Exclusive Interview: Sherlock Holmes and X-Men Writer Simon Kinberg (Part 2)

Exclusive Interview: Sherlock Holmes and X-Men
Writer Simon Kinberg (Part 2)

Share on Facebook posted 07-24-09 by John Freeman Gill

A-List action screenwriter Simon Kinberg, a producer on the much-anticipated prequel X-Men: First Class, gives 30 Ninjas Editor John Freeman Gill the inside dope about the controversial death of Cyclops, an over-the-top Sherlock action sequence that was never shot, why Jude Law is not your grandfather’s Dr. Watson — and the surprising advice legendary director John Woo gave Kinberg about pacing an action film.

Holmes, Sherlock Holmes

30 NINJAS: You knew Downey had been cast when you were writing the script. I would think it’s kind of liberating to be able to write such a physically and sort of emotionally muscular version of Sherlock Holmes, particularly after Iron Man, having that muscular performance in your head as one more kind of thing that this fine actor is capable of. Did you find that it gave you a license to do things you might not otherwise do?

SK: Well, the whole essence of the movie was to try and create a more active Holmes, so the enterprise of the film was to try and shift him into a more muscular genre. And yeah, so I felt like there was freedom, but the coolest part about it for me was that I’ve never remotely written a character who was as physically and intellectually powerful at the same time.

30 NINJAS: So that’s your superhero idea as well?

SK: Yeah, and usually with a superhero you get one or the other. You either get the mastermind who’s a little bit geeky, or you get the guy who’s Wolverine, who’s physically incredibly gifted, but he’s not the guy who’s masterminding and chess-playing. That’s, you know, Professor X, who sits in a wheelchair. So to actually have a character that has power of mind and power of body was really challenging and obviously really exciting.

30 NINJAS: Why was it challenging? Did you feel that there was more of an onus to humanize him in some way? Give him weaknesses that could make him someone you can identify with?

SK: Yeah, that’s part of it — I mean, certainly you need to find vulnerabilities or fragilities for any superhero, especially. Otherwise, they’re like a cartoon, not anything we can identify with. But it was sort of like if you’re playing in a band, and you don’t know when to play the drums louder, and when to play guitar louder, you need to find ways to modulate them; it’s really about rhythm. And it was just sometimes you have a Sherlock Holmes who’s physically heroic and sometimes you have a Sherlock Holmes who’s intellectually heroic. And those things have to sort of balance and form each other and coalesce and disconnect, and it was just an interesting balance to learn, because there are some things that are more physical, obviously if he’s in a fistfight, and there are some scenes that are more intellectual, where he’s just deducing some mystery from a bunch of clues.

30 NINJAS: Were there discussions about how much of an action star he could be while still having him be true to the original Arthur Conan Doyle character? And I’m thinking specifically of him jumping out a window into the Thames; I mean, that’s opening-sequence James Bond territory. Did you feel that you could make it as big as you wanted to make it? Were there discussions about that?

SK: Well, there were discussions in the sense that there were a lot of people on this movie who operated as custodians of the Sherlock Holmes legacy.

30 NINJAS: Who were those?

SK: [Writer] Lionel Wigram, who was the guy that came up with the idea. There were Sherlock Holmes experts that were around and about. And you know, Robert became sort of a Sherlock Holmes expert. Everybody got so immersed in the literature that when something could conceivably be inappropriate, there was always a consensus of, Well, this is not appropriate for this character who we’re all just carrying, not necessarily creating.

Surprising Advice From John Woo

30 NINJAS: Can you think of an example?

SK: I had an idea that was just outsizing the movie. It was just a huge sort of chase at the end of the film at a time when you didn’t want a chase, you wanted actually the characters to be facing off and getting into the sort of deduction of the movie. And I wanted to stick a big equivalent of a car chase — a horse chase — in there. And rightfully, everybody was like, “You know what? The movie doesn’t need it there.” I said, “OK. I just came up with a good sequence and I wanted to stick it somewhere,” and that happens sometimes. On Mr. and Mrs. Smith there’s a bunch of action sequences that I wrote that we didn’t end up shooting. You know, John Woo was right: You can have too much action sometimes … There was actually a moment, very early in the process [of developing Mr. & Mrs. Smith,] where John Woo was going to direct that movie. And it’s ironic, because a lot of Mr. & Mrs. Smith was actually … very much inspired by John Woo’s early films, like Killer, probably most of all. So to be sitting with him talking about these sequences that were very explicitly, at least at the time, referencing his movies was really funny, and actually I had this one great moment, the first time [producer] Akiva [Goldsman] and I met with John. He said, “I liked the script,” we sort of talked about it, and he said, “But you know what? Sometimes there’s too much action!”

30 NINJAS: John Woo said this?

SK: Yeah, and I was like, “You’re John Woo! How’s that possible to have too much action?” I was like, “It’s your fault — it’s because of you that I want action!”

