Do you react to branding?

[andrewducker]

Basically, what I'm looking to know is whether people went to see it (or avoided it) because it was labelled as "Sherlock Holmes". Would the basic plot and characters have interested you if it hadn't been linked to the familiar Sherlock Holmes brand (or, similarly, did the fact that it was branded as being Sherlock Holmes put you off because either you don't like Holmes, or you objected to the changes)?

[Poll #1782078]

Comments

SEWIWEIC

[recycled-sales.livejournal.com]

Ooh I love that acronym.

I'm pretty sure that I would've watched both the first two if the opportunity presented - they both interested me, although the latter more so. The name wouldn't really have made a difference.

As for the last one, the brand doesn't really concern me. It's probably just a generic script that was adapted for the licensed subject. Whether it's a good film/ bad film that's fun to watch is what would sway me.

[kerrypolka.livejournal.com]

Obviously it's all in the hypothetical, but my decision making process with all three is something like:

I like historical action comedies more than I dislike newly-written stories full of white guys. However, I don't like contemporary action dramas more than I dislike newly-written stories full of white guys.

All three are newly-written stories full of white guys, but I enjoy silly historical action films and I don't really care for contemporary action dramas.

I would be slightly more likely to go (maybe I should say more enthusiastic about going) to a silly historical action film if it were a completely original story, because I would assume it felt less tied to a source material and would have the freedom to not be bigoted, whereas films of bigoted source material either have to work around it or roll with it.

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

I can't answer the first question from your options - haven't watched it yet but intend to from trailers and good reviews, opinion regardless of it being labelled 'Sherlock Holmes'.

I want to see the Musketeers film because it looks like a silly fun swashbuckling adventure. The fact that it is claiming it is 'The Three Musketeers' makes no odds to me because I've now read the book and am well aware that none of the film versions I've ever seen have borne much resemblance to the orginial story!

And yes, my attitude of ignoring branding pretty much applies to all consumer products - I don't care who made it as long as it fulfills what I want it for - unless I'm boycotting a brand due to unethical practices.

[kerrypolka.livejournal.com]

I don't care who made it as long as it fulfills what I want it for - unless I'm boycotting a brand due to unethical practices.

Yes!

[innerbrat]

1) Best Batman movie I haave ever seen and nothing will dissuade me otherwise.

2) I only watched this because it was a 'modern day working of Sherlock Holmes'. Now I know not to watch it on its own faults alone.

3) It's a swashbuckling, steampunking, assassin-in-corsets wig wearing Orlando Bloom campfest. Who cares what it's called?

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

I love 3) and heartily agree. Why is that boy so much more attractive in a wig??

[innerbrat]

We may have to agree to disagree on that, mind. I don't much like him in that long blond thing, but that may be because his dialogue was so appalling.

OTOH, that boy should be in everything ever. I don't even fancy him, but I'd pay good money to see his as Robin Hood.

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

Ah, each to their own, I think I may have a strange liking for long blonde hair and elf ears...

I could definitely see him as an Errol Flynn-alike Robin - all wit and swashbuckle and none of this trying to gritty and realistic while taking vast liberties with history nonsense!

[innerbrat]

Exactly!

[khoth.livejournal.com]

For the Sherlock Holmes movie, I watched it and would probably have watched a non-Holmes version had it come to my attention, but I'm not sure if it would have.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Would not have watched RDJ version if it wasn't for Holmes-obsessed partner. Would probably have watched new Moffat/Gatiss series no matter what, but Holmes hook certainly helped. As another commenter says, its own merits now carry it!

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

I would probably have watched the Guy Ritchie film eventually on TV, but the reason I've watched it already is that my Holmes-mad colleague lent me his DVD.

The TV series has Steven Moffat's name on it, it doesn't need another brand, but the fun it had with Holmes tropes made up a huge part of its appeal.

Musketeers is not my thing, but I will probably catch it on TV (or buy the DVD for my father and watch it before I hand it over).

[gwendally.livejournal.com]

I am more likely to buy a book if there's a small blurb about it on the back. I want some small clue about whether the hook is of interest to me.

The reason the hook for Sherlock Holmes works is because I like Sherlock Holmes. I don't like The Avengers so an Avengers hook would have had the opposite effect on me: knowing it was on an Avengers theme I would have avoided it.

The Three Musketeers concept is about political rebellion and palace intrigue. I'm not sure if the people doing this movie know that. If it is all about bodice ripping and there's no years of sacrifice and bravery and service involved then, no, I'm not that interested. I'd rather watch reruns of "The West Wing".

