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00:00:01
The Spirit
149 Plays4 years ago
Frank Miller's take on The Spirit opens with Gabriel Macht and Samuel L. Jackson fighting in a pool of literal crap...and that's really the perfect metaphor for this movie. It's the first film the guys review that they hate, and Perry swears to one day make Derrick pay for forcing him to watch it.
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Transcript
Audible Promotion and Podcast Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, Derek, guess what? Hit me with it. We just got a promotion with Audible. Audible, fantastic. I love Audible. Do you know what the cool thing about this deal is? What's that? If our listeners go to audibletrial.com slash supercinemapod, they get a free trial with Audible. And do you know what they get with that?
00:00:22
Speaker
What do they get with that? Tell me. They get one free audiobook of their choice and they get two free Audible Originals, which is special content that Audible makes available free for all its subscribers. Are you kidding me? That deal is so good I may go myself and sign them. Do you think they let you keep the books after you're done?
00:00:42
Speaker
No, you're not gonna tell me they let you keep the books after you're done. Yes, in fact, you can go sign up for a trial and you can cancel before the trial ends and you get to keep the books you've already downloaded.
00:00:55
Speaker
Well, I don't see how you can beat that with a stick. Exactly, yeah. And you can, lots of great books, especially for fans of the show. You can listen to Super Gods by Grant Morrison, which is all about like how the superhero comics have changed and evolved over time. Or you can check out Marvel Comics, The Untold Story. Which is a terrific book. I have that both in hardcover and I listened to that on Audible myself in my car while traveling back and forth.
00:01:21
Speaker
And there's also another similar book that's called Slugfest, which is about like the wars between Marvel and DC Comics. Oh, okay. So that's another one you got to check out too. So yeah, head on over to audibletrial.com slash supercinemapod and start your free trial right now. You got one free audio book and two free audible originals and you can keep them even if you cancel before it's over.
00:02:05
Speaker
My city, she's always there for me. Every lonely night she's there for me. She's not some tarted up fraud all dressed up like a piece of jail bait. Now she's an old city, old and proud of her every pock and crack and wrinkle. She's my sweetheart, my plaything.
00:02:32
Speaker
She doesn't hide what she is, what she's made of. Sweat, muscle, blood, generations. She sleeps after midnight and until dawn, only shadows move in the silence. Damn, I've got no time for this.
Movie Dislikes and Marvel Casting
00:02:56
Speaker
Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast. I am half of your host, Perry Constantine.
00:03:01
Speaker
And I am the intensely satisfied other half, Derek Ferguson. Why don't you go ahead and tell everybody why you're so intensely satisfied today?
00:03:13
Speaker
because you hated the shit out of the movie that we're going to be talking about this week. And so even though it isn't quite the same, I feel like I'm back at you for making me watch Daredevil. Nowhere near the same. No, it wasn't the same because I like Daredevil. Yeah. But you know what? It's that old Klingon proverb, revenge is a dish best served cold. So I'm going to get back at you one day when you least expect it.
00:03:41
Speaker
Well, you know, when you least expect it, expect it. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I I was watching this movie last night and I kind of hate you. I kind of hated you a little bit after when I got what I finally got to the credits of what felt like a six hour long movie, because it's just, oh, God, I was so surprised to look back at it. It's only an hour and a half. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
00:04:05
Speaker
Yeah, we should tell the folks who, if you don't know by now, we are, of course, discussing that train wreck of movies, you know. Whenever anybody starts talking about Batman and Robin, I say, well, how can you? I say, well, have you seen The Spirit? Yeah. And then that's OK. Then how can you rattle Batman and Robin? But before we jump into that, I wanted to quickly just talk about some big MCU news that was announced this past week.
