Not your grandfather’s Sherlock Holmes …
The first official trailer for the upcoming Holmes movie, evidently calculated to outrage purists and attract the attention of a younger audience.
Holmes’ “baritsu” is not identical to E.W. Barton-Wright’s Bartitsu, but still, the trailer shows us bare-knuckle boxing, stick fighting, a jiujitsu-like throw and a savate-like kick. By establishing the equation of “Victorian London” and “martial arts”, the new movie risks making Bartitsu cool ..
Tags: baritsu, bartitsu, martial arts, Sherlock Holmes movie
Events, Movie, videos | Bartitsu Society Tuesday, 19th May 2009
3 Comments
Other Links to this Post
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
By James NomadRip, Tuesday, 19th May 2009 @ 5:36 pm
I am even more excited to see this film after that trailer. It is looking even better than I’d hoped.
By David McCormick, Monday, 1st June 2009 @ 6:39 pm
Tony, I was sad not to see your name in the credits. Amazingly, they had two guys credited with the fights (a fight consultant and a fight director), which is rare enough: usually fights are done by the stunt coordinator. But for them not to hire the bartitsu master is just insulting.
By Tony Wolf, Monday, 1st June 2009 @ 7:41 pm
Hi David,
I had a commitment in the USA throughout 2008 and into the beginning of this year, so would not have been able to take part in the movie project in any case.
Fortunately Richard Ryan, the S.H. fight director, is an old colleague of mine and the Bartitsu Society donated copies of both volumes of the Compendium to the production, for use as inspiration towards the fight choreography. Sherlock Holmes’ baritsu is not identical to Barton-Wright’s Bartitsu, so we are not expecting “verbatim” Bartitsu in the movie, but we’re all looking forward to seeing what Richard and the team came up with. The movie will inevitably equate Holmes/Victorian London with martial arts in the public imagination, which will be good for our hobby in the long term.
Thanks for the kind words, but I’m not a Bartitsu master, just an enthusiast.
Cheers,
Tony