The Spirit

So.

The new The Spirit trailer. I reserved judgement, with great difficulty, and sat on my thoughts until I could go home and sit through another viewing of Sin City, which I hadn't seen since its theatrical release.

Thankfully, it's still a good movie.

My personal take has always been that Robert Rodriguez was the real director of SC and, even though Miller shared co-directing credits he was really more of a consultant, providing insight into what kind of visual look he was striving for in the comic. But this trailer sort of muddies the water a little bit, by thoroughly aping the visual motifs of SC.

So now I ask the question, was Miller driving the cinematic look of Sin City, and as such, just transferring his own personal style to The Spirit? Or is he just copying Rodriguez's style having seen it in action?

Unfortunately the trailer really isn't long enough to make that call.

On the whole, I was disappointed with the trailer. It felt unfinished. Some of the stunt work and CGI look pretty phony and the scratch track they stuck to it is fairly generic. It's from The Untouchables isn't it? I've never read the title this movie is based on, and probably never will, so I've got no hangups about this film being true to the source material. Essentially, I'm the best kind of audience this film can hope for. No expectations.

Do I care that it looks like SC redux? Hell no. Directors have been ripping visual stylistic traits off each other since the movie camera was first invented. If Miller is able to do some interesting with the look, I'm willing to let him try.

So, in summary, weak trailer, but still I still have an interest in seeing the final product.