r/flicks • u/KaleidoArachnid • 5d ago

What was wrong with Frank Miller's version of the Spirit?

So I wanted to get into this particular franchise as I know it originally started off as a comic book, but what I was curious about was the movie adaptation itself because I tend to hear how the film is widely mocked among fans of the comic, and it was for that reason that I wanted to know what the movie did wrong to begin with.

18 Upvotes

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32

u/THC_UinHELL 5d ago

The problem is that it was very much Frank Miller’s The Spirit, and not at all Will Eisner’s The Spirit

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u/metalyger 5d ago

The trailer was so cringe, trying to look closer to Sin City and the whole "my city screams" monolog. It wasn't that kind of comic, the character ran in the Sunday funny pages of the newspaper in the 40s, the same pages as Dick Tracy.

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u/majorjoe23 5d ago

Kind of. The Spirit was a supplement to the newspaper. More akin to an extra section like Sports or Features. It was a completely different section than the comics page.

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u/KaleidoArachnid 5d ago

But what did the movie do wrong that made it so infamous as an adaptation?

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u/PanchamMaestro 5d ago edited 5d ago

Eisners stories were generally frumpy shaggy dog stories full of humanity. They didn’t take themselves that seriously but took the artistry of storytelling itself quite seriously. They were very much about the world the characters lived in; a scruffy take on mid century NYC. Miller’s take was all polish and soundstage. Mixing Sin City with a weird shallow take on Loony Tunes or something just because the Spirit had some slapstick. Just awful.

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u/General_Kick688 5d ago

Absolutely everything. Seriously, just run through a couple of Eisner stories. Literally. Everything.

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u/THC_UinHELL 5d ago

But it wasn’t an adaptation, that’s the problem. It was Frank Miller’s dumb take heavily painted over Eisner’s original vision

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u/FX114 4d ago

I mean, it's primarily panned for being a bad movie. Being a bad adaptation is secondary to that.

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u/Roller_ball 5d ago

I don't think that is it. Miller completely changed up Batman which is a far more beloved character and fans were welcoming.

The problem is the movie is a complete piece of shit.

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u/lectroid 5d ago

Miller didn’t ’change up’ Batman. He essentially did to Batman what Moore was doing to the old Charlton comics: deconstructing them and showing what a more ‘real’ version of these characters would be. And keep in mind, this was the very beginning of comics ‘grim dark’ phase. The Bronze Age was the death of the Comics Code, and Miller was among the first writers to start pushing against restrictions. He did it w his Daredevil run, then with the Wolverine series.

But he had, it seemed, a very limited bag of tricks. Once the character has been given a secret ninja background and any women are recast as Virgins or Whores (w or w/o hearts of gold), it becomes apparent that his sensibilities stagnated at the “edgy 14 year old” phase.

Sin City was so over the top (both book and film) that they’re essentially self parody. The Spirit just showed that he really didn’t have any other ideas.

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u/MaleficentFrosting56 5d ago

I’ve only read a handful of Frank Millers comics. I enjoyed Dark Knight and Ronin a lot.

Sounds like you might not be a huge fan?

Are Wolverine and Daredevil not worth checking out?

I’m only been reading comics for a few years. Really enjoyed Sandman but it’s hard to look at those the same these days. Big Spawn fan as well.

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u/lectroid 5d ago

I was a huge Miller fan in the 80's when his stuff was new and he was pushing what was acceptable in mainstream comics. His Daredevil run was groundbreaking and really remade the character. The Wolverine series was more or less the final confirmation of Logan as THE X-Man and One of Marvel's most bankable characters outside Spiderman.

Gaiman's recent fall from grace notwithstanding, Sandman still holds up as one of the great extended literary and artistic works of its medium. Ditto Good Omens. But just like Miller, some of his works tend to hit the same points, over and over. Slightly bent fantasy cliche's like Mirrormask and Neverwhere are pretty shrugworthy, though at least they don't seep into racism and some fascist-adjacent rah-rah'ing like Miller.

