But the notion of an athletic Sherlock engaged in the martial arts — a skill that Conan Doyle himself mentions in The Adventure of the Empty House— ignited a powder keg of early negativity, especially in British tabloids and online outlets. "Nunchuk Holmes" is what Guardian blogger Marina Hyde derisively dubbed the film. The director himself came in for a few hits. An item on the website Den of Geek bore the headline, "Guy Ritchie gets his mockney claws into Sherlock Holmes. Be afraid."

Law, who pored through Conan Doyle's writings in preparation for his role, points out that many so-called liberties in the script merely are expansions on what is alluded to in the original stories.

"The physicality, the bare-knuckle fighting, the martial arts are all hinted at in the books," he says. "We just hold a magnifying glass over them. A word that Conan Doyle uses an awful lot is 'apprehended.' As in, 'Holmes and Watson apprehend the villain.' We get to show the apprehension."

However, the naysaying didn't stop once the cameras rolled last fall. The news media began to label the production as cursed after a series of unfortunate incidents, including Ritchie's divorce from his pop-star wife of eight years, Downey's injuries during a fight scene that required six stitches and an exploding tanker truck.

Most potentially damaging, however, was a claim made in mid-February by U.K. tabloid The Sun that the studio, dissatisfied by an early cut, demanded that Ritchie redo five weeks of filming. Warner Bros. swiftly put out a statement denying the rumor. "The re-shoots were pure fiction," says Silver. "It was great to see this story come out while we were actually still shooting the movie. To read this incredible account was funny to me."

But pre-opening buzz has been on the upswing ever since Downey introduced footage that was warmly received by theater owners at the ShoWest convention in March. The first trailer, which will accompany Terminator Salvation when it opens May 21, aims to put lingering doubts to rest.

Wigram thinks jealousy might be at the root of the initial bad-mouthing. "Guy is a great filmmaker," he says. "He reinvented a whole genre, the gangster genre. That is a great achievement. I used to pitch this as a Guy Ritchie version of a Sherlock Holmes movie. There was never any question that he would be an absolutely perfect fit for it."

Besides, he adds, "in terms of what they say about him, if you are married to Madonna, you're bound to get a certain amount of that. It's absurd to mock his talent. "

Time will tell if Sherlock Holmes becomes a new standard for resurrecting old heroes. Already, there is talk of how Russell Crowe's tights-free Robin Hood will be given a Gladiator injection of macho grit — and Strong will play an evil henchman.

Meanwhile, Ritchie takes a moment to reflect while set builders hammer away nearby. "There is one more week, but I'm in no rush to end," he says. "I am enjoying it. I like coming to work."

Yet he is also eager for Sherlock Holmes to open and show audiences another side of his talents. Told that people probably want to see him do something different, he says with a smile, "So do I."

[doug maverick]

had alot of friends work on this film. there was some wire work, but they are going for a more brutal stylized type of fighting.alot of accidents on that set in the fights. **** even downey caught one to the grill!!!its like a weird mix of wing chun and BJJ

[Yoshiyahu]

Robert Downey Jr. Has a new movie called Sherlock Holmes. In one of the fight scenes you can see him utilizing a man sau. Has any body saw any other movies with Downey utilizing WC?

[Phil Redmond]

His Sifu is my WC brother Eric Oram in L.A.
In Fact Sifu Oram went with Downey to England for the filming of the Sherlock Holmes movie. I have clips of Downey doing WC but I can't recall him doing it in a movie.

[anerlich]

The fictional Sherlock Holmes in the books was a skilled boxer, and having him do WC would be both anachronistic and varying from the original. Why the director might allow Downey to add some personal flair like this to a movie would be a mystery.

Still, worse and stupider things have been done to good stories by Hollywood.

[CFT]

Holmes' martial art in the books was Baritsu, which many think is Bartitsu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartitsu).

