‘The Spirit’ adaptation unsaved by brilliant visuals

    The nerd community tends to be tightly knit. There are definite bonds of trust between nerds and those who provide us with our nerdery, particularly between the reader and the comic book writer.            Twenty years ago, Frank Miller earned the trust of the nerd community by writing and penciling “The Dark Knight Returns,” the book that introduced the dark and edgy Batman that fans of Christopher Nolan’s Batman films know and love. Coinciding with Alan Moore’s “Watchmen,” “The Dark Knight Returns” helped usher in the so-called Iron Age of comics, a time known for grim and gritty stories, defined in part by Miller’s dark, noir-influenced writing and visual style.
    Unfortunately, Frank Miller betrayed our trust with the December 2008 release of “The Spirt.”
    Miller has writing chops. He helped to reform creator rights in the comic industry. He’s won Eisner Awards, Kirby Awards and Harvey Awards, a big deal in comics, I promise. Miller’s stuff makes good movies. That can’t be argued. He wrote and penciled “Sin City,” and was co-director of the film version with Robert Rodriguez. He wrote a mini-series called “300” about the battle of Thermopylae, which was adapted into a solid film directed by Zack Snyder.
    So, why? Why does “The Spirit” suck?
    First, the film is a complete departure from the essence of the source material. According to Will Eisner’s official Web site, willeisner.com, “The Spirit” began as a comic strip that ran in newspapers in 1940. When the burgeoning comic book industry began to really take off, newspaper publishers wanted in on that action. They approached Eisner and “The Spirit” made the jump from the funny page to the funny books. Influenced by the burgeoning film noir genre, “The Spirit” carved out a place of its own, separating itself from other smart-talking detective comics such as “Dick Tracy.”
    The Spirit, formerly known as police detective Denny Colt, is apparently killed on the job. Due to an enemy’s experimentation, Colt is in suspended animation for three days. When he awakens, he uses his anonymity to do the things the police can’t and becomes the vigilante known as The Spirit.
    The film follows much of the same general outline. However, the major departure is The Spirit is actually dead for some time and injected with magical chemicals that give him Wolverine-esque regenerative abilities, apparently, along with, super-strength and enhanced agility of some sort.
    In the entire film, the costumed detective stops ONE crime. A woman is about to be mugged, and he beats the holy hell out of the bad guys. The rest of the time, he is obsessed with tracking down one criminal, the Octopus. He never even manages to find the guy. He attempts to infiltrate the Octopus’ base and gets caught.
    The only times he faces off against the Octopus, the fights are played for laughs. He, I swear to Loki, punches the Octopus until he explodes for some unknown reason. Seconds later, the Octopus wraps a toilet around The Spirit. Oh, right, because the Octopus has those regenerative abilities. Which makes sense, because this criminal mastermind’s whole scheme is tied to finding some magical ancient Greek artifact that might grant him immortality, which he already has. Basically, the plot sucks. Let’s move on.
    The movie tries to be an action flick. It shouldn’t be, but let’s say I’ll buy into it. Every action sequence is played for chuckles. The aforementioned toilet bit. The Octopus attacks The Spirit with a disembodied head at one point. The Spirit attacks a wave of minions with snowballs later in the film. Just… no.
    There are multiple anachronisms. Everyone dresses and speaks as though it’s the 1950s, yet there are cell phones and the Internet. There is no need for the movie to work so hard to sell a period and then throw some future into your face. It’s just jarring.
    The dialogue is atrocious. Truly, truly horrid. There are moments where it just feels like the actors are painstakingly trying to recall every word of a 3,000-word line because they’ll be electrocuted if they don’t. It’s almost forgivable, because it fits the sort of noir style of the movie. However, it’s still awkward, so it falls flat.
    Pretty much the only thing I enjoyed was the visual style. I liked “Sin City,” and this is pretty much a direct rip-off, so I guess it stands to reason. The sort of neo-noir feel is very “in” these days, and this movie has it in spades. However, just because Frank Miller likes noir doesn’t mean he should use it for everything.
    Essentially, it boils down to this: Miller has gone soft. He was a genius in his prime, that’s doubtless. With “The Spirit,” he waived all rights to credibility. I’m going to make an official statement on the behalf of all nerd-kind right now: Frank Miller is not to be trusted.
    “The Spirit” has a runtime of 103 minutes and is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of stylized violence and action, some sexual content and brief nudity.
    Cody Arant can be reached at cody.arant@murraystate.edu.