30 NINJAS: There’s a phrase in painting that artists talk about. That if a painting is too busy that you need a place to rest the eye, and that seems apt here.

SK: For sure. And the best action movies are the ones that have great gear shifts. And they know exactly when to shift in and out of the gears. They know when to rev all the way up, and when to rev all the way down and literally give you seven minutes, ten minutes of just character scenes and dialogue and emotions and/or comedy and relationship, and then get those people you’ve come to care about into even greater danger.

30 NINJAS: Do you think that you could’ve written a character like this Sherlock Holmes, who is both physically and mentally gifted, if you didn’t have an actor who was both things himself?

SK: I can’t imagine another actor playing this role. Just as Angelina [Jolie] had all the attributes that comprise Mrs. Smith [in Mr. & Mrs. Smith], and which are hard attributes to find in one person, I think the same is true for Robert, that he has a sort of broad spectrum that are all necessary to be Sherlock Holmes.

30 NINJAS: It’s hard to imagine Keanu Reeves playing Sherlock Holmes.

SK: There’s a lot of actors you could put on that list. You couldn’t buy a Sherlock, either because they weren’t intelligent enough or they were not physical enough.

Jude Law Dives In

30 NINJAS: Dr. Watson is traditionally a bit of a bumbler. How much has that changed with this Jude Law version of the character? And how did you differentiate Holmes and Watson?

SK: Jude’s not really playing a bumbler. You know, the Watson in the books is a former war hero, so he’s not just a nerdy doctor. He’s someone that has some physical gifts. And the differentiation between him and Holmes in the movie is just more that Watson’s a person that lives in the world a little bit more. He’s getting married, he’s got his doctor practice. He’s just someone who doesn’t live in his head as much.

30 NINJAS: What can you tell me about Jude Law and what he brought to this film?

SK: I mean, look, Jude’s another very capable guy — we didn’t cast a nerdy or chubby Watson. We cast a really good looking, physically strong guy who’s also intelligent and sensitive and human. He is capable of doing action, in a way that maybe you haven’t seen Watson do before.

30 NINJAS: And how did you go about integrating character into the action? Sherlock Holmes, the original stories — and even the early movies — are nothing if not character-driven.

S: The way I approached the action was literally just to say, OK, who are the characters? What is the set of characteristics that defines Sherlock? What is the set of characteristics that defines Watson? What is their conflict based on those characteristics? Now, how can we use the action to dramatize those characteristics and that conflict? So, if Sherlock’s a little bit reckless and Watson’s a little more careful, then that’s a very easy thing to dramatize in an action sequence. You know, Sherlock is a little more cerebral, and Watson’s a little more physical, ’cause that’s the Watson that’s in some of the stories and that’s the Watson we have, then that’s again an easy dynamic to dramatize.

30 NINJAS: Your Watson is more physical than Holmes?

S: In a way, yeah. Just, Holmes overintellectualizes things. But believe me, Holmes has plenty of action. It’s just that he also has the capacity to overanalyze. Like in the trailer of the movie, there’s that moment where Holmes is opening a door. He’s going through, key by key, trying to pick the lock of a door. And Watson just emerges out of nowhere and kicks the door open. Holmes is more figuring out the whole situation and then diving in. Watson’s a little bit more diving in.

From X-Man to Ex-Man

30 NINJAS: Jumping to X-Men for a minute, why did you and your co-writer on X-Men: The Last Stand, Zak Penn, decide to kill off Cyclops?

SIMON KINBERG: There were a lot of reasons, but one of the biggest reasons was, dramatically, that movie was about Jean Grey coming back from the dead and turning into the Dark Phoenix. It’s about a hero turning into a villain, which is one of the most radical runs in comic book history; that had never really happened before in the same way. And in the comic book, she comes back and she starts destroying planets, and that’s not the tone that Bryan Singer created in the first two X-Men films, so we needed to find something that was as dramatic as destroying planets but was character-driven, was grounded. And so we felt like, well, there’s nothing more dramatic than killing the love of her life, than killing the guy she was essentially married to. So that’s why when she emerges, either she’s blowing up New York City, like Godzilla, or she destroys someone that is so close and intimate to her that it shocks the audience more than blowing up New York would. So that was the intention.

Check Back Soon for Part 3! Kinberg Gives the Inside Story on Robert Downey Jr. Authoring His Own Sherlock Fights, How Downey’s Wing Chun Kung Fu Is a Chess Game Made Physical, and How the Filmmakers Dealt With Sherlock’s Cocaine Addiction!

In Part 1 of Our Exclusive Interview, Kinberg Talks About X-Men Fundamentalism and Leaks Details About His Favorite New Sherlock Scene, the Superpowers of Sherlock Holmes, and Director Guy Ritchie’s Vision for the Film’s Action: Read it Now!