00:04:34
Speaker
oh okay um not sure if you heard this but uh jonathan majors has been cast as uh king the conqueror oh yeah and of all movies ant-man 3 you know what okay i read on facebook of course a lot of people bitching about that but i said well it's kind of following the natural thing because it was thanks to ant-man
00:04:59
Speaker
and going through the whole Microverse thing that the Avengers were able to time travel. Right. In Avengers Endgame. So it seems to me here that the Avengers traveling through time would catch the attention of Kang. That's my thinking too, because one of the things, I saw a lot of people saying like, you know, well, Kang versus Ant-Man doesn't make a lot of sense. And I'm like, well, they never said that he was playing the villain of Ant-Man 3. They just said that Kang is gonna be a major player in Ant-Man 3.
00:05:29
Speaker
yeah exactly so i think we're you're right i think it's gonna have something to do with the fact that you know scott figured out how to travel through time he gave that information to the avengers and all the avengers traveled through time i think you know king's gonna be looking to doing some uh you know maybe policing of the timeline or something like that because the thing about king is
00:05:49
Speaker
there's like 50 different versions of Kang or like hundreds of them. Like you have the whole Council of Kangs and all that. And it could be like an older Kang coming in from a future point in his life when he's kind of mellowed and he would work with the Avengers on occasion. Or it could be also, because don't forget, we got Cassie's now a teenager after Endgame.
00:06:13
Speaker
And so in the comic books, she became one of the members of the Young Avengers team, which also included Iron Lad, who was in reality a young Kang the Conqueror. Right. So that could also have something to do with it as well. Yeah, I mean,
00:06:32
Speaker
Okay, the more I heard it, you know, like at first I said, okay, well, Kang, yeah, okay, well, I can see it, but then the more I thought about it, I said, yeah, Kang is a good,
00:06:45
Speaker
way to bring him in. And don't forget, we still got Loki. He's out there with the Time Cube. Right. Yeah. You know, he's still out there bouncing around time, too. So it could be a thing with Kang and saying, hey, listen, I'm not supposed to be the only one, you know, bouncing around time. You know, these people coming in. And this could just be a way of bringing him in and establishing him as the big bad for this new, you know, cycle of MCU movies that we're going to
Theaters vs. Streaming: Wonder Woman and Mulan
00:07:11
Speaker
be getting.
00:07:11
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And so, yeah, I'm really excited. I haven't seen majors. I don't think I've seen them in anything. I haven't seen Lovecraft Country yet of you. Oh, yeah, it's great. I haven't seen the latest episode. I've been hearing a lot of bitching about this last episode that, you know, was just
00:07:29
Speaker
aired this past Sunday. I haven't seen it yet. So I got to catch up on it and see what everybody's complaining about. But everybody complains about everything these days. So yeah, they do. So I get kind of slow about it. But yeah, a lot of people apparently, this last episode of Low Calf Country has got a lot of people up in arms. I've heard a lot of good things about it. I'm looking forward to checking out eventually when I get around to picking up
00:07:59
Speaker
Uh, what is it? Um, HBO max. Yeah. Right. But, um, and also, uh, looks like Wonder Woman got delayed again. You know, I don't know why they just didn't do like we were saying in the last episode.
00:08:18
Speaker
The Fast and Furious, they just said, you know what? We're just going to put out next summer. And bing, bang, boom, that's it. And then you had Christopher Nolan. He insisted that Tenet be in the movie theaters, and it was going to come out, and it turned out that that didn't go over. That didn't save the movie theaters, like they thought it would. Some people did go see it. And I do know some people that went to see it. And even the ones who went to see it, they were disappointed. They said they wish they had waited.
00:08:47
Speaker
Yeah yeah I mean that's that movie did not really seem to do very well. No no no like either critically or commercially because like a lot of people are saying like yeah it's not really that good either. Yeah a lot I like I said I know some people that went to see it and I thought oh how would they say now I wish I would or you know I think they Christopher Nolan and the studio probably would have did better either a
00:09:11
Speaker
to wait until next summer. That's what I would've did with everything. No movies this year in the theater, we're gonna wait till next summer. Or just do what like Trolls and Mulan did, like do the streaming model instead. And just do the streaming thing, yeah. Even though Mulan didn't do that well, but that was more because of political thought that was going on than the actual quality of the movie. Yeah, although I did hear people say that the movie, people who did see the movie said it wasn't that great.
