I SWEAR that years ago, Frank Miller refused to work in Hollywood because they butchered his Robocop 2 script. Now he's taking Will Eisner's baby and mangling it into his own "soon to be way overused" Sin City style.

I thought he really respected Eisner too.

This may be the worst thing I've seen today....and I watched footage of the "bombs" in Georgia.

Has Miller even read The Spirit comics?

This may be the worst thing I've seen today....and I watched footage of the "bombs" in Georgia.

Has Miller even read The Spirit comics?

What do you expect, he's a bad comic book writer as well.

The Spirit was often goofy and silly. But it wasn't just stupid. It seems like Frank Miller is really unsure what to do with the goofiness, so he just puts it in there randomly amongst his "gritty dark" stuff. "Gritty dark, gritty dark, goofy goofy goofy, gritty dark, goofy, gritty dark, goofy... is my goofy quotient high enough? Crap, I'm all outta goofy. It's still too dark. I think I'll watch Tom and Jerry cartoons till I have some ideas..."

It's not that this silly stuff shouldn't be there. It should. The Spirit was whimsical and funny, often.

It's just that Frank Miller doesn't seem comfortable with whimsical and funny, whimsical and funny, for him, is like wearing drag. It just looks wrong and messed up.

GRRRR! I love the Spirit, and I love Frank Miller comics, and I loved the Sin City movie, but this... this is just awful. And maybe in context it's good, but who would show a scene from the FINAL BATTLE as a teaser clip? We have no idea what's come before, or why Sam Jackson is now a gibbering maniac. I remember the Octopus in the comics as having a lot more class.

I'm really starting to think I should just go back and add a domino mask to Warren Beatty in the Dick Tracy movie and pretend that that's the Spirit movie. It's actually fairly accurate.

Wait....are they fighting in a big pile of shit? I thought it was mud until the toilet popped out of nowhere...then I remembered the chunks of corn in the mud.

Is this just one of those things where it's obvious to everyone but me that they're fighting in a giant pile of crap? How has no one mentioned this yet?

This is seriously deep hurting, and not the good MST3K kind, either. I seriously hope FM is taking a piss and this is actually not from the film, rather it's a faux spoiler intended for the MTV Movie Awards show next time Sam Jackson hosts it.

Kudos to the Dick Tracy comment, I thought the same thing.

Would be interesting to alternatively see the Spirit brought to television. Not as a 60's batman send up, not exactly, rather something that has Joss W. sort of balance between dramatic and comedic. Spirit could use the breadth of narrative development a television serial could afford, the comic series is pretty robust. Not half hour episodes like the Tick live action show, those suffered from missing the plot of why the cartoon or comics worked so well through a willful inability to maintain a viable tone. Latter day 3 Stooges silliness one moment, Seinfeld in rubber-wear and velvet pants the next.

e

Wow. That is really, really disappointing.

Appropriate they are fighting in shit, I suppose.

it wasnt that bad..

What...the...fuck...is...this. After all those Sin City, sexy teaser posters about "keep the mask on" and shit, they're going to spring this on people and PEOPLE WILL BE PISSED. You cannot just spring slapstick on people. Unless they add an exclamation mark---"The Spirit!"---this is going to fall on its face. The least he could do is put some Yakkity Sax in there.

It's not bad if they weren't advertising it like Sin City 2. Chris is right, you can't just spring this on people unexpectedly.

Mr. Eastwood -

Clearly, you are not feeling well. Also, you spelled your name wrong.

Actually yes - when I heard the comic was coming out I went and checked out some of the old Spirit comics. I was confronted with some bizarre suck. Apparently that's weirdly part of the point? Anyway, bah.

wht crappy directing for a fight scene is this?

The video (and an earlier one) is still available at my.spill.com

This movie looks insane in the best way possible. A guy fighting a schizophenic Samuel L. Jackson in a sewer? Awesome! It definitely looks incredibly stylized, but incredibly entertaining at the same time.

It's just that Frank Miller doesn't seem comfortable with whimsical and funny, whimsical and funny, for him, is like wearing drag. It just looks wrong and messed up.

That's part of it, but it's not JUST that.

True whimsy, and wistfulness, and melancholy, and all other poetic qualities, are sorely lacking in Hollywood these days. Action movies HAVE to be gritty affairs, because that's what the primarily teenage and young-adult male audience that drives most of the movie business thinks is good.

I think Miller wanted to make a Spirit movie as an homage to Will Eisner, but it's just not well-suited unchanged. There's too much poetry in The Spirit, too much soulfulness.

(And type 'the force' in the box below? I'll do it, but under protest. Bah!)

Frank Miller makes whimsical and funny stuff. You just have to see things from a different perspective to see the darkly funny aspect of it. Sin City: The Big Fat Kill was a perfect example. It was laugh-out-loud hilarious if you can appreciate that type of humour.

Watch it at http://my.spill.com/video/video/show?id=947994%3AVideo%3A490950

Hello. And Bye.