Frank Miller’s film adaptation of Will Eisner’s The Spirit is an elaborately stylized train wreck. It would be easy to see only the glaring dissonances, such as childish one-liners sharing the screen with a scene in which a man is bludgeoned with a severed head, and write off the film entirely. But this wouldn’t do it the justice it deserves. The Spirit is a kind of “what if?” that populates the daydreams of only the most committed comic book nerds, which by some miracle has actually been made into a film. It’s a film that exists to answer an outlandish hypothetical question: what if two of the greatest comic artists of all time, Will Eisner and Frank Miller, teamed up to make a movie?!? Fortunately for Mr. Eisner, he didn’t live to see the result
The plot of the film is really unremarkable, and serves only to deliver the more considered stylistic elements. One of the big questions the film needs to answer, but doesn’t, is whether or not it’s a comedy. And what does “comic” mean here?
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.
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 Batmanseries/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.
Lionsgate has moved up the release of Frank Miller’s The Spirit, from January 2009 to Christmas Day. It’s a huge, and not entirely explicable, show of confidence for the comic book movie, which will now compete against family holiday films and Oscar bait instead of having a January graveyard weekend to itself.
Ellen Page will prove her range by strapping on a corset to play the title role in a BBC Films adaptation of Jane Eyre.
Sony Classics has acquired Atom Egoyan’s Adoration, which will premiere in competition later this month at Cannes. The film stars Rachel Blanchard, who also appeared in Egoyan’s last Cannes entry, the widely-reviled Where the Truth Lies.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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