# The Spirit looks awful **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 5, 2008, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-spirit-looks-awful/475806 "2008-12-05T03:21:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2008, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-spirit-looks-awful/475806/1 "2008-12-05T03:21:02Z")
Hooh, boy. We are in for a stinker. I just saw the trailer for this soon to be bomb and it looked like a credit card commercial parodying a comic book movie. This could be the worst major comic book movie since Halle Berry put on a dominatrix outfit. Will Eisner is rolling in his grave. Not that The Spirit was “great” IMO the way some of his other comics were, but damn. This looks really, _really_ bad. And no I will not wait to judge it until I see it. Judgement has been passed. It is officially awful IMO and only glowing recommendations from people I know and trust could convince me to see it now. The burden of proof has officially been handed to the movie. That’s how bad it looks. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2008, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-spirit-looks-awful/475806/2 "2008-12-05T03:29:11Z")
Frank Miller was friends with Will Eisner, but Eisner’s work has a soul and humanity that Miller has never displayed. This was not a good character/director match. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2008, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-spirit-looks-awful/475806/3 "2008-12-05T03:42:54Z")
> [@Krokodil](#): > > Frank Miller was friends with Will Eisner, but Eisner’s work has a soul and humanity that Miller has never displayed. This was not a good character/director match. More importantly, _once upon a time_ Frank Miller made good stuff. I’m not sure that’s been true for a decade. Samuel L. Jackson looks horrendous in this. ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2008, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-spirit-looks-awful/475806/4 "2008-12-05T03:55:32Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > More importantly, _once upon a time_ Frank Miller made good stuff. I’m not sure that’s been true for a decade. > > Samuel L. Jackson looks horrendous in this. Samuel L. Jackson has been horrendous in everything since Pulp Fiction. I think people just pretend to like him because they’re always afraid he might be standing behind them or something. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelQReilly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@MichaelQReilly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelQReilly)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2008, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-spirit-looks-awful/475806/5 "2008-12-05T04:01:52Z")
I absolutely loved Sin City. This just looks like a watered-down, crap-ified version of that movie. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2008, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-spirit-looks-awful/475806/6 "2008-12-05T04:15:12Z")
I couldn’t imagine how this movie could be made with live actors. The Spirit - which was great, BTW, one of the greatest of all time, hands down, bar none, period, that’s all she wrote - was totally about the atmospheric art accompanied more by narrative boxes than by dialog. It was an outlier even for comics. (Not comic books, which it wasn’t.) You can never reproduce atmosphere. Especially the atmosphere from another world decades and cultural light years ago. Can’t be done. Why did anyone need a trailer to tell them that? ---
**Author:** ![Equipoise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/equipoise/32/151_2.png) [@Equipoise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Equipoise)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2008, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-spirit-looks-awful/475806/7 "2008-12-05T05:38:34Z")
It looks amazing. I can’t wait! ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2008, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-spirit-looks-awful/475806/8 "2008-12-05T07:34:29Z")
> [@Cisco](#): > > Samuel L. Jackson has been horrendous in everything since Pulp Fiction. I think people just pretend to like him because they’re always afraid he might be standing behind them or something. Well, certainly he became typecast after that. Personally, I was disappointed he didn’t get nominated for an Oscar for A Time to Kill. You’d never imagine that’s the same guy as is now considered one of the baddest badasses on the screen. ---
**Author:** ![happywaffle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ee59a6/32.png) [@happywaffle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/happywaffle)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2008, 9:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-spirit-looks-awful/475806/9 "2008-12-05T09:10:37Z")
You’re wrong about Samuel L. Jackson. He’s an excellent actor who is probably a little typecast, though I rather suspect that he picks his own “badass black motherfucker” roles as much as he’s selected for them. I get the feeling he has more fun as an actor than 99% of people in Hollywood. But, yeah, The Spirit looks putrid. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2008, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-spirit-looks-awful/475806/10 "2008-12-05T13:35:28Z")
I think the Spirit could be done with live actors – Eisner’s stories were all basically storyboards for movies – but would work better as a TV anthology series than a movie (since that was what the strip was). From what I’ve seen and heard, Miller turned it into a by-the-numbers superhero movie and added **Sin City** atmosphere. But Central City wasn’t Sin City. And, yes, the Spirit was great. But I’d also say Eisner went on to even better things: **A Contract with God** is a masterpiece of literature and art. ---
