The usher looked at my ticket, blinked, looked back at me, back down at the ticket, back at me, and said, “The Spirit? Really?” Then he rolled his eyes, shrugged in a “it takes all kinds” manner and tore my ticket.
As bad omens go, the only thing that could have been worse would have been discovering Mike Nelson, Crow, and Tom Servo sitting in the front row.
The thing with Frank Miller is this: He’s a power hitter. He takes huge swings for the fences every time out. If he connects, he drives it out of the park. The problem with power hitters is that they strike out. A lot. And when they do, it can be monumental to watch. They don’t just stand there and watch a ball whiz by on the outside corner with their bat on their shoulder. No, they take huge hacks at it, swinging from the heels, and when they miss, they spin around, their legs twisted in knots and crossed at the ankles, and sometimes even fall flat on their ášš.
That’s pretty much what we’ve got here. A huge swing and a miss.
The truth is that, if you come at it from the point of view of viewing it as a surrealist comedy, it can be pretty entertaining. I’m going to focus on the positive aspects because (a) I am friends with most of the producers on the film, and (b) everyone else is dumping on Frank, so why pile on?
A) It’s the best film that Paul Levitz has ever appeared in. During one point as the Spirit is plummeting, Paul is visible in the crowd and is heard to say, “You’ll believe a man can’t fly.” Seriously. I’m not kidding. Go run Paul’s name through IMDB if you don’t believe me.
B) All the shots remained clearly in focus.
C) Everyone’s diction was really clear, and no one bumped into any furniture.
D) I could follow the action sequences, which is more than I can say for “Quantum of Solace.”
E) The Frank Miller illustrations over the final credits were pretty good. In fact, if this had been a four-issue Frank Miller comic book series instead of a movie, I think people would have liked it a lot better.
Here’s the main problem: The film is like “Ðìçk Tracy” on crack. The thing that made “Ðìçk Tracy”…well, not work, really, but work as much as it did…was, first, the vividness of the color palette and second, Al Pacino contrasted with Warren Beatty. Scenery chewer versus a guy who was little more than scenery himself. Here we have on the one hand Samuel Jackson, who apparently wanted to out-lousy-movie his “Pulp Fiction” co-star John Travolta. He failed; despite what others have said, “The Spirit” is NOT as bad as “Battlefield Earth.” On the other hand, we have Gabriel Macht as the Spirit, a character who desperately needed to have been played by Bruce Campbell. In fact, there’s nothing in this film that wouldn’t have been 110% better if Campbell had been in the lead, because he can carry off the balancing act that I think Frank was going for.
“The Spirit” is at war with itself: A color scheme mostly of muted black and white (a flashback of Denny Colt lying dead of gunshot wounds makes it look like he’s covered with pigeon crap rather than blood) is in conflict with the over-the-top script which is in conflict with the director’s vision (bad news since the director wrote the script) which is in conflict with the actors (bad news since the director directed them.) So you get a film that doesn’t know what it wants to be aside from a Frank Miller film. Lines that are intended to be funny fall flat; lines that are intended to be serious prompt laughs. Cloned disposable henchmen with their names on their t-shirts, apparently having wandered in from the 1960s “Batman” series, keep showing up in sequences that I suspect only Frank thought were amusing. In the sparsely attended hall where I saw it, the film garnered at various times reactions ranging from outright guffaws to incredulous shouts of “WHAT?” in reaction to some particularly absurd moment. Something tells me that isn’t what Frank Miller was going for. The truth is that Frank was given his head on this film, and now critics are handing it to him. Is it deserved? To quote “Unforgiven,” deserves has nothin’ to do with it.
Ultimately, is “The Spirit” THAT bad? No. It’s just THAT not good.
PAD
• 
I saw the movie this morning, too, and I couldn’t agree with you more, Peter. Throughout most of the film my jaw was just kind of hanging there, agape, as I repeatedly couldn’t believe what I was seeing on the screen. It was absolutely surreal, like you said, and absurd and a little bit insane.
I’m still not entirely sure what it was I saw, but I’m fairly certain it wasn’t anything close to what Will Eisner had in mind when he created the character. I’m dying to know what Will would have thought of it.
The cameo by Paul Levitz cracked me up. I wanted to nudge the people around me (yes, I was not the only one in the theatre) and point him out to them, “That’s the publisher of DC Comics,” but I doubt any of them would have cared.
