The Spirit

-

I'll admit that I'm not too familiar with The Spirit, a Golden Age noirish comic book from the legendary Will Eisner - I often confuse the series with The Spectre. As it turns out another comic book legend, Frank Miller has chosen The Spirit as his first proper film project (he directed some portions of 2005's Sin City, based on his own graphic novel series).

Adapted from the legendary comic strip, THE SPIRIT is a classic action-adventure-romance told by genre-twister FRANK MILLER (creator of 300 and SIN CITY). It is the story of a former rookie cop who returns mysteriously from the dead as the SPIRIT (Gabriel Macht) to fight crime from the shadows of Central City. His arch-enemy, the OCTOPUS (Samuel L. Jackson) has a different mission: he's going to wipe out Spirit's beloved city as he pursues his own version of immortality. The Spirit tracks this cold-hearted killer from Central City's rundown warehouses, to the damp catacombs, to the windswept waterfront ... all the while facing a bevy of beautiful women who either want to seduce, love or kill our masked crusader.

Surrounding him at every turn are ELLEN DOLAN (Sarah Paulson), the whip-smart girl-next-door; SILKEN FLOSS (Scarlett Johansson), a punk secretary and frigid vixen; PLASTER OF PARIS (Paz Vega), a murderous French nightclub dancer; LORELEI (Jaime King), a phantom siren; and MORGENSTERN (Stana Katic), a sexy young cop.
Then of course, there's SAND SAREF (Eva Mendes), the jewel thief with dangerous curves. She's the love of his life turned bad. Will he save her or will she kill him?


We're still waiting for the first teaser trailer for The Spirit, but judging by the poster art and first released pics, the film is very much in the vein of Sin City. Perhaps even too much so, given its predominantly red, white and black colour pallet and use of CGI-enhanced imagery. Is this really Will Eisner's The Spirit, as the film's title suggests, or Frank Miller's The Spirit? Considering Sin City 2 and 3 are currently in pre-production, perhaps audiences are being overdosed with such a hyper-faithful, stylised approach.

Then there's the question of whether audiences will warm to this Golden Age property, which, unlike Superman for example, has largely faded from the public consciousness over the years. If you remember, both The Shadow (starring Alec Baldwin) and The Phantom (starring Billy Zane) movies tanked badly back in the 1990s.


Still, the difference between those movies and this one is the fantastic casting (Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, Eva Mendes, Gabriel Macht, Jamie King), and the exact transfer of comic book styling and cinematography to the big screen.

I'm still not tired of such stylish adaptations. The Spirit should be great fun. I'm looking forward to it.

Comments

Unknown said…
I'm not going to pretend to know a lot about this. But from what I've learned reading the Sin City letters pages (Frank used these as his kind of olden age blog). Eisner is one of Miller's greatest influences (especially his work on Sin City).

I think The Spirit is where the Sin City style of rain was originally developed. Anyway Miller is definitely a big fan of Eisner's. Here is a link to some of Eisners Original Spirit work. While more "cartoony" there are definite similarities in style.

And I'm really let down by that Sam Jackson image. The silhouettes in the background are outrageously jagged.
2:55 PM
Pfangirl said…
Thanks for the link, Rob. Very interesting.

As for the Jackson image, I totally agree - really shoddy quality. What's up with that?
8:38 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is the rebooted Lara Croft gay? Evidence for and against...

-
Image
As some of you know, I’ve been fangirling hard over the new Tomb Raider , the first entry in the video game series since 2008, and ostensibly a reboot for the entire franchise . Taking the form of an origin story, Tomb Raider 2013 depicts the events that transformed a beautiful, if bookish, archaeology graduate into a pistol-packing adventurer with a devil-may-care attitude. We meet Lara Croft as a pretty, fairly ordinary 21 year old, brooding over her work notes, listening to her mp3 player and very much confined to the shadow of her male mentors. By the end of the game, however, she’s taken charge – she’s had to! – and, battered, bruised and bloody, she’s both a survivor and hero, right down to rescuing the princess and carrying her away in her arms. Yeah, this is probably the best point to mention that there will be some Tomb Raider 2013 spoilers in this post, so read ahead with caution. Anyway, I loved the game. Technically it’s near faultless, it looks beautiful, the ov
Read more

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Queer Icon (Part 4)

-
Image
Part 4: The mystery of Lara Croft’s sexuality “Now what’s a man gotta do to get that kind of attention from ya?” – Larson Conway (Tomb Raider, 1996) Despite being an icon for many queer pop culture consumers, Lara Croft’s own sexual orientation remains ambiguous. Outside of the Top Cow comics and live-action films – where Lara is blatantly heterosexual, with a fondness for slightly scruffy bad boys (who keep betraying and hurting her) – the character comes across as primarily asexual. Kurtis Trent is the only male figure who even comes close to being a love interest in the game series. Lara's apparent sexual disinterest is despite the adventurer appearing very sexually attractive herself; a figure of desire with bee-stung lips, voluptuous breasts, toned stomach and impossibly long, athlete’s legs. Yet Lara is never dominated by sexual yearnings or romantic affections. She is very much in control of herself at all times. It’s worth noting, however, that over time th
Read more

Ladies I Love: Part 2 - Rhona Mitra

-
Image
Following on from the first post in this series , you may realise that I have a very definite type. Anyway, today we profile model-turned-actress Rhona Mitra . This 36 year old Briton is of English, Irish and Indian descent. You'll have seen her pop up on the big and small screen multiple over the past decade and a half, although Mitra's claim to fame is that she was the second ever model (some say first if you rule out "unofficial"  Nathalie Cook ) to play iconic video game character Lara Croft . From 1997-1998, Mitra could be found in PR material, as well as at trade shows, events and conventions as a flesh-and-blood embodiment of Tomb Raider 's kick-ass archeologist lead. There have been many official Lara Croft models over the years , but as far as I'm concerned Mitra remains the best. In my mind, of all of them, she most closely resembles the video game character in terms of facial features. Plus she comes from money and had a rebellious boarding
Read more