Review: The Spirit (Frank Miller, 2008)

The Spirit is not a good film. It's one of the worst of the year, or perhaps any year. In most throwaway films, I tend to be pretty generous: "It was like a roller coaster. Fun while you're on it, but no lasting effects." I can't even say that about The Spirit.

But I have a problem. I like Frank Miller. I like comic book movies. While I cannot recommend this film to just any member of the general public, I can highly recommend it to those studying comic book film adaptations. Fortunately for The Spirit, I fit into that category.

The story is ridiculous. I'll do my best. A man called The Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson) wants immortality. But to do this he needs the blood of Heracles which is located in a vase held by Sand Serif (Eva Mendes). The Spirit (Gabriel Macht) protects the Central City metropolis and therefore must fight against Octopus' scheme. This is the roughest of outlines.

The only reasons for liking The Spirit lie in its construction - literally, how the film is made. Films based on graphic storytelling (comics, graphic novels) have existed for awhile. Tim Burton's Batman is a great favorite of mine. But the construction of the film is traditional. In the end, it looks like a regular action movie, based on a comic book series.

Frank Miller has had two of his own graphic novels adapted to film: 300 and Sin City. Miller's directorial debut, The Spirit owes itself to these two films in terms of its visual style. Almost all scenes were filmed against a green screen. In a sense these films are more like animated films than live-action. I see this as new filmmaking aesthetic: "Comic book filmmaking." I am not familiar with the source material for The Spirit, but the stories for 300 and Sin City follow their source material quite closely in both story and visuals. Indeed, the films look like translations of page to the screen. This is the essence of what I call "comic book filmmaking." Translation versus adaptation - making the film look as much like the comic book as possible.

So, when I say The Spirit is bad film, you can believe me. Is the dialogue campy and wooden? Absolutely. Can I see these same words appearing in a speech bubble? Absolutely. The visuals look much like storyboards and indeed, Miller drew the storyboards for the film himself. Adaptations tend to send cinephiles into a frenzy. "They got rid of this character! Why!" They complain when things are added, subtracted or perhaps worse, diluted. At least with Sin City and 300, they are faithful to their material. My big assumption here is that The Spirit follows suit. My response to those clamoring for faithful adaptations: Be careful what you wish for!

In the end, what The Spirit makes is three of a kind - Sin City, 300 and The Spirit. What do you get with three of a kind? Trend!