Did You Know: The First ‘Young Sherlock’ in 1985 Changed Movie History… With CGI?
Viewers couldn’t get enough of Young Sherlock earlier this year, and a second season was quickly given the green light.
The Amazon Prime Video series, which was released in March, stars Hero Fiennes Tiffin as the eponymous Sherlock Holmes, with the series exploring his younger years and origin story before he became the detective we all know and love.
Young Sherlock has an average of 84% on Rotten Tomatoes — and viewers love it just as much as critics, with a near-identical audience score of 83%. However, this isn’t the first time Sherlock’s younger years have been adapted on-screen.
In 1985, the movie Young Sherlock Holmes was released. It focussed on Sherlock and Watson meeting for the first time at boarding school, as they try to uncover the reason behind mysterious deaths, which seem to be related to trippy hallucinations. This film, which was directed by Barry Levinson (the filmmaker behind Rain Man and Good Morning, Vietnam), has a respectable critical consensus of 71% on Rotten Tomatoes — but in the years since, it has become something of a cult classic.
Moreover, there’s one aspect of the film in particular that actually makes it an essential component of cinema history…
The Role of CGI In Young Sherlock Holmes
In the movie, the character Reverend Duncan Nesbitt suffers a hallucination. A knight from a stained glass window effectively jumps out of the pane and pursues Nesbitt with his sword. This causes the panicked reverend to run outside into the street, where he is trampled to death by a horse and carriage.
It’s the very existence of this knight (although, as mentioned, it's technically a hallucination) that makes Young Sherlock Holmes a cult classic. This is because it is the first fully polygonal CGI character in the history of film — and pulling it off was no small feat.
How Did They Do It?
Steven Spielberg, who was the executive producer of the film, worked with Industrial Light & Magic and Pixar to bring the knight to life. It should be noted that Spielberg himself founded ILM along with George Lucas, with the company also proving instrumental in bringing the Star Wars movies to life.
As reported by Slashfilm, the project was spearheaded by ILM’s visual effects supervisor, Dennis Muren. It was his wife, Zara, who designed the knight as a series of glass shards arranged in a human-like manner. In a 2020 keynote speech at the VIEW Conference, Muren explained how they made 100 or more one-inch-thick pieces of digital glass which, when together, created a formidable figure. He says they also angled these glass shards so that they were convexed toward the reverend, giving it all an especially sinister presence.
In the end, this tireless work was worth it, with the film being nominated for Best Visual Effects at the 1986 Academy Awards. And while this film might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about a young Sherlock Holmes (especially these days), it will always be remembered for reaching that unique cinematic milestone.
If you want to watch Young Sherlock Holmes and see this landmark moment of movie-making yourself, you can do so by renting it on Prime Video or Apple TV.
