After seeing the sleek teaser trailer for The Spirit, Frank Miller’s adaptation of the classic Will Eisner comics, it’s hard to believe that this new leaked trailer (originally posted on Film School Rejects, where it may still be available) is for the same movie. It begins with an arty, perfume-ad sort of misdirected marketing angle and then evolves into a goofy mix between the campy Batman series/movies, Sin City, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and Brenda Starr (remember that piece of crap?).

And I’m not alone in thinking it now looks pretty terrible. Bloggers and commenters around the web are mostly critical of Samuel L. Jackson’s look. Personally, I think Gabriel Macht, as the lead, looks about as lame as Billy Zane in The Phantom (is it possible domino masks are never cool on an actor?). For a roundup of what others are saying, since you probably can no longer see the clip out yourself, check out some links after the jump.

• Wired’s Underwire blog says the new trailer “sucks” and “just doesn’t capture, well, the spirit of The Spirit.”
• Cinematical’s Eugene Novikov fears that “The Spirit will prize style to the exclusion of a story that can be taken seriously” and admits about Jackson: “I can’t imagine I’ll be able to watch him in the movie without giggling.”
• Peter Sciretta at /Film has a good point that “The actors come off as actors wearing costumes, rather than comic book characters brought to life on the big screen,” and asks a question I too wondered: “what is up with the psychedelic image of The Spirit falling out of the lips of a woman’s mouth? Am I missing something?”
• Josh Tyler at Cinema Blend may have the answer: “Apparently, The Spirit is some sort of sex fiend? The trailer focuses on his weird dalliances with women, some of which seem to happen inside 80s music videos and some of which happen inside Sin City.”
• At FirstShowing.net, Alex Billington attempts some positivity: “I actually think it doesn’t look that bad.”
• io9’s Meredith Woerner has a lot of negatives to counter that: “Let’s disregard the godawful late-90s rock music in the background for a moment, and focus on the big bad. First, you’ve got a ton of things going on that make no sense. The Spirit is seen climbing across big fat lady lips, that’s a bit jarring. Next there’s the dialogue: it’s rotten. It reeks of trying too hard. ‘You’re so close,’ coos Lorelei. Finally, the barrage of Hollywood hotties seems more like a desperate play for sexiness than picking the right actor for each role.”
• Mike Sampson at JoBlo gives this confusing response: “I’m straight up dying to see THE SPIRIT because I can’t believe how unbelievably bad it looks.”
• Finally, some simple, full-on positivity from Carolina at Hollywood.com: “Movie comes out in December. Looks pretty good. Any other Frank Miller fans?”

UPDATE: The embedded trailer was shut down before this post even went live, but it’s now officially up on Yahoo!