00:09:41
Speaker
Yes, I know a couple of people also who saw Mulan and they said that, yeah, it wasn't because apparently this is more like a straight war movie, you know, made for adults. It didn't have like, you know, Eddie Murphy. And, you know, so they said they were kind of disappointed. Right. Yeah. In that regard. So I said, well, you know what?
00:10:06
Speaker
What can I tell you? What can I tell you? I mean, it's weird that Disney's still going ahead with the live action remakes, because aside from the Jungle Book,
00:10:19
Speaker
Not many of them have really been well received, have they? I can't think of, I don't know, I can't remember if Beauty and the Beast or Cinderella were well received, but like. Beauty and the Beast was well received. Okay. And I know what, I actually like the live action better than the animator. Okay, I still haven't seen it, but I've been thinking about checking it out, so I think we'll. Yeah, check it out, it's good, it really is. I like Beauty and the Beast. Dumbo, I haven't checked it out yet.
00:10:49
Speaker
Okay,
Disney Live-action Remakes
00:10:50
Speaker
it did okay, but it was the blockbuster that Disney thought it was going to be. I completely forgot about Dumbo. Yeah. Okay, this is the Tim Burton one. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's got Michael Keaton and Danny DeVito in there. Oh, okay. I didn't realize Michael. Oh, that's right. Yeah, I do remember him from the trailer now. Yeah.
00:11:07
Speaker
Right. And what's his name? Colin Farrell. He's in this, too. Oh, OK. Yeah, so it's got an all-star cast. But I'm saying, from what I recall reading, it did OK business, but it didn't do the blockbuster business that Disney thought it was going to.
00:11:24
Speaker
Yeah, and I haven't seen it yet, although I've got Disney Plus, I just haven't watched it yet. What else are the live action thing? The Jungle Book, I saw the live action Jungle Book. Jungle Book was good, yeah. Yeah, that was good. Now that, yeah, I enjoyed that. Have not seen The Lion King, have no interest in seeing it. I saw the animated version. I said, yeah, okay.
00:11:46
Speaker
We saw the Lion King in the theaters and you know, it wasn't bad. Like it was okay, but the problem is with those animals and stuff like that, like you're trying to do like CGI, realistic animals, they can't really emote them. Yeah. So that was like, yes, that was kind of the problem with it. It's like none of the animals could really emote. Although I did like, it was, who was his name? John Oliver did the voice of Zazu and I really liked him. Okay.
00:12:16
Speaker
Okay. Yeah, I haven't seen it. Like I said, I saw the animated version and I'm okay with that. I don't need to see the live action. But yeah, they seem determined to go through their whole catalog and do these live action
00:12:32
Speaker
remakes and I really don't know who you know if they do it like they did like the jungle book okay I can see why because it was different enough from the animated version right then you know okay it may but other ones I really don't understand unless of course is just to make money right yeah well we saw um Aladdin was the other one and we watched that one um a few months back and you know what how was that
00:12:59
Speaker
Like, a lot of people hated it, but I kind of liked it. I thought it was... Yeah, a lot of people kind of was really ragging on the land. No, I liked it, and I liked the actors they got to play Jasmine a lot. I liked the guy they got to play Jafar. I was really impressed with Will Smith. Like, I really liked that he, just like Robin Williams, you know, imbued the genie with his own personality in the animated version,
00:13:24
Speaker
Will Smith wasn't trying to redo that. Like he was doing his own version of the genie. And it worked pretty well, I thought.
00:13:30
Speaker
Well, he's a smart, I mean, you know, real smart. I mean, let's face it. Yeah. He's not a dummy. And he's smart enough to know that there is no profit in trying to copy, you know, Robin Williams. So he just did his own thing. So, yeah, I mean, I keep saying to myself, one day I'm going to get around to watching it on Disney, because I do want to see it, you know, I mean, because I'm, yeah, because like a lot of people really was like ragging on that movie. I said, but why? You know,
00:13:56
Speaker
I think it's just cause the original has such, cause a lot of those people I noticed were like my generation. So, you know, we, like Aladdin was like our first theatrical Disney movie.
