The Spirit - What Happened?

After it's Christmas day release, the film adaptation of The Spirit has gone on to earn $15 million at the box office. The film has also earned it's self a 15% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

I think it's safe to say that The Spirit is indeed a flop of a film.

So what happened?

Will Eisner's The Spirit has risen to the forefront of the graphic medium over the past decades as an example of how comic books should be done.

Frank Miller's The Spirit has shown us exactly how comic adaptations shouldn't be.

Noticably the movie went from being Will Eisner's 'The Spirit' to From the creator of 300 and Sin City: Frank Miller

The main problem with the adaptation was that it really wasn't The Spirit. Miller has often noted Eisner as a big influence of his work but the two had very different views on how comics should work as a medium. A big part of what The Spirit was became lost when trying to shoehorn it into the "Millerverse". Meanwhile the Darwyn Cooke version of The Spirit comes off quite well on it's own while paying homage to the original.

The Spirit doesn't work in the same way as Sin City. The books are two different tones and trying to make the Spirit film work the same way as the Sin City films is absolutley ridiculous.

A big part of why the Sin City movie worked was that it looked just like the Sin City books, and the main reason of that was Robert Rodriguez bringing their creator onboard as a co-director. That move proved the Sin City film the truest comic adaptation ever. But having Miller as the sole director and in turn having him cop his own visual style, The Spirit seems to have been damned.

If only the movie industry had asked comic fans about this first, we could have saved their golden boy creator of blockbusters like 300, Sin City and Robocop.

See, we've already seen what Miller is capable of. Or as I guess I should say not capable of.

Frank Miller has created some of the most memorable works in comics, and this is going beyond his own work with 300 and Sin City.

Miller was responsible for giving Marvel's Daredevil title new life, with the introduction, death and eventual rebirth of Elektra.

His tale Batman: Year One went on to cement Batman's place as a character with real potential, a story which later went on to influence the film Batman Begins heavily. His other Batman work The Dark Knight Returns was lauded as one of the most inventive Batman stories ever, and alongside writer Alan Moore the two made comics matter in the 80's.

But then Miller started to slip. His next Batman related works, the DKR sequel The Dark Knight Strikes Again and All-Star Batman and Robin both came off as too over the top and as if he was someone trying to write a Frank Miller story.

Yes. Frank Miller has gone batshit insane.

So here we stand now, The Spirit adaptation will fade overtime but what does this mean for Frank Miller? There were plans for a Sin City 2 put into motion right after the first film came out, what will this mean for that?

Will Frank ever work in this town again?