Guy Richie and the "Sherlock Holmes" series are almost one of the IP sequels that many fans have been looking forward to for many years.
However, this series can be described as fateful. First Robert Downey Jr., on the road to shooting Marvel films, went for ten years. In addition, the original team of this film has been difficult to gather. After the release of "Sherlock Holmes 2", director Guy Richie's works were also released continuously, in addition to "Mysterious Agent" and "King Arthur: Battle of the Beasts", two works that Warner had planned, and also filmed "Aladdin" for Disney.
This has led to "Sherlock Holmes 3" becoming a difficult birth film with frequent news and repeated postponements. For many years, almost every year, the news that the film was about to start was released, but it was repeatedly frustrated.
Fans' Weibo tags in the name of Guy Ritchie brushed one after another, and even brushed the hot search list. After Iron Man finally exited and Robert Downey Jr. vacated the slot. However, the film broke the news: "Sherlock Holmes 3" changed director, directed by Dexter Fletcher.
Who is Dexter Fletcher?
Speaking of this director, Dexter Fletcher's works in recent years are more familiar to audiences. "Bohemian Rhapsody" was directed by him halfway through. In October 2018, Fletcher replaced Brian Singer as director of Bohemian Rhapsody, a film biopic about Queen, who earned the title of executive producer due to DGA regulations and the willingness of the two directors after consultation. Next, he directed 2019's Rocket Man, a film based on the true story of British national treasure singer Elton John.
Director Dexter Fletcher debuted as a child star since childhood. At the age of nine, he won his first film role, playing a small child in Dragon Snake Bully.
The first attempt led to the child star's subsequent appearance in Bob Hoskins' Long And Beautiful Friday, The Elephant Man, and Rebel Blood. As an adult, he played a 17-year-old boy in 1989's Shonen Newspaper. Even until 2001's "Company of Brothers," he was still playing a 22-year-old sergeant, when he was 35 years old.
From the end of The Junior Newspaper in 1993 to the marriage of Dexter Fletcher in 1997, he experienced the lowest period of his career, was heavily indebted, and once declared bankruptcy.
But it was also during this time that he met his best friend, Alan Rickman, who later played Potions professor Severus Snape. In 1997, when Bob Hoskins married his wife, Severus Snape was the best man.
A year later, Guy Rich invited him to play the chef "Soap" in Two Smoking Guns, and it was from this film that Dexter Fletcher realized that he was no longer the "crooked child star". He began to fight for his role as an adult actor, and it was from this period that he realized that being a director was also a suitable development path.
Later he began to plan his debut. In 2011, Dexter Fletcher released Savage Bill, a British gangster film that truly depicts the current situation in London's East End. Later he himself commented that it was a post-rock film in which he thrust the camera into the barbaric and dark london underclass. "I love London, so I want to make a movie that's really about London, like Elephant Man and Two Big Smoking Guns."
There is a great deal of self-projection in his creations. Bill, starring Charlie Corred-Mills, as a father, neither takes care of two children nor has the heart to be a good father, leaving it all to his eldest son.
In Dexter Fletcher's view, his childhood experience as a child star forced him to take on the burden of adulthood, which made him more precocious and led to his autism as an adult. The father in Savage Bill does not learn to take on the responsibilities of adulthood, while a child does, and thus loses himself and his childhood. This is Dexter Fletcher's past self, and it is also a self-portrait of the low point of adulthood.
Later, his song and dance film "Sunshine Lis" also borrowed from the past years. For Fletcher, the film, which tells the story of two young soldiers returning from the trauma of Afghanistan and trying to reintegrate into local society, mirrors some of his past friends, those who lived forever in their teenage years. "Because I've changed, now I don't connect with those people anymore."
After that, he directed "Eddie the Eagle", a film based on real people and true events, which is also an inspirational film. As a director, when he encouraged young actors, he often remembered what Alan Rickman had said to him. "Alan was my mentor and every time I was particularly disappointed in myself, he always encouraged me: 'Yes, but you can do it.'" Now as a director, I make sure I do the same to young actors. ”
The experience of song and dance films and biopics led him to take over Bohemian Rhapsody in time after Brian Singer opted out, and for him, taking over "Sherlock Holmes 3" again clearly meant that Warner had high hopes for him.
Halfway through, what will be the effect?
In the case of Sherlock Holmes, there is no doubt that this is a series full of Guy Richie. Unlike other versions of Sherlock Holmes spin-offs, Guy Ritchie's Holmes is more like a combination of the London in Guy Ritchie's shot and the director himself. The traditional gentlemanly demeanor of the Baker Street detective disappears from the work, and the exaggerated color of the comics blends with Guy Richie's own East End style.
The casting of this film now looks quite forward-looking. The success of "Sherlock Holmes" and the hit of "Iron Man" are only one year apart. After "Iron Man 2" and the "Avengers" that followed, Robert Downey Jr. became a hit, and in the decade since the release of the "Avengers" series, he has not played such an important major role in other films.
The success of Sherlock Holmes led to the second installment, which was also directed by Guy Ritchie. Both films generated more than $520 million in global revenue. At the time, Warner and Guy Ritchie's collaboration was pleasant.
But in recent years, Guy Ritchie's films have reached an impasse. The success of the Sherlock Holmes series did not continue into these films. The Secret Agent, directed by him, made $110 million worldwide with a budget of $75 million. The performance of King Arthur: The Beast is even worse, with a budget of only $188.6 million worldwide. And this was originally a series of films that Warner Bros. intended to develop further.
The failure of several films is enough to shake capital's confidence in a director. Looking at Dexter Fletcher's recent directorial achievements, it's easy to see why warner Brothers chose him to direct the sequel to a well-known film starring Robert Downey Jr.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Rocket Man" are very successful, and the word of mouth and box office have achieved double success. At the same time, after the dismissal of Brian Singer in "Bohemian Rhapsody", Dexter Fletcher completed the film perfectly, which also made the takeover of "Sherlock Holmes" seem more feasible. Especially in the context of Fletcher's previous gangster-themed films in London, he has indeed become a reasonable candidate.
For Guy Richie, this is not a bad thing, although he did not make "Sherlock Holmes 3", which fans are very much looking forward to, but then, he also has "The Gentleman" starring Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hannum, Colin Farrell and Hugh Grant, which is almost a collection of suspense cassettes such as "True Detective", "King Arthur", "Secret Agent" and other suspense films, co-written by Guy Richie and "Sherlock Holmes" screenwriter Marne Davis, and is currently scheduled to be released in 2020.
This result is obviously the result of the compromise between the three parties, and as a sequel that has been expected by fans for many years, although the change of director is not the result that everyone expects, it can only be silently wished that this film can end in the form of a complete trilogy and complete the best end of a series.