Stupid-Awesome: Frank Miller's The Spirit

Hey Frank? There are other fonts you
could use for logos. I'm just sayin' s'all.

If you were to ask someone what the worst comic book movie of all time is, they would probably say without missing a beat Batman and Robin perhaps followed by Catwoman as a close second. At least this was until recent years when the movie gods decided to bless us with the wonderful monstrosities like Jonah Hex and Frank Miller’s The Spirit. The thing is, The Spirit deserves to be called an awful movie, because… Well, it’s an awful movie! But I cannot say it’s not watchable. Now before you decide to lynch me, if you hadn’t already cast my opinions as worthless after my disdain for Firefly and my praising of Revenge of the Fallen, you have to understand… I know this movie is bad. This movie is everything a movie should not be. And a lot of people realized that when they went to see The Spirit and they were disappointed, hoping they would be seeing the next Sin City or 300. And some of you might only be familiar with Frank Miller from Sin City and 300. You got to understand, while I was NOT a big fan of Sin City, only liking the Marv story in it, and 300 I considered his best contemporary story... I suspect the reason the movies was so well received, was because the director decided to make it visually interesting instead of focusing on the script, and it worked. Miller’s comics turned to movies really helped set a new stage of digital landscaping, where the entire thing can be filmed in front of a green screen, allowing the line of fantasy and reality to be blended. But in the case of the Spirit's movie here, it’s a lot like the movie Tron: Unless the story is any good, then it’s a bad story printed on gold leaf paper. So they were disappointed.

But not me baby! Not me! You see, I went into this piece of slimy turkey fluff expecting a pricelessly horrible piece of crap. I was expecting a train wreck, and I was happy to see I was not disappointed! After all, this is the guy who gave us the Goddamned Batman:

Bruce Wayne: Agent of NAMBLA

The Spirit was everything I was expecting it to be. It’s plot is incoherent, it’s dialogue is laughable and it’s protagonists are so one dimensionally flat, you could get deeper characterizations from an episode of the Little Einsteins. (Though let’s be honest, the Little Einsteins ARE awesome!) The visuals are murky and unclear and it’s obvious that the director has never understood what’s supposed to go onto a storyboard. In short… It’s a Frank Miller story.

HAASSAAAAAAAAN CHOP!.

You need to understand that Frank Miller is insane. To a comic book nerd like me, buying a Frank Miller product is like the rest of the normal folks watching Anna Nicole Smith slowly destroy herself. You see, back in the 1990s, they used to make a ‘top ten writers of all time list” and at the #1 spot was always Frank Miller. ALWAYS. Whenever someone was to ask a creator “who would you want to work with?” They would rattle off the appropriate names to their scene and usually end it with “And of course, Frank Miller!” He was placed on such a high pedestal for writing a Batman book I’m not 100% is really all that great. Now naturally when you have that much of a buildup and expectations for a man’s work, you’re going to be disappointed on Episode I levels… IF YOU’RE LUCKY. After years of being away, he finally unleashed the Dark Knight Strikes back onto the comic book audiences in 2001. The readers sat there, totally dumbstruck saying this was utterly horrible, and the fellow comic creators gave very safe, totally non-descript reactions that didn’t comment on the story, but praised him for the story that “deconstructed the superhero myths”. (I heard that one thrown around quite a bit. I’ll spare you the identity of the various creators who sided with Miller.) But anyway, it was quickly obvious to everyone now that Frank Miller had lost his fucking mind. Most of us have only read All Star Batman and Robin just because it’s so badly written, filled with oodles and oodles of misogyny, anarchy, and underlined potential pedophilia… That it’s countered with Jim Lee’s amazing artwork. And it’s exactly what I expected out of The Spirit! It’s a beautiful, wonderful, violent, sexist, confusing train wreck of stupid!

Col. Fury, what the hell are you wearing?
You know what? I don't care. I'm just gonna
pretend you're fighting M.O.D.O.K.

