Music, Style & Culture

Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows Press Conference

We join Robert Downey Jr, Jude Law, Noomi Rapace and Guy Ritchie in London.

Guy Ritchie returns with the follow-up to his brilliant 2009 version of Sherlock Holmes.

He reunites Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law as the cunning detective and loyal sidekick Watson for Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. The action is ramped up for the sequel, with original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo star Noomi Rapace making her English-language debut as the mysterious gypsy who aids the pair in foiling Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris).

The gang were in London yesterday to talk to us press types about their new film, which hits UK cinemas on 16th December. Naturally, Downey Jr and Law's epic bromance was touched upon, as well as the intricacies of filming a naked Stephen Fry as Sherlock's big brother Mycroft Holmes.

Robert and Jude, what did you particularly relish about developing the Holmes/Watson bromance?
Robert: [Jude] doesn't like it when you say bromance.
Jude: I think it belittles it. It's more than that!
Robert: Delicious. People talk about chemistry, and what does that really mean. We were just having lunch and trying to figure it out. We're really grateful it comes across that way. We work really hard, and we have respect for each other. We've seen, and been in, sequels that sucked, and we wanted to try and avoid those pitfalls.
Jude: I also think, no matter how happy and harmonious and creative the first film was as a group, 20 or 30% of a film is always taken up at the beginning getting to know each other, and that you end on a high, knowing how each other works. It never felt like we dropped the ball from the first - we never assumed there would be a second - but a lot of energy was carried into the second. A lot of enthusiasm for relationships that worked, that we wanted to flesh out more. I was excited about mining more of the same.

How much do you get to work on the characters?
Robert: Mr Law and I should speak about this. From the minute we met, when Guy got us together, hoping we would hit it off, we cracked a book and started getting chills: hey, Watson was never this chubby old doofus with his foot in a waste paper basket. He was dynamic, he was in the army. Holmes never wore a deerstalker hat. We had a chance to, not rewrite the history of Holmes, but to extrapolate from the untapped actual history.
Jude: You can compare Holmes and Watson in a way to great Shakespearean characters in a way. They've been played by hundreds of actors over the years, and each one is a different interpretation - the source material can take that form of interpretation. This is ours.

Robert, what are the less obvious pitfalls of sequels, as nobody sets out to make a bad sequel?
Robert: We were really fortunate to have new blood with Noomi, as, humble as she's being, she came in and mastered a second language inside a year. She came in and challenged the tenets of what does it mean to be a third party to this investigation, how can she fit into the storyline. The main thing that gets lost is that you have to redouble your humility, because there's a natural inflation that occurs with success, and until it's happened, you can't know it. I guess the main thing is, you unconsciously take things for granted, and you think the audience is with you, because you're with yourself. These are discussions that Jude and I would have all the time - what would we expect? What would be expected and gotten wrong this time because you're thinking about all the money that's to be made?
Noomi: It was amazing to see and discover how you worked, as I stepped into this big American movie. The way Guy and you two worked was so playful and easy, and I forgot I was nervous. It felt almost like a small indie production, as it was team work and it was so intimate.
Robert: I think it's really important we talk about the gypsy dance sequence just for a moment...
Jude: What would you like to know?
Robert: Where did you get those moves?
Guy: I made them dance for three days and used five seconds of it.



Noomi, you must've received many script offers after the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trilogy - why did you choose this as your first English language film?
Noomi: I always had a very strong thing with gypsies, and when this came to me... Actually I met Robert and his wife Susan [Downey, producer] in LA. It was a very quick, intense, fun meeting, and we didn't really talk about Sherlock. I came out of the meeting smiling, thinking, oh my God, I really want to work with those people. So it was very personal. I met the people from Warner Bros. and it was a very good meeting, then I met Robert and Susan, then I met Guy in London, and it started from a very honest... a discussion about movies and dreams and how we want to work. It felt like I was invited into an amazing opportunity to work with people I'd been admiring for years. It was much more about the people in it, and then also to have the opportuntity to play a gypsy.

How difficult was it to move from Swedish films?
Noomi: I think the biggest step for me was to step into the English language, because I didn't speak English two and half, three years ago. So, I was afraid I was going to be caught up in a prison of having to translate everything from Swedish into English, and not be able to improvise and adlib and live in the language. It's thanks to those boys - the way they worked and the way they embraced me, and the way Warners took care of me. It felt like everyone just grabbed me and pulled me in, and I forgot I was nervous. It felt like I became one of the boys. I forgot it was not my language.