**Author:** ![shy\_guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a6a055/32.png) [@shy\_guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shy_guy)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2008, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-spirit-looks-awful/475806/11 "2008-12-05T18:24:32Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I couldn’t imagine how this movie could be made with live actors. The Spirit - which was great, BTW, one of the greatest of all time, hands down, bar none, period, that’s all she wrote - was totally about the atmospheric art accompanied more by narrative boxes than by dialog. It was an outlier even for comics. (Not comic books, which it wasn’t.) > > You can never reproduce atmosphere. Especially the atmosphere from another world decades and cultural light years ago. Can’t be done. > > Why did anyone need a trailer to tell them that? I agree with every word in this post. That said, the trailer makes the movie look even worse that I thought it was going to be. There’s not a single element of it that has anything to do with The Spirit, and if it weren’t specifically titled that I would really have no idea that’s what it was supposed to be. I’ll still see it on the big screen, but I really thought that Miller’s friendship with Eisner and obvious appreciation and understanding of his work would allow him to put aside his own little quirks for five minutes and make an actual Spirit movie rather than Sin City 2: The Spiriting. ---
**Author:** ![cbawlmer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/71e660/32.png) [@cbawlmer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cbawlmer)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2008, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-spirit-looks-awful/475806/12 "2008-12-05T18:59:09Z")
Yeah, it looks terrible, and I enjoyed _Sin City_. Miller lost his damn mind quite awhile ago, and has been coasting on his early successes ever since. Now his name on anything new is pretty much a warning label. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2008, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-spirit-looks-awful/475806/13 "2008-12-05T19:38:15Z")
> [@happywaffle](#): > > I rather suspect that he picks his own “badass black motherfucker” roles as much as he’s selected for them. I might not have agreed with you until all the “yeah, but only if I can have a purple lightsaber” scuttlebutt. Lowered my opinion of him a bit, that did. ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2008, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-spirit-looks-awful/475806/14 "2008-12-05T20:23:53Z")
I dunno. Maybe it is because I don’t know the source material, but I’m looking forward to it. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2008, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-spirit-looks-awful/475806/15 "2008-12-05T20:33:50Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > And, yes, the Spirit was great. But I’d also say Eisner went on to even better things: **A Contract with God** is a masterpiece of literature and art. This. Here’s hoping that no bright spark ever gets the idea of making a crappy movie based on **A Contract with God** - perhaps adding happy endings to each of the stories. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2008, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-spirit-looks-awful/475806/16 "2008-12-05T20:41:40Z")
I’d say **A Contract with God** would be of little interest to Hollywood – no superheroes, no action, just great stories and characters. Thank God. ---
**Author:** ![shy\_guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a6a055/32.png) [@shy\_guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shy_guy)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2008, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-spirit-looks-awful/475806/17 "2008-12-05T20:54:26Z")
I’m reasonably certain that The Spirit is going to be a huge flop, so I’m not _too_ fearful of more Hollywoodization of Eisner. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2008, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-spirit-looks-awful/475806/18 "2008-12-05T22:54:21Z")
Eisner was a genius, and this looks like a travesty. I’m so there. ---
**Author:** ![MacTech](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@MacTech](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacTech)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2008, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-spirit-looks-awful/475806/19 "2008-12-05T22:58:34Z")
Watching the trailer, I thought “what is this, Sin City II?” Meh, not interested (and I loved Sin City) ---
**Author:** ![Terrifel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c68b51/32.png) [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2008, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-spirit-looks-awful/475806/20 "2008-12-06T00:27:59Z")
Well, I got at least one mild chuckle out of the film, without even seeing any of the trailers. Back when I went to see the most recent Batman movie, [I saw this standee in a shadowy corner of the lobby.](http://www.reelcomix.com/admin/admin_images/SpirtiStandee.jpg) The dark red lettering was not particularly visible at first, which somewhat altered the impact of the text. _"…AND I AM HER!_" I have to say, also, that it is a pretty impressive feat to design a movie ad which gives such specific information about whose creative vision is responsible, and about whose is absent, without actually featuring any names. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-spirit-looks-awful/475806.md?page=2)