Thesis:

These conventions, throughout the decades, have been updated to accommodate to 21st
century wants. Sherlock Holmes and his trusty sidekick, Watson, have been updated in many
ways today through movies like Sherlock Holmes. The Victorian Era detective Sherlock, was just
a detective and nothing more; as opposed to film where he is updated to an action fighter
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Sherlock Holmes is presented to the 21st Century audience as a more action fighter type
character. Conan Doyles Sherlock was presented as an arrogant big headed detective and
nothing more. An excerpt from The Hound of the Baskervilles by Conan Doyle best exemplifies
it by having Sherlock say, It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor
of light (Doyle loc. 870). Here Sherlock Holmes is shown as very witty and pompous while
giving Watson a back handed compliment at the same time. In Conan Doyles stories no where
did he have a big action scene. While Conan Doyle did show Sherlock be somewhat aggressive
in his personality he did not show it in any physical form. Now in the 21st Century films such as
Sherlock Holmes, directed by Guy Richie, portrays just that, a more violent Sherlock. The crime
fighting Holmes is shown towards the beginning of the film. In the movie Holmes is in a brawl
which is very fast pace using whip to emphasize the chaos and using diegetic sound to show
certain hitting sounds. Sherlock Holmes in the film is seen as a detective and an action fighter.
His detective side is shown when he uses his knowledge and his deduction skills to help him win
the fight which stuns the audience by carefully choreographing every single move in order to win
the fight, which he does effortlessly. Delameter states in his book, Excerpt from Theory and

Practice of Classic Detective Fiction, that Holmess collection of knowledge, too, is eccentric
(Binyon 22). So while were seeing the new physically aggressive Holmes in the contemporary
movie it still stays true to the genius detective he has always been. This change was due in part
to the new audience that had to be satisfied. The new, 21st century audience demands action and
fighting scenes, which has been popularized in the past couple of decades. Sherlock Holmes, the
2009 film, delivers just that: thrilling action and adventure. Panek, in his scholarly book
Beginnings, states that the detective story by many other scholars have been classified as a
recreational activity. (Panek 11). This certainly holds true in that Sherlock Holmes stories, while
being a detective story, is still seen as a fun thing to do. This can only be done now in the 21st
century by adding action scenes like the ones in the film Sherlock Holmes. So now with the
added action and fights scenes to the detective story it becomes a pass time to new audiences in
the 21st century. While there are changes to Sherlock Holmess character there are also bigger
changes to main characters such as Watson.