SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS
The Abridged Script
FADE IN:
EXT. LONDON - 1891
CHINESE ROBERT DOWNEY, JR., confronts RACHEL MCADAMS on a crowded street.
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
Sorry, Rachel, but we don't need you for this movie.
RACHEL MCADAMS
But I'm hot and American! Audiences love that about me!
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
Yes, but it turns out, so am I.
RACHEL MCADAMS
We'll see what my mysterious, faceless boss has to say about that. Oh, and here's some random thugs for you to beat up with your superpowers.
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
I don't have superpowers!
ROBERT uses PRECOGNITION, MINDREADING, INHUMAN SPEED, FLAWLESS COORDINATION, and INFALLIBLE REFLEXES to beat the snot out of the bad guys.
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
Deductive reasoning for the win!
INT. FANCY RESTAURANT
RACHEL sits down to lunch with her UNSEEN BOSS.
RACHEL MCADAMS
I'll talk with you through this curtain since I know you don't want anyone to see your face.
UNSEEN BOSS
Actually, every single one of the 200 customers and staff in this restaurant know my face, who I am, and what to do at my secret signal.
Suddenly everyone in the restaurant GETS UP AND LEAVES. And, at long last, the mysterious super villain is finally revealed to be... SOME BRITISH ACTOR YOU'VE NEVER SEEN OR HEARD OF BEFORE.
JARED HARRIS
Hey, I was in 22 episodes of Mad Men.
RACHEL MCADAMS
You've got 200 henchmen with nothing better to do than sit around a restaurant waiting to make a dramatic exit?
JARED HARRIS
Well, I--
RACHEL MCADAMS
And where does your army of henchmen go for the rest of the movie? From here on out, it's just you and three other dudes.
JARED HARRIS
You're not supposed to--
RACHEL MCADAMS
And how come you let all of them see your face and not me?
JARED HARRIS
Listen, this movie speeds along at a million miles a minute so you don't have time to stop and think about questions like that. Now I'm going to have to kill you off.
RACHEL MCADAMS
If you've gotten rid of all the witnesses...
(coughing)
And they all worked for you anyway...
(coughing)
Why are you bothering to disguise my death as...
(dying)
Tuberculosis?
(dies)
INT. EITHER BAKER STREET OR DOWNING STREET, I CAN NEVER REMEMBER WHICH ONE IS WHICH. THE ONE WITHOUT THE PRIME MINISTER.
JUDE LAW and his DOG show up at BRITISH ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.'s home.
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
Your dog just ate some poison that I keep lying around. Here's a magic injection that instantly cures poison. Oh, and physical injuries somehow.
JUDE LAW
A get-out-of-death free card. Gee, you think that'll come in handy later in the movie?
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
Are you kidding? This is bigger than the movie! IT BRINGS BACK THE DEAD! We could save countless lives, revolutionize modern medicine, change the world!!!
JUDE LAW
Or, you know, fist fights.
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
You're right. That's so much better.
JUDE and ROBERT head out on the town with STEPHEN FRY. They end up at a gambling hall where NOOMI RAPACE works as a Gypsy fortuneteller.
NOOMI RAPACE
So I'm the new Rachel McAdams?
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
Yes, only without the banter, charisma, romantic tension, or personality.
NOOMI RAPACE
Oh, so Katherine Heigl.
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
Zing! Now if you'll please hang out forgettably in the background for the rest of the movie, we need to keep the plot racing along. I'm here because your brother works for Jared Harris. Also, there's an assassin hiding in the rafters. He's Russian and therefore an acrobat and therefore a match for me in a fist fight. I know all this because I smell vodka.
NOOMI RAPACE
It's all so logical when you say it.
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to deductive reason this guy a new asshole.
FIST FIGHT #2 ensues. ROBERT adds WEIGHTLESSNESS, PERFECT BALANCE, and IMPERVIOUSNESS TO HARM to his arsenal of superpowers. Eventually, he wins.
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
Good thing neither one of us is smart enough to carry a gun.
INT. CHURCH
JUDE LAW gets married to KELLY REILLY in the FASTEST WEDDING in the HISTORY OF MOVIES.
JUDE LAW
Take notes, Twilight. That's how it's done.
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR. wanders off to talk with JARED HARRIS in his OFFICE.
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
At last, a face-to-face confrontation! Why did you invite me here?
JARED HARRIS
To tell you that I'm going to assassinate Jude Law. You, however, I'll leave alive because I respect you.
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
So the only person you won't kill is the one person you think might be able to stop you. And you've invited this person to your office where many clues are in plain sight. And you're outright telling him the next stage of your plan?
JARED HARRIS
I don't see why not.
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
Well, I guess I have no choice but to secretly follow my best friend around without giving him any warning that people are trying to kill him until after he's already faced the first wave of assassins on his own.
JARED HARRIS
You know, I'm starting to understand why people say we're intellectual equals, and I'm not sure it's a compliment.
INT. TRAIN
JUDE and KELLY are attacked by ASSASSINS as they ride towards their honeymoon in Bristol. ROBERT eventually shows up dressed as a WOMAN.
KELLY REILLY
You hate me for taking your place in Jude Law's life, and now you show up on our honeymoon dressed as a woman? Not exactly subtle, Robert.
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
How's this for subtle?
ROBERT tosses KELLY from a MOVING TRAIN, leaving him alone with JUDE. Then he uses his PRECOGNITION POWERS to have already BOOBY TRAPPED everything the assassins are about to do.
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
Now let's talk about our relationship.
JUDE LAW
If I promise to help you hunt down Jared Harris, can we not?
