...and I thought it was horrible! No spoilers following:Tonight over at the Rave movie theater here in Las Vegas, the first advance screening of The Spirit, written and directed by Frank Miller, was held and Rob (a friend who's my new helper in processing the week's new books), had gotten two passes Saturday when he and his wife went to a movie there. I was pretty exited because The Spirit isn't set to open nationwide until December and I thought from seeing two trailers that it would be a fun movie ala Sin City or fun to goof on like that show Mystery Science Theatre did to bad movies.
After seeing the trailer I thought that Frank Miller's Spirit wouldn't have much to do with Will Eisner's creation which I thought was kind of odd as I know that Miller respects Eisner. I'm going to guess that Miller thought what he was doing was updating the character for today's audiences. I don't have a problem with movies based on comic books differing from the source work as long as the changes are entertaining and make sense unto themselves as I realize that movies and comics are two different mediums. Anyone who goes into Miller's movie Spirit expecting it to evoke what they like about Eisner's comic version will be seriously disappointed, because while I think the movie has some nudge nudge wink wink homages to Eisner's work and other comics, the movie felt nothing like any of the Spirit stories I've read. Again, if Miller's Spirit movie was entertaining, I wouldn't have minded, but...
Who is the intended audience for The Spirit? A good amount of the visual look of the movie does look like Sin City the movie, but it doesn't have the overall visual originality or stylistic flair that Sin City did. The dialogue and narration is embarrassingly bad (and I don't even think it would even be fun to make fun of). The fight scenes aren't even enjoyable in an over the top way like Kung Fu Hustle or even Sin City the movie. Actually Miller did nothing new with the fight choreography and you'd think with all of the great fight scenes he's written and drawn in comics (or even just watching Kill Bill or working on Sin City) that he'd bring something exciting to the screen. I can't see any amount of fine tuning going on after test screenings that could make the Spirit movie good and as is Miller's Spirit plays like a mix of Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy and Sin City the movie without the ingredients that made those movies good fun and visually exciting.
Rob and his wife said they enjoyed the movie (and would see it again) and my friend Cristina thought it was on the plus side of okay. I really think that Miller's Spirit won't do that well at the box office (as it will not appeal to large cross audiences) and while I realize that a creator can't hit it out of the park every time at bat, I think it'll be awhile until Miller gets to work on such a big project. So I was saddened upon The Spirit ending (even though I was glad it did finally end) because I wanted to spread the word on how entertaining I'd hoped it would be, not be Mr. Negative.
No comments:
Post a Comment