How do you come up with the idea for the story?
Guy: As a creative team, it's just that. Lionel [Wigram, producer] came up with the idea, he started the whole thing running. Everyone has an equal part in creating what we think an audience will like, and what we think is exciting creatively. This might be overstating it, but it's a powerhouse of creativity. I don't think anyone trumps another individual in this mix. I'm not sure any one of us can take the credit for any one idea. Someone would come up with a bad idea that would get ridiculed, and then you realise it's the bad idea that led to a good idea, so there's no such thing as a bad idea. I very much like being a part of that. I feel like if any one of us take ownership of a concept, they become alienated by the group. It happens organically, because we've all got egos. But then when you get excited by the creative process, everyone gets excited, as no one is trying to own anything. Five or six brains think as one. Joel and Lionel got the momentum going to make the films, then thereafter it became a living organism as a mind. We just tap into that. The script was so rough, which some of us found frustrating at times, as we felt it wasn't the film we really wanted to make. Then it got broken down and rebuilt by the organic mind.
Robert: Any moment in this film that touches you, makes you laugh your ass off or cry - those were mine.

Guy, can you talk about the challenges of directing a naked Stephen Fry?
Guy: I thought it was going to be an issue when we were presented with the pages, and at the end it said he was naked. He turned up on the day naked! There was no great resistance - rather like getting Robert into a dress! So I've got a sneaking suspicion it could've been his idea. There was no work on my part! Robert and I have a mutual friend - that chap Chris Martin out of Coldplay - and he's a Sherlockian, as is Stephen Fry. It was his idea [to cast Fry].
Robert: Every good idea in this movie came from Chris Martin.

Were there any accidents during the action scenes, and what would you say was the hardest scene to film?
Noomi: We got bruises and stuff.
Robert: Noomi was banged up every day.
Noomi: What was amazing is that those two guys actually do their own stunts. They do almost everything. It was amazing. You really fight good!
Jude: Probably the hardest scene was running through the woods.
Robert: Guy had this idea for a sequence for quite a long time.
Noomi: I had a corset - you didn't have that.
Jude: Actually, I did have a corset...

This is a more physical film than the first - was it exhausting to combine the script with the physical aspects?
Noomi: I've done fight scenes, and I like it. This one it felt like... I stopped training, because I wanted to become more feminine - I didn't want to look like I'd just come from the gym.
Jude: I think it's true to say the physical aspect of this film was another important element we wanted to push further. We pushed the dialogue, we pushed the banter, the relationship, and we did noticably step and say, let's elevate the physicality. Going back to our original idea, it was to take these guys out of Baker Street. You don't just hear them talking about their adventures - you see them living them. That bar was pretty high. We'd go into stuff 90% knowing what was happening, and then another idea would come up that would increase it by 20%.
Guy: There's something worth noting is that these action scenes would sometimes last two weeks, and these guys would work eight, ten hours a day, repeating the same stunt. No one asks a professional athlete to do that amount of work, and consequently, these three were constantly on a diet and exercise routine. It's impossible to appreciate how much you want out of them physically, never mind the other aspects.



Why wasn't this film shot in 3D?
Guy: I am a fan of 3D movies, and I am a film geek and I like the technical aspect of filming a lot. Actually I did try and push this for 3D - the resistance was that there was a lot of 3D coming out. It felt almost tired at the time we were embarking on this. At the time it just didn't feel that innovative.
Robert: When shooting 3D I don't think you can have the swiftness of movement. Sometimes Guy would be doing innovative shots and the movie kind of leans on being able to go guerilla style here and there, with these beautiful frames. As it stands now, I feel 3D can be inefficient. I'm sure the tech's catching up with the needs of filmmakers.

Guy, do you feel constrained by the mainstream at all?
Guy: Funnily enough, I don't at all. Filmmaking's changed, as we all know, and indies got muscled out in quite conspicious fashion. Why that is the case I'm not sure. I still see myself as an indie filmmaker. I certainly got no resistance from the studio in terms of trying anything we thought was innovative - they really encouraged it. They want this filmmaking, particularly at a blockbuster level, that has absorbed an indie influence. Big movies are becoming increasingly more interesting - some of them are, some of them aren't. It's an interesting time in film history.

Sherlock has fantastic disguises - how far have you gone in real life to disguise yourself?
Jude: I'm in disguise right now! [strokes beard]
Robert: About twenty years ago, I went on a tear, and put on a Planet of the Apes mask thinking that would prevent people from knowing how blitzed I was. It worked for about the first 15 seconds. "It's me, Cornelius!"

Even after part one there were questions about the homoerotic subtext - this time you're pushing it further with the dancing, the crossdressing. Are you saying not to take it too seriously?
Robert: You mean onscreen, yeah? What happens in our private lives is another matter entirely. Jude and I have decided to save Warner Bros money - we've been sharing a suite during the entirety of the press junket. We asked for a small room, with a single bed. We prefer two sinks so we can wash up before and after our nuptials. As for wearing each others clothes to please each other, that's something we're going to save for the next installment - Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Trannies.

Our friends at Filmbeat recorded Downey Jr uttering those words above - watch him and Law being on particularly good form below.