Story here.

Comic book artist Frank Miller will adapt and direct The Spirit, based on comic legend Will Eisner's classic strip, for Odd Lot Entertainment and Batfilm Productions, reports Variety.

Miller made his helming debut co-directing Sin City -- adapted from his graphic novel -- with Robert Rodriguez.

The Spirit, which debuted in 1940, tells the story of a masked detective who is believed to be dead. Using a mausoleum as his home base, Eisner's character fights crime in the dark shadows of Central City, using cunning and ingenious forms of punishment.

Never heard of The Spirit, but, with great joy I will follow Frank Miller anywhere.

-s.

The Spirit was created in the 1940's by Will Eisner, who is considered one of the greatest comic book writers. DC Comics purchased the rights to the character a year or two ago, and will be introducing him back to the comic book fold soon.

The interesting question: will Miller portray the character of Ebony White as the comic book version?

'The Spirit' movie that could have been
But if the world had turned a little differently, if fate had been a little kinder, a “Spirit” feature film would have debuted in the 1980s that would not only have been revolutionary but -- those of us involved in it were convinced -- a huge hit, possibly the first $100 million-grossing animated feature. And the futures of such filmmakers as Brad Bird, Gary Kurtz, John Musker and John Lasseter might have taken alternative paths.
Steven Paul Leiva, Hero Complex, Los Angeles Times, December 12

The trade papers have spoken.

I don't read either of these publications more than thrice a year each, at best, so I don't know how much these reviews can be trusted. Still, they don't look promising.

While I am trying to remain neutral, Miller seems to have missed the simplicity of the character. He was a friend of Eisner's, so I had hopes of something fun, not absurdly campy, but a fun crime-fighting romp. It looks like Sin City 1/2. Miller has creative issues that I had hoped would not interfere here...but I fear I have hoped in vein.

I never had much hope for this film, as soon as I heard Miller was directing it. He thinks The Spirit is just like his Sin City, but they are almost polar opposites, philosophically. Miller is incapable of "getting" The Spirit. Sigh.

FWIW, I studied under Will Eisner for three years in the late 1980s into 1990. When I showed Will pages I had done with a Frank Miller influence, he explained to me why it didn't work.

Later, I drew a page in which the Spirit wandered through a series of panels in the styles of various cartoonists. I worked the stylistic changes into the story, so that the villain the Spirit was searching for was the cartoonist responsible (me, of course). One of the panels was a low, wide Milleresque closeup on the Spirit's angry eyes, with narrative boxes rather than thought balloons as he thought, "Miller ... Miller, I swear ... you'll pay for this." Watching The Spirit a few days ago, I thought back to that more than once. (Later on the page I drew a Kirbyesque portrait of the Spirit slugging someone, I don't remember who, with extra-large fists that hit harder because perspective made them larger.)

The funny thing was that one of Eisner's criticisms was that Miller's work was inappropriately cinematic rather than graphical. I didn't agree with the criticism, but it did make me think at one point that Miller as director might be a good match.

However, even in comic-book form one sees a degeneration in Miller's work. Miller used to know how to tell a spare, effective story, but DK2, for instance, is just a lot of pictures and a lot of words, with barely three panels together anywhere graphically conveying a meaningful sequence of events. It's all fragmented.

On another level, the elements of perversity in his early work seem to have been like a gateway drug; Miller seems to need ever larger doses of depravity to get the same effect, with ever cruder characterizations and less and less subtlety. The Dark Knight Returns is about my threshold.

I liked some of the early Sin City work, although it really opened the floodgates to his more limited scopes. I'vecorresponded with people who are friends with Miller, and he has apparently told them his very maligned All Star Batman and Robin is a parody of his own excessive style. His interests are so limited that he seems to lack much of any option to go anymore. His women are pretty much all strippers and prostitutes (which can be worthy subjects in storytelling) in a singular vein. Or as some people like to refer to his style of writing women...WHORES!WHORES!WHORES!!!

It was his affection for Eisner that had me holding out hope. And honestly? You take out the line of "The City...she is my mother. She is my lover" of the initial teaser and it felt like it could be close to Eisner's vision. I mean, the magnificence of Eisner's design sense is influencing some in how titles appear to be integrated into the frames. But Eisner's storytelling approach is very different from Miller's. Though, obviously you guys know that. (Especially SDG)

SDG wrote:
: FWIW, I studied under Will Eisner for three years in the late 1980s into 1990. When I showed Will pages I had done with a Frank Miller influence, he explained to me why it didn't work.

