Frank Miller's greatness is a passionate topic of debate among comic and movie fans. Many credit him with the major moves foreword in the comics industry within the last twenty years. No one will ever deny the greatness of Sin City and 300, and his contributions to the Batman mythology will always be fondly remembered. That being said, his latest film project, The Spirit, looks to be one of the biggest failures of 2008.
Many will argue that Miller has a good degree of experience adapting comics to film with his work on the set of Sin City. What most people fail to realize is that he only served as a consultant, meaning that he sat next to the director, Robert Rodriguez, and offered him advice on certain scenes. This by no means qualifies him to act as director on The Spirit; early trailers seem to indicate his endeavor to bring his style to the big screen will only end in disaster.
Miller is also attempting to center his gritty story around a character that has always been the furthest thing from dark. The Spirit was a detective who dressed in blue and solved mysteries with the colorful cast of friends and family he had gained over the years; he was a pulp hero that often bordered on campy. Frank Miller is trying to make the character more reminiscent of his Sin City characters: mentally unsound and motivated by a twisted since of morality. I believe if the great Will Eisner were still alive he would be appalled by what is being done to his character. The movie is most likely doomed to fail at the box office; the nature of the film will probably alienate both enthusiasts and the mainstream audience. If the film succeeds in any way, it will only be because some people can't look away from a disaster of a movie.
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