I did like “Iger Street” and the “Ditko’s Speedy Delivery” truck and the fence, “Mr. Donnenfeld.” And did you notice the Thug (what were they, clones? I mean, what was up with THAT?) toward the end whose name was “Matzos”? I got a little kick out of that, and Morgenstern not know what “alta cocker” meant.
But, yes, I came away from the movie utterly perplexed, which, for all I know, is exactly what Miller was going for.
Congrats on the MST3K reference PAD!
Congrats on the MST3K reference PAD!
Sigh. Really wanted to like this. Why Miller wanted to make this little more than Sin City 2…
For some reason I’ve always seen The Phantom, The Shadow and The Spirit as 3 of a kind, liked together in some way. Maybe the fact that they were not overly fantastic in nature, or the period they took place in, or their longevity or whatever. Now they have something else in common–they bombed as films.
As PAD said, it’s become pretty common to dump on Miller. A lot of it seems like petty jealousy to me but he brought this one on himself. The most amazing thing to me is that the studio really seemed to think they had a hit on their hands, judging from the money spent on advertising. Could this possibly have tested well?
I don’t know why so many people seem to hate Miller (ASB? It’s fun if you’re not trying to take it seriously). I’m going into this with an open mind.
Maybe it’s because he has no business directing?
Hate him? I was rooting for him. And I was rooting for the film. As I said, I know the producers. I want them to be successful. So I was somewhat dismayed that this film in which they’re all so heavily invested is getting clobbered.
PAD
I don’t hate Frank Miller, I pity him. It’s like that cousin that used to be a respected member of the family, and now he is an alcoholic nut that always does embarassing things.
Laughing at ASB strikes me as disturbingly similar to laughing at the formerly sane guy that now pìššëš himself in public, while ranting incoherently and showing his genitals to passersby.
Some laugh, some just want the poor guy to stop and get help.
I was skeptical of this movie when NEWSDAY gave it one star (very, very few films they give less than two stars that I liked), and less when I heard they gave the Spirit a Wolverine-ish healing ability.
In Eisner’s comics, the Spirit is pretty much a normal guy — a hard-boiled detective, but not the steroid freaks of SIN CITY — who is good in a fight but tends to wind up with lots of bruises and ripped clothes. The strength is not so much in the character, but in the innovative stories and often atypical tales (notably one story showing a lovable loser who found he could fly, or another showing, minute by minute, the last ten minutes of a criminal’s life). I suppose someone thought that wouldn’t be interesting enough for the big screen, and it looks like Frank Mller decided to supercharge it like SIN CITY (just as he did with THE DARK KNIGHT STRIKES BACK, which turned Batman into someone who cheered on those killing bad guys).
I’ll stick with the Eisner comics.
I think I can agree with most of the comments here. I liked the movie for its general look and feel, though it wanted to channel Sin City too often, the acting was good for the most part, samuel jackson was crazy funny in his over the top acting and the connection between the Octopus and the Spirit I thought was neat. What it boils down to, for me at least, was that it was a poor/lacking Spirit movie, but if you ignore the comic book source it was a decent.
Miller has actually talked about how the stuff from the movie comes from the original Spirit comics. Like how the Spirit and the Octopus had crazy battles where they did all kinds of stuff to each other, but walked away.
I’d be willing to bet that when Frank Miller read the comics, it sparked a lot of ideas in his head. He’d see something that wasn’t fully explained and come up with an explanation for it. So his interpretation of what was happening ended up having a lot of stuff in it that everyone else didn’t see. I think he looks at his movie and sees it as a lot more faithful to the comic than other people would see it as.
Frank Miller. Robocop 2. I rest my case.
I haven’t seen the film yet, but as for the MST reference, I’m sure Mike, Kevin, and Bill will take a crack at the Spirit as a rifftrax when it comes out on DVD. Also PAD, assuming that you are a MST fan, If by some cruel twist of fate your not aware of Rifftrax, or Cinematic Titanic I highly recommend googleing at your earliest convenience.
JAC
The sad reality is Miller has been off his game for a very long time. If those in charge focused more on the now rather then Miller’s 20+ years gone glory days and told him he is f$@#ing up and taken the appropriate actions, a servicable movie might have been created instead of the insult to Will Eisner that was put together. That is part and parcel of being a producer and apparently none of them did their jobs.