00:14:09
Speaker
Ah, yeah. So I think that that's got to add, you know, and that movie resonated with a lot of kids. I remember. It sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that that's what it is. Because when I saw it, of course, I was an adult, you know, when I saw it. So I was old and jaded. But yeah, I can understand it's like the same thing like The Little Mermaid. It like resonated for a whole generation because it caught them at the right age.
00:14:29
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You know,
Critiquing Nolan's Films
00:14:31
Speaker
and well, actually, it was funny because afterwards I watched it with my wife and after and she I don't know if she had seen the original Aladdin or if she just couldn't if she hadn't seen it or if she just couldn't really remember it. But, yeah, she was like, she's like, well, I want to watch the original. So then we went on Disney Plus, we looked and we watched the original like right after we watched the live action one. So I got to camera back to back and I'm just like, yeah, you know, the remake's still pretty not bad. I enjoyed it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, and
00:15:00
Speaker
I don't know, but see, unlike a lot of people, and I know, OK, this is where we lose 10% of our listeners, I don't freak out over remakes. No, me either. You know, most people do. Because first of all, a lot of our classic movies that we look at, look at The Maltese Falcon. That's the one I always point to. The Maltese Falcon, the one that we love with Humphrey Bogart and everything like that, that was a remake of a remake of the same story.
00:15:25
Speaker
Well, I mean, like look at, you know, A Fistful of Dollars was a remake of Yojimbo, which was kind of a remake of, what was that?
00:15:39
Speaker
I can't remember the name of it now, but it was a remake of a, it was a Daschle Hammett book. Oh, Red Harvest. Red Harvest, that was a thing. Yeah, Red Harvest, right, exactly. You know, but people like really lose their shit over remakes. And like I tell them, I say, well, you know what, Broadway does remakes all the time, and they don't call it that, they call it revivals. Right, yeah. Like every five years or so, they bring back, you know, My Fair Lady.
00:16:04
Speaker
or what is it, or they bring back West Side Story or Oklahoma. And nobody freaks out over that. Exactly. So why do you freak out when they make a remake of the movie? Well, let's spoil it. No, they're not. The original is still there. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I've never understood that. And I see people saying, oh, leave it alone. Leave it alone. They're not damaging the original. The original is still there. They're not going to go and burn all the copies of the original and then piss on the ashes.
00:16:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's just like, okay, okay.
00:16:41
Speaker
Okay, I don't like a remake if it's done badly, but if it's done well, like say, like the Peter Jackson King Kong. Now, he did it with a lot of love and affection for the original and he put enough of a spin on it so that it wasn't the exact same movie. So yeah, I mean, but you know,
00:17:05
Speaker
Best people of the day, Perry, what are you gonna do? Yeah, yeah. But yeah, but back on the, briefly on the Nolan thing, you know what, I kind of cooled on Nolan after the one-two punch of Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar. After that, I was just kind of like, I don't think, I still haven't seen Dunkirk, just because like after those- Yeah, know what, don't bother. I've seen Dunkirk. Okay, here's the thing, Dunkirk is not a bad movie.
00:17:32
Speaker
But it's not a particularly compelling one. I felt like there was an emotional distance. I was never emotionally engaged with the movie. That's the best thing that I could put. Nolan is more interested in ideas than actually making his audience feel something for what they're watching. Yeah, yeah. And when it comes to like, I noticed this after,
00:17:57
Speaker
with the Dark Knight Rises, that his storytelling is not really good. Like, cause the Dark Knight Rises, that plot is all over the place. Oh my God. Don't let me get started on that. But I think a lot of the big problem is that after, cause he had so much success, like those trio of movies, right? There was the Prestige, there was Inception, and there was the Dark Knight. And then like his star just skyrocketed after those three. And I think he bought into his own hype a little bit.
