Sherlock Holmes (2009) and A Game of Shadows (2011)
Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, Victorian London, and a lot of punching.
Watson’s first list of Holmes’s skills includes boxing and swordsmanship; play that up and you have an action franchise.
You want a film on a Saturday night, you want it to move, and Holmes being good in a fight sounds like a feature.
What it keeps and what it changes
Keeps: the period, Irene Adler, and in the second film Professor Moriarty as the adversary.
Changes: the pace and the plots, which are new. Guy Ritchie directs, and the first film’s villain, Lord Blackwood, is invented.
Whose story is it?
Holmes and Watson as a double act, more evenly split than the stories manage.
How much time does it ask?
Two Warner Bros. films, 2 hr 8 min each.
Jared Harris plays Moriarty in A Game of Shadows; Stephen Fry plays Mycroft.
Where to find it
Sherlock Holmes (2009): buy or rent — Prime Video
Other ways to get it: A Game of Shadows: buy or rent — Prime Video · Find where it’s streaming — JustWatch
More versions: Sherlock Holmes, Granada Television (1984–1994) · Sherlock (BBC, 2010–2017) · The Basil Rathbone films (1939–1946)