I think the only hope at this point is that the movie does well enough to warrant a Spirit direct-to-DVD animated feature involving someone like Brad Bird or Darwyn Cooke and will make this all worthwhile.

Because no matter what the title says, this is “FRANK MILLER’s The Spirit” and will look and feel a lot like Sin City and basically be an epic fail of an homage to the great Will Eisner. This movie, of any comic based movie, deserved to be handled right, and every single piece of info released so far indicates it is most certainly NOT.

The very sad fact is that the majority of the audience will have no knowledge of what the Spirit is supposed to be and will just go, “kewl, it’s like Sin City!” and see it anyway.

Please send me the Earth-2 version of the Spirit movie done by Brad Bird. I’ve heard all sorts of wonderful things about it.

Thanks!

Your pal -
Magoo

that being said, hello mr. elephant in the room: WHY CAN WE SEE THE BLOODY OCTOPUS’ FACE?!?!?!

film different than comics, genre, stars, no blue coat, high-priced execs blah blah BLAH. I’m going to sit in the theater with my hand raised to block it out, like driving into the sun. little pre-movie unfair geek hiss, Frank…little hiss.

Dear Santa: wouldn’t a darwyn cooke animated spirit be great?

Brad

http://www.hollywood-newsroom.com/news/leaked-pic-of-sexy-nurse-scarlett-johansson-from-the-spirit/

One of the intuitive principles confirmed by cog-psych research is the appeal of taboo, scarcity and perceived persecution. I can’t think of a better way to co-opt social media than to get folks to think that they’re defying Big Brother. A faux C&D is a way of making people feel that they’re important, that they need to post the pics lest the pics disappear and that promoting the pics–and thereby the film–strikes a blow for human freedom.

Another theme from cognitive research is the way in which the drive to learn and transmit gossip is hard-wired in our brains. Note that the “leaked” pictures were apparently from costume studies, with the actress not smiling and the clothes not quite perfect. It’s imperfect information to which we shouldn’t have access–which makes us want to see it and pass it on.

We’ve already seen this strategy in the Marvel Boy viral, in which the company would seem to have used a fake C&D to create a sense that the site was leaking taboo gossip that could disappear at any moment. For Marvel Boy, the breakdown came, it seems, with the apparent lack of contingency plans for when uncontrolled gossip appeared in the comments thread. My guess is the Spirit marketing strategy might have been a bit more airtight if Special Ops hadn’t IDed itself overtly or included the odd pseudo-legal capitalized phrase “Copyright Infringement Violation,” which is what led me to look ‘em up in the first place.