DrWeb<p><strong>Steven Spielberg’s Forgotten Sherlock Holmes Movie Is Still the Most Important Sci-Fi Film Ever</strong></p><a href="https://www.cbr.com/steven-spielbergs-sherlock-holmes-most-important-sci-fi-film/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"></a><p><a href="https://www.cbr.com/author/josh-patton/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"></a></p><p>By <a href="https://www.cbr.com/author/josh-patton/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Joshua M. Patton</a></p><p>Published 2 days ago</p><p>Joshua M. Patton is currently a Senior Writer and critic for CBR covering television, movies, and comics. He also reviews books for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Over his 30-year career in journalism his work has appeared on the Huffington Post, New York Post, and in dozens of other outlets in print and online. An award-winning fiction writer and poet, collections of his work are available on Amazon. </p><p><a href="https://www.cbr.com/steven-spielbergs-sherlock-holmes-most-important-sci-fi-film/#threads" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"></a><a href="https://www.cbr.com/steven-spielbergs-sherlock-holmes-most-important-sci-fi-film/#threads" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"></a></p><p>Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents:</p><p>There are few fictional characters today who even have a chance to endure as long as<a href="https://www.cbr.com/tag/sherlock-holmes/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> Sherlock Holmes</a>. The “consulting detective” created by Arthur Conan Doyle in 1887 is so iconic, the character’s unique first name is synonymous with investigation (albeit mostly sarcastically). Just shy of the 100th anniversary of the character, Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment produced <em>Young Sherlock Holmes</em>. As a very young child, this movie was my introduction to the character. However, this nostalgia is not why, I believe, this movie is arguably the most important science fiction film ever produced.</p><p>There’s also an argument that Sherlock Holmes is the first modern superhero, given Doyle’s own prolific stories, pop culture name-recognition, and hundreds of adaptations in comics, radio, theater, and film. In fact, Prime Video ordered a <a href="https://www.cbr.com/young-sherlock-amazon-guy-ritchie/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Young Sherlock series from Guy Ritchie</a>, based on a series of novels by Andy Lane beginning in 2015. The film version of <em>Young Sherlock Holmes </em>predates those books by 30 years, based on a script written by Chris Columbus after <em>Gremlins </em>and <em>The Goonies</em>, also from Amblin. Barry Levinson, himself still a few years away from Oscar-winning films like <em>Good Morning Vietnam </em>and <em>Bugsy</em>, directed it. The movie is part of that classic Amblin tradition featuring stories about plucky kids getting into fantastic adventures, facing death, and saving the day. I was the perfect age for movies like these, and <em>Young Sherlock Holmes </em>holds up for me because of that connection to my youth. Yet, that’s not why I vividly remember seeing the movie in the theater near my childhood home. While the movie features some traditional, even “hokey” special effects, one impossible scene blew my mind. It also served as a proof-of-concept for the kind of computer-generated visual effects that made everything from the <em>Star Wars </em>prequels to the Marvel Cinematic Universe possible.</p><p><a href="https://www.cbr.com/premium/?ref=ad_removal" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"></a></p><p><strong>The Path to Young Sherlock Holmes Started with Spielberg, George Lucas, and Pixar</strong></p><p>The Disney+ documentary series <em>Light & Magic</em> partially tells the story of the Pixar computer, beginning in 1974. Five years later, George Lucas gave the team jobs at Industrial Light & Magic. Early CGI in films like 1982’s <em>Tron </em>would never pass for photorealism. In the documentary, Edwin Catmull said that computers simply lacked the processing power to render such images. This is why ILM offered the first Pixar computer for sale (at $100,000 each), which funded its further development. Lucas, however, had little interest then in animated films, which is what the Pixar team wanted. He sold the company to Steve Jobs, and ILM took that technology and built upon it.</p><p><a href="https://www.cbr.com/premium/?ref=ad_removal" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"></a></p><p>At first, ILM only worked on films made by Lucas or his friends, like Steven Spielberg. It wasn’t until the <a href="https://www.cbr.com/star-trek-harve-bennett-importance/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">producer of the <em>Star Trek </em>films, Harve Bennett</a>, came calling that ILM took on contract work. <em>The Wrath of Khan </em>featured the first fully computer-generated sequence in a film, though the images were still far from photoreal. ILM created a computerized simulation showing what the “Genesis device” could do to a planet. Today, these images look positively ancient, but they worked for <em>Star Trek</em>‘s future setting at the time. No one had seen anything like that before. Many fans don’t even realize the two gray control panels on each side of the demonstration’s “screen” are also CGI images.</p><p>Lucas yearned for digital filmmaking options for everything from actual filming to special effects to post-production. Save for some artists, <a href="https://www.cbr.com/star-wars-mad-god-phil-tippett-special-effects/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">like stop-motion “god” Phil Tippett</a>, practical effects reached something of a plateau from the 1980s to the 1990s. The people developing the Pixar computer wanted to make animated movies, but Lucas wanted ILM to continue to develop that technology to blend CGI elements and characters with live-action films. He knew that once digital visual effects technology advanced far enough, there would be no limit but time and money on what a filmmaker could commit to the screen. But one film had to be the first, serving as a test case.</p><p>Continue/Read Original Article Here: <em><a href="https://www.cbr.com/steven-spielbergs-sherlock-holmes-most-important-sci-fi-film/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Steven Spielberg’s Forgotten Sherlock Holmes Movie Is Still the Most Important Sci-Fi Film Ever</a></em></p><p><a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://drwebdomain.blog/tag/arthur-conan-doyle/" target="_blank">#ArthurConanDoyle</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://drwebdomain.blog/tag/filmmaking/" target="_blank">#Filmmaking</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://drwebdomain.blog/tag/george-lucas/" target="_blank">#GeorgeLucas</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://drwebdomain.blog/tag/light-magic/" target="_blank">#LightMagic</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://drwebdomain.blog/tag/pixar/" target="_blank">#Pixar</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://drwebdomain.blog/tag/science-fiction/" target="_blank">#ScienceFiction</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://drwebdomain.blog/tag/sherlock-holmes/" target="_blank">#SherlockHolmes</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://drwebdomain.blog/tag/star-trek/" target="_blank">#StarTrek</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://drwebdomain.blog/tag/star-wars/" target="_blank">#StarWars</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://drwebdomain.blog/tag/steven-spielberg/" target="_blank">#StevenSpielberg</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://drwebdomain.blog/tag/young-sherlock/" target="_blank">#YoungSherlock</a></p>