“…apparently none of them did their jobs.”
Appearances can be decieving, especially if you have no first-hand knowledge of what happened. Despite the bad reviews, I think I want to see “The Spirit” to judge for myself. I’ll limit my opinions about the film to what I see on the screen, though.
I’m not a comic book person, so I have no dog in the fight about Frank Miller’s brilliance or arrogance. I will say that I was wildly entertained by The Spirit. I had to be restrained from laughing too loudly several times during the course of the film.
As I told people later, every time they hit a new low, they started drilling.
It’s always bugged me that people continue to dump on Miller for taking risks and doing things that people aren’t expecting while Alan Moore is consistently praised as a genius despite the fact that his recent work has suffered as well. “I’m the god dámņëd Batman” is condemned while a children’s lit lesbian pørņ is somehow considered art? Maybe if Miller had published through Top Shelf and overcharged for a really big hardcover people would take him more seriously.
I respect Miller for trying while other popular writers continue to pander to their audience.
I haven’t seen the movie yet but I intend to despite that I pretty much believe everything I’ve read about it. I think the mistake that Miller made here is taking his one directing experience and trying to recreate it here. Most likely, this was probably his opportunity to break in to the directing racket after having worked on Sin City and I don’t blame him for taking it but he probably could have used a little more co-directing experience before taking this one on.
Frank Miller. Robocop 2. I rest my case.
Well, the story goes that the extensive rewriting of Miller’s Robocop 2 script was what put him off Hollywood until he was finally convinced to be involved in Sin City.
Now if it only looked like he could do something other than, at face value, what looks like a Sin City clone…
Here’s the problem. The plot to the SPIRIT can be boiled down simply (spoiler warning). The Octopus and Sand Seref want something. They each grab a box, return home and slap their foreheads. “D’oh! I picked up the wrong one!” Somewhere toward the middle/end, Sand gets a message to the Octopus, propsoing a trade. At the conclusion, they trade, with many cops on hand.
THAT is the plot. It could have been told in ten minutes and posted on youtube. Everything else, including The Spirit himself, is inconsequential.
MST3K? Funny you should mention them. It seemed to me that there were several lines of dialogue built into this movie just for that purpose.
I believe that Frank Miller might have been drunk when making this movie. Because it was an awesome drunk movie. I think the movie was hilarious in the way that ASBAR is hilarious. It doesn’t matter if it was supposed to be campy or intended to be as comedic as it was. It just was.
If people could turn off their brains and enjoy the ultra violence of Punisher War Zone. People could just stand to turn off their minds and enjoy the over-the-topness of The Spirit. It was very enjoyable in that mind-state.
rich, PAD’s book on comics writing described Raiders of the Lost Arc the same way. Nazis want something. Indianna Jones tries to keep them from getting it, but everything he does fails. The Nazis get it and it kills them.
Pretty much any movie can be boiled down to a five sentence description.
In all the interviews I’ve seen with Miller he’s talked about disagreements with Eisner over things in the comics so I wonder how much of this is Miller just doing it the way he wanted to instead of trying to do Eisner’s “Spirit?” How close do you think the original “Spirit” movie was to its source?
Meanwhile, I want to see the movie more now because of the bad reviews than I ever did based on the previews. Unfortunately, between overtime at work and the general holiday foolishness if I have a day free I’m in no mood to spend two hours of it in a theater. Guess I’ll wait for the DVD.
I haven’t been reading an excessive amount of Miller’s work in the past 20 years, but wasn’t Sin City the comic in the last 20? And THAT certainly has been loved. Presumably, the success of Sin City (the film) comes at least partially from Miller’s contribution on the film. (I liked the film in spite of the fact that it didn’t have any of the qualities I normally want in film.) On the other hand, I was pretty horrified by his Dark Knight sequel and didn’t get beyond the first issue of the All-Star Batman that he did with Jim Lee. I DID love Give Me Liberty (done in the last 20 years).
My take (limited, grant you) is that Miller has either brilliantly excellent instincts (the majority of his work), or catastrophically BAD instincts – (Dark Knight Strikes Back or from what I’m hearing about the Spirit.) Not much in the middle. It’s either genre-changing or God-awful. Perhaps it depends on who he is working with or the amount that he is being reined in / edited? I’m sure this hurts like a mother, but I admire the man for always taking risks, and I hope this doesn’t put him off from continuing to do so.