ROBERT and JUDE head to PARIS with NOOMI to find her brother, the terrorist. They start with his old boss THIERRY NEUVIC.
THIERRY NEUVIC
I set up a bomb. I won't tell you where, but I will tell you it goes off in ten minutes.
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
All the evidence here points to the opera! Let's go!
But the bomb actually blows up at a MEETING OF INDUSTRIALISTS at a nearby HOTEL.
JUDE LAW
They're all dead!
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
But one person has been shot in addition to being blown up!
JUDE LAW
Are you fucking with me?
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
Nope. Jared Harris had a sniper kill this guy right before he was going to die anyway in an explosion.
JUDE LAW
Why? What possible purpose would that serve other than tipping us off which bombing victim was the true target?
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
You're right! This is horrible!
JUDE LAW
What, the contrived "clues"?
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
No, the criminal kingpin has a super sniper henchman who never misses. I've always thought of myself as a Victorian Batman, but we're dangerously close to Daredevil territory.
JUDE LAW
Anyway, it turns out the shooting/bombing victim was an arms dealer, and Jared Harris owned the other half of his company.
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
Off to the weapons plant!
INT. WEAPONS PLANT
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
Go send a telegraph to my brother Stephen Fry while I go get captured.
JUDE LAW
Okay.
JARED takes ROBERT prisoner, shoves a giant HOOK through his ribcage, HANGS him from the ceiling, and TORTURES him for information. Yeah.
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
It's okay, my deductive reasoning tells me I'm about to be saved by random chance.
JUDE LAW returns. SUPER SNIPER GUY shoots at him with a gun, and JUDE fires back with some HEAVY ARTILLERY that the weapons plant apparently keeps LOADED and in WORKING ORDER.
By chance, the artillery shell knocks over a GUARD TOWER into the building where ROBERT is being tortured.
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
Hey, where did Jared go? He was right on top of me! Shouldn't we be right next to each other in the rubble?
JUDE LAW
No, you should be tapioca.
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
Clearly I'm just fine. Let's go run a couple of miles in slow-motion and hop a train, hobo-style.
They DO.
JUDE LAW
Okay, willful suspension of disbelief is great and everything, but are we really going to ignore the fact that you were tortured and a building fell on your head?
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
Fine. Have it your way.
(dies)
JUDE LAW
Wow, too far in the other direction! If only we had some kind of get-out-death-free card. Oh, wait...
JUDE injects ROBERT with his MAGIC WAKE-UP-THE-DEAD POTION.
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
It's truly is the ultimate miracle of science!
JUDE LAW
Let's never speak of it again.
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
Okay.
INT. SWITZERLAND
ROBERT, JUDE, NOOMI, and STEPHEN are at a peace conference between England, France, Germany, and Russia.
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
Jared Harris has bought up all sorts of weapons manufacturers, and now he's going to sabotage the peace conference and start a world war!
JUDE LAW
How's he going to do that?
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
Deductive reasoning and my DVD of Mission: Impossible tell me that he's replaced one of the diplomats with an exact double. Specifically, Noomi's brother.
JUDE LAW
And what does this have to do with advanced radio control technology?
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
With what now?
JUDE LAW
From the first movie, remember? Jared Harris orchestrated everything to steal a radio control device. Shouldn't that come into play at some point? Or are we retroactively making the first movie a giant waste of time?
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
You know what? Fuck you, Jude. Go find the assassin on your own.
ROBERT leaves to PLAY CHESS with JARED.
JUDE LAW
There's still no reason it should all fall to me. Stephen, you've got all of Sherlock's magical observation powers. Why don't you identify the assassin?
STEPHEN FRY
(evaporates)
JUDE LAW
Okay, then.
ROBERT does absolutely nothing while JUDE stops the assassin and prevents a WORLD WAR, at least for the time being.
JARED HARRIS
Here's the thing. My deductive reason is every bit as good as yours, and it tells me you didn't actually stop World War I. It's inevitable. In fact, you only delayed it until even more countries would be entangled and weapons technology would be even more deadly. So it's actually your fault the war is as bad as it is.
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
Um, let's pretend that's not true.
JARED HARRIS
Also, my deductive reasoning tells me that if World War I happened now instead of 1914, Adolph Hitler wouldn't be able to use the aftermath to climb to power, making you directly responsible for World War II and the Holocaust.
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.
Yeah, I'm not sure the screenwriters really thought all this through. Anyway, did you know in the original books Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty fall over a waterfall together to their deaths?
JARED HARRIS
Yeah, why?
ROBERT drags JARED over the balcony with him, and they fall down a huge cliff and through a waterfall.
JARED HARRIS
(falling)
If you were willing to kill me, why didn't you do it months ago?
(still falling)
You know, before I killed all those people and nearly started a world war?
(still falling)
I mean, you knew exactly who I was and where I was the whole time. I was famous and had all sorts of public appearances.
(still falling)
Hell, I even had an office at the university with my name on the door.
Finally, they DISAPPEAR into the WATER.
JUDE LAW (V/O)
No bodies were ever found. None whatsoever. Nope, not a one. I can't stress enough how few bodies were found. Because it was zero.
INT. JUDE LAW'S HOUSE
Weeks later, JUDE opens a box that came in the mail. Inside is one of those JEDI SCUBA THINGS from Phantom Menace that's only the size of an apple but apparently lets you BREATHE UNDERWATER.
JUDE LAW
Holy crap! Do you realize what this means?
KELLY REILLY
That Robert's still alive?
JUDE LAW
Who cares! We've got a device that lets people breathe underwater! We're gonna be rich!!!
END