When people copyright their intellectual property, they keep people from cashing in on their ideas. This is very important when it comes to books, comics, music, television, and movies. It ensures that if someone’s character becomes popular, other people will need permission to make money off that character. Sometimes, something like Night of the Living Dead will sneak through the cracks, allowing people to make other “Living Dead” movies without obtaining permission. Most times, however, people have to wait. Or just get permission.
The public domain happens after the copyright runs out. You see, copyright only lasts for a certain amount of time. It is not indefinite. Depending on where the copyright was registered, it might be valid for different amounts of time. Here in Canada, the typical copyright lasts for the creator’s lifetime, plus fifty years after the creator’s death. The rules are a little different in the USA, where creations enter the public domain ninety-six years after being published. This will change in 2073, where things entering the public domain will enter seventy years after the creator’s death.
The technicalities of the public domain aren’t the topic this week, though. I don’t want to get into all the ins and outs of copyright law. I just want you to know that the public domain exists. Once a copyright has run through its time, the creation becomes public property. This means that people are allowed to use that idea in whatever way they want. If they want to make money off a public domain character or story, they can. And it’s these public domain properties that bring us to this week’s topic.
Holmes & Watson was a comedic take on the Sherlock Holmes characters. Sherlock Holmes (Will Ferrell) and his sidekick Dr. John Watson (John C. Reilly) were hot on the heels of another mystery. Moriarty (Ralph Fiennes) was in custody, but they knew it wasn’t really Moriarty. It was a lookalike placed into custody so Moriarty could flee to America. With all this going on, someone was still taunting Holmes and Watson, and they decided to follow the clues to figure out who and why.
This was a comedic take on Sherlock Holmes, much in the style of a Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly team up. Probably because that’s exactly what it was. That didn’t quite work for a Sherlock Holmes story. It wasn’t so much the performances of the two leads. It wasn’t the performances of the supporting cast, either. Rebecca Hall, Ralph Fiennes, Kelly MacDonald, Lauren Lapkus, Rob Brydon, and Steve Coogan all gave decent performances. It was the writing that was the downfall.
There were three pieces of each joke. The characters would explain the joke. Then the joke would happen. Then they would explain what just happened, again, in case anyone watching missed the other two times. This repetitive nature took a lot of the wind out of the sails of Holmes & Watson. The other part of the writing that was tiresome was the period piece references. I get that the movie was a period piece, but many of the references were similar to what happens in a prequel. The filmmakers felt the need to include on-the-nose jokes about things that people know happened, with little to add. The climax took place on the docked Titanic, which was a cool look at something happening in London at the time. Adding the kicker that characters were taking it to get to the USA wasn’t necessary and actually made the whole having the Titanic in the movie feel like a forced punchline, rather than a natural setting.
Anyway, that was one take on the Sherlock Holmes character. The reason I mentioned all the public domain stuff at the beginning was because Sherlock Holmes is in the public domain. People can do whatever they want with the property, as long as they aren’t adapting the few stories still under copyright. This has led to numerous adaptations of the character, especially in recent years. Many of them have been vastly different from one another. There have been style changes. There have been setting changes. There have even been genre changes. They all share one thing, though. At the centre of all of them is Holmes.
I’m only going to be writing about a few of the newer adaptations of the Sherlock Holmes mythos. Sherlock Holmes entered the public domain in 2000. Except for a few stories written after World War I, the entire original Arthur Conan Doyle run of the character is in the public domain. Thus, I’m going to be sticking to adaptations released after the character and original bunch of stories entered the public domain. They will also only be the adaptations that come to mind. I might miss some. But I’m going to hit some of the big ones.
Another note is that I haven’t seen all of them. In fact, I may have only watched three of the ones that I’ll be writing about. This means that I’m going to be giving generalizations on most with some quick research done to make sure there’s the slightest amount of depth to what I saw. This is mostly going to be about the different ways that the property has been adapted since reaching the public domain. Allowing more people to try more things with a property can lead to a fun variety. Whether good or bad, people will take swings and they can be quite interesting to see.
The most famous of the Sherlock Holmes adaptations was probably the big screen franchise that starred Robert Downey Jr. Director Guy Ritchie was fresh off a return to form with RocknRolla and moved into the big, Hollywood film system. Robert Downey Jr. played Sherlock Holmes while Jude Law took on the role of John Watson. Much like Holmes & Watson, the Guy Ritchie films were period pieces. They happened to be set twenty years before the comedy, making them a slightly different period, but they were period pieces all the same.