Pretty much any movie can be boiled down to a five sentence description.
I always liked Harlan Ellison’s synopsis of Moby Ðìçk: “A nut chasing after a big fish.”
I don’t hate Frank Miller, I pity him. It’s like that cousin that used to be a respected member of the family, and now he is an alcoholic nut that always does embarassing things.
And with that description I find myself thinking of Dave Sim.
BTW, have you heard the story of The Spirit movie that could’ve been? Back in the 1980s, Brad Bird, Gary Kurtz, John Musker and John Lasseter were collaborating on an animated film, but the studios weren’t interested.
I’ve been put off of this film since seeing the really completely non-handmade poster direction. There was just nothing that felt right about this project to me.
Eisner/Miller is one of my favorite books about comics, and it might have given me hope. That’s not how things rolled out, apparently. I think if Frank Miller can be called indulgent, I wouldn’t disagree.
As for the work of Alan Moore, I feel the recent work is far richer than his early work. I can read Watchmen and Miracleman repeatedly, but I have found myself far more moved by my re-readings of Promethea, Lost Girls, Voice of the Fire, Top Ten, etc. I don’t think that Moore is content with his laurels and he appears to want to push his own boundaries. I can’t really say the same for Frank Miller as his boundaries really seem to have to do mainly with vulgarity and pushing against censors than of making anything with deeper resonance.
Jason M: “rich, PAD’s book on comics writing described Raiders of the Lost Ark the same way … Pretty much any movie can be boiled down to a five sentence description.”
Well, I hve PAD’s book on writing, but that misses the mark. You can boil down Raider’s to a five sentence description, but you really need to see the movie to get the story. With THE SPIRIT, the five sentences ARE the movie. With nearly 2 hours of fluff.
I wish that he would have gone the SIN CITY route and told different stories of varying length. This movie would have been much better if it just adapted four to six Spirit stories by Eisner. You could have adapted a couple noirish crime stories, and a few of Esiner’s more offbeat stories — like the one about the lovable loser who can fly, and the toy tommy gun that wished it could actually kill people.
Jason M: “rich, PAD’s book on comics writing described Raiders of the Lost Ark the same way … Pretty much any movie can be boiled down to a five sentence description.”
Well, I hve PAD’s book on writing, but that misses the mark. You can boil down Raider’s to a five sentence description, but you really need to see the movie to get the story. With THE SPIRIT, the five sentences ARE the movie. With nearly 2 hours of fluff.
I wish that he would have gone the SIN CITY route and told different stories of varying length. This movie would have been much better if it just adapted four to six Spirit stories by Eisner. You could have adapted a couple noirish crime stories, and a few of Esiner’s more offbeat stories — like the one about the lovable loser who can fly, and the toy tommy gun that wished it could actually kill people.
Ðámņ those double posts.
Some years ago I came to understand why I loved some Miller books so much while other books are just ok, make me groan or even (DK2 I am looking at you) make me laugh the bad way. I discovered the Miller books I liked the most were all done with someone else. I rather have Year One over RotDK, consider Give me Liberty a much better work than Sin City and cling to my HardBoiled while I refused to have a free copy of 300.
And the funny thing is I actually like Frank Miller art. But to some extent, his writing seems to me much worse when he is the one drawing, like he takes extra care whenever someone else’s name is going to be on the cover along his… its just a guess, but the fact is I allways enjoy his writing much more if its other guy doing the art.
I came home a few hours ago after watching The Spirit… oh boy was the people laughing. At all the wrong sequences. And I came to think that maybe Miller needs to have a co-director. maybe his creative drive works better when working with someone he respects alongside, on equal terms. Because Sin City was actually a fantastic movie, but The Spirit, while so much like it, failed to deliver in every possible level.
It’s always bugged me that people continue to dump on Miller for taking risks and doing things that people aren’t expecting while Alan Moore is consistently praised as a genius despite the fact that his recent work has suffered as well. “I’m the god dámņëd Batman” is condemned while a children’s lit lesbian pørņ is somehow considered art?
