Sherlock Holmes, again

[starlady]

Oh, this movie. I can't think of the last time I saw a movie again and thought it was even slashier than I did the first time. I actually found myself looking around at the other people in the theater and wondering what exactly people without slash goggles were getting out of it--people laughed at all the right points (unlike in Milwaukee! people in Jersey have more fun, apparently?), so the movie was hitting them too, but in what places? I couldn't venture to say. eumelia asked me a few months ago what I thought fandom was, and now I have to amend my answer: it's a worldview, too.

I really thought that rushthatspeaks's comments on the movie were spot-on with regards to class, and I totally had them in mind while watching this time around. And, you know, class hasn't disappeared completely--viz. Lestrade handing Holmes over to the Home Secretary--but in some ways, hm, it's less firmly entrenched; Blackwood certainly doesn't get any special privileges as a (disgraced) member of the Lords. And yes I know this isn't really realistic, but still, I wound up concluding that Holmes neglecting his waistcoat when he goes to meet Blackwood in prison (especially in light of the fact that he apparently had Watson and Irene stow him a complete change of clothes on the tugboat at the end of the movie) is a deliberate insult. Everything Holmes does is deliberate (duh, Electra), or at least deliberated. I also think Holmes' personal contempt for Blackwood explains why he agrees to take the case the Four Orders crew give him, though his disregard for them precludes him taking their money. Certainly I don't think Holmes gives a damn about the social order one way or another, and probably not the empire either.

I wish we had seen more of Watson and Mary without Holmes, and more Mary and Holmes. I do think, though, that we have to read both Holmes and Watson as bisexual for the movie to make any sense, though clearly Holmes has decided in the interim since his interlude with Irene that Watson is the greatest thing since bread came sliced (not that it does yet! that is how awesome Watson is for Holmes), which is why he rejects Irene twice in the movie despite, I think, clearly being tempted. At the same time, she is still clearly completely in love with him, to the point that she puts her life on the line for him multiple times even in the face of at least one opportunity to sell him out for her own skin.

I feel like there is at least one happy ending Mary/Watson/Holmes OT3 AU here, but Holmes has clearly decided that Watson's happiness is the paramount thing, and lets him go in the end. I feel that the next movie may very well end at Reichenbach; if it doesn't, I think Mary may wind up dead. It's probably too much to hope for Irene back in the next movie, but damn, she's so awesome. And she and Holmes and Watson also make an amazing OT3! That is one combination that could also do anything they liked, if they put their minds to it (so could Holmes and Irene, for that matter), but things are never that perfect. (Note: I said some of these same things on fish_echo's post about the movie.)

Oh, Holmes and Watson. Watson clearly loves Mary a lot, because I don't know why else anyone would leave the sort of relationship he and Holmes have. All the plausible interpretations I can invent are angsty at heart, but Holmes does not seem too terribly sad at the end. Not that he would. Man, this post sounds sad now! And this movie does not make me sad; it is amazingly awesome and fills me with energy, because I find good movies uniquely inspiring. Oh, movie, I love you so much. If there's one thing I've learned in fandom, it's cognitive dissonance, and I am going to take the movie at face value and think that things have somehow, kind of, worked out between Holmes and Watson sufficient for them to kick more ass and take more names in the next movie.