Sep 23, 2008 08:20 AM
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Tue Feb 9
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Fresh masked face Gabriel Macht is Frank Miller's darling Spirit in the movie adaptation of Will Eisner's comic. Recently, he tried to clear up some of the confusion (and dismay) over the adaptation of this work. The Spirit is supposed to be light-hearted and fun, so why so serious with the red and black shadowy nonsense in every ad we've seen? Macht described Miller's process of bringing the character to life and the direction he got from Miller. And now we know where everything went awry.
In an interview with Wizard Universe Macht talked about Miller's direction:
One thing we did was, we were talking about how the Spirit is physically very strong and can obviously take care of himself. He finds ways to protect himself and civilians in Central City. He'll use a manhole cover as a shield or something. He hates guns. But there's also the sense of the Spirit being sort of clumsy. He may walk into a wall or whatever. I was talking with Frank once, and he was telling me about how he wanted this punch to lookâhe was hoping for the Spirit to really look like he knew what he was doing, and this punch was a deadly hit, right? So when he reached back to show me the punch, he actually hit himself in the nose. [Laughs] It was hilarious, because it was exactly what the Spirit would have done. It was just a perfect image, a metaphor for who the Spirit is.
The Spirit hates guns: True. Spirit will use odd objects for defense: True, Spirit is a little clumsy: Sometimes true. All of these points sound true to Spirit form. But what he didn't mention was that The Spirit is only shot in red and black with CG shadows that cloak the whimsical with a foreboding and ridiculous feel that looks like a G-rated version of Sin City. Your heart might have been in the right place, Miller, but you got in your own way. I wish he had done what he promised and made the film fun and comically sexy, not weird and awkward like some acid assault on the senses.
Send an email to Meredith, the author of this post, at meredith@io9.com.
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