Holmes vs Moriarty - When Heavyweights Collide

“What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?”, Joker once asked Batman. The timing of the question was probably wrong as Joker was himself hanging upside down from top of a building and Batman was too pissed off to give a fitting verbal reply. But it is surely a fascinating scenario (if you think about it) – two champions of their respective fields, advocating conflicting ideologies, coming face-to-face for the first time to outwit, outperform and outclass each other. It is always a battle of gigantic proportion, where you have Goliaths on both ends and Davids watching from the sidelines. It is, as my good friend ‘CJ’ calls it – a COLLASH – a bastard son born when collision has sex with clash. For the stakes are higher than they have ever been, and post this encounter the reputations will never be the same again, unless they share the honors. The adversaries do change according to scripts but the intensity and excitement of having finally met your match remains intact. It could be Good vs. Evil, Savior vs. Destroyer, Capitalist vs. Communist, Gandhi vs. Hitler, Pacino vs. De Niro, Sampras vs. Federer, Ali vs. Frazier, Tendulkar vs. McGrath, Roark vs. Gault or Sherlock Holmes vs. Prof. James Moriarty.

Guy Ritchie has encashed on this salivating proposition of bringing two fictional adversaries together in the sequel to his 2009 revamped version of Sherlock Holmes and let me say that Madonna’s ex-husband has done a pretty good job of it. Robert Downey Jr., an actor who, considering his talent, tasted commercial success pretty late in his career, once again delivers a master class performance as an eponymous detective and towers above the rest – something you expect. But it is the little known Jared Harris, playing Moriarty, who gives the kind of performance that literally ensures that no one ever calls him Jared ‘who?’ again. What makes his performance more credible is the fact that he had to work his way around the initial dampener of seeing him, and not Bratt Pitt, donning the role of Moriarty and still leave you impressed. Well, let me just say that A Game of Shadows is one of those rare movies that are able to pit two strongly built characters against each other, build a thrilling crescendo and pull it off perfectly. And of course, it’s better than the first part. But this is not a movie review (although partially it is.) This post is more about finer details of the history behind this great rivalry, something left out from the movie for obvious reasons and I cant keep myself from writing about.

When you cherish your gift of immaculate observation and delectable presence of mind to nab even the toughest and wackiest of problems that police itself has given up on, you’d usually find yourself in a spot of bother when pitted against a criminal mind that has an extraordinary dangerous streak and intent to propagate crime. Moriarty, in many ways, is a perfect antagonist for Holmes. Holmes, younger of the two, has always known and heard about Moriarty’s legend but never met him till their famous encounter in Conan Doyle’s The Final Problem. In spite of being a man of immense ego and self-esteem, Holmes respects Moriarty’s mental powers and treats him as his equal in terms of intelligence. He even knew full well from the very start that sooner or later their paths would cross, and when they do, he cannot afford to let his guard down, not against the master criminal, the ‘Napoleon of Crime’ as he fondly called him. Moriarty on the other hand, was of course the mafia of the crime syndicate in Europe with a vast network of immensely to moderately talented delinquents working under him. With his irreconcilably corrupt mind, he would leverage his Machiavellian intelligence to plan everything that is deviously wrong and that comes under the domain of illegal activity and then lend it the most ingenious execution.


He knows every trick in the trade and is too shrewd and much too savvy for the customary police to suspect him, let alone plot his arrest. Nobody has seen his face. Nobody knows if he is for real. But nobody denies his existence too. He is the idea, the thought and the voice behind all that is going mysteriously wrong in London.

Moreover, he acknowledges Holmes’ unique talent but I doubt if he ever thought of him as his match. Unlike Holmes, who had a good prior knowledge about Moriarty’s legend, Moriarty only hears about Holmes after he first foils his plan in The Valley of Fear. The famous BBC TV series starring Jeremy Brett, also inferred ‘The Red Headed League’ episode to be Moriarty’s brainchild. Though Moriarty does concede that Holmes has all the ingredients to be an interesting adversary and that it would be disappointing to lose him, but he can’t let his business suffer because of pleasure. He won’t let Holmes continue to foil his subterfuges and fuck with his reputation. It is therefore sad that Holmes and his bete-noir came face-to-face just once – The Final Problem – their one and last encounter.

Before finishing this fictional trivia let me just enlighten you about one great parallel between Prof. Moriarty and the cult Indian comic kitsch villain Grand Master Robo. The way both characters were introduced in the franchise before being brought fully in focus in later editions is actually quite fascinating. The fact that both Moriarty and Robo went on to become the arch-nemeses of the respective protagonists makes the comparison that much more symbolic. But the similarities start and end there. Where Moriarty is known for his intellectual deviousness, Robo is known for his physical abilities – he is half human and half machine. In a way, one can call Robo a poor cousin of Darth Vader too! But more on that later - when, in near future, some ingenious Indian filmmaker (with access to ludicrous amount of money) picks up an old Raj Comics copy of Grand Master Robo from the stack of Guptaji’s worn out comic books and decides to adapt it on screen. Till then savour the vintage Moriarty-Holmes standoff.
The End?