You see, many people complain about The Spirit because it should have been better, but what many do not understand… This isn’t a movie like Revenge of the Fallen, or Clash of the Titans, or even X-Men 3 where it sucked but it COULD and SHOULD have been much better. But with The Spirit… My friends, this movie was unable to be more than what it was. This was directed and written by Frank Miller. This was the best that the movie could have ever hoped to be, and it’s a mean-spirited cynic’s treasure trove! Or, to be sure, it never should have happen. But it did. So we need to embrace it. And mock it.

As bad as my movie was, I still look less
ridiculous than Superman's new costume.

What follows is an in-depth review of the movie. Gabriel Macht plays the Spirit, a former cop in a corrupt city who survived death, thanks to the experimenting of the villainous Octopus to become virtually immortal. The Octopus (played by Sam Jackson) wants the blood of Heracles, and Sand Serif (played by Eva Mendes) wants the Golden Fleece. (Though this isn’t spelled out very well in the movie!) Octopus, who’s constantly making egg references (that honestly serve no point) has cloned himself a small army of mentally impaired henchmen. Every girl that the Spirit runs into immediately falls in love with him, where this leads him to Sand Serif, who’s making a trade with the Octopus. She has the Blood, he has the Fleece. They’re arranging a trade. This leads to a gun showdown, that ends up having Octopus blown into a little wiggling finger. The end. I am not shitting you. That’s a decent synopsis. It’s like a Uwe Boll movie, where it’s insane to watch, because you listen to the commentary and he’s talking about this, and you somewhat suspect that he knows he’s made a shitty movie… But the producer is kissing his ass, telling him how brilliant he is. It’s like listening to two stupid people, patting themselves on the back for making what was considered the worst comic book movie ever made, until Jonah Hex came along. The only difference here is that I suspect that Frank Miller, along with people like Rob Liefeld, is fully aware of his reputation and is playing it up for us. We all acknowledge it’s a stupid ass movie, but that said, it’s a wonderful drinking game movie. This is a great movie with friends, or one of those movies where you truly want to watch a stupid movie.

Honestly, for not really existing and just being
green-screened in, I thought the backgrounds
were rather impressive.

The acting is so hammy and over the top. Gabriel is decent as the Spirit, but Eva Mendez’s acting is soooo bad, the Baroness from the 80’s G.I.Joe cartoon came across as having a wider range or emotions. Even the teenage version of her is so badly written, it feels like I’ve stumbled across an episode of C.O.P.S., where one of the Bigboss’ crew was talking about how they love diamonds, see? The other female actors are so corny and hammy, I could bring up accusations of sexism, but none of the men come across as particularly intelligent either. It’s a bad movie, and I will honestly admit that I have watched it with my hand on the fast forward button until I can get to the next scene with Scarlett Johansson and Samuel L. Jackson. These two plays off each other wonderfully, and they’re the one of the only good things about this movie. You almost wonder how much of it was ad libbed, because they're quite fun to listen to. Sure, whatever they’re talking about is utterly ludicrous, but I can’t deny it’s entertaining, whether it’s Jackson staring as a failed clone foot experiment, or the two of them dressed up in samurai warrior gear, or one really oddball scene that makes no sense at all with them dressed as S.S. Reich officers. There is nothing quite like it. Now I can’t say the entire thing was a total waste. I know the movie was filmed in front of a green screen, and mock it if you want, they completely recreated the city of Central City. If future movie producers can get past Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s love of this chiaroscuro with near desaturated color, and actually use some of the techniques developed here… You could make some seriously impressive movies, on a fraction of the budget. Hey, I’m holding out hope for someday of one of my one silly ideas to be optioned. :P

So... Couldn't find the screenshot of my ass, huh?

Like I said. This movie is stupid. It is so incompetent in it’s execution, because Frank Miller doesn’t understand the basic fundamentals of film making that Uwe Boll understand… And that’s a guy who make three Bloodrayne movies, the latter of them consisting of mostly girl-on-girl tribadism. But if you’re like me, and you’ve developed an appreciation for the insanity that was once the skillful and rather clever writer, as he’s now devolved into a sad teenage wannabe old man who’s just obsessed with violence, whores, lipstick bisexual lesbians, and ninjas… Serving as a warning to all of us of the path to avoid. You should see The Spirit… Just to know what NOT to do.