[Lee Chiang Po]

There have been several movie stars that have held high rankings in the martial arts. Peter Lory, of Mr. Moto fame. The little bug eyed fellow with the nasal twang to his speach. He held a 7th level black belt in Japanese Jujitsu.

[RGVWingChun]

Robert Downey Jr. Has a new movie called Sherlock Holmes. In one of the fight scenes you can see him utilizing a man sau. Has any body saw any other movies with Downey utilizing WC?

in Tropic Thunder, he gives the director a vertical punch to the chest....LOL

[TenTigers]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqjBMhV4uSM&feature=PlayList&p=ABA4831F5CF1FAA2&index=35&playnext=3&playnext_from=PL

[Ultimatewingchun]

God, I hate this thread! :rolleyes:

Yes, Downey has studied TWC from Eric Oram, who I know since he's 16 years old...but when I saw the youtube clip of Downey on Oprah Winfrey talking about his wing chun (and there was even a clip of him throwing a punch at Eric...and Eric going to town on it)...

I wanted to hide. :eek: :D Total Hollywood blah, blah, blah.

And furthermore, I am a HUGE FAN of the Sherlock Holmes series that was originally made by a corporation known as "Granada TV"...a series that aired on British televison about 4x per year over a 10 year period (apx. 1984-1994)...

starring JEREMY BRETT as Sherlock Holmes. (And it made its' way onto American television as well).

Absolutely fantastic stuff. I have a copy of all 41 episodes and have watched each of them countless times over the years (and it used to drive my wife nuts)...

Each of the 41 episodes were probably the most true depictions ever made - in terms of being true to the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories and dialogue. Most were an hour long, and some were even two hours long.

The 2 hour rendition of THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, for example, was just magnificent.

And now Hollywood is going to ruin this with Robert Downey, Jr. as Holmes !!!??? :eek:

I'm so ashamed. ;) :cool:

[TenTigers]

hey, lots of folks didn't think Michael Keaton would play a good Batman, thinking that he's Mr. Mom, and the guy from Gung-Ho. These people obviously have never seen him in Pacific Heights. He can be very dark, and sinister.
I think Downey is a good actor, and could probably pull it off, depending on the writer and director and choreographer. Bourne Identity was pretty cool, for a non-MAist. Blows away Keanu in Matrix.(barf)

[Vajramusti]

Basil Rathbone was great as Holmes in an early early movie version.
No high movie- tech stuff-just good acting.

joy chaudhuri

[rindge]

Joy truer words were never spoken. Basil Rathbone was fantastic in the old SH black and white films. I grew up on those and they drew me to the SH writings of Doyle. I have seen the previews of SH with Downey and they blow. To much FX...SH is not about FX it about acting and plot.

Victor any idea where I can get the movies you mentioned? The Hounds of Baskerville with Rathbone was fantastic and it would be interesting to see how the newer version compares.

Rindge

[Vajramusti]

Rathbone actually was a pretty good fencer. He often played the villain in many swashbuckling movies- sometimes against Errol Flynn as the hero-including Robin Hood.

joy chaudhuri

[Phil Redmond]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqjBMhV4uSM&feature=PlayList&p=ABA4831F5CF1FAA2&index=35&playnext=3&playnext_from=PL
This movie was considered to be Hollywood's first MA fight scene. Some of you may not know this but many of James Cagney's fans were appalled that he kicked the guy during the fight. Some of you old timers might remember when kicking was considered dirty fighting.

[Ultimatewingchun]

Rindge,

Google "Granada Television"....and you'll see a listing for "Amazon.com/Sherlock Holmes, Granada Televison"....when you click that, you'll see how to buy them right there online.

[tigershorty]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1czvD3aVk8Y

robert downey jr chain punches jack black in the balls at 2:36 into the clip. pretty funny.

[Ultimatewingchun]

just as I suspected. Arthur Conan Doyle would be turning over in his grave if he saw this trailor. This is NOT Sherlock Holmes. Jeremy Brett was incredible, even better than Basil Rathbone - who was very good himself.