Or "House".

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

When I read the original Three Musketeers, I found it to mostly be a comedy of errors featuring a bunch of sexist pigs, who go around behaving like selfish idiots while other people intrigue around them ;)

Possibly I am showing my humourless feminist side by expressing that opinion. I gather it does change in tone rather depending on what translation you read - mine is Victorian I think.

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

Having said which, I did find it funny despite myself. It involved a whole lot less heroism and bravery than I was expecting from the film versions though.

[tysolna]

Talking about entertainment media here: Of course I react to branding. I know what I like, as they say. I am far more likely to watch a movie like the Robert Downey Junior "Sherlock Holmes" which is set in a steampunkesque Victorian London than, say, something like "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" (and I still haven't watched "Mama Mia"). But I reserve the right to not like it even if it is "branded" to my tastes (I like Doctor Who, and I like Moorcock, but the two together don't work, for example).

Hang on, Three Musketeers has Bloom in it? With swords? ;)

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

Sherlock Holmes seems to be becoming the modern version of Shakespeare. By that I mean the same basic plots are being adapted into very different settings and different actors are playing their version of Holmes in the way stage actors portray the likes of Hamlet or Richard II.

There are apparently over 200 film or TV versions of Sherlock Holmes and literally thousands of stage adaptations, yet Conan Doyle wrote only 60 Holmes stories.

SEWIWEIC

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

STEAMPUNK Musketeers - like Doh! What is there to worry about!

Re: SEWIWEIC

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

indeedy. it'll be interesting if only to see if someone can make Steampunk not a gratuitous lump of badly engineered cliches.

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

Crikey, you've made this one impossible to answer by selections.

I eventually bought Sherlock Holmes [Ritchie] because of both branding and director. I'd have grabbed it eventually either way.

I haven't seen the TV series cos I don't have a TV. I'm tempted to catch it on DVD, but definitely wouldn't bother if it wasn't branded.

Musketeers: I have zero brand loyalty, very much enjoyed the Disney version and more recent kung fu infused variety. I'll decide whether the new one's worth it based on reviews. I have no objection at all to silly action flicks, as long as I expect them to be silly action flicks [see 300]. If they take themselves seriously, they damned well better be impressive. Die Hard and Predator being an excellent examples. Films like Elizabeth: Golden Years that claim to be historical and totally aren't piss me off no end.

Don't have a TV

[0olong.livejournal.com]

...but... internet?

Re: Don't have a TV

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

or broadband.

which is somewhat restrictive. I'm still tethering my iPhone.

[ajr.livejournal.com]

Regarding the BBC "Holmes" series. To add to my answer in the poll, if it hadn't been labelled as "Sherlock Holmes" then I would've been grumbling afterwards about how it totally ripped off Sherlock Holmes. The show uses the original plots (but updated for modern) as well as the character names, so there's no way the branding could be filed off without anyone noticing.

Regarding the Three Musketeers thing - I have heard nothing about this yet. At all. So I really couldn't say if I'd watch it or not.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

> it hadn't been labelled as "Sherlock Holmes

Yeah but what do you mean by that?

- patently obviously Holmes by another name
- just some generic Victorian detective thing
- SOEWIWEIMR

[andrewducker]

If it was just a period detective romp.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I have a geas to see all Musketeers related stuff. (Apart from the Barbie version.) Often under extreme protest. So I will be going. But there will almost certainly be Complaints, later.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Isn't the BBC one called 'Sherlock', not 'Holmes'?

I would've watched the movie because it was a period action flick starring RJD. It didn't bother me that it messed with the ACD stories because every single adaptation did before it - yes, even the Jeremy Brett one, back in the box you! Nothing is sacred.*

On the 'Sherlock' front, I don't really watch procedurals, however supposedly imaginative, unless there's something about them to hook me in such as a strong recommendation or a star I already know and like. I like Cumberbatch and Freeman fine, but I doubt I would've bothered on the basis of them-plus-premise if I didn't know it was a modern re-invention of SH and want to see how they'd adapted it. (Although reading through the comments I'm reminded that it's a Moffat effort, so I might've watched it on that basis.)

On the Three Musketeers movie, Paul W S Andeson made Resident Evil 1 & 4, the Death Race remake and Event Horizon. If I heard he was making a period drama action flick complete with dirigibles I'm pretty sure I would go see it whether it was hung over the flayed corpse of a literary classic or not.


