Fight scene from THE SPIRIT

August 13th, 2008 at 09:11am Will Pfeifer

I’m of two minds on THE SPIRIT, the movie directed by Frank Miller that’s due to hit theaters Christmas Day. On the one hand, I really liked SIN CITY, the movie co-directed by Miller and Robert Rodriguez that was based on Miller’s own series of noir-extreme graphic novels. It was, without a doubt, the most faithful translation of a comic book to the big screen I’ve ever seen, right down to most of the shots being mirror images of Miller’s own drawn panels.

THE SPIRIT, though, was not a Frank Miller comic book. Created by the late Will Eisner in the 1940s and distributed through newspapers as a Sunday supplement, it’s generally regarded as one of the most influential — if not the most influential — comics ever created. Sixty years ago, Eisner was using film-inspired techniques and graphic novel innovations that still look ahead of their time in the 21st century. As a cartoonist drawing DAREDEVIL and BATMAN in the 1980s, Miller was heavily influenced by Eisner’s work, even putting SPIRIT billboards in backgrounds of DAREDEVIL as an homage.

Miller’s SPIRIT movie, though, looks more like SIN CITY 2. The first trailer made it look too grim, too gritty and too damn dark. THE SPIRIT comic strip had its dark, shadowy moments, but it was surprisingly light-hearted, with an average Joe hero, not a remorseless killing machine. I’m worried THE SPIRIT movie is forgetting that.

All that said, however, this fight scene screened at the recent San Diego Con gives me a bit — a tiny bit –of hope. Sure, it’s dark and violent, but it’s also obviously light-hearted, and the Spirit (played by Gabriel Macht) seems to have the same never-say-die attitude Eisner’s character had. Take a look at this obviously bootleg footage (before You Tube yanks it down) and see what you think.

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