While I haven’t read “Lost Girls”, “LOEG, The Black Dossier” was brilliant. Meanwhile ASBAR is a incoherent piece of crap. So that could have something to do with the differing opinions.
I’m not gonna waste money seeing this in the theaters, mostly because I don’t have it, but also because I don’t want to support what looks to me to be a severe bášŧárdìzáŧìøņ of Will’s work. As I stated in a different blog, I was a Spirit fan in the Sixties and Seventies, with the Warren reprints. What makes the stories work isn’t the action so much as the characters, plotting and dialogue.
Frank took ten years of a brilliant comic, smunched it down to two incomprehensible hours, and peed in the resultant mess. He gave a face to a villain who didn’t need one, superpowers to someone who never had them and generally screwed the pooch all around. If Frank was trying to make a bold statement, he did. And it’s “I SUCK!”
Roger waited until a few days ago to post his review, I think out of courtesy to the studio and his paper. He was fairly kind, but only gave it one star. He gave the Adam Sandler movie two and a half.
The characters were described as cardboard, with apologies to a useful packing material. He said it had far more style than substance. I think he was being polite, and at least respectful to the source material. I case you didn’t know, Roger Ebert is an old comics geek like us.
I’m just sick about this. Would somebody out there please shoot Frank Miller before he creates again?
I’m gonna go fix coffee now.
Miles
What’s ASBAR?
Miles Vorkosigan: “Frank took ten years of a brilliant comic, smunched it down to two incomprehensible hours, and peed in the resultant mess.”
I think that opinion carries a lot more weight from people who have actually seen the movie.
Miles Vorkosigan: “If Frank was trying to make a bold statement, he did. And it’s ‘I SUCK!’
…
“Would somebody out there please shoot Frank Miller before he creates again?”
It’s funny: a couple of years ago I posted some negative opinions about ASBAR on my own blog and readership must’ve doubled or tripled. People came out of the woodwork just to say something negative about Frank Miller, and then disappeared again. Clearly, it’s become all “kewl” to dump on Miller.
The problem is, I don’t think it’s fair or objective. Miller’s successes are more impressive than his failures: The Dark Knight Returns; Ronin; Batman: Year One; Daredevil: Born Again; Daredevil: The Man Without Fear; Sin City; 300. It is myopic in the extreme to focus on recent failures as though they are the totality of the man and his work.
PAD and lorinheller nailed it: Frank Miller takes risks that either pay off big or fail in a big way. I suppose Miller could rein himself in and stay in safter territory, but then he wouldn’t be Miller. And we’d never see another spectacular piece of work like DKR, Sin City, or 300.
As for Miller needing someone else (like an editor or producer) to rein him in, the answer is: no, he doesn’t. That’s the job of the audience. If they keep paying to read/see what he does, there’s no reason for him to stop doing it. If his audience decreases beneath the level needed for his work to be economically viable, he’ll have to choose whether to adapt or perish (metaphorically speaking).
Luigi: ASBAR = All-Star Batman and Robin.
“The problem is, I don’t think it’s fair or objective. Miller’s successes are more impressive than his failures”
Bill, the problem here is that most of his successes are old, and most of his failures are new.
Rene: “Bill, the problem here is that most of his successes are old, and most of his failures are new.”
That simply reinforces my point. As I said, the list of Miller’s successes is more impressive than the list of his failures.
The full title is All Star Batman And Robin The Boy Wonder. The hyphen between All-Star is usually omitted these days, which I attribute to internet illiteracy.
It is usually the best selling DC title the month it comes out, but it comes out so seldom that the schedule is mocked. Frank Miller writes it, and Jim Lee draws it.
In it, Batman kills and maims, talks dirty, has sex, and is completely psycho–at least, until the arrival of a certain sidekick begins to change his ways.
Most of us readers of ASBAR as totally shocked that DC is publishing this, but many of us, me included, absolutely love the book. Many people who don’t read it, or haven’t even tried to read it, hate it with a passion.
Just like the Spirit movie.
Alan Coil: “…which I attribute to internet illiteracy.”
Yet you failed to capitalize the word “The” in “The Spirit.” Would you call yourself an “internet illiterate?” It’s best to cut others a little slack, so you can ask for it in return when necessary.
Alan Coil: “Many people who don’t read it, or haven’t even tried to read it, hate it with a passion.”
