YMMV / Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

• Aluminium Christmas Trees: It wasn't unheard of for British aristocrats to walk around naked in front of their servants, who were regarded as part of the furniture.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Both Sherlock and Moriarty pictured how the battle would go in their minds, but Holmes decided on a Taking You with Me on Moriarty, defeating him in just 9 seconds—when they both came to the conclusion that Holmes's injured arm would be too easy for Moriarty to exploit during the fight.
• Awesome Music: Some parts of the soundtrack pinches Ennio Morricone's theme from Two Mules for Sister Sara.
• Complete Monster: Professor James Moriarty, the notorious "Napoleon of Crime", is Holmes's equal in intellect but utterly lacking in any moral restraints. Fatally poisoning Irene Adler for falling in love with Holmes, Moriarty goes after not only Holmes but also his best friend, Dr. John Watson and his new wife Mary with his goons. Plotting to jump-start World War I so he can profit off the munitions sales, Moriarty oversees a series of bombings across European counties to increase tensions and greedily has a businessman killed to acquire his company. Capturing Holmes, Moriarty brutally tortures him and murders the members of the Gypsy tribe attempting to free Holmes, before trying to enact his final ploy to begin his war.
• Contested Sequel: Audience score in Rotten Tomatoes remains in 77% for both films, curiously enough, but the critical reception of the sequel was significantly lower than the first.
• Fan Nickname: Stephen Fry's version of Mycroft Holmes quickly took on the nickname "Frycroft".
• Genius Bonus:
  • When Gladstone collapses (just before Holmes gives Watson his wedding present), Holmes mentions to Watson that he's been experimenting with Ricinus communis— the castor oil plant from which the poison ricin is derived.
  • Moriarty's blackboard, already a Freeze-Frame Bonus, contains a lot more than just the Chekhov's Gun for later:
    • In multiple places, there are equations trying to solve the n-body problem, fitting a doctor of astronomy trying to study the mysteries of gravity and the interaction of celestial bodies.
    • Building on that, he has also written down equations that prove the Painlevé conjecture, a solution to the three-body problem, something that wasn't done until the 1990s.
    • There are equations written down that explain self-sustaining electromagnetic waves (i.e. light) and elsewhere, there are equations describing the propogation of waves that seem to be derived from the Helmholtz equation. Specifically, Moriarty appears to be trying to puzzle out what sort of light beams can exist inside of optical cavities that you would find in a laser, something that wouldn't be invented until the 1960s.
    • Finally, most relevant to the film, Moriarty has a Pascal's Triangle, but with lines striking through numbers at an odd angle, the sums of the numbers in each strike-through following the Fibonacci Sequence. Based on its tie in "The Art of Domestic Horticulture", as well as a note being given to Moriarty by Moran in Paris that has several numbers on it, Moriarty was using the Triangle and the Fibonacci sequence as the keys for a Book Cipher, which Holmes deduces and tasks Mary with cracking at the end of the film.
  • The chess game that Holmes and Moriarty play against each other in the finale is based on a real life chess game between chess Grandmasters Bent Larsen and Tigran Petrosian in 1966, where Larsen deliberately sacrificed his queen to Petrosian in a play that seemingly gave no immediate benefit or return to him, but ultimately set up the conditions he would need to checkmate Petrosian. Petrosian realized he had fallen into a trap and conceded the game, but by following the chess moves Holmes and Moriarty verbally announce, you can track a possible sequence of actual chess moves that Larsen and Petrosian could have theoretically played out had the game continued. And, of course, within the context of the film, Holmes has defeated Moriarty by playing on his greed, his inability to pass up an opportunity that's too good to be true, and by sacrificing the most powerful piece on the board: Holmes himself.
• He's Just Hiding: It's fairly common to see fans purposing ways Irene Adler's death didn't actually happen (check the WMG page for a few of them). Early rumors that Rachel McAdams would be cast again in the third film only helped to it, and even despite they have not been confirmed, they support the perception that Irene's death was purposedly left ambiguous in order to open the door to a future return.
• Ho Yay: Like the previous film, there was so much of it that it had to given a page of its own.
• It Was His Sled: Anyone who's read the books knew what to expect when Mycroft dropped the name of Reichenbach, Switzerland.
• Like You Would Really Do It: When Holmes briefly appears to die on the train. Obviously the plot can't go on without him, and any Holmes fan knows that even if the writers did kill off Holmes, he would have to die alongside Moriarty. (Which makes the second death scene a lot more convincing.)
• Magnificent Bastard: Colonel Sebastian Moran is a disgraced soldier turned efficient and extremely loyal assassin for Professor James Moriarty—assuring Moriarty's targets are taken out for him be it by poisoned darts shot from his cane if necessary. Moran specifically snipes a target from about 600 feet away seconds before the bomb meant to conceal the kill goes off and later distracts Sherlock Holmes by showing him how to work a German-made gun long enough to then have him subdued. Moran then relentlessly pursues and orders soldiers to unleash an arsenal to try to take Holmes; Dr. John Watson and their allies out while they're escaping—and with intense focus despite injury, managing to personally get a kill shot off on one at the last moment too.
• Moral Event Horizon: At first, Professor Moriarty comes across as an Affably Evil Worthy Opponent to Holmes, but any possible claim to playing fair is utterly destroyed when he announces his intent to make Watson collateral damage for no other reason than to hurt Holmes, and in the same breath reveals that he has already poisoned Irene Adler because she outlived her usefulness.
• Paranoia Fuel: Holmes' urban camouflage. He could be hiding in your room, watching what you're doing, right now. The end?
• Retroactive Recognition: Sebastian Moran is Arthur Fooking Shelby.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Sherlock's departure from John's wedding after the holy union between him and Mary, counts as both this and heartwarming.
  • Irene's death stands out as the most prominent.
  • Also a twofer in the movie's climax, the first being Sim's wailing when her brother suddenly dies from poison right in front of her, and the other being when Holmes grabbed Moriarty and plunged over the falls and its aftermath. What's worse is John's last words in his manuscript, describing him playing witness to this potential Heroic Sacrifice.
    "A few words may suffice to tell the little that remains. Any attempt at finding the bodies was absolutely hopeless. And so there, deep down in that dreadful cauldron of swirling water and seething foam, would lie for all time, the most dangerous criminal and the foremost champion of the law of their generation. I shall ever regard him as the best and the wisest man whom I have ever known."
    • On top of that, the original story, "The Final Problem", had John responding to a fake call for help from an inn, leaving Holmes to face Moriarty alone and hurl the both of them off the waterfall, with John figuring this out minutes later. In this version, he gets to where Holmes and Moriarty are, just in time for him to see Holmes closing his eyes and throwing himself and Moriarty off the ledge and into the waters below.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The radio transmitter from the previous film is in no way mentioned in the sequel. However, with the second sequel in production, it could be a contingency plan for Moriarty.
  • Also, the death of Irene Adler feels like a waste when you consider they obviously thought the two heroes one villainess formula worked from last film, but felt they should have her carry the Idiot Ball enough to keep an appointment with Moriarty after she failed him. Plus, it really ticks off Nero Wolfe fans...

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