00:18:27
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. That's what, yeah. Nolan believes his own hype now. He done, he done read too much of his own press and he started to believe it. Inception to me is the memento and inception are still my favorites of his movies. Now I can watch those over and over again. You know, especially Inception because it was so well put together and you understood everything, which is what a friend of mine said about
00:18:54
Speaker
tenant in that he he said that in inception you had the Ellen uh page right she played a character that kind of like student for the audience okay so you had um what's his name he was explaining how dreams work
00:19:13
Speaker
Oh, Leonardo DiCaprio. Yeah, right. Yeah, Leonardo DiCaprio. When he was explaining to her how dreams work and how the technology works, and by way of explaining it to her, was explaining it to us.
00:19:26
Speaker
Okay, he was saying that Tenet doesn't have, you know, that type of character. So, you know, you feel kind of lost. But yeah, but I mean like Interstellar, Interstellar, I couldn't tell you what that movie was about if you put a gun in my head. And it wasn't, it wasn't like 2001 where
00:19:44
Speaker
You watch it, and you don't get it. But you know something? You're OK with not getting it because you don't feel that you're not getting it because the director doesn't want you to deliberately not get it. It's just that the ideas he's dealing with is so huge.
00:20:02
Speaker
Or like Mahalan Drive, too. Right, exactly. Okay, perfect example. Same thing. I didn't get that with Interstellar. I got the impression that Nolan just wasn't explaining everything because he didn't care to explain anything. Yeah, that's exactly what I said. Yeah, we're just the audience and we're just supposed to sit there and be impressed by, you know, the grandiosity of his concepts. Yeah, yeah.
Dune and Fantasy Literature
00:20:27
Speaker
I felt the same thing.
00:20:30
Speaker
Let's see, there's one other thing I think I wanted to mention in the news. Oh well, forget it, I can't remember it now, but so we'll just skip ahead. Oh, I didn't, I remember now. I saw the Dune trailer for the Delos, Dennis Villanueva. Yeah, I saw it too. And it looks pretty good. You and I, we both have the, we both make sci-fi fans cringe everywhere whenever we say this, but we could not get into the actual novel.
00:20:58
Speaker
No, no. You know what, I can't even say that around Barry Reese anymore. Yeah, he sends me dead rabbits in the mail. I can't say that shit no more around Barry, because Barry loves Doom. And I always say, and I have a hardcover copy that I've had since the 1970s.
00:21:20
Speaker
And every year, I try to read two books. I try to read Lord of the Rings, and I try to read Doom. This has been since the 70s, mind you. To this date, I still have not gotten past page 50 of Doom.
00:21:33
Speaker
What about Lord of the Rings? Did you ever get anything? They never finished that either. If it was not for the movies, I would never find out how the story turned out. You know, it was funny, one of my friends, he was a huge Lord of the Rings fan, right? He read the books growing up, loved them. And one day he said to me, he's like,
00:21:52
Speaker
and we were talking and I can't I think we're talking about uh we're talking about something we're talking about movies or books or something and we get on to Lord of the Rings he's like well you've read the books right and I'm like no he's like what you haven't read the books like you have to read the books the movies are don't do it justice you have to read the books I'm like okay okay I'll read the book so I bought the the trilogy box set I read I slogged through fellowship of the ring and I talked to him and he's like you know what I I watched I re-watched the the movies the extended edition the other night and he's like
00:22:21
Speaker
And he's like, and I changed my mind, you don't need to read the books. Yeah, I mean, yeah, you really don't need to read them. Yeah. And yeah, I've never read it. And mind you,
00:22:34
Speaker
I was around when there was a real cult around Lord of the Rings in Tokyo, you know, like in the 70s and 80s. It was really big and it was like a cult thing. And if you said that you didn't read it, you would get strung up in the town square. You know, that was like a book you had to read. Unfortunately, I think what the problem was was that
00:22:53
Speaker
I had been introduced to heroic fantasy and sort of sorcery through Michael Warcock and Robert E Howard. So the stuff were fantasy and they actually do stuff. Right. Exactly. And in comparison, Tolkien was just too slow. I'm sorry.