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u/PaulNerb1 4d ago

Daredevil: Born Again is fantastic. So is Batman: Year One

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u/GreenZebra23 2d ago

The thing about Miller is he's really good at writing hard-hitting and real-feeling dialogue, so it makes his stories feel like they have more nuance than they actually do. But yeah if you actually think about them they're incredibly broad and frankly (heh) simplistic. Of course he's on record many times saying his favorite writer is Mickey Spillane, so that absolutely tracks

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u/Jonneiljon 4d ago

Miller also had the benefit of setting the Dark Knight Returns in the future which allowed him to to ignore continuity to some extent. This allowed him to hone in on aspects of the character he was interested in.

The problem with The Spirit is that it’s style was so similar to Sin City, and Sin City’s style was so different to anything else at the time, that this became an unintentional Sin City sequel but with characters that require a more lighthearted approach than the grim and gritty inhabitants of Sin City. The styles clashed. Had Miller written and drawn a Spirit comic series I suspect it would be much the same problem. Miller has one mode… grim noir. When it works it works great. When you try to graft it on to other characters it’s not meant for, it’s a mess. This is why Robocop 2 isn’t very good.

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u/majorjoe23 5d ago

I think a similar visual approach to Sin City could have worked for The Spirit. But that would have involved using the same effects to create a more Spirit-like world. 

Frank Miller directing with a script and visual input from Brad Bird would have been the way to go. But at that point, just have Brad Bird direct the thing.

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u/Corrosive-Knights 5d ago

It was just… so out there.

The film didn’t have any sense of tone, going in all kinds of directions and moods and looking more like Frank Miller was doing more Sin City rather than anything Eisner related.

There are things you can get away with on the pages of a comic book that simply don’t work as well -or at all!- when showing real people and this was a case where that really didn’t work at all.

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u/foursheetstothewind 5d ago

It’s more that it’s just not a very good or interesting movie. So it’s already got that headwind before you even consider how it handles its source material.

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u/PerspectiveWhore3879 5d ago

It's honestly worth watching just to see the train wreck. Although admittedly, I've tried to re-watch it only once since seeing it in the theater, and I bowed out part way through. 😅

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u/AutomaticDoor75 5d ago

When I first watched The Spirit, I had been awake for 24+ hours finishing up post on a short film. The Spirit was so bad that I thought I was hallucinating from sleep deprivation. Then I re-watched it and realized it was really that bad.

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u/jonhammsjonhamm 5d ago

Frank Miller is a writer not a director.

Micheal Phelps is a great swimmer but I wouldn’t pay him to build my pool.

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u/GreenZebra23 2d ago

I think it comes down to differences between the two media. In his prime he was a great director when it came to comics. His use of pacing and shot setup was hard to beat. But that doesn't necessarily translate to the medium of film. Hell, even as a writer, compare his comics writing in the 80s to the RoboCop sequels.

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u/Mr_SunnyBones 5d ago

Frank Miller...

y'see theres your problem right there .

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u/SantaRosaJazz 5d ago

It was a lame script and lamer direction. 

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u/Inspection_Perfect 5d ago

I never read the comics, so I got an enjoyable comedy with decent art direction.

Plus, it had Scarlett Johansson before her Iron Man 2 weight loss.

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u/CalligrapherDry3025 5d ago

It's unintentionally funny. "Cmon, toilets are always funny!!!"

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u/Newkular_Balm 5d ago

That was the exact line where I went from hating and "not understanding" the movie to liking it. I get the hate, but I enjoyed it after that line.

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u/pinata1138 5d ago

I actually liked it, but I’ve never been exposed to the source material so… 🤷‍♂️

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u/filkerdave 5d ago

It would be easier to say what the film did right.

Nothing.

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u/babybird87 5d ago

weak hero.. annoying villains.. nothing really worked

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u/mickeyflinn 5d ago

I am going to go with that weird disconnected foot that was bouncing around

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u/DivineAngie89 5d ago

Even the comic sucked that movie was doomed from the start

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u/Odd_Butterscotch5890 1d ago

it made me think Frank Miller had never read an Eisner comic in his life.

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u/Ignoble66 5d ago

if you have no expectation its enjoyable if yer expecting some kinda pulitzer level movie youll be disappointed its a fine comic book movie