Corrected entry: In scene of Piccadilly Circus, the statue of Eros is facing the wrong way. This statue was removed for protection during WWII and when returned was put the wrong way around therefore, in this scene the original position should be shown, with Eros' bow landing in Shaftsbury Avenue. (01:04:05)
Corrected entry: When Holmes and Watson enter the lab of the 'midget chemist' that aided Lord Blackwood with his illusions, Holmes declares the room "smells of sodium phosphate, among other aromas." Sodium phosphate is neither an aromatic compound, nor does it have a smell.
Correction: He does not state Sodium Phosphate. He said "Ammonium Sulfate", which does have a smell.
Corrected entry: Holmes' ''stun baton'' works multiple times without having to recharge. That is not how electricity works. If it has the ability to discharge, it will keep going until the charges between the device and the ground are equal, which would be after one time. And batteries that small didn't exist then.
Correction: You suppose a lot knowing absolutely nothing about how this home made device of his works. A tazer can discharge multiple times without needing to recharge because it must be activated with a button press. Apparently there is a similar such activation mechanic on Holmes' baton.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Dr Watson and his girfriend are having dinner with Sherlock Holmes, Dr Watson is wearing a zipped up jacket. The zipper was not invented until 1891. And this was only in the USA it wouldn't have reached British shores for years after this.
Correction: The jacket Watson is wearing in this scene is a military frock coat. These coats were common from about 1860 to just prior to WW1, and they fastened down the front with hooks and eyes, yielding the same appearance of a zipper front jacket. If you look closely you can see the hooks at his throat, and where the front pulls together slightly at the hooks and relaxes in between.
Corrected entry: Holmes and Dr. Watson are being ferried across the Thames the first time. Watch "Watson" change his jacket. The shot is obviously computer animated.
Correction: I just watched this scene and nothing seems out of the ordinary about Watson's movements as he puts on his jacket.
Corrected entry: After Holmes and Watson get to the factory on the river and see that Adler is chained to a meat hook headed for the bandsaw, the voice of Blackwell tells them that she followed them there. How was it possible for her to have followed them when they got there by a slow boat and then how could she have managed to have already gotten captured and chained up when they had just gotten there?
Correction: Simple. She followed them and as they were looking around the room with the chemicals, Blackwood (or an associate of his) captured her and hung her up. It wouldn't have taken them long to tie her up and hang her on the hook.
Corrected entry: In the scene at the end where Irene is on the bridge, she is carrying the part she removed from the contraption. In some shots, she holds one cylinder, in other shots the part is made up of two cylinders.
Correction: The part is made up of two cylinders in every single shot. Some shots however flash fast and stop motion is needed to see that the cylinders are still two.
Corrected entry: When Holmes, Watson and Mary are having dinner, she throws red wine in Holmes' face and it runs down all over him. He is wearing a white collar, yet when the camer pans back to him, there isn't a spot on him nor the fresh white collar.
Correction: There is wine all over his face and his hand prevents us from seeing that there is on his collar too.
Corrected entry: After Holmes and Watson found the ginger midgets, we see them walking in an alleyway and talking about the wristwatch. In front of them happens to be gypsy that talked to Watson a few minutes later. She stays in front of the crowd and makes a left and Sherlock and Watson go right. How can the gypsy meet Sherlock and Watson if she went away from them?
Correction: It's obvious in the following scene that Holmes arranged for the gyspy woman to accost Watson and deliver her "vision" of his future. Watson, himself, realises this, asking Holmes "Have you no shame?". What we see is the gypsy woman leaving after Holmes made his arrangements in order to be in position to meet Holmes and Watson later.
Corrected entry: In the scene later in the movie where Irene opens the door to her room, you will see Sherlock kneeling, and was trying to "pick the lock." Well, when he stands up, and in every part of those shots with him in that room, you will see no lock tools.
Correction: When she opens the door we see him quickly palm whatever he was using. He demonstrates later he does not need tools to pick a lock (he picks a handcuff lock with a hairpin), so he likely had a similarly innocuous tool that he simply put into his pocket.
Corrected entry: After the explosion in the factory, Holmes, Watson, and Irene Adler are all shown with scars from the blast. Watson's injuries are on his left side, despite the fact that it was his right side that was facing the explosion. Since he was injured by flying shrapnel, it should be his right arm and shoulder that is injured, not his left. Likewise, Adler's scars are on her right side, when her left side was facing the explosion.
Correction: There were multiple explosions during this scene and both Adler and Holmes are shown to move up and down the corridor with both side facing the blast. She could have received her injuries whilst she was facing with her right side to the blast and received none while facing with to the left. As for Watson, he was only seen for a moment after the blast and we have no idea what happened afterwards. He could have been tossed around by the blast and landed onto something that injured his shoulder or some other explanation. Since the viewer cannot see what is happening to him, you can't call it a mistake.