00:23:09
Speaker
So yeah, so every year I make a crack, I still haven't read it yet. I just want to, well, you know, I have to be happy with the movies. I remember like all the, they're like all these elf songs or, you know. Yeah. I'm just like, what the fuck is this? I'm just going to move on with the damn story.
00:23:25
Speaker
Exactly. And after you've had Robert E. Howard with Cody going around all day killing and slaying monsters and stuff like that, and then at night drinking and lynching, you say, okay, yeah, this shit is pretty cool. Now I gotta read about a bunch of Hobbits singing songs and... Nah, man. Please, miss me with that bullshit. Okay.
00:23:50
Speaker
No disrespect to the new Lord of the Rings fan, because I don't want y'all coming after me, because I know how y'all can be. But yeah, the Dune trailer looks good. And I'm one of the five people who liked the David Lynch movie. I liked the Dune. Matter of fact, you know something? It was very funny. I'm watching the trailer. And there's a lot, I can swear there's a lot of shots that's in the trailer that I recall seeing that it's exact shot in the David Lynch movie.
00:24:18
Speaker
or they seem very familiar to me. Right, right, yeah, yeah. So, I also rewatched 47 Ronin, the one with Keanu Reeves, because I'm teaching in my class next week, or not next week, two weeks, but you know what surprised
Keanu Reeves' Career and Cameos
00:24:33
Speaker
me is I actually, like, that was a movie that I actually liked too, but it was another movie that just got like completely shat on by everybody.
00:24:42
Speaker
I have no idea. I liked it myself. I saw that. I said, yeah, this is pretty good. And I actually picked good timing because then after I watched it, I was going back online to like, you know, check out reviews and stuff. And I found out that they're doing a sequel. Oh, cool. And it's going to be, it's going to be set 300 years in the future. And it's going to be a cyberpunk version of the 47 grown in. Well, you know what? Yeah. The 47 grown. Matter of fact, I saw they did a version of that.
00:25:08
Speaker
with Clive Owen, it was- Oh yeah, Morgan Freeman, yeah, last night. It was Morgan Freeman. Yeah, last night, yeah. Yeah, so it was set in like kind of like this alternate medieval world and stuff like that. Right, yeah, yeah. That story is kind of like the Seven Samurai in that you could do it like in any genre, in any time period, and it works. Yeah, and in fact there was,
00:25:34
Speaker
In fact, you know, Hello Kitty even did like a line of like 47 Ronin figures and stuff like that. See? Yeah. So yeah. It's one old story. You could do the 47 Ronins in Vietnam War era, you know, Cambodia. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You could do it in 16th century France. You can, you know, yeah, you could do it in a, it's that sort of story that lends itself.
00:26:00
Speaker
to that you could do it in a variety of time periods and settings and it still works yeah absolutely yeah so um but yeah that i'm looking forward to that i hope they get Keanu Reeves back because especially now after he's had his John Wick Renaissance i think that'd be really cool to see him in especially because he's in the cyberpunk video game that's coming out soon
00:26:18
Speaker
And I'm so glad that Keanu Reeves, because you know what, for years and years people ragged on Keanu Reeves for no other reason than apparently he was just Keanu Reeves. And I'm really glad he's enjoying a lot of success. Yes. Now, because you know, he's always struck me as a guy.
00:26:35
Speaker
that didn't take all this Hollywood shit too seriously? No, like he's, you know, he's a real, like he lives like a very simple lifestyle and he lives in like a regular apartment, he rides the subway. And apparently like people who have worked on set with him, like the cast and like the crew and everything, every single crew member says that, you know, a lot of the stars we work with, they're dicks, they think they're better than everybody else, not Keanu. Like he comes, he comes in and talks to us, he asks us how our day's doing, he buys us lunch, all this kind of stuff.
