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It’s been out on DVD for a while now, but I finally got around to seeing Frank Miller’s incarnation of Will Eisner’s series The Spirit. I was skeptical about the movie when it was in theaters. I’m not a huge fan, or particularly familiar, with the character of The Spirit and his stories, but I knew a few basic things going into it. The first thing I knew was that The Spirit was a brightly colored book, which seemed sharply contrasted with Miller’s preferred style of noir-esque, high contrasting art. The second thing was that The Spirit was funny. Miller’s funny isn’t often well received (look at his most recent entries in the Dark Knight collections) and the previews all suggested that it was a very serious movie.

For a little bit of background, The Spirit is a man named Denny Colt who was a police officer. During a big to-do, he was somehow killed. But he didn’t die, not entirely. He was buried, and dead for all intents and purposes. But, Denny didn’t stay dead. Denny came back, somehow or another, and decided to become a kind of shadow, or spirit, to the city. He wasn’t Denny anymore, he was simply The Spirit. And that’s how it was, and that’s how it was always going to be.

But the movie went with a slightly different route, that I’m not going to bother explaining because it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Miller got a lot of The Spirit right, but he also got a lot wrong, and that’s the problem. Miller’s movie was, as I said, a rather dark movie. Color-wise. The Spirit, who typically wore blue and white with his red tie, was now sporting an all-black look except for the tie. Something that, especially to me, who was accustomed to the character in the old outfit, seemed a little unusual.

Miller’s desaturated, and heavily stylized, take on the character in the movie was actually very interesting to watch. I’m a general fan of Frank Miller, as it may or may not have been implied by the number of things I’ve written on him since 21Six decided to go into an essay-writing contest like it is, and Sin City as well as 300 utilized this stylization very effectively. As such, it didn’t really surprise me to see that this movie had not only gone a similar route, but done it equally well, if not better. It was a bit much for the character, but considering that it’s Frank Miller, I’m willing to forgive some of this.

The music was fantastic, I feel. A nice combination of 40s with a general heroic sense, it’s something that I felt really captured both the time period of the source and also maintained a kind of timeless feel to it. We can all listen to Billie Holiday and not go “Oh, gross, old music.” and so forth– if you don’t like Billie Holiday, replace it with your favorite singer from the 40s. If you never listened to music that old, then please go jump into a large fire. Miller and the others really brought that across.

I feel like, if Frank Miller was actually writing a comic book for The Spirit that it would have this look and feel. I like that.

The problem, though, arises in that this isn’t Frank Miller’s The Spirit and it never really was. The Spirit is always an entity linked with Will Eisner, and Eisner is one of the untouchables of comic books. Miller captured many aspects of the character based on the bits I’ve read before I watched this, but it didn’t feel like Eisner’s character anymore. Miller completely rewrote Daredevil as a character, bringing him to a new level of fandom and actually making the character one of Marvel’s mainstream characters. Events in Miller’s run of Daredevil still impact the Marvel Universe.

Miller’s movie was noir. It wasn’t a true film-noir, but it kept a lot of the feel that Miller often brings into his movies. It was Sin City with domino masks. That’s fine if you like Miller, and you like his stuff. But I’m sure a lot of people wanted Miller to have written this as Eisner would have.

I will hand it to Miller, though, he made it funny.

Spirit is a funny character, and a funny comic. Modern Spirit comics maintain a kind of whimsy, from what I’ve read, and this really isn’t any different. Miller’s Spirit focused a bit more on sight gags and something akin to the idea of “I see what you did there”, but it was still funny. The movie didn’t take itself seriously, not directly. And, with someone like Miller, that kind of thing seems to be one of the more recurring aspects of the characters in his books.

To keep citing Miller’s previous works, it’s very similar to the scenes in Sin City where the man is being dragged across the street, while being dangled from the moving car. Or it’s much like in The Dark Knight Strikes Again where Batman informs Superman that he will be dropping 90 tons of planet Earth on him, or something to that effect. He maintains a kind of lightheartedness while still keeping it gritty and grim and all of those things that Miller helped populate in the comic book industry that he now overtly parodies in his later works.

A fine scene would be towards the end of the movie, as The Octopus shoots The Spirit, steadily pulling out larger, and larger weaponry until finally he shoots the man with two quadruple-barreled shotguns. Over the top, and generally making you go “Oh, come on now.” but I laughed at how absurd it was, and it helped really add to my enjoyment of the movie.

I love it.

It also keeps up in the dialogue, which is a combination of Miller’s narration penchant and the silliness of the gags and lightheartedness as well. From the narration of The Spirit, describing his city as it’s something of a living, breathing creature– a woman most often– who needs him as a guard… to The Octopus completely ignoring Silken Floss, only reiterating how “damn weird” something is. If there was any problem to be had with the dialogue, which sounded a little cheesy at times (but I think that was intentional, really) it would be that the characters didn’t really express it properly. People felt wooden, which doesn’t work in a movie so heavy in dialogue and dependent on saying the words just right. But nothing’s perfect, not even Nolan’s The Dark Knight.

It’s interesting to see it in action, and I’m impressed (as well as pleased) that a movie about The Spirit finally made it into theaters, even if I didn’t go see it then. I don’t know if I’d actually recommend it to someone, just because I’m fairly certain that this is a polarizing movie. I have an appreciation for Miller’s work, and his general “I have clearly stopped caring about things” attitude that is expressed a lot of his more recent work, which a lot of fans I know don’t really like. It’s a funny movie. Not particularly smart, not what you would expect when you see a Spirit movie, but if you like Frank Miller’s movies I don’t think it can be too disappointing.

If you have a membership with a movie-rental place, go rent it. If you find it at the library, check it out there. If you like it from there, I’d say buy it. It couldn’t hurt.