I detest the opinion that this movie is proof comic books and films should never cross paths. Film and all artforms are forever evolving and branching out whether you like it or not.

I believe we forget films are just another form of art, and that at the end of the day each film wont appeal to everyone, just like a Picasso isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

A bad movie is just another way of saying that the film didn’t appeal to your interests or your individual perception of films in general. That’s the reason why some people’s all time favourite film is Schindler’s List, while other people place Terminator 2 at the top of their personal top 10 list. Everyone has their own personal definiton of what a bad film is.

For example, a lot of people will disagree with me but all the James Bond films prior to Daniel Craig did not appeal to me at all. For me they were bad films according to my taste. The latest two I love. But I still respect the fact that people like the older films and understand the reasons why they like them.

Theres no right or wrong opinion. Even if the majority of people think a movie is bad, it’s only ever going to be a bad film to them and them only, so there’s not much point arguing too much.

In terms of The Spirit. I loved it for the campyness and one-liners and the over-the-top plotline and controversial art style. Other people hated it for that. Think about that for a second.

Now, I’d seriously get bored if all comic book movies took The Dark Knight approach. I love realism and drama, but if that’s all that existed I’d be craving for fun, humours, outrageous rides like The Spirit a lot more. Brings me back to the days of Dick Tracy and The Phantom. I’d certainly see less films if there were only serious adult dramas to see and not any action films, comedies, kids films or anything that mashes those 3 together.

It also may interest people that my 50+ year old mother loved and enjoyed The Spirit movie very much.

It’s also funny how people complain The Spirit looks too much like Sin City, when the majority of films photographically look pretty much like eachother; realistic and not stylised.

And Bladerunner was considered a bad film back in its day. Now it’s a masterpiece.

I’m going to continue focusing on the point I brought up in the first place. You, on the other hand, are free to complain that I’m not focusing on what YOU want to focus on. If that’s all you have, then I’m done with you.

PAD

“Detail her bra; it’ll drive them crazy, Jim.”

“She knows what she’s got. Make them drool.”

“Ok, Jim. I’m Shameless. Let’s go with an ASS SHOT [his caps, not mine]”

“Unfortunately, I do know better to realize that Frank Miller isn’t a pen name. For those unfamiliar with the world of comic books (and therefore aren’t filled with a combination of self-loathing and Cheetos),”

Comic book fans in general hate themselves and eat junkfood. Nice.

“To many nerds,”

Comic book fans who liked “DKR” or “Sin City” are nerds.

” Unlike Alan Moore, whose work was targeted at actual adults, Miller’s collection of growling, swearing, constantly bleeding, big-titted badasses were aimed squarely at perpetual adolescents.”

Comic book fans who liked “DKR” or “Sin City” are perpetual adolescents.

Self-loathing, junk-food eating, immature nerds. I think “kind of morons” pretty much distills it to its essence. He basically launched an ad hominem attack on anyone who liked “DKR” or “Sin City,” which naturally he’s entitled to do. But for someone who seized upon my “ants” comment with such fervor, it’s rather astounding that you make excuses for someone who indisputably despises fans of Miller’s earlier work.

PAD

‘Uhm…that “antidote” mostly says that anyone who liked “Dark Knight Returns” or “Sin City” is kind of a moron.’

Um, that’s not really what he wrote, and I’m a little surprised that a professional writer can’t tell the difference between saying “XYZ certainly inspired a lot of dumb comics in its wake” and “Anyone who likes XYZ is a moron”. But then again, I’m just an “ant”, so what do I know?

‘That’s some definition of “nice” with which I was previously unaware if you happen to be a comic fan, but okay, if you take pleasure in it…’

Well, what if you’re a comic fan who prefers not to have his intelligence insulted on every page?

What if you’re a comic fan who doesn’t think “dark and violent” == “sophisticated realism”?

What if you’re a comic fan who actually knows what “film noir” means?

What if you’re a comic fan who’s just sick of one-dimensional characters, unfunny sledgehammer “satire” and juvenile attitudes towards sex?

