We talked about Frank Miller’s highly anticipated film adaptation of Will Eisner’s long running comic book The Spirit back at Comic-Con when the scenes failed to impress us. In fact, they felt like they were straight out of Sin City Redux. It’s been a few months since we were underwhelmed; have the filmmakers changed anything? Not based on the clip we were sent this week. Despite being a self-proclaimed fan of Will Eisner, Frank Miller is managing to stomp the life out of every facet that made The Spirit a compelling comic. Check out the video after the break, and find out why we’re not happy.
The Spirit, which has been called “the Citizen Kane of comic books,” ran from 1940 through the early 1950s, and even appeared as a Sunday comic strip for three years in the early 40s. Eisner had been approached by publishers who wanted to get in on the comic book, but that didn’t really appeal to Eisner. As a result, he created a hero without superpowers who fights crime wearing a bright blue business suit, a fedora, and a domino mask. The charm was in both Eisner’s appealing art style, and the gee-whillikers style writing that combined detective noir with goofball wit.
In Eisner’s book, Denny Colt was a young detective who was apparently killed on the job, but was later revealed to have been in “suspended animation” and used the fact that the world thought he was dead to create a new identity for himself to fight crime as The Spirit. Sort of like Michael Knight without the talking car. He doesn’t have any powers or special abilities, except maybe the ease with which he seems to attract women.
Straight from the mouth of Frank Miller in this clip, his movie version of The Spirit has mysteriously returned from the dead and has “unusual powers of healing.” As if this wasn’t affront enough, you’ve got Samuel L. Jackson as a vamping villain version of The Octopus (only seen in the comics as a pair of gloves) who shouts “I’ve got 8 of everything!” while blasting away with a multitude of enormous guns. We imagine there’s a joke about his eight penises somewhere in the film as well.
Miller even goes as far as saying, “This movie’s not a tribute to Will Eisner, it’s a tribute to The Spirit“. Sadly, it seems like it’s more a tribute to Miller’s obsession with green screen, guns, over the top acting, and his own Sin City. The Spirit was entirely Will Eisner’s creation. To not feature what made it so popular is a slap in the face to the memory of Eisner, and Miller should know better. This would be like taking Miller’s own version of The Dark Knight Returns, giving Batman some sort of arbitrary superpower (Hey! Now he can talk to bats!) and making it a slapstick comedy.
Even the poster for Miller’s film tries to ape the splash page style that Eisner often opened his comics with. Although where Eisner’s pieces were gorgeous works of art, Miller’s comes off as an amateurish horror film copy. “My City Screams” also seems a lot harsher than the madcap adventures that Eisner’s hero often found himself in. He’s even changed The Spirit’s blue suit and mask for black versions, and he’s trying to make his bright red tie as iconic as Superman’s cape or Batman’s symbol.
Our advice is to just wait for Sin City 2, when Miller is free to apply the style of filmmaking that suited Sin City to his own artwork so well, for better or for worse. As far as The Spirit is concerned, imagine if Quentin Tarantino remade Citizen Kane, because that’s about as messy as this movie sounds. Miller is so concerned with making this his own, that he’s thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Even DC Comics, who publishes a monthly The Spirit comic book, calls it “Will Eisner’s The Spirit” on the cover of each book. Miller’s version feels like it left Will Eisner on the curb — or more likely spinning in his grave somewhere.
Originally posted on:
SpoutBlog