00:27:05
Speaker
Yeah, like he donates most of his money to charity and he's just like, you know, I just kind of live a simple life.
00:27:10
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, he's a down-to-earth guy. Yeah. You know, he's a regular person. And I like that. I like that he doesn't let all of that go to his head. And also, I've read interviews where he's really appreciative of the fact that shit, all I get to do is go, really, I'm getting paid for playing dress up. Yes, yeah. Did you see, he was in that movie, the Ali Wong movie on Netflix.
00:27:37
Speaker
always be my maybe, I think it was called, with her and Randall Park? No. It was like this romantic comedy that Ali Wong
00:27:45
Speaker
I think she directed, I don't know if she directed, but she starred in it. Randall Park was in it too. And there's this one part where her character ends up dating Keanu Reeves and Keanu came in for like a day while he was shooting John Wick two to like, or John Wick three, one of them. And he comes in for like a day just to like play like this over the top fictional version of himself. And it was hysterical. Oh man, I gotta see that. It was good. And especially, it's funny because
00:28:12
Speaker
Randall Park's character gets in a fight with him.
00:28:18
Speaker
At the end of the movie, spoilers, the two main characters get together at the end. But he's an aspiring musician and stuff like that, aspiring DJ. And he says something. He's like, I bet these people would think I'm a lot more special if I told them that I punched Keanu Reeves. And she's like, well, you should. You should tell people. So he wrote a song about how I punched Keanu Reeves and it plays over the end credits.
00:28:45
Speaker
Oh man, you gotta check it out, it's hilarious. Yeah, listen, if Keanu Reeves is in it, I'm down. Like I said, I really liked him a lot because, and I'm glad to see that he is reaping the benefits of all of his years of hard work. Cause he does put in a lot of hard work in his mood. I mean, I don't really think, I could not think of a performance he was in where I could say, okay, well he was just folded that in. He does seem very committed to what he's doing.
00:29:13
Speaker
you know, in every performance. And who knew that he was going to be our newest action hero? Yeah, I mean, I never saw John Wick coming. No, nobody did. Yeah. Yeah. That was one of those examples of something that just hit us out of the clear blue sky. And everybody just sat up and said, whoa. Just like, it might be a lot of taken in that way.
00:29:35
Speaker
Yeah, yes, take it because I never would have pictured Liam Neeson as being an action star. Oh, no, no, although when you go back and you look at his at the totality of his career, he has been in like a lot of action orientated stuff. Yeah, yeah.
00:29:51
Speaker
We just never saw him, you know, quite like that. Right, yeah. It does make sense when you look at all his stuff, but it's just something, it's one of those things you just never expected. No, no, no. I mean, who expected him to make a movie like that? Take it. No. And that was a massive hit. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Critique of 'The Spirit' Film Adaptation
00:30:09
Speaker
All right, so I think now we might as well jump into the movie because I think I'm just trying to stall. Yes you are and doing an excellent job of it. All right, so as we mentioned at the top of the show, this episode we're talking about the spirit. Frank Miller's
00:30:31
Speaker
directorial debut, because, you know, even though he was credited as co director on Sin City that was basically just because Robert Rodriguez, you know, basically just took the panels from the comic book so he credited Frank Miller's director because of that. But this is the first time Frank Miller is actually working behind the camera.
00:30:48
Speaker
And it's the last time, hopefully, as well. Yeah, well, he never directed anything else after this. No, no. After that, the phone stopped ringing. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But everybody said, OK, we can't trust him with it. No, no. I think, OK, first of all, I had some people asking me, they said, well, Derek, why would you
00:31:12
Speaker
Okay, why? Yeah, that's basically what they did. And I said, well, you know what? I said, every time, I said, so far, Perry and I have just been talking about movies that we, you know, we gush about them and, you know, we, you know, we enjoy. And even the ones that we, you know, don't really like that much, we still find good things to say about them. Like, you know, or like last week when we talked about the cobbler or two weeks ago when we talked about the cobbler. And yeah, you know, we find stuff that, we find stuff that we like about them.