Just take a look at the IMDB message boards for the new Spirit movie. Here’s what the *fans* of this movie are saying:

-> “Of course it’s bad, it’s supposed to be bad.”
-> “It’s supposed to be stupid, it’s a comic book.”
-> “It’s supposed to be cheesy, it’s a comic book.”
-> “It’s supposed to be campy, it’s a comic book.”

There’s your Frank Miller Legacy right there. The next time you try to convince a layman that comic books are not universally stupid, cheesy, campy or intentionally bad, you’ll have Frank Miller to thank for your trouble.

SRS

PAD

‘Miller is the highly lauded writer/artist behind such graphic novels as “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns” and “Sin City.” To many nerds, his work is considered groundbreaking, and I suppose that’s true in the sense that Miller single-handedly made comics even dumber. Unlike Alan Moore, whose work was targeted at actual adults, Miller’s collection of growling, swearing, constantly bleeding, big-titted badasses were aimed squarely at perpetual adolescents. Allowing Miller to re-imagine Will Eisner’s quiet, understated comic book is like allowing Jeff Dunham and his hateful, one-note puppets to star in a remake of “Dr. Strangelove.”’

http://www.theweekender.com/movies/In_the__lsquo_Spirit_rsquo__of_cinematic_crap_12-30-2008.html

Made a terrible movie?

You’re welcome.

Actually, I can correct myself. In 2004, very renowned (and one of the bestselling) European writer/artists Enki Bilal did a 23 million Euro version (in 2004 dollars, that would be 29.9 million) of his own graphic novels “La Foire aux immortels” and “La Femme piège” called IMMORTEL. As far as I know he had also a huge chunk of control over the product, having adapted it himself and directed it completely against green screen.

Commercially speaking, it was a huge disaster, as the movie grossed in Europe approximately 4 million Euros (about 6 million 2004 US dollars). Critically speaking, it met a similar fate as THE SPIRIT, and the review by Tasha Robinson at the Onion AV Club… could pretty much be the same as one for Miller’s movie.

Immortal, the third film written and directed by French/Yugoslavian comic-book artist Enki Bilal, falls into the usual traps of a highly visually innovative cinematic technological experiment: It’s stunning from start to finish, with every calculated frame a poster-perfect image, but it’s also busy, cold, and soulless, with a story that doesn’t unfold so much as it mechanically lines up grungy-gorgeous sequences for perusal like paintings in a museum exhibit.

http://www.avclub.com/content/node/25462

… but perhaps it wasn’t on everybody’s radar in the US, the favourable rating giving on Rottentomatoes was 43 percent (as I stated earlier, I am not really comfortable with the RT system as a basis of argumentation, but will use it here as to work from the same base level)

http://uk.rottentomatoes.com/m/1144306-immortel/

Twilight–35.8 on FR, 21 on SA, 13.6 on SU.

First of all, happy new year, Alan

As for your argument, in itself, that argument is hard to counter. Unfortunately, though, the examples you are giving, provide no statistical comparsion to a movie like THE SPIRIT, especially since TWILIGHT and HSM 3 were what are called front-loaders, with an extraordinary interest by a quantifiable group that advance ordered the tickets to be there on opening night. The same can also be said of DARK KNIGHT, which – due to numerous parameters – had become the most anticipated movie of the year up until that point (and one can argue, even after)

A rather large drop-off on a daily basis, even up to 40 percent, is well within the realm of calculation there.

In order to give such a statistical argument some validity, one must find a similarly marketed movie with a similar target audience and similarly obscure material that has what one could call “geek recognition”, but is by and large unknown to a wider audience.

Thankfully, the year provided us with such a movie, which – while not completely 1:1 in all of its parameters, can well serve for such a comparison.

The movie? MAX PAYNE.

Now, I am saying the parameters are not 1:1, mainly because that movie opened in 1,000 theatres more and had the benefit of being relatively lonely there on its opening weekend. But it is close enough.