Ha!

: Later, I drew a page in which the Spirit wandered through a series of panels in the styles of various cartoonists. I worked the stylistic changes into the story, so that the villain the Spirit was searching for was the cartoonist responsible (me, of course).

Ain't you a stinker.

: The funny thing was that one of Eisner's criticisms was that Miller's work was inappropriately cinematic rather than graphical. I didn't agree with the criticism, but it did make me think at one point that Miller as director might be a good match.

Was this before or after Miller wrote that awful screenplay for RoboCop 2? (I believe he wrote RoboCop 3 as well, but the second film burned me so badly that I couldn't bear to watch the third one. Especially if they couldn't convince Peter Weller to reprise the role again.)

I liked some of Miller's comics back in the day -- the Martha Washington series, RoboCop Vs. Terminator even -- but "Frank Miller as a filmmaker" has never been an exciting proposition for me. OTHER filmmakers have taken Miller's ideas in interesting directions -- Batman Begins was influenced by Batman: Year One, and films like 300, Sin City and Daredevil were all serviceable enough -- but the less filmmaking that Miller HIMSELF does, the better, I think. (Yes, I know he was one of the co-directors on Sin City, along with Quentin Tarantino; but would that film have been as watchable as it was if Robert Rodriguez hadn't been the main guy behind the camera?)

Actually, Miller did not write 2 or 3. What he did was he wrote a screenplay for Robocop 2 that was hacked up by another writer. Robocop 3 actually cannibalized unused ideas from the Miller Robocop 2 script and built a new script. Miller was quite upset by the final result of Robocop 2 stating it was not the movie he wrote. He walked away from Hollywood as a result. You can certainly feel burned by # 2 (although 2 is a masterpiece compared to 3), but it wasn't Miller that destroyed it. A comic company published a miniseries using Miller's original Robocop 2 script. I never read it, but I heard it was quite good.

Agreed, totally. The initial trailer gave me hope. The second trailer took it all away.

Comic-book geeks may find the longer version of my CTMovies review posted at Decent Films of interest.

Somewhat short interview with Miller over at PopMatters. Having just read Steven's review, I was biting my lip as I read through the interview, especially over a few of the answers he gave. Ack. Definitely don't want to see this, ever.

I don't consider myself a massive Spirit fan but even I know that putting a "face" on the Spirit's main villain, the Octopus, compromises what makes him intimidating. He's a man seen only from the shadows, with his "arms" reaching everywhere. This is just Samuel L Jackson in makeup. BTW, Roger Ebert's review of this film seems to be getting a bit of internet love. I've seen the quote:



Being posted a lot.

BTW, Darwyn Cooke's recent work bringing the Spirit back to comics is very good.



That would be awesome to see sir

Neil Gaiman:

Back in May I posted,

Had a conversation with Paul Levitz the other day about Gaiman's Law of Superhero Movies*, which is: the closer the film is to the look and feel of what people like about the comic, the more successful it is (which is something that Warners tends singularly to miss, and Marvel tends singularly to get right) and the conversation went over to Watchmen, which had Paul explaining to me that the film is obsessive about how close it is to the comic, and me going "But they've changed the costumes. What about Nite Owl?" It'll be interesting to see whether it works or not...

And I wound up pondering that when I noticed that Frank Miller's The Spirit film had racked up a sad little 15% fresh over at Rotten Tomatoes. . . .

Yes, this is one of those bons mots that makes every critic wish he had thought of it first. I made a similar point about the film's complete dearth of characters and emotions, but failed to say it as well as the master.


Unfortunately it is one of those things that is better in the telling than the actual seeing. I did some work in college that would be worth looking at today, but that particular page isn't among it. (I doubt I even have it any more.)

Just from watching the trailer (and knowing nothing about the original comic), I just don't get how this movie could merit an "F."

Really? This trailer?



It's so bad that, by the time Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson, in Nazi gear!) shows up, I can't control my laughter.

"Embedding disabled by request."

The problem with the F is that I think it may have caused me to want to see it even more. Maybe on DVD or something.

Steven, you saved me at least $10 on this one. Your review removed every last vestige of moviegoer curiousity that I had left over from reading other negative reviews before yours. There was a time, three years ago, when I would have gone to see it just to see how bad it was. I no longer have that luxury now!

I think that the relative infrequency of "F" grades on DecentFilms makes them all the more potent when they do show up.