A New Spirit Trailer. The Same Old Fears

 

A new trailer has been released for Frank Miller's adaptation of Will Eisner's The Spirit, and I'm still as confused and annoyed as I was after the first few trailers.

 

The worries I have about the film still persist.  If anything, this trailer only served to reinforce them.  If I had to choose one word to describe my first impressions of what the Spirit movie is going to be like, I think I'd have to go with Schizophrenic.  I just do not understand what Frank Miller is trying to accomplish with this film.

 

On the one hand, visually it looks very dark and gritty.  It looks dead on like the film version of Sin City.  And that's how it's being marketed too.  This new trailer is all super serious and is obviously going for a dark and dirty feel to the film, what with the music and the "What are you?" stuff.  Yet at the same time, the elements of campiness that I am afraid of are still so blatantly there.  In this trailer you see the nut shot with the giant wrench that I mentioned in a previous post.  You also see the Spirit take a guy out with what appears to be a snowball.  Some of the dialogue in the trailer is intentionally cheesy too, like the line "Somebody get me a tie, and it sure as hell had better be red."

 

And what's with the guy blowing up Doctor Manhattan style at about the 2 minute mark?

 

I know I'm sounding really negative going into this film.  I'm trying really hard not to be, but I seriously think one of two things is going on here, and neither of them bode well for the film.  One, either Frank Miller couldn't figure out what kind of film to make so he made it half dark and half campy or; two, the film is campy like the Spirit is supposed to be, but the film is being marketed entirely incorrectly.  I am getting the feeling that it's possible since Frank Miller's name is associated with audience for things like Sin City and 300, then that's how they're trying to market the film.  But I get the feeling the film isn't like that at all.

 

The problem with both of those scenarios is that audiences don't really know what they're going to be walking in to.  And if people go in expecting one thing, and end up getting another, a lot of people are going to be annoyed and this film isn't going to do so good.

 

I hope I'm wrong.  I really do.  But I fear that things for this film are sort of doomed.