But this stuff...Ouch!!! :eek:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfRKSBiCWfI&feature=related

[Liddel]

But this stuff...Ouch!!! :eek:


Just be happy its not a Michael 'all CGI no emotion' Bay production :p

DREW

[anerlich]

I too thought Basil Rathbone was great.

There was a recent miniseries which played here with Rupert Everett as Holmes ... I thought that wasn't bad, though it made a bit much of the drugtaking for my taste (though, hey, maybe RD Jr. could bring some verisimilitude there ... :().

Haven't seen the Jeremy Brett ones and am interested now.

[anerlich]

He looks like he's trying to be Johnny Depp in that trailer.

Sherlock Holmes is not about blockbuster action, but the use of observation, logic and reason to solve difficult crimes.

And the bedroom scene with the cuffs is so totally NOT Holmes. Part of the interest of the stories is his intriguing apparent lack of a sexual aspect to his personality, which some have later attributed to gayness.

[Ultimatewingchun]

If you're a big Sherlock Holmes fan, Andrew, and it sounds like you are...I highly recommend checking out the google info I posted about earlier.

The 41 stories that were made with Jeremy Brett as Holmes were remarkably close to the actual writings of Arthur Conan Doyle...(ie.- long paragraghs were taken and spoken word-for-word from the text quite, quite often, but all done extremely well).

I sometimes would read (or reread) a story by Doyle after watching an episode, because the acting and the period sets were so superb that I just wanted to get more of the story defined. That's when I realized just how true the script stayed to the original stories.

And Jeremy Brett's portrayal of Holmes - wow, brilliant! He was a very powerful actor, and a protege of Sir Lawrence Olivier. (Brett died young - he was 60 - of a heart attack around 1995, which is why the series came to an end).

And I'll tell you something else, in addition to Brett they also used lots of very accomplished and established (as well as up-and-coming) British actors/actresses.

In fact, the beautiful actress, Natasha Richardson, who just recently died as a result of that tragic skiiing accident (Liam Neeson's wife)...she made her movie-acting debut with a leading role in one of the episodes (THE COPPER BEECHES). She couldn't have been more than 21-22 at the time.

Really great stuff.

[Mr Punch]

...but when I saw the youtube clip of Downey on Oprah Winfrey talking about his wing chun (and there was even a clip of him throwing a punch at Eric...and Eric going to town on it)...

I wanted to hide. :eek: :D Total Hollywood blah, blah, blah.**** me, what a surprise: a big Hollywood actor going on Oprah proving himself over rehab through the power of martial arts having his segment bigged up in a Hollywood stylee! :rolleyes: Even seeing that somewhat embarrassing segment doesn't diminish the fact that I think it's great he's given himself a second chance (OK probably 10th or so) through martial arts, wing chun or whatever, and it makes him a somewhat positive role model and is good publicity for some of the more spiritual, less hardcore fighting elements of the martial arts.

But ribbing you aside Victor (it's just good fun, all right?! :p ) I'm in total agreement about the Brett Holmes being good stuff, Rathbone being excellent too, the Downey one being bullsh!t and I liked the Everett one too (the druggie aspect is too often underplayed so that was kind of refreshing).

BTW, as mentioned, Holmes could box, so the chun in the movie looks daft. However, although it was doubtless unintended by the film-makers, prizefighting in those days may have still resembled chun more than modern boxing: there would have still been remnants of vertical punching and much much less upper body movement. Just saying!

[Ultimatewingchun]

Good point about the vertical punching from the old time boxing stance, Mr. Punch. In fact, in the story/episode "THE SOLITARY CYCLIST" - Jeremy Brett as Holmes beats this guy up during a fight in a rural country tavern using the old style boxing - including one piece of very fancy footwork.

I almost fell out of my chair when I first saw it, as the footwork looked so much like the full side step we do in TWC, but from the front stance, the way a boxer would be standing. Broken rhythm and everything.