MAX PAYNE

FR: Average per screen / $2,086

SAT:AvS/ $1,928 (= -7.6 %)

SUN: AvS/ $1,211 (= -37.2%)

In conclusion, one could very well call THE SPIRIT a miniature front-loader with an incredibly tiny range of appeal in the first place, which in itself is something that relieves Miller somewhat of his responsibility and shifts it towards Lionsgate and Michael Uslan for choosing a property that had no reason to be in the theatres in the first place, from a commercial point of view.

Then again, one could also very well say that of a little-known vampire hunter named BLADE in 1998, dumped in the wastelands of the end of August (where movies like BABYLON AD are dumped today), same property value, same target audience, and if we extrapolate Snipes’ value as a movie star based on 1998 figures, it’s not quite Gabriel Macht/Sam Jackson/Eva Mendez/Scarlett Johannsen… but it is kind of close enough.

Unfortunately, I can’t obtain the direct daily figures at the moment, but the opening weekend at a 2,322 screen run equals an Average per Screen of $ 7,353 …

(ah, numbers we can play this all day, I swear we can)

Hollywood has only two rules. 1) make me money, lots of it OR 2) win me awards, lots of them. Michael Bay and Brett Ratner have careers because of rule no. 1, the Coen Brothers because of rule no. 2 (and no, awards are more than just the Academy kind)

What Miller has achieved, and that is no small feat… he has made a movie that both failed critically AND commercially on a level that – and please let me point out again that I do not have anything against him personally, I don’t know the man, he is probably a nice chap – has left an enormous commercial and creative crater that will be seen for a long time and from quite a distance.

What makes this so significant? And why are people harping on so much about it? It’s not, I believe, because it was a bad comic book adaptation… there have been many of those and even more bad novel adaptations, it is because of the man who did this.

If it had been, e.g., Brett Ratner screwing up Conan (he might, who know?), the level of anger would have been, “eh, that’s Hollywood, they don’t know what they are doing anyway”, which was kind of the reaction that followed the adaptations of FROM HELL, V FOR VENDETTA and LOEG.

It’s the fact that one of the most prestigious, most commercially valid comic book writer & artist – for the first time, I believe (please somebody correct me, if I am wrong) had unprecedented control over the movie-making proccess. Let me re-iterate. He wrote it. He directed it. And unless Lionsgate took the final cut away, he was in control of the editing booth.

And he made it a creative, critical AND commercial failure.

I wish him all the best, personally, I really do, but he does have the face a serious problem now, even in his core audience. In other words: if the reaction of “man, this is the guy who did DKR” is replaced by the joke “I am the goddamn XYZ”… you’re in trouble.

Any hands for any one who stayed through the credits - to see Frank’s storyboards spersed through the credits?

I thought I’d never live see the day when the name “Jim Shooter” would show up listed as a movie credit.

Nice to see Bob Schreck and Diane Schutz’s name mentioned, though.

To be honest, I think one rush to the Frank Miller dogpile for me personally has to be the way he is so reveried by the right wing media because of last summer’s soundbytes having him comparing the Dark Knight movie to George W. Bush’s war on terrorism. I mean, local radio talk show host Larry Elder on KABC ( he’s now resigned from the station) once spent two hours on his show talking and analyzing about Frank Miller’s rallying behind Dubya’s war cry policies of torture and war profiteering ( although the soundbytes did originate from a NPR interview)

You would think that comic book creators would have a liberal view on these kind of things.

So, I saw this a couple of nights ago at the Rave - which is a all digital theater complex in the newly built Town Center just a few blocks from the Mandalay Bay on the Strip in Las Vegas. I was supposed to have a date accompany me from my myspace page.

Well, she flaked on me - and I suspect it was all due to Frank Miller’s assocation with the film.

So, Frank - I want to thank you for ruining my love life.

Plus - since she happened to be African American - I think the sight of Samuel J. Jackson parading around in a Nazi uniform probably would have been too much for her to handle.

….at least it was for me.

