Awesome / Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

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Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

• Three of Moriarty's henchmen ambush Sherlock in the beginning. One then starts whistling Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, and his fellow thug continues without missing a beat. Clearly, Moriarty hired some quality henchmen.
• Holmes and Moriarty playing a game of chess without looking at the board, knowing exactly where every piece is, and at the same time discussing their plans. In fact, Sherlock started the invisible game, after Moriarty finishes his Evil Gloating about the inevitable upcoming war and about Switzerland respecting his privacy thanks to his fortune. While also taking off the coat that Moriarty offered him earlier.
  Holmes: Bishop takes Knight, check.
• Moriarty sticking a fish hook into Holmes and spinning him round and round while singing along to a German opera about a man who wanted to catch a fish. A moment of surreal brilliance. Made doubly awesome by the fact that Holmes stole Moriarty's notebook during the scene and put the illustration mentioned below into it.
• The entirety of Holmes' meeting with Moriarty in his college, which establishes Moriarty as more than a match for the detective, and a Worthy Opponent. The conversation sums up everything well.
  Moriarty: Rest assured, if you plan to bring destruction down upon me, I shall do the same to you. My respect for you, Mr. Holmes, is the reason you're still alive.
  Sherlock: You've paid me several compliments. Let me pay you one in return, when I say that if I was assured of the former eventuality, I would cheerfully accept the latter.
• Moriarty's 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 true Chess Master. 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.
    Holmes I was mistaken.
    Watson: What?
    Holmes: I made a mistake! (Angrily tosses the king chess piece aside)
  • In the climactic chess game, Moriarty proved himself to be a master planner. In the case of his surgically modified assassin failing to assassinate the Prime Minister, he had Moran ready nearby to silence him, ensuring that nothing ever gets to him. Something that Watson realized too late.
    Watson: No loose ends. (Immediately bolts to the already dying assassin)
  • Moriarty gets another one at the climax. While Holmes is deducing how to best Moriarty in a fight, Moriarty smiles, thinks "Come now. You think you're the only one who can play this game?", comes up with his own deductions, and actually wins the (imaginary) fight.
  • And, to his credit, Moriarty is every bit a beast in hand-to-hand combat as he is in mental games, further emphasizing his role as the Evil Counterpart to Sherlock. Every strike is aimed precisely to eliminate his opponent and remind him who is (supposedly) the lesser in this encounter, targeting his injured shoulder multiple times while unleashing every bit of the fury he disguises before the actual fight.
  • "Conclusion? 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 Inspector Lestrade, who is already in the process of confiscating much of Moriarty's wealth. Perfectly shown in The Summation below.
  Holmes: I attended several of your lectures. It was in Oslo, when I first caught a glimpse of your little notebook. Red-leather bound from Smythson, on Bond street. Rook to king's rook three. Check.
  Moriarty: (Panics for a moment, then checks his pocket for his notebook, and continues smiling after knowing that it's still there) Bishop to rook three.
  Holmes: Its importance was not fully apparent to me, until I observed your penchant for feeding pigeons. Then, it occurred... that with an empire so enormous, even you must keep a record of it somewhere. Bishop takes bishop.
  Moriarty: Rook to bishop four.
  Holmes: I then only require the notebook itself. You didn't make it easy. I would need to endure a considerable amount of pain. But the notebook would undoubtedly be encoded, so how to break the code? Rook takes rook.
  Moriarty: Pawn takes rook.
  Holmes: Bishop to bishop seven.
  Moriarty: Queen takes knight pawn.
  Holmes: Does The Art of Domestic Horticulture mean anything to you? How could a man as meticulous as you, own such a book, yet completely neglect the flowers in his own window box? Irony abounds.
  [Moriarty panics, then brings out his notebook from his pocket to check its contents.]
  Holmes: Never mind, it's safe, in London, where my colleagues are making good use of it. The most formidable criminal mind in Europe, had just had all of his money stolen, by perhaps the most inept inspector in the history of Scotland Yard.
  [Moriarty checks the contents of his notebook, but it's revealed to be a flipbook, then looks at Holmes in disbelief.]
  Holmes: He'll be making an anonymous donation to the widows and orphans of war fund. Bishop to bishop eight. Discovered check, and incidentally... Mate.
  • Equally brilliant is 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 awesome and ironic point that Moriarty, whose plans were to profit from a war that HE would cause, lost his fortune to a charity benefiting wives and orphans of war victims.