It was the attitude that truly set Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes movies apart. Ritchie brought a sort of rock-and-roll aesthetic to the material. It was primarily in the visual style. It was clearly trying to be the “cool” version of Sherlock Holmes, with speed-ramping and bare-knuckle boxing. The first one kind of worked. It made for an entertaining movie solidified by the two lead performances. It warranted a sequel, with a second sequel possibly on the way.
Two other movies came out that took the Sherlock mythos in a different direction than the standard Holmes and Watson mystery solving, as well. The first one, based on a book, was Enola Holmes. You may have seen something about it on Netflix, while browsing through the main screen for ideas about what to watch. Enola was the teenage sister of the great detective, Sherlock. While trying to solve a family mystery, she stumbled upon something much bigger and had to save the country.
Enola Holmes was another movie that spawned a sequel, which is set to be released sometime this year. It is another film franchise based on a book; only, this time, the book was also based on a book. Enola Holmes was adapted from a young adult book, which was a new perspective on the Sherlock Holmes stories. The character of Enola was original to the young adult series, but much of the world and supporting characters were pulled from the original Sherlock Holmes stories. It made for an interesting, new spin on material people had seen and read many times before. The perspective being shifted to a teenage girl made it even more so.
The other film adaptation worth noting is Mr. Holmes. The story was pulled from a 2005 novel called A Slight Trick of the Mind, which saw an old Sherlock Holmes trying to recall details from his final job as a detective. It was another period piece, this time in the late 1940s, that took the standard Sherlock Holmes story, and added a new spin. It wasn’t set during the prime of Sherlock’s sleuthing days. The story was set well in the future (his, not ours), with Sherlock’s mind slowly deteriorating. The brilliant man was trying to recall his brilliance, but he wasn’t as brilliant as he once was.
I haven’t seen Mr. Holmes, but I believe it would fit in well with a theme that has been popping up in recent movies. There’s this idea that people enjoy: a recognizable hero ages out of their prime. What can they do when they aren’t at the top of their game anymore? Can they still save the world, solve the mystery, or bust the criminals? James Bond got that treatment, to an extent. As did Batman in the Zack Snyder movies. It only made sense for the greatest detective to ever grace the page and screen to also get his old man adaptation.
Now let’s get into the television side of Sherlock Holmes. There are three television adaptations I want to write about here. Two of them are pretty obvious. One of them isn’t quite as obvious, but everything will click into place. Let’s get to it then, shall we?
Stephen Moffat had a history of writing new adaptations of older works through the 2000s. He joined the writing staff of Doctor Who during the 2005 revival series and remained a writer through the 2008 series. His work on the series gained critical acclaim and led him to become the head writer when Russell T. Davies stepped down after that 2008 series. Right before that, he penned a modern adaptation of Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde titled Jekyll, which saw a descendant of Dr. Jekyll experiencing a similar ailment where he would turn into Mr. Hyde.
Following the success of running Doctor Who, Stephen Moffatt decided it was the right time to bring Sherlock Holmes into the modern world. Sherlock hit BBC in 2011 with three feature length episodes that brought Sherlock Holmes and John Watson to modern day London. The series went on to become a huge success. There have been four seasons, each with three episodes, and a special. I haven’t seen the series and don’t know too much about what happened in it. What I can say, however, is that Hollywood wasn’t going to let the UK have all the Sherlock spoils.
Soon after Sherlock premiered to major acclaim, CBS decided to get in on the game. They greenlit a Sherlock Holmes series called Elementary that brought the detective to modern day New York City. That’s much better than the stuffy old London, right? There were some major changes to the Sherlock Holmes characters in this retelling. Sherlock was a recovering drug addict instead of actively using drugs. His sponsor was Joan Watson, a gender-swapped version of John Watson. She would later become his apprentice and work partner. His nemesis was still Moriarty, but once again gender-swapped. And, because he was in New York City, Sherlock helped out the NYPD, not Scotland Yard.
Elementary aired on CBS, which is a network known for their procedural dramas. It made sense. Sherlock was always solving mysteries. Procedurals tend to be people solving a new crime every episode, once a week, for twenty-two weeks. Ish. The stories weren’t always going to be direct adaptations of classic tales. Hell, with the changes the show was making, it would be tough to have any direct adaptations. But it would still involve Sherlock Holmes solving mysteries, which is the heart of the series anyway. Elementary ran for seven seasons before concluding in the summer of 2019.
The final Sherlock Holmes adaptation that I want to mention is one that some of you might not even know. Actually, most of you probably know it’s an adaptation. Let’s not fool ourselves. You are smart enough people. And if you’re reading this, you probably know your movies and television shows. This one was a swing in a new direction, though it was still within the procedural realm of other Sherlock Holmes adaptations. The other Sherlock Holmes adaptation was a little show called House.