However- not having my date show up meant I could gourge out on a big plate of Nachos without feeling guilty. However Jackson popping out of that curtain garbed as a gestapo almost made me pull a George W choking on pretzel bit - EXCEPT when you’re choking down on a tortilla strip drenched in thick syrupy cheese- IT HURTS EVEN WORSE!

I also - like someone mentioned elsewhere - I too, checked out the Day the Earth Stood Still remake on the IMAX on the Palms - and my dad asked me which of the two movies did I enjoy more and I had to admit hands down that I was more easily entertained by The Spirit - because it was a ‘life and death’ struggle to get through.

~

Coat

“In comparison, THE SPIRIT’s per screen average shows an attrition per day… just in its third and fourth day of release that is hard to ignore.

It suffered a 17 percent drop on Saturday (from Friday) and a whopping 21.8 percent on TOP of that, from Saturday to Sunday.”

Thomas, that’s true of almost all movies. 1st day is almost always much bigger than 2nd day, 2nd day is always bigger than 3rd day.

Dark Knight, as reported by Nikki Finke on deadlinehollywooddaily dot com, opened with 67.9 million on Friday, 48 million Saturday (down 29%), and 39.4 million on Sunday (down 18%).

High School Musical–16.9 million on FR, 15.3 on SA, 10 on SU.

Twilight–35.8 on FR, 21 on SA, 13.6 on SU.

I can talk to people in my circle of friends, and people I know through the internet; but the stranger sitting in the same aisle as me who is confused by Sam Jackson chopping fat guys in half with a katana goes off and I don’t get to say “hey, if you didn’t like this, try this alternative.”

Speaking of Punisher, I think that Punisher has had three separate, very different adaptations and I think Spirit should get another one, maybe a half decade down the road. Blue suit, Ebony White, the whole classic thing.

That’s not to say that Frank Miller’s decisions to change The Spirit were wrong. I think the black suit and the glowy sneakers were just fine. Also, most of the writing was spot-on. At times (when The Octopus wasn’t on screen) I felt like Miller was doing the Spirit right.

I think the Dolans were the best cast roles in the whole movie.

I liked it. Needed more John Cleese, though.

“As a film adaptation, now people might walk away thinking “what was this Will Eisner guy thinking? He must have been on something.”
I don’t think that it makes people wonder about Eisner, wonder what they have missed by never hearing of “The Spirit.” ”

1. I think most people don’t care. How many people do you think knew that 300 was based on a graphic novel after watching the film despite “based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller” being plastered all over its marketing materials and in the credits? I’d say maybe 10% of the audience and of that 10% about 90% already knew before they watched it.

2. Then you should tell them what they missed by giving them some collections of The Spirit by Will Eisner. Will Eisner’s The Spirit is still safe and sound on the bookshelves, and the only way people will know anything about it is if it ends up in their hands for reading.

At least The Spirit did twice as much as Punisher War Zone. That’s fairly impressive to me. Punisher was a sequel with name recognition. The Spirit basically came out of nowhere. The grosses are not that bad, considering.

I think my problem with this adaptation is that if Miller did this as a comic, I would be happy to know that most comics fans know something of the original Spirit. As a film adaptation, now people might walk away thinking “what was this Will Eisner guy thinking? He must have been on something.”

I don’t think that it makes people wonder about Eisner, wonder what they have missed by never hearing of “The Spirit.”

It doesn’t matter if the movie is based on a comic or comic book characters or whatever, simply make a good movie and people will see it. Good script, good casting, memorable scenes. I want to be entertained, goddammit, not to have an spiritual experience. I don’t even care who the hell is Frank Miller, and a very large percentage of movie-goers everywhere haven’t even heard his name. I mean, I’ve been making comics for 10 years now and I didn’t know his work until a couple of years ago.

I just returned from seeing “The Day the Earth Stood Still” and I’m still appalled at how fricking BAD this movie was, and dismayed at the thought that people are actually being paid to write that horrible.

No … I pointed out the same thing, way back toward the beginning of the posts.

