"as a comic book fan, this movie appealed to me as it felt exactly like a video comic. The horrible acting and cheesy dialogue fit with a comic-booky feel, lets face it comics are cheesy."
See, that's where the Spirit really bothered me though (moreo than any of the filmmaking aspects you mentioned). I read a fair amount of comics and graphic novels and while there is sometimes cheese (especially with Amazing Spider-Man lol) a great number of modern comic books have toned that down over the years. Nowadays a lot of the series worth following are more clever than they are cheesy. The laughs that do occur while reading them also feel more genuine and well desered rather than just relying upon goofy one-liners or ridiculous happenings (just look at how the various X-Men series have evolved from their early days to now).
I dunno, I just feel comics have actually matured over the year while still managing to be fun wheras The Spirit just kinda felt like a step back for the public image of comics, at least that's how I felt about it. Visually it was sometimes great, that I'll admit, but the narrative, story and characters exhibited, in my opinion, some of the worst traits modern comics have to offer.
So in looking at The Spirit as a "comic book on screen I'd personally rate it at a 2/10. There are far better "comic book on screen" movies out there I'd direct friends toward before I even remotely considered mentioning this film at all.
EDIT: And I'm not entirely anti-cheese. I certainly still get a kick out of Tank Girl's antics and chuckle at Peter Parker's sometimes groan inducing zings. But I personally take it in moderation.
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CinemaNoir
13 years ago
yeah i completely get what you are saying. It really feels like a comic out of the 40s to maybe 70s and definitely does not fit with the current trend in comics and graphic novels of toning down the cheesiness in favour of more realistic and natural dialogue. Definitely not at like the kind of dialogue you'd read in the new batmans, the walking dead or even scott pilgrim where at least the dialogue is topical, humourous, modern and yes still somewhat cheesy.
I guess the Spirit felt more like a throwback comic than just like watching a comic on screen, it definitely didn't have that Frank Miller flair over it like I had expected. My problem with this in terms of filmmaking also was that in addition to a poor screenplay, there was very little character development. If you are going to make a comic book based film, you need character development. Had the film been an hour longer and really taken me into the world of these characters, I might have been more forgiving of its cheesiness, piss poor script and terrible dialogue.
Overall I agree that it was a major dud
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