At last, finally another entry to The Dork Report’s hal­lowed pan­theon of zero-star unholy cin­ema atroc­i­ties. Frank Miller’s The Spirit is far more than just merely bad. Like the most infa­mous movie dis­as­ter of all, Ed Wood’s Plan Nine From Outer Space (read The Dork Report appre­ci­a­tion), it veers wildly from stun­ning weird­ness to unin­ten­tional hilar­ity, inter­spersed with fre­quent stretches of insuf­fer­able bore­dom. But what truly lands The Spirit among the rar­i­fied com­pany of true cin­e­matic crimes against human­ity is that it is the insane and unhinged prod­uct of a uniquely obsessed auteur mind. The only dif­fer­ence is, Miller was handed a great deal more money and resources than Wood ever man­aged to wrangle.

Not that he didn’t have to work for it. Miller is one of the best-known (and most ripped-off) rock stars to grad­u­ate from the sweat­shop that is the comic book indus­try. He has writ­ten and/or illus­trated some of the best-selling and most influ­en­tial series of comics’ mod­ern age, includ­ing Wolver­ine, Dare­devil, Ronin, Elek­tra: Assas­sin, Sin City, and 300. Much of this work has long been ruth­lessly pil­laged for raw mate­r­ial for Hollywood’s lever­ag­ing of comic book intel­lec­tual prop­er­ties. The unmatched one-two punch of his 1980s Bat­man graphic nov­els Year One (with David Maz­zuc­chelli) and The Dark Knight, together with Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s The Killing Joke, became the basis for Tim Burton’s Bat­man (1989). That first major comics-to-movie block­buster not only bor­rowed Miller’s par­tic­u­lar inter­pre­ta­tion of the char­ac­ter (itself a highly dis­tilled ver­sion of its sur­pris­ingly dark his­tory), but also his over­all visual style (going to far as to visu­ally quote indi­vid­ual panels).

“I’m gonna kill you all kinds of dead.”

Over a decade later, Mark Steven Johnson’s Dare­devil (2003) unfor­tu­nately fum­bled Miller’s most famous orig­i­nal char­ac­ter, the Greek ninja assas­sin Elek­tra. But Miller was soon to cease being merely some­one from whom Hol­ly­wood stole paid homage. In 2005, Miller jumped media bar­ri­ers to co-direct a fea­ture film adap­ta­tion of his orig­i­nal graphic novel Sin City with Robert Rodriguez. The two crafted an exact­ingly faith­ful recre­ation of the book, essen­tially treat­ing the orig­i­nal comics as sto­ry­boards. Miller’s pro­file only rose as Zack Sny­der pulled a sim­i­lar stunt with Miller’s 1998 graphic novel 300, pro­duc­ing an even big­ger (and slightly con­tro­ver­sial) smash hit.

Credit to Miller for absorb­ing count­less lessons from the sea­soned indie mav­er­ick Rodriguez, enough to helm an entire fea­ture on his own. The Spirit’s visu­als are often extra­or­di­nar­ily beau­ti­ful, exploit­ing the thin bar­rier between ani­ma­tion and live action blurred ever since the largely green-screened Star Wars: The Phan­tom Men­ace (George Lucas, 1999) and Sky Cap­tain and the World of Tomor­row (Kerry Con­ran, 2004). Like Sin City, nearly every shot is highly processed to effect a styl­ized evo­ca­tion of noir lit­er­a­ture and movies.

But together with Miller’s sig­na­ture brand of stark, chiaroscuro images and pur­ple, pulpy noir dia­logue, it doesn’t look or sound any­thing like the real osten­si­ble real source mate­r­ial, Will Eisner’s orig­i­nal Spirit comics. The leg­endary Eis­ner is con­sid­ered the inven­tor of the graphic novel. The DVD edi­tion includes a must-see bonus fea­ture: “Miller on Miller,” in which Miller talks of him as a teacher, and took many of his apho­risms as lessons, includ­ing the essen­tial sen­su­al­ity of ink­ing (which Miller took rather lit­er­ally). Eis­ner (and oth­ers such as Neal Adams) may have inspired Miller in the first place, but Miller’s ver­sion of The Spirit in Chucks and cape-like trench­coat more closely resem­bles his own cre­ations, espe­cially Dwight from Sin City (Clive Owen in the film) or Dare­devil as he appears in the 1990 graphic novel Elek­tra Lives Again.