Why do I hate it? Because it is fundamentally disrespectful of the comics medium. TV/film camp, ala the “Batman” TV show, originally spawned from the belief that the basic medium of comics is not really worthy of serious consideration.

Which is why I was so angry with Miller for taking a camp (or quasi-camp) approach for “The Spirit”

If the the films “Iron Man” and “Hellboy II” were steps forward for the comics-related film, “The Spirit” and “Batman & Robin” were huge steps backward.

What mystifies me is why Miller, allegedly a student of comics history, seemed to be so unaware of this when he opted for the camp approach with [i]The Spirit[/i].

2. For Sin City, it was a novelty and an interesting choice. For The Spirit, it’s now Frank Miller’s style. I don’t think it works that way, but I’m not saying it’s horrible either.

3. “Did Miller really think he was honoring Eisner by doing just the opposite of what Miller himself wanted to happen with his own creations? Am I the only one who’s noticed how backwards that is?” More than one person has said (maybe it was only actually 2, but that’s still more than one) that Will Eisner encouraged (via the producers) the individual directing the adaptation of The Spirit to do something different with the film. Frank Miller did something different. It’s not a big deal. Write to Lions Gate and tell them you didn’t like it (in something resembling a polite fashion). Tell them you want to see a more faithful adaptation. Maybe they’ll listen.

4. I’m betting that the reason this is now Frank Miller’s “style” of filmmaking is because he uses the actors like action figures and draws the setting around them with post production special effects. It’s just like making a comic book to him but different enough to make it a new experience worth trying out. The Spirit is basically Frank Miller’s adaptation of Will Eisner’s The Spirit, and instead of it coming out from Dark Horse on paper, it’s coming out from Lions Gate on film. I believe this is an important distinction, and as an idea and an experiment, it’s really cool. However, as in the comics industry, it’s quite often the strange ideas and experiments that don’t really have the great sales numbers.

5. To further bang my head against the wall of this topic, it’s not camp and it’s not serious. It’s Frank Miller. So is All Star Batman and Dark Knight Strikes Back. I think he deserves what he does to be called simply “Frank Miller”. He has earned it. Like them or not, Sin City, The Spirit, All Star Batman, and Dark Knight Strikes Back are all simply “Frank Miller”, and I have no doubt that they’re exactly the way he wants them.

Ultimately, Miller is responsible for the movie. As the writer/director, he had more control over the final product than most filmmakers. Sure, moviemaking is a collaborative effort, and the problem with many movies is the “created by committee” factor, once studio execs get their paws on a production, on every level, from script to final edit. Of course, in Miller’s case, it could be argued that he’s had too much control since he’s achieved his auteur reputation, although I don’t know if that was the case on The Spirit.

It’s clear, though, that what was expected of this movie was that it be a “Frank Miller” movie. For better or worse, Sin City and 300 gave him clout and a bit of creative capital, and the Miller brand had value, moreso than the work of Will Eisner did, on a purely commercial level. Not that that’s fair, necessarily, but this is Hollywood. I don’t begrudge him for taking the opportunity that was presented to him–succeeding in Hollywood by any measure is difficult and rare. So, while Miller is responsible for the movie, it’s not as if he sucker-punched Lionsgate, or Michael Uslan. He gave them what they wanted, and it didn’t pay off for them.

For a while now I’ve thought that Miller’s best comics work had a strong editorial hand behind them (mainly Denny O’Neil, frankly). His more recent work is a lot more slack, on a story level, than his earlier stuff, much more reductionist and reliant on shock effects over real characterization. Combine that with this trend to do an exact comics-to-film translation and it’s no wonder that the end result feels empty. You CAN’T do a one-to-one transliteration from comics to film. It’s a disservice to the strengths of both media. I’m sure The Spirit is probably very nice to look at, but it has to service story and character. That is, unless all you want is a spectacle to watch, preferably under the influence, in which case god bless you. That’s probably how I’d watch that Rob Liefeld movie.