Frank Miller Promises 'The Spirit' Won't Be a Retu...

Frank Miller is just blogging like crazy these days. Which is great -- I wish everybody I ever wrote about had a blog, because it would make everything ten times easier and more interesting. No conjecture. Straight from the horse's mouth!

Today, Miller addressed the concerns and criticism directed at the first teaser for The Spirit, mainly centered on its resemblance to the eye-popping Sin City. "It only resembles Sin City in that I am its director, and, well, yes, I have my ways and my proclivities .... No, Sin City, that one's my own baby, folks, and it looks the way it does for its own reasons. The Spirit is, and will always be, Eisner's Spirit .... To drive the point home, The Spirit , despite any accidental impression left by that kickass teaser-trailer, is a full-color movie. Sin City - and I hope to make of it a movie trilogy all its own, come Hell and high water - is, visually, a playhouse for black and white."


He also addresses the rumblings directed at the Spirit's suit, which has been changed from blue to black. Turns out, the Spirit's suit was probably always meant to be black, but due to the limitations of pre-digital printing, all black had to be printed as blue -- even Superman's hair suffered. (To be honest, I always wondered if that was the reason for the blue suit, but I assumed I was just an idiot who was missing an important noir reference.) To Miller and the costumer's credit, the film did attempt to pay homage to the iconic coloring, but with ugly results. "In tests-and we did several-the blue made the Spirit look like an unfortunate guest at a Halloween party. Going to black brings back his essential mystery, his Zorro-like sexiness. It also makes that red tie of his look very, very cool. So I made the call, with all respect to Eisner's creation, and most importantly, to what I perceived as his underlying intention. It was an easy call for me to make. The Spirit dresses in black, and looks much the better for it. As I said, my desire was never to slavishly follow the rules of '40s printing into campy oblivion, but to reintroduce Eisner's creation, via modern technology, to our brave new world."