*Unless the murdering of the source text is on a holocaustal scale like LXG, obviously, in which case burn it, burn it and scatter the ashes.

[martling.livejournal.com]

It's interesting to see this described as 'branding'. Is it really branding in the same sense as for other products?

I saw the Sherlock Holmes film and it's true that I probably wouldn't have done if it wasn't labelled that. Similarly, I might buy a product from say, Nikon and be influenced in that decision by the fact it says Nikon on it.

However, I think there's a key difference. If it turned out that the product labelled Nikon was crap, my opinion of the Nikon brand would go down. If it turned out however that the film bore no relation to the Sherlock Holmes concept I am familiar with, I think my opinion of the Sherlock Holmes concept would be unaffected: only my opinion of that film would go down.

This is, I suppose, influenced by my knowledge that poor Sir Arthur bears no responsibility for the various travesties committed with his characters since his death.

An interesting case in between the scenarios above would be Star Wars, which seems to me much closer to the conventional view of a "brand", and whose original creator is very directly responsible for Jar Jar Binks. It's hard not to find my opinions of the originals affected by subsequent releases, particularly when he's still fucking with the originals.

[andrewducker]

It's clearly a _something_. Because a fair chunk of people (30-36%) watched two things purely because they had the word "Sherlock" on them.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

They're called "Sherlock" but that means more than the character. Some people might not care about Sherlock Holmes as a character but might care about watching things in that period, however fast and loose history is played with and whether they're about Sherlock Holmes or someone else entirely.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

Maybe like what Stephen King says about film and TV adaptations of his work: He points to the books on his shelf and says they're still there.

Two other interesting examples are the Bram Stoker's Dracula and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein films from the early 90s: They asserted to be the stories as the original authors intended them, thus the author's name, but certainly in the case of the former were more about bringing out and/or introducing subtexts.

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

I didn't watch Sherlock because of branding as such, but rather because I like the character of Sherlock Holmes and wanted to see what Moffat and Gattis would do with that character. If they'd announced it as them doing "a Holmes-like detective" (or even a Doctor-like detective, since the Doctor when done properly is a very similar character) I'd have watched that.

Didn't watch the Guy Ritchie films because Guy Ritchie films do less than nothing for me, and the whole advertising campaign around it might as well have been plastered with "AVOID!" in gigantic neon letters.

And as for The Three Musketeers, I was completely unaware of its existence til I saw this post, but doubt I'll go and see it from your brief description.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Didn't watch the Sherlock Holmes film at the cinema, but intend to on DVD at some point, but it's not high on the priority list since it looks fun but not good.

Didn't watch the TV series, because it was on TV and I don't watch many TV series, and don't really know anything about it.

The three musketeers thing looks vaguely entertaining but I doubt I'll see it at the cinema.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

An adaptation is just that, an adaptation. It's adapted from one thing, into something else.

The film Watchmen bears some similarities to the comic, but it's still just a film. The film LXG bears some similarities to the comic, but it's still just a film. The TV seris of Holmes, the Young Sherlock Holmes film and the Sherlock Holmes vs Cthulhu computer game also have some relations to the ACD stories, but they're a different thing entirely.

Yes, people will judge one against the other, but that's (usually) just going to lead disappointment. Is LXG a good adaptation of the graphic novel? Fuck no. Is LXG an enjoyable film? I thought so, because for me I could divorce it from the graphic novel. I mean, it's not -great-, but it's fun. It's like Wild Wild West, basically, but not terrible (and without Kenneth Branagh, WWW would have been even worse).

Apocalypse Now is one of the greatest films ever made, but it's not -really- a very good adaptation of Heart of Darkness. Bladerunner isn't really a good adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep or the other story it comes from, but it is instead amazing in its own right. The three Lord of the Rings films, on the other hand, are pretty close adaptations of the source.

LXG is, to my mind, about as good an adaptation of the source as Bladerunner is. This doesn't make them good or bad in their own right, unless you can't or won't separate them from the source. Something that is good in a comic may not necessarily be good in a film.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

If I want to see Sherlock Holmes, I want the proper Victorian setting*. The setting is as important as the characterisation to me. So the ITV Jeremy Brett series scores points in this respect and the BBC Benedict Cumberbund** / Martin Freeman series doesn't. (And neither do the Basil Rathbone films.) If you read the Conan Doyle stories, they are dripping with period details. Remove those and it's just another detective story.





* Actually some of the later stories are set after 1901, but you know what I mean.
** Or whatever his name is.