Robert Downey Jr. reprises his role as the world’s most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, and Jude Law returns as his formidable colleague, Dr. Watson, in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. With the bromance and action in full effect and coming to DVD and blu-ray 14th May, flickfeast were lucky enough to bend the ear of said colleague himself, the ever-charming Mr Jude Law…
flickfeast: What did you most enjoy about returning to the franchise?
Jude Law: I think no matter how happy and harmonious and creative the first film was as a group, it’s always true to say 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 on the first and we never assumed we were going to make a second, but there was a lot of energy carried from the first into this second film – and certainly a lot of enthusiasm for relationships that worked and that we wanted to flesh out a little more. So I was excited about investigating and mining more of the same.
FF: Why do you think Holmes and Watson have endured?
JL: The reason they’ve been so popular for so long is that they’re symbolic, in a way, of characters that we all know and that we all have in us. There’s the side that’s down-to-earth and reliable and another side to us that can be imaginative and creative, eccentric and anarchic. Looked at in a simple way that’s what Watson and Holmes are symbolic of. So there’s a lot there to play with. I think one of the reasons these characters have survived the test of time and have been explored by so many actors is because they’re incredibly rich. They’re great characters. You can compare Holmes and Watson to great Shakespearean characters that have been played by hundreds of actors over many, many years. Each one of those is a different interpretation, and the fact is the source material can take that kind of interpretation – and this is our interpretation.
FF: How did you keep them fresh?
JL: First of all we had a tome of work by Conan Doyle we could lean on, to investigate how best to keep these characters rich and alive. We were also in a creative environment where we were allowed to play, to keep stretching and trying new ideas.
FF: Can you relate to these characters personally?
JL: I suppose that some days I wake up and I have to be responsible, down-to-earth and reliable and other days I don’t. I think this job in particular allows us all to be Holmesian, to be eccentric and imaginative and creative and to think out of the box. And then perhaps real life, away from work, demands us to be more like Watson.
FF: There’s more action this time round…
JL: The physical aspect of this film was another important element we wanted to push further, so we were pushing the dialogue, we were pushing the banter, we were pushing the relationship and we did noticeably step-up and say ‘Let’s really elevate the physicality’. The idea was to take these guys out of Baker Street. You don’t just hear them talking about their adventures, you see them unpicking them and running from them and living them and surviving them. We’d go into stuff 90% knowing what was happening and then usually another idea would come up that would increase it by 20%, so you were shooting 150% rather than 100%.
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Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows bursts onto DVD & blu-ray 14th May.
