Review: The Spirit
Written by Edward ChampionPosted on December 25, 2008
Filed Under Comics, Film, eisner-will, miller-frank
The critics were not happy during the screening. The critic to my left fell asleep in his chair for an hour. The critic to my right — a jovial man who really wanted to like it — gradually realized that this was a film impossible to come to terms with.
Gone were Eisner’s primary colors, replaced by muddy and amateurish black-and-white visuals with digitally added snow that never seemed to stick. The Spirit was so bad that it made Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy look like a masterpiece.
Everyone was excited at the beginning, knowing that this was Will Eisner’s classic character finally brought to the screen and that it was Frank Miller who was going to steer it forward. But one of the fascinating aspects of this screening was observing the precise point in which each audience member would give up, knowing that Miller was cheapening a legend. Knowing that the film was wasting its cast and crew. Knowing that Miller was producing something even more odious than The Dark Knight Strikes Again or that crappy Robocop comic. (And let’s be honest. Has Miller truly contributed anything important to comics in the last ten years?) Knowing that it was Mr. Rodriquez who was the great force behind Sin City, and not Miller. (And to think that Rodriquez abandoned the DGA for this hack.) Knowing that just about everybody wanted to lock Miller into a room and punch him repeatedly in the face for about eight hours for producing this travesty. Knowing that something we all had hoped would be good was such a steaming turd.
I counted eight walkouts. There may have been more. But I can’t be sure. I was too busy slumping in my seat, stunned by the film’s relentless determination to sodomize Will Eisner’s corpse, assaulted by the film’s muddled script, which couldn’t even clear up the origin story until two-thirds of the way into the picture, its needless misogyny (women are either whores, nurturers, or kept in the background as laconic sidekicks), its inability to strike a single human note, and its failure to evince one note of fun.
Yes, Frank Miller should be punched in the face for this. It’s the only way to be sure.
There were jokes — one involving an ass on a copy machine — in which not a single person laughed. And again this was a friendly and rowdy crowd. But they all sunk into their chairs, feeling very angry that their time had been greatly wasted.
Oh, Stana Katic, how you tried as Morgenstern! You are as wonderful as Mageina Tovah, who played Ursula in the Spider-Man movies. I can now watch you in just about anything. And I feel so sorry for you for having your talent wasted. How much did you fight to keep the remainder of your quirks in? Bill Pope, I have admired your cinematography for quite a while. But this film was beneath your great talent and you should have known better. Samuel L. Jackson, signing on for a role just because you’re a geek simply isn’t worth it anymore.
Miller directs his cast as if they are statuary and handles his crew as if they are expected to generate magic simply by standing around. He is an ugly and crude man who does not know the human condition, and he is more interested in Eva Mendes’s ass than any innate personality she can use to sex up her role. He has tossed around crude pop culture references — including buildings and trucks named after Eisner’s collaborators — in an effort to win over the fanboys. But the fanboys will not bite. What Miller doesn’t understand is that geeks are too refined to swallow codswallop. What Miller doesn’t understand is that hell hath no greater fury than a fanboy spurned.
If there is any justice, the fanboys will lynch Miller at a future Comic-Con. If there is any justice, this film will fail at the box office and the money men will reconsider handing Miller the Buck Rogers reboot.
But there is rarely justice in Hollywood. The fact that this film was allowed to be made is testament to that.
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Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. The famed writers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have written a very funny and thoughtful volume about romances, both Old Skool and New Skool. Here is a book that any smug and humorless literary manboy beating his flabby passive chest over Banville or Bolano should probably read pronto, if only for the distant possibility that he might get over himself. While the Choose Your Own Adventure segment at the end caused me to have a very disturbing dream involving Shelley Long (don't ask), Sarah and Candy did have me rethinking many of my own misperceptions when I wasn't busy laughing. They're not afraid to take on the New York Times Bok Review or even the groupthink within certain sectors of the romance community.
Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.
Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.
Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. This wonderfully raucous volume has been completely ignored by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. But it's probably one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had this year. Calvo cavalierly mashes up multiple genres and manages to mix up familial subtext with larger-than-life, almost cartoonish characters. (Indeed, one might argue that one mobster's penis is a character of its own in this sprawling novel.). This is not an easy thing to pull off, but Calvo makes it work. And it's helped immeasurably by Mara Faye Lethem's idiom-specific translation. (See longer post.)
The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg This thoughtful book tackles the complicated (and little discussed) subject of reproductive rights from numerous angles, which includes a number of unpleasant but necessary ones. The upshot is that there isn't a quick fix solution for declining birth rates and fundamentalist abuses. Just about every political faction has contributed to the friction. But you'll want to read this book anyway to refamiliarize yourself with the topic, but also to understand just what's occurred during the past several decades to get us where we are today. (See also podcast interview with Goldberg.)
Or send materials to:
315 Flatbush Avenue, #231
Brooklyn, NY 11217
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- The Bat Segundo Show: Marjorie Rosen
- When Parody Replaces Opportunity
- The Benefits of Notebooks
- Hate Mail Dramatic Reading Project #8
- Slowdown
Ed, you couldn’t see this coming from the trailers? I collected Eisner’s work (way back when) and the instant I heard about this project, I knew it was doomed to be a (standard) failed attempt at cashing in on an established brand; ie, irremediable shite. Next up: Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain: The Movie.
Growing up in the 70s and 80s, I read reprint volumes of Will Eisner’s THE SPIRIT and was fascinated by how it managed to be so different and enjoyable in so many ways:
- The daring and innovative artwork
- The amazing splash pages
- How The Spirit was often a secondary character in the lives of the many “ordinary” characters in Central City
- Eisner’s love of the common man, as shown in the many episodes where “dull” characters and their emotions become the center of action
- The friendship between The Spirit and his sidekick Blackie White (yes, his caricatured appearance did annoy me a bit)
- How the plots varied from humor to horror to thriller to sometimes sci-fi
- The many sexy and yet competent female characters
- The countless details that made Central City a living, breathing place: E-trains, slum blocks, trash-filled alleys, gutters flowing with scummy rainwater, clotheslines, commuters, etc. etc.
… and yet NONE of all that made it into Miller’s movie.
If Frank Miller had only tarnished his own reputation, I would have forgiven him. (I swear to you, I wrote to the guy years ago and warned him about creeping artistic self-indulgence…)
But to also spit on the reputation and work of Will Eisner, a man he called a “friend” (I read the book EISNER/MILLER, and noticed how different they are)…
… that’s low. A true friend would have backed away, knowing that he could not do his friend’s work justice.
Frank Miller, you’re no friend of Will Eisner.
Blackie White= Ebony White, my bad.
Yes, I know the character began as a stereotype, Eisner tried to make up for it later etc. But that’s a whole different discussion…