MovieChat Forums > The Spirit (2008) Discussion > Why So Serious?

Why So Serious?

posted 14 years ago by robotrix
5 replies | jump to latest

(To borrow a line from another film)

This is a movie that's set in a city that doesn't exist that looks like the 1940's yet has advanced technology like smart phones...

It's patrolled by a dead cop come back to life and can take all sorts of physical abuse because his body regenerates....

The crime boss in town has mastered the cloning of humans as dumb but full grown and can take a lot of injuries before dying and no one cares - not even the Armed Forces...

And everyone is after two items - the blood of Hercules and Jason's golden fleece - and the only way they can be real is if all of Greek mythology is real including the gods...which current thinking is that these were all fairy tails invented by unsophisticated people trying to explain the world around them....

And yet everybody is up in arms because it's not taking things serious and/or following the comic book.... It dares to have a sense of humor.

Meanwhile, I'm watching Inglorious Basterds - which is a well crafted film, you definitely see why the Supporting Actor nomination and the finale in the theater is a work of art and also has a sense of humor despite it's subject matter....but the thing has absolutely NOTHING to do with history as Hitler, Himmler, Goering and every other top official of the Nazi party is shown killed in a movie theater in France....and yet THAT film is seen as brilliant....

Why can Tarantino screw with reality to tell a story and that's fine but Miller can't change a few things in a comic book to make an entertaining film and that makes this film the worse thing ever made?

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Last night, I was lying back looking at the stars and I thought...where the *beep* is my ceiling???

[–] 14 years ago

[deleted]

[–] edwchase 14 years ago

The issue with this film is not that it takes liberties with reality.

The issue is that it is a poorly written, poorly acted, poorly directed piece of dreck that even insults the lowest common denominator.

The issue for those of us who are Will Eisner fans is that this will probably the only opportunity we will ever get to see his most famous work turned into a movie. (There was a made for TV Spirit movie in the '80's. Even though it was very low budget, it is much, much better than this Miller version)

Imagine the work of your favorite author being made into a movie. You get only one shot, if the movie is bad, there will likely never be another chance. Imagine your frustration when the movie turns out to be really, really bad. The Spirit is not like Batman, or Hulk or other mass market icons. If one of those movies fails the character is well known enough to justify a re-boot. Unfortunately, until this movie came out, most people had never heard of the Spirit. Now most people have heard of him, but they think he sucks.

They did change the story (No Ebony White, Octopus was never shown in the comics, Sand Saref was never a vicious man eater [that was a character named P'Gell], Ellen Dolan was not a doctor, Spirit did not a Wolverine like healing factor, the list goes on and on). However, none of that is the issue. The issue is that Miller stripped out all of Eisner's style of storytelling. There is none of Eisner's subtlety, sensitivity, humor or drama. It is all replaced with Millers "two by four to the head" style of storytelling.

There is no Will Eisner left in this movie. This is not "Will Eisner's The Spirit", this is "Frank Miller's The Spirit". And that boys and girls is the problem. That is why this movie fails.

[–] Sirus_51 14 years ago

Edwchase,

I bow to you being able to say everything that was wrong with this film with skill, insight and intellect.

Thank You kindly.
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In a fair universe, we would all be better people.

[–] Jigsaw737 14 years ago

nd yet everybody is up in arms because it's not taking things serious and/or following the comic book.... It dares to have a sense of humor.

Meanwhile, I'm watching Inglorious Basterds - which is a well crafted film, you definitely see why the Supporting Actor nomination and the finale in the theater is a work of art and also has a sense of humor despite it's subject matter [...] and yet THAT film is seen as brilliant....

There is humour and there is humour. The humour in The Spirit was idiotic and childish while the humour in Inglorious Basterds was clever and mature. I'm not saying that idiotic and childish humour doesn't have its place, it does, but it also has to be executed well, which the Spirit didn't. The bottom line is: comparing The Spirit with Inglorious Basterds is like the the proverbial comparison between apples and oranges, or excrements and truffles in this case. These two movies have absolutely nothing in common, because "screwing with reality" is not the issue. It's "screwing with reality WELL".

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~No matter where you go, there you are~

[–] Allyssenn 14 years ago

Oh, be serious.

Saying that the humour in Inglorious Basterds was sharper and more clever than the humour here is a cheat. The movies have 2 completely different tones. One is slap-stick comedy and the other is black comedy.

And the humour in Inglorious Basterds was NOT "clever and mature," nothing Tarantino DOES is mature, it's just VIOLENT. It was cruel humour meant to cater to his legions of wimpy, cruel, 12-second attention-spanned, snickery-behind-the-hand, "I'm-so-much-smarter-than-you" set of fan boys who have to put on new underwear every time he opens his mouth. Tarantino just made all that crap psuedo-arty and palatable by making the brunt of the jokes Nazis. Without that calibre of victim, it would have been a comedy about bashing people's heads in. Funny, huh.

Look, I didn't love "The Spirit," I didn't loathe it, either. I thought it had problems and an inexperienced director/writer was the biggest. But I can't understand all the squirrely man-love that Quentin Tarantino gets. He's pretty mediocre. He's a way better actor than he is a writer or director.