A forgotten Sherlock Holmes flop gave us the first fully CGI character

For casual moviegoers, CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) seems to be coming with a bang. Depending on who you ask, it was either the T-1000 as seen in James Cameron’s “Terminator 2” or the animated dinosaurs in Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park” that marked a sea change in the way fantasy and science fiction creatures were created for the cinema. However, most film buffs and students of the subject realize that cinema evolves on a certain spectrum, and this is even more true for new technologies. Experiments with computer animation began as early as the 1960s, and a number of milestones occurred on the path to these aforementioned triumphs. Films like “Star Trek II,” “Tron” and “The Last Starfighter” all provided building blocks for the eventual CGI revolution.

Another notable film involved in the dawn of CGI is one that isn’t often talked about, so much so that it could be called forgotten: “Young Sherlock Holmes.” Directed by Barry Levinson and released in December 1985, the film was an Amblin Entertainment production, meaning Spielberg was involved. As such, the executive producer reached out to his friends at Lucasfilm when the script called for a priest having a hallucination of a stained glass window coming to life and attacking him in the form of a knight. The folks at Industrial Light + Magic brought in a division known as Pixar to help them with the scene, and their work resulted in the first fully CGI character ever created for a film. It’s an impressive and memorable sequence in a still underrated film.

The central mystery of “Young Sherlock Holmes” concerns the murders of several prominent figures in Victorian London through horrific hallucinations that lead them to their deaths. One of these drug-induced hallucinations occurs when Reverend Duncan Nesbitt (Donald Eccles) sees the Stained Glass Knight attack him, frightening him so much that the man runs off onto a busy street and is hit by a car. It’s a brief scene, and the knight was not required to do more than appear sufficiently menacing and intimidating to motivate Nesbitt’s fear. Yet Levinson, Spielberg and writer Chris Columbus needed the Knight to be self-contained and believable. In other words, while a previous creation entirely in CG like Bit from “Tron” could be considered a character, the knight had to have presence.

For this, the Pixar Computer Animation Group team was mobilized, because the people there (including John Lasseter) were adept at this booming technology. Working under the direction of ILM visual effects supervisor Dennis Muren, the trick was not only making the Knight a reality, but also finding a way to depict him that would be worth the expense of the scene. As Muren explained during a keynote speech at the VIEW conference in 2020, what the scene needed was “design that feels like you’re getting what you pay for in CG.” That’s when Muren’s wife, Zara, stepped in, designing the Knight as a series of flat, individual pieces of glass working in tandem. It’s a look that sold the effect, justified the CG approach, and made the film worthy of an Oscar nomination.

In the 40 years since its release, The Knight and its importance in the history of cinema and visual effects have been the reason why everyone has been talking about “Young Sherlock Holmes”, which was not yet a box office hit. Yet it’s a film that deserves more attention and affection. On the one hand, his approach to the Holmes legend is quite novel, becoming interested in the character (played by Nicholas Rowe) as a teenager. Rather than generally being a murder mystery story or action film (as in Robert Downey Jr. films), “Young Sherlock Holmes” recalls the pulp adventure of the 30s and 40s, a mixture of mystery and horror.

Levinson makes the hallucination sequences genuinely eerie, and the dangers Holmes, Watson (Alan Cox), and Elizabeth (Sophie Ward) face are not treated frivolously. There is a side and a real stake in the Columbus scenario, a tone which seems inherited from his other Spielberg production the year before, “Gremlins.” Although the film’s treatment of Egyptian culture is highly problematic by today’s standards, it is on par with the antiquated worldview and serial adventure tropes of the time, similar to Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

What’s also notable is how the film foreshadows the appeal of the “Harry Potter” series. This isn’t too surprising considering the director of the first two films in this franchise was Columbus himself. Still, the dynamic between Holmes, Watson, and Elizabeth feels like a more mature version of Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Yes, it may have failed domestically upon release, but the 1980s are littered with financial failures which then lasted. That “young Sherlock Holmes” deserves to be counted among them is, at least to me, elementary.