Btw, folks...I forgot to mention earlier that another (at that time) up-and-coming British actor who played a small role in the episode, "SHOSCOMBE OLD PLACE", was Jude Law. He also had to have been no older than his early twenties at the time, I would guess.

And now, in fact, in this travesty with Robert Downey,Jr. - Jude Law plays Doctor Watson.

[taai gihk yahn]

Rathbone actually was a pretty good fencer. He often played the villain in many swashbuckling movies- sometimes against Errol Flynn as the hero-including Robin Hood.

joy chaudhuri

yes, Rathbone was actually an excellent fencer; interesting trivia from his work in "Court Jester" w/Danny Kaye:
"Basil Rathbone, a world-class fencer called "the best in Hollywood", said that Danny Kaye, who had never fenced before, was as good as he was with only three weeks of practice; Kaye was a natural. "With his quick reflexes and his extraordinary sense of mime, which enabled him to imitate easily anything seen once, Kaye could outfence Rathbone after a few weeks of instruction". [1] In fact, in one scene, Kaye (42 at the time of filming) was so skilled, Rathbone (then 63) could not keep up, and was instead doubled by sword choreographer Ralph Faulkner (which is why the viewers don't see Rathbone's face in that scene).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Court_Jester

[Vajramusti]

Thanks for the info. I am not surprised. Danny Kaye was very agile and also picked up cues very well. Basil and Ratbone- that's quite a story.

joy chaudhuri

[goju]

isnt guy ritche idrecting it it should be a good movie i think

[enoajnin]

This just in from the Warner Brother panel at Comiccon where they were discussing Sherlock:

Asked about the pictures of Downey practicing Kung-Fu, Downey said, "Look, I'm not trying to start a riot or anything, but... I could windmill through the lot of you, one after the other."

[golgo]

I saw the trailer for Sherlock Holmes tonight. I think I saw a pretty clear Tan Sao (or Tan Da) in the short boxing clip.

[AdrianK]

This just in from the Warner Brother panel at Comiccon where they were discussing Sherlock:

Asked about the pictures of Downey practicing Kung-Fu, Downey said, "Look, I'm not trying to start a riot or anything, but... I could windmill through the lot of you, one after the other."

Well, he is about one of the fittest wing chun or kung fu guys I've ever seen.

But I have to say this after having the chance to touch hands with him many years ago, b*tch please. :D

[BS_billy_C]

Wonder why Downey didn't practice with some of the WC guys in England there are some very well respected men within the VTA based in England.

Not sure if his teacher is mind, being a student of Cheung's, perhaps he was disuaded from doing so by his teacher?

[GeneChing]

I like what Downey said in this interview. I read all the Sherlock Holmes books in my youth and had issues with the caricature he became in the popular media. Downey sounds like they are really going back to the source book, which would be awesome. Watson was played like the fool in many versions, but he certainly wasn't that way in the books.
SEPTEMBER 3, 2009, 10:43 P.M. ET
Sherlock Holmes: Martial Artist (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204731804574388540350472998.html?m od=googlenews_wsj)
The star of the coming movie about the famed detective talks about giving the role a fresh spin
By LAUREN A. E. SCHUKER

He's played Iron Man and Charlie Chaplin, but Oscar-winner Robert Downey Jr. says his greatest challenge may be his next role: Sherlock Holmes.

The 44-year-old actor will star as the great sleuth in the Guy Ritchie film "Sherlock Holmes," opening on Christmas Day. Scottish-born author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote four novels and 56 short stories about Holmes, and over the years there have been countless stage and screen portrayals of the detective, who first appeared in print in 1887.

The coming film, which was first inspired by a comic book that producer Lionel Wigram wrote to help build support for a Holmes movie, promises to give the Holmes franchise a provocative twist—by adding a dose of martial arts, something that most portrayals of the hero have ignored. Mr. Downey, who did many of the fight scenes himself, says that the film hews very closely to Doyle's original descriptions of the British investigator, which focused on his superb martial arts skills as well as the close relationship that Holmes has with his friend and sometime roommate, Dr. John H. Watson (played by Jude Law).