• Holmes vs. Moriarty. The entirety of the fight takes place purely in their thoughts, but the awesomeness is there. And Moriarty is the only character to be able to fight Holmes on an even field.
  Holmes: His advantage: My injury. My advantage: His rage. [Moriarty knocks Holmes' left arm away before assaulting him with a flurry of blows] Incoming assault. Feral, but experienced. Use his momentum to counter. [Holmes quickly blocks Moriarty's strikes, before using his left arm to give Moriarty a blow to the midsection and his right jaw before cutting to real time]
  Moriarty: Come now. You really think you're the only one who can play this game? [back to the mind game] Trap arm. [Moriarty grabs Holmes' left arm] Target weakness. [aims to grab Holmes' injured right shoulder] Follow with haymaker.
  Holmes: Ah, there we find the boxing champion of Cambridge. [blocks Moriarty's haymakers without breaking a sweat]
  Moriarty: Competent, but predictable. [Holmes gave Moriarty a powerful right hook, which staggers him] Now allow me to reply. [grabs Holmes' left arm once more and relentlessly attacks Holmes' injured shoulder, pushing him closer to the railing over the falls]
  Holmes: Arsenal running dry. Adjust strategy. [attempts to go for Moriarty's legs, but Moriarty dodged successfully, before resuming his assault on the injury]
  Moriarty: The wound is taking its toll. [smacks Holmes' face onto the chess table while landing hits on Holmes' injury]
  Holmes: As I feared. Injury makes defense untenable. [a knee kick to Holmes' face and Moriarty got Holmes on the railing, close to pushing him over] Prognosis: Increasingly negative. [Moriarty dislocates Holmes' right arm before attacking his injury, blocking Holmes' attempts to prevent it]
  Moriarty: Let's not waste any more of one another's time. We both know how this ends. [Moriarty finally releases Holmes, sending him plummeting down the falls]
• The last scene...Holmes disguised as a chair in Watson's own house, sneaking a peak at the emotional tribute Watson is penning about him! You just know he's about to 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 a singular punctuation mark to Watson's manuscript...
• Watson. Cannon. That is all.
  • "That's not fair."
  • Made even better when one remembers that Moran and Moriarty have been consistently one step ahead at every turn. This turns the tables squarely back in Watson and Holmes' favor, and Moran, sociopathic spoiled brat that he is, looks like he wants to throw a tantrum when he realizes his position.
• Half a dozen of Moriarty’s henchmen try to assassinate Watson and Mary while en route to their honeymoon. Unfortunately, they didn’t count on Sherlock Holmes.
  • To wit, he sneaks aboard the train without alerting Watson, Mary or the thugs, while providing the trope image for incredibly conspicuous drag, uses a few items from the train lavatory to assemble a grenade trap, uses the darkness to slip a stick of lipstick in the place of a machine gun bullet, and stuffs the cap into a soldiers rifle. He then accurately predicts when each will come into play, and has Watson act in accordance. His shoving Mary into the river off a train is less pleasant, but almost certainly saved her life.
  • Watson gets one when he makes good use of the opening Holmes’s aforementioned lipstick provides, shooting a soldier about to toss a grenade at them. After a few seconds, we see he’s dropped it in a bag of grenades. With one missing a pin. Boom.
• Mary, of all people, pulling a gun on one of the assassins on the train.
  I think it's time for you to leave.
  • 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 behind 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.
    • And guess who happened to have been in charge of said slow-motion...
• In keeping with his role as badass ex-military marksman and second-in-command to Moriarty, Sebastian 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.
  • The simple fact that Moran is only in a position to do this because he survived Watson's attempt to kill him with a howitzer fired at his sniper nest from point-blank range thanks to some considerable hustle on his part.
• Speaking of Moran, there's also his relationship with Moriarty, which goes beyond the usual Big Bad-Number Two relationship. Witness Moran making a concrete effort to ensure that his boss is fine just after Watson shoots down a tower on Moriarty's operating table room, with a tinge of fear and uncertainty in his usually cold voice. Most other henchmen would certainly haven't bothered to do so, and the evil duo truly do serve as a Mirror Universe-style parallel to Sherlock and Watson.
• Watson, at the summit, makes a Sherlock Scan to find the imposter and saves the day while Holmes is outside playing chess to keep Moriarty busy. Even Moriarty is aware of Watson's abilities after living with Holmes for so long, and even seems a' bit concerned knowing Watson's in the other room.
  Holmes: We both have two Bishops. I may be absent from the room, but my methods are not.
  Moriarty: [Chuckles] Surely, you don't mean Dr. Watson?
  Holmes: [Gives a cold stare]
  Moriarty: [Looking the tiniest bit nervous] That doesn't seem fair.
• The End?

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