Sherlock Holmes (film)/Awesome

Sherlock Holmes

• Holmes manages, within a matter of moments, to completely disguise himself with things he picks up while busy trailing Irene through a carnival, then catch up to her coach and even catch a tiny glimpse of her employer.
• When Irene is almost mugged in an alley, she manages to beat the muggers and steal their wallets.
• The entire sequence of Blackwood's men versus Holmes and Watson in the "ginger midget's" lair. Also doubles as Crowning Moment of Funny.
• The Summation where Holmes has Blackwood dangling off Tower Bridge and proceeds to reveal everything he'd effortlessly deduced over the course of the entire movie, casually finishing the complete demolition of Blackwood's supernatural pretensions and then saving Blackwood's life so that he can rightfully go to the gallows should be enough to persuade any skeptic that this really is Sherlock Holmes we're watching.
• Lord Coward turning to shoot Holmes only to find that while he wasn't looking, Holmes had closed the flue in the fireplace, and is now hidden in a billowing cloud of smoke. Holmes baits him with a bit of misdirection in the smoke while the villain searches until it clears and Holmes is jauntily sitting in a chair behind the villain.
• The best part is that at the beginning of the scene, it looks like Lord Coward is being Dangerously Genre Savvy, getting ready to kill Holmes the second he's got him prisoner. And Holmes still outmaneuvers him.
• Irene's "entrance" into the location of Blackwood's Gas Chamber death machine.
• "His name is Moriarty." No, it's not The Un-Reveal that's awesome -- the quote simply illustrates the awesome Xanatos Gambit executed by The Man Behind the Man.
• Holmes not only beating the shit out of his much bigger opponent in a fighting tournament, but mentally processing every move he's going to make in a slow motion second. It's a great scene that shows how his physical abilities also reinforce his great intellect.
  • This must not register on an emotional level. First, distract target. Then block his blind jab. Counter with cross to left cheek. Discombobulate. Dazed, will attempt wild haymaker. Employ elbow block, and body shot. Block feral left. Weaken right jaw, now fracture. Break cracked ribs. Traumatize solar plexus. Dislocate jaw entirely. Heel kick to diaphragm. In summary: ears ringing, jaw fractured, three ribs cracked, four broken, diaphragm hemorrhaging. Physical recovery: six weeks. Full psychological recovery: six months. Capacity to spit at back of head: neutralized.
• Holmes is kidnapped by a leader of the secret society, who smugly assumes that Holmes is wondering where he is and who he's dealing with, having been blindfolded for the whole trip. Except Holmes was able to use various auditory and physical clues to track the entire journey and divined his "host's" name from correspondence in the room, and asks why they even bothered to blindfold him. Also a Crowning Moment of Funny.
• "Relax. I'm a doctor."

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

• Moriarty's The Reveal to Irene Adler in the dining hall. If you simply must know, Irene is drinking tea in plain sight whilst Moriarty sits behind a red curtain, continuing the motif of the faceless character from the first film. They are chatting when Moran, nearby, clangs a cup twice, and the ENTIRE dining hall clears out except for Irene and Moriarty. It is at this point Moriarty reveals himself.
  • The opera scene is where Moriarty firmly establishes himself as a Magnificent Bastard. Holmes has followed a trail of clues leading him to a bomb Moriarty has planted at an opera house. Holmes gets backstage, reaches a platform beneath the stage...and there's no bomb. Instead, there's a chess piece (a king) sitting in one corner, and when Holmes picks the piece up, he looks through a hole in the platform and has a direct line of sight to Moriarty's seat, where the Professor just smiles at him. Meanwhile, the actual bomb, planted at a diplomatic conference at a hotel, detonates.
  • Moriarty gets another one at the climax. While Holmes is deducing how to best Moriarty in a fight, Moriarty smiles, thinks "You think you're the only one who can play this game?", comes up with his own deductions, and actually wins the (imaginary) fight.
  • "Result inevitable. Unless...."
• Moriarty taunts Holmes that all of his efforts have not really accomplished anything in the end. Holmes counters by revealing that he not only allowed Moriarty to torture him earlier in the film purposefully in order to get a chance to steal the pocket notebook in which his assets are documented, he also figured out how its contents were encoded and passed it all on to Lestrade, who is already in the process of confiscating much of Moriarty's wealth. Checkmate.
  • Oh, come on- no mention of Holmes' flipbook? Especially since it's a direct nod to earlier in the film when Moriarty asked Holmes who was the fisherman and who was the fish... and the flipbook shows a fisherman getting eaten by his own catch: a shark. It ends with the shark quipping "be careful what you fish for!"
• The last scene... Holmes disguised as a chair in Watson's own house, sneaking a peak at the emotional tribute Waston is penning about him! You just know he's about the crash the second honeymoon trip.
  • Possibly even one-upping his own literary canon counterpart by sending Watson an anonymous package containing Mycroft's breathing device, just knowing that Watson will recognize it immediately. And as Watson runs off asking Mary if the postman looked unusual, Holmes suddenly pops up off the chair to add his singular punctuation mark to Watson's manuscript...
• Watson. Cannon. That is all.
  • "That's not fair."
• Mary, of all people, pulling a gun on one of the assassins on the train.
  • Another small one for Mary: close to the end of the film, she, along with Scotland Yard, use the information given to them by Holmes to gain more evidence behing Moriarty's plan. Mary helps by putting her governess education skills in practice to decode Moriarty's notebook.
  • This cannot possibly be emphasized enough: in the end, Moriarty's entire operation is dismantled by Inspector Lestrade and Mrs. Watson.
  • Cue the scene where boxes and boxes of money are stacked in the offices, and then Mary just smiles and says "That's the end of page two. Page three..."
• As Holmes, Watson, and Sim are fleeing from Moriarty's weapons factory, they are pursued by Moran and several Mooks. At one point, Holmes dodges a near-point blank shot from one mook, grabs his rifle and knocks him out, while chambering a new round in said rifle, and passing it to Watson, who then non-fatally snipes Moran. Made especially impressive by Holmes having a large wound in his shoulder, and having just been pulled from a collapsed building.
  • The entire factory and forest escape is one giant CMOA, filled with slow-motion destruction and as much gun porn as you'd ever want.
• In keeping with his role as badass ex-military marksman and second-in-command to Moriarty, Colonel Moran gets several. The most prominent is probably when, after chasing Holmes, Watson and Co. hell-for-leather through a forest (managing to take down multiple moving targets with his rifle without breaking stride) and being knocked to the ground by a bullet, he gets back up with a deadly gleam in his eye, steadies his hands, steadies his breathing, and picks off the unlucky fellow bringing up the rear with a single perfect shot - apparently purely in revenge for daring to shoot at him, since the escape was already assured at that point.
• Watson at the summit makes a Sherlock Scan to find the imposter and saves the day while Holmes is outside playing chess.
• The End ?