Mr. Downey spoke about playing an "intellectual action hero" from London, where Mr. Ritchie is shooting several weeks' worth of additional scenes for the film.

The Wall Street Journal: Sherlock Holmes is a big leap from previous characters you’ve played. What got you interested in the role?

Mr. Downey: As I remember it, I went in for a meeting with [producer] Joel Silver and said, 'Dude, where's my franchise?' And this came up as the answer...And Holmes was like a cross between two previous parts I'd done, Tony Stark [alter ego of Iron Man] and Chaplin, which I loved.

“Iron Man” wasn’t a big enough franchise for you?

"Iron Man" was not enough. I wanted something else. And 'Sherlock Holmes' was such a no-brainer, even as a standalone project but particularly with Guy [Ritchie]'s reported interest and involvement.

How did you and Mr. Ritchie make the film—and the character—more accessible to a modern audience?

Well, I had a fair amount of leeway after "Iron Man".... So we were sitting in a meeting discussing what to do and we thought, "Why do a stodgy version of it?" Doyle never writes a three-page action sequence, but after the fact he will talk a lot about the physical contact that happened. Doyle talks about how Holmes is a stick fighter and a master of baritsu [Doyle's altered spelling of the real martial art bartitsu]. So Guy [Ritchie] made those traits a big part of the character."

While Sherlock Holmes isn’t a superhero like Tony Stark, it sounds like he still fights a great deal—at least in this movie. How does your character approach action differently?

Holmes always thinks his fights through and wins them in his head before he even physically gets into them. That embellishment is really central to the way action plays out in the movie.

It sounds like the film mainly focuses on the fight sequences and martial arts.

Yes, but not to the exclusion of the real center of the story, which is his relationship with Watson.

To prepare for the role, as well as that important relationship with Watson, did you watch previous portrayals of Sherlock Holmes, in movies, on television?

I watched some of the old movies, but to tell you the truth, the more you watch the old stuff, the more you realize how not traditional it is—it's not like the stories at all. Part of the tableau in which Holmes is always thought of is him, in profile, with a deerstalker hat and with a curved pipe in his mouth. Nothing about that has anything to do with Doyle's description—in one description, Doyle says he is wearing a hat, but it's more of a moleskin cap. The oversized pipe came from something that theater actor [and playwright] William Gillette used in his portrayal—and now it's always used on stage. When I see Holmes portrayed with those two props now, I always think, "Really? That's not what the writer meant.

So how did you prepare?

I really wanted to portray Holmes as Doyle wrote him. When I played Chaplin I flew all over the planet looking for clues, but the definitive Western expert on Holmes [Leslie S. Klinger] lives 20 minutes up the road in Malibu. So I went and hung out with him, I read through his book, a definitive annotated Sherlock Holmes, which was probably the modern data center for us.

Did you read a lot of Doyle’s stories?

I read them all.

Were you a Sherlock Holmes fan before you signed onto the movie, or did you pack in all that reading afterwards?

I honestly knew nothing about the character—just that he's a detective and that he's a weirdo. But there are all kinds of misconceptions about him. Many have said that he's a huge drug fiend, but it's clear reading the stories—he's not. It's just that none of those behaviors were considered strange or illegal at that time, so he partakes in drugs, but he doesn't abuse anything. He just overindulges in them when he's bored and when he's not bored he puts them down.

Why do you think Sherlock Holmes is such an enduring character?

Look at "Hill Street Blues" or "CSI"—there have been so many legacies that respond to Holmes's character. He can be a little ****sure and full of himself, but Holmes is also like that freaky roommate everybody has once in their life, that guy who is a math genius but could never pay his part of the rent. And at the same time, he has this dedication to doing the right thing to the exclusion of doing all other things. He sacrifices everything so he can become better at what he does. As a character actor, I found that trait endlessly compelling.

Write to Lauren A. E. Schuker at lauren.schuker@wsj.com