Corrected entry: Near the beginning of the film Sherlock Holmes is in his home with Watson and mentions how the flies in a glass case "fly counter-clockwise". Sherlock Holmes is supposed to be English and therefore would have said 'anti-clockwise'.
Correction: The term "anti-clockwise" is indeed the preferred English term, however, as it was not coined until 1895, at least two years after the setting of the film, Holmes would have had no option but to use the older "counter-clockwise" term.
Corrected entry: In the beginning of the movie, Holmes is shown trying to create a silencer for a revolver. Due to the way revolvers are constructed, it is impossible to make a silencer for one, with the exception of the M1895 Nagant. Someone that knows enough about physics to attempt to create a silencer would have known this.
Correction: Impossible to completely "silence" the noise made by the gun, but to dampen it by supressing the noise and flash produced by the bullet exiting the barrel. Holmes would then have to work on creating a noise supression device for the cylinder to complete his invention (if he hadn't already); perhaps something similar to the gas-seal system used in the Nagant M1895.
Corrected entry: At the end of the movie, Lord Blackwood activates his chemical weapon remotely using "radio waves". Radio waves were discovered by Hertz as a natural phenomenon in 1888. Radio was not used for anything practical in the 1880's-early 1890's.
Correction: That's the point - this is new and revolutionary technology that even Holmes, with his great knowledge of such matters, finds intriguing. The existence of radio waves was first postulated by Maxwell in 1865, so it's not remotely unreasonable that, in the fictional reality depicted in the film, Blackwood and his people could have produced a working system nearly quarter of a century later.
Corrected entry: When the large French thug reappears, he says "Tu m'as manqué?" and the subtitles read "Did you miss me?" This is a very common anglophone mistake - a native French speaker would actually say "Je t'ai manqué?", which would translate literally to "was I missing to you?" but has the idiomatic meaning of "Did you miss me?
Correction: This is not totally true. This was a pun-only in English, though: "Did you miss me" meant both "have you longed for me" and "did you not hit me". For the reasons you have exposed, this could not be said as is in French, since both meanings couldn't be conveyed in a single sentence. Thus, the writers, having no other choice, kept the more literal one (not being hit - tu m'as manqué, which isn't a mistake when used to mean that) and omitted the second part of the pun (longing - je t'ai manqué, which *would* be a mistake). Because, let's face it, the line wasn't originally written in French...
Corrected entry: When Holmes jumps out the window after the girl, as he walks he has a scarf on, then he approaches the circus with no scarf and grabs one off a woman to put round his neck.
Correction: After jumping out the window, Holmes takes off the scarf he was wearing and ties it around his waist as a belt. Then when entering the circus area he grabs another off a woman to replace it.
Corrected entry: When Holmes electrocutes the French giant, he jumps back at least 10 feet each time. Electricity doesn't do that to you. It causes your muscles to contract, which, if anything, would only cause you to jump forward, but never more than three feet.
Correction: I can tell you from experience that a powerful electrical shock can launch you backwards by several feet.
Corrected entry: Earlier in his career, Jude Law had a role in a TV episode of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
Correction: How is this trivia? It's in his resume. A character having a minor part in a TV series almost 20 years before having a major role in a similarly titled/plotted movie is not really trivia, or very interesting.
Corrected entry: Sherlock Holmes says that the toxin can be made only with some herbals found in the Black Sea Region of Turkey. Turkey was founded in 1923. The movie time line must be before 1894, because the Tower Bridge was opened in that year. Turkey at that time was called Anatolia, and was part of the Ottoman Empire. (01:58:10 - 01:58:55)
Correction: The present-day country of Turkey was only created in 1923, true. However, the name predates the modern country by many centuries; Turk, as a term for a specific ethnic group of people, goes back well over a millenium, with the Ottoman Empire being referred to informally throughout its existence as the Turkish Empire or, simply, Turkey. See, for example, this map, dated 1817, which clearly uses the term "Turkey" to refer to the area.
Corrected entry: At the end underneath parliament Irene Adler takes two bullets out of a gun to use the gun powder, however, she spent all the bullets shooting at Dredger.
Correction: She spent all the bullets in her gun. However, she picks up the gun previously kicked out of Holmes' hand and uses the bullets out of that gun to dismantle Blackwood's weapon.
Correction: Unfortunately, you've fallen for an urban myth that the statue originally pointed towards Shaftesbury Avenue, both to acknowledge the philanthropy of Lord Shaftesbury, to whom the monument is dedicated, and as a visual pun, that Anteros (that the statue depicts Eros is, alas, another myth) firing an arrow would "bury the shaft" in Shaftesbury Avenue. While this is a rather wonderful story, sadly, it's not true; early photographs, taken three years after the monument was erected, show the arrow pointing in the opposite direction, down Lower Regent's Street, appropriately towards Parliament, as Lord Shaftesbury was a prominent political figure.
Tailkinker ★