Then there are those, like me, who have tried ASBAR and didn’t like it. Yet I still respect Frank Miller and his impressive body of work.
I respectfully submit that knee-jerk responses in defense of Miller are as irrational as knee-jerk criticism of his work. It’s possible to like everything he does, or none of it, or some of it.
Nevertheless, I submit his most recent failures do not define him as a creator. His list of credits, and successes, is too long and too significant.
Could we avoid such comments as “someone should shoot Frank Miller” and similar statements? Let’s remember we’re talking about (a) a real person and (b) a movie.
PAD
Bill Myers: “Yet you failed to capitalize the word “The” in “The Spirit.” Would you call yourself an “internet illiterate?” It’s best to cut others a little slack, so you can ask for it in return when necessary.”
But in “Just like the Spirit movie.” the title of the movie isn’t being used. If it were, it would be “Just like The Spirit.” As it is, it’s similar to saying “Just like the Indiana Jones movie.”
It’s best to cut others a little slack, so you can avoid getting nit-picked in return.
I’m going to reserve judgement until I see it. Personally I think I’ll like it. I don’t know if I’ll like it as much as The Dark Knight or something like that but I think I’ll like it.
Sean D. Martin, the name of the title character isn’t “Spirit.” It’s “The Spirit.”
Josh: “I’m going to reserve judgement until I see it.”
I wish more people had that attitude. It’s refreshing.
There are times when I’ve avoided a movie that received really bad reviews. In this case, however, I really want to see “The Spirit” particularly because of the negative reviews. I want to see what all of the fuss is about.
At least I’m going in with my eyes wide open. If I end up disliking it, I can’t say I wasn’t warned. 🙂
If you want to get technical, the logo on the cover of the book has a star symbol in between the words “All” and “Star”, so the correct title would be All*Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder.
And calling it by the full name at all times is vitally important. If you leave out “The World’s Greatest Comics Magazine” part out of “Fantastic Four”, it’s the same as punching Stan Lee in the face. And he’s old, why are you punching him? Bášŧárd.
I can think of at least 7 reasons to punch Stan Lee in the face. One for each awful cameo he has done in the Marvel movies.
Just kidding, of course.
“If you want to get technical…”
Actually, I don’t. If anyone wants to use my remark to Alan as a pretext for a fight, you’ll do so without my help. I’d rather discuss Miller’s latest movie and his other work.
Regarding ASBAR, when I read a couple of issues earlier this year it struck me as a logical next step in the evolution of his work. His stories and characters have grown increasingly over-the-top, so I took ASBAR at face value. I didn’t enjoy it, mind you, but I took it at face value.
I later read that Miller calls ASBAR a parody of “super-serious comics.” That threw me for a loop. Given his treatment of Superman in DKR, and his treatment of Wonder Woman in DK2, Miller’s approach to ASBAR didn’t seem nearly over-the-top enough to qualify as parody. If Alan or anyone else who enjoys ASBAR wants to weigh in, I’d be interested in knowing what you’re seeing that I’m not.
As for “The Spirit,” I haven’t read any articles about it other than PAD’s review. Has Miller stated what his intent was with this movie? I’m going to do some searching myself, but if anyone cares to offer any links to shorten my search cycle, you’ll have my gratitude. 🙂
Never mind. Just googling Miller and “The Spirit” turned up tons of stuff.
I didn’t realize Miller was friends with Eisner. It seems Miller feels his movie is true to the essence of the source material, but with a more modern spin. Having read a lot of reprints of “The Spirit,” I’m eager to see the movie so I can judge for myself.
Luigi: ASBAR = All-Star Batman and Robin.
I think Marvel should do a book called All Star Hulk And Thor.
Or DC should do a miniseries reuniting Green Lantern and Green Arrow, except they’re in civilian garb the whole time, so it’s All Star Hal/Oliver Limited Edition.
PAD
I’m going to reserve judgement until I see it.
As well you should. I know I did. Or at least I did as much as I could. I desperately wanted to see things in there others didn’t. And, as it turned out, I did. I haven’t noticed anyone else remarking on Paul’s cameo. Also, I should note that Frank had some nice in-joke nods to Eisner, such as having Dolan say, “How much difference can ten minutes make in a man’s life?” acknowledging one of the most memorable Spirit stories.
PAD