This Dork Reporter read Miller’s comics as a kid, and cer­tainly never expected the guy would one day be a bank­able force in Hol­ly­wood. Look­ing back­wards, it’s plain he hasn’t changed much. His obses­sions and pre­oc­cu­pa­tions are now only ampli­fied and enhanced: his mod­ern comics (and now movies) are mostly com­prised of homo­erotic bone-crunching acro­batic fights (if the entirety of 300 isn’t proof enough, might I refer you to Daredevil’s bat­tle with the naked, big-dicked Bulls­eye in Elek­tra Lives Again), volup­tuous femmes fatale (no skinny waifs for him), and pulp fic­tion and film noir-inspired odes to his beloved New York City. Also on the DVD, Miller expounds on all his favorite talk­ing points, from his detailed knowl­edge of comics his­tory, his love for New York City, and his hatred of cen­sor­ship (he’s famously prone to cas­ti­gate the comics indus­try for weakly cen­sor­ing itself instead of fight­ing back against — or even ignor­ing — Con­gres­sional pres­sure in the 1950s).

“I’ve known some pretty strange women in my time but this one, she’s got the final word on strange.”

I’m not famil­iar with Eisner’s orig­i­nal Spirit comics, which appeared as inserts in 1940s Sun­day news­pa­pers. But from what I under­stand, Miller took a great deal of lib­er­ties beyond jet­ti­son­ing Eisner’s col­or­ful visual style in favor of his own Sin City look. Miller adds a meta­phys­i­cal aspect miss­ing in the orig­i­nal, mak­ing The Spirit and his neme­sis The Octo­pus both inde­struc­tible and quick-healing (per­haps inspired by the char­ac­ter Wolver­ine, to which Miller had a hand in pop­u­lar­iz­ing in the early 1980s). The pres­ence of Samuel L. Jack­son can’t help but rec­ol­lect M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreak­able, an infi­nitely more sub­tle exam­i­na­tion of the super­hero archetype.

The action is set in an unnamed fan­tasy urban land­scape like that of Alex Proyas’ Dark City (1998) and David Fincher’s Se7en (1995): filthy, sur­rounded by water, soaked by con­stant pre­cip­i­ta­tion and fog, and in per­pet­ual night until the sun finally rises at the end. Miller’s script con­spic­u­ously avoids men­tion­ing the year, but the auto­mo­biles and fash­ions are clearly of the 1940s while the char­ac­ters employ the cell phones and inter­net of the 2000s. This is Miller’s home.

The Spirit sports an unusu­ally eclec­tic cast, with the unknown Gabriel Macht in the epony­mous role with much better-known stars Jack­son and Scar­lett Johans­son in sup­port­ing roles. The per­for­mances range from the dis­tracted (Sarah Paul­son as a good girl besot­ted with The Spirit) to the bor­der­line lunatic (hi, Sam!). One can hardly blame the actors, for surely they were at the mercy of the screen­play and Miller’s rookie coach­ing. Stana Katic is enter­tain­ing as Mor­gen­stern, a gosh-golly gee-whiz rookie cop that goose-steps from scene to scene like a sexy robot. ScarJo rocks horn­rimmed glasses like no bad girl before her, but it’s just plain uncom­fort­able to see her in Nazi fetish­wear and jackboots.

The Octo­pus is a mad sci­en­tist con­duct­ing all sorts of med­ical atroc­i­ties in the name of mutat­ing him­self to god­like pow­ers. He deems one of his mis­fired exper­i­ments as “just plain damn weird,” a phrase apro­pos of the movie itself. It’s oddly slap­stick, and often out­right silly. Unex­pect­edly, it’s much less vio­lent, or rather, gory, than 300 or Sin City. It’s also slightly more play­ful in nar­ra­tive terms; the Spirit’s noirish voiceover often brazenly breaks the fourth wall by speak­ing directly to the camera.

And finally, some trivia gleaned from the credits:

• This comic geek thought I rec­og­nized a con­tri­bu­tion by fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tor Geof Dar­row (Hard Boiled and Big Guy & Rusty the Boy Robot), and I was proved cor­rect in the end credits.
• The end cred­its them­selves, designed by Miller, are stunning.
• Miller is also cred­ited for the sto­ry­boards, which must be some­thing to see.
• Miller cameos as a decapi­ti­ated cop, the head of whom The Octo­pus wields as a weapon. He also appears in Sin City, Dare­devil and Robo­Cop 2, for which he wrote the screenplay.

Offi­cial movie site: www.mycityscreams.com

Buy the DVD and the book The Spirit: The Movie Visual Com­pan­ion from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.