House started up in 2004. It featured a surly doctor solving a bunch of medical mysteries. Someone would come through his teaching hospital with an unknown illness. Dr. House, his best friend Wilson, and the students they taught would work together to figure out what the illness was. Throughout the series, the students would be swapped out, while other hospital staff would come and go. But the mystery illness aspect and solving the mystery to help the patient would stay.
Aside from the simple story structure being relatively the same, with the mystery and all, there were more similarities between the characters. Sherlock’s last name was Holmes. The name House could be seen as a nice reference to that since a house is a home. His best friend is James Wilson, which sounds very similar to John Watson. House had a painkiller addiction. Sherlock Holmes, and I can’t believe it took me this long to specifically mention it, used cocaine recreationally. House lived at 221B Baker Street, the same address as Sherlock Holmes. There were many other small references throughout the series, like characters named Adler and Moriarty, as well as House’s personality, that called back to the classic stories as well. It was Sherlock Holmes placed in the medical procedural world.
As you can see, since Sherlock Holmes hit the open market in the public domain, people have taken the property and done their own spins. There have been the straight-forward retellings where the only differences were the director’s stylistic choices. There were modern updates, placing the characters in the present day. Some characters were changed up a bit, with age differences and gender-swaps. In one case, a new character was created, and the main characters were either pushed into supporting roles or into the background. In another case, the Sherlock Holmes characters and formula were placed onto a medical procedural. The public domain allowed people to try these things. Not all of them were critically successful. Not all of them were financially successful. But they brought variety, which is something that doesn’t necessarily come when works are still under copyright.
Sherlock Holmes isn’t the only time that you see people trying different things with public domain material. Look at what has happened with The Three Musketeers over the years. There have been the typical sword-fighting movies, but there has recently also been a steampunk version and a modern-day spy movie based on the Alexandre Dumas stories. The works of Shakespeare have been adapted in so many ways that you might not even realize that movies like My Own Private Idaho, She’s the Man, or 10 Things I Hate About You were loosely based on Shakespeare plays. If these works weren’t in the public domain, adaptations would be controlled by an estate, telling people what they can and can’t do. The public domain allows people to try new things. Whether they succeed or fail doesn’t matter. At least they tried something different.
Eventually, everything will end up in the public domain. It won’t ever be everything at once. There will always be some staggering as the newer intellectual property will still fall under copyright law for a set amount of time. But it will become public domain when that time is up. When it does, people will be able to take wilder swings at the material, try new things, and maybe come up with an entertaining story that people weren’t expecting. Originality isn’t always in the story or characters themselves. It comes from what people choose to do with them. How they tell the story. How the characters are used. I always say that. Public domain is another way that people can tell the story uniquely.
It's about time we got to some notes:
- Holmes & Watson was suggested by @BreakABone, who also suggested Birdemic (week 100), Steel (week 127), Catwoman (week 174), I, Frankenstein (week 217), Jonah Hex (week 249), and Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (week 280).
- I mentioned 3 Musketeers (week 384) right at the end of the post.
- Billy Zane made a quick appearance at the end of Holmes & Watson. He has been in three other Sunday “Bad” Movies. They were Going Overboard (week 67), The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption (week 380), and Sniper (week 430).
- Ralph Fiennes was in both The Avengers (week 304) and Holmes & Watson.
- Finally, Hugh Laurie has made quick appearances in both Spice World (week 451) and Holmes & Watson. Interestingly, he was also Dr. Gregory House in House.
- Have you seen Holmes & Watson? What did you think? What’s your favourite adaptation of Sherlock Holmes? Do you like when things reach the public domain and people start trying new things? Put your thoughts in the comments or get a hold of me on Twitter.
- If there is a movie that you think would be a good fit for Sunday “Bad” Movies, let me know. Find me on Twitter and message me. Or put the suggestion in the comments. In most cases, I’ll be sure to check it out. This week was a suggestion!
- Check out Sunday “Bad” Movies on Instagram for more Sunday “Bad” Movies fun.
- Now it’s time to look towards next week and see what we’ve got cooking. Every once in a while, I like to take a trip to the world of television movies. No channel is more suited for this blog than SyFy, or it’s predecessor, Sci-Fi Channel. I’ll be checking out a movie that aired on Sci-Fi Channel in 2003 called Control Factor. If you want to see what I thought about that one, come back next week. I’ll see you then.
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