00:31:41
Speaker
Because you and I, we're not the type of people who just like to do a podcast where we just shit on everything. Right. And that was one of our mandates when we was doing this. We was doing it because we want to do movies that we enjoy, and we wanted to share that with people. We just don't want to come on here and just be vomiting all over these movies and everything like that. Yeah. But I thought that the spirit would be interesting in that it's a movie that, yeah, OK.
00:32:11
Speaker
we can both agree on that it's universally hated. But my contention is that we can still learn something from a movie that is no damn good. It's something we can learn from it. And yet there are a lot of things that I learned positively, believe it or not, from watching Spirit, especially now. First of all, I'd just like to say that
00:32:38
Speaker
This is when I realized how Frank Miller felt about his own subject matter. There is a fight scene near the beginning of the movie between the spirit and the octopus played by Samuel L. Jackson. And we think that they're fighting in mud.
00:32:55
Speaker
up until when Samuel Johnson out of nowhere finds a toilet and slams it on the spirit's head. And then I realized what they were actually fighting him. Yeah. Yeah. That's how Frank Miller actually feels about his own movie, I think. That was such a perfect metaphor for this movie is just two guys rolling around in a pile of shit. Yeah.
00:33:23
Speaker
Yeah. That whole scene, even when they literally throw the kitchen sink at him. I'm like, come on. Yeah. From out of nowhere. Where did he find the kitchen sink? I'm just like, what the fuck? Yeah. I mean, is this a joke yard? And there's nothing.
00:33:45
Speaker
There's, there's no sense of like, um, there's no sense of established. There's no establishing in that scene, right? There's nothing to establish where they actually are. Yeah. We have no idea where it appears to be a swamp in the middle of the city. Yeah. For some reason that I, you know, I can't fathom, but trying to make sense out of this one, first of all,
00:34:11
Speaker
you would have people argue, and quite rightly, that spirit as created by the great Will Eisner is actually not a superhero. He's more of, he's more in the mold of those Pope characters from the 30s and 40s. Right, yeah. You know, now,
00:34:28
Speaker
I'm getting away with, if I'm not mistaken, I believe I read somewhere that Eisner actually didn't intend to have him wear a mask at first. And like, you know, but I think it was the publisher, someone said, well, you know, you got to give him a costume. And so Eisner just drew the mask over his face. That is the costume.
00:34:46
Speaker
I can see that because the mask is kind of really like, you know, really there's no reason for him to wear that mask because it's so teeny and tight. It's barely covering his eyes as it is. Yeah. You know, I lost my train of thought there. Yeah, but I mean, okay, as created by Will Eisner, his character is more of a pope.
00:35:11
Speaker
character from the 30s and 40s. I get away with saying this is a superhero movie because Frank Miller actually does give the spirit a superpower in this movie, in the healing factor that he has, which explains why him and the octopus can have these meaningless fist fights that seemingly go on forever. It's like watching something out of a Looney Tunes cartoon.
00:35:35
Speaker
Well, well, that's what this movie is. Yeah. It's a basically, it's a Looney Tunes animated shit fest. It is. There's no other way to describe this movie. It is from start to beginning a bad movie. Yeah. However, there are some nuggets
00:35:55
Speaker
in this movie that can be appreciated, the performance of Gerald Mock, for instance, who plays the spirit. Really? You like that? I did not. Listen, I liked him. I liked him because you know what? He throws himself into this thing fearlessly. And okay, I never blame an actor for the script. They're giving the script and they do the best they can with it. And that's what this guy did with it.
00:36:23
Speaker
I mean, I just kept thinking the whole time. I'm like, you're trying so hard to be Christian Bale's Batman in these voiceovers. And his voice just keeps changing all the time. And it just never seems to make sense when he's using the deep raspy voice and just his regular voice. And it just seems to switch on a dime with no reason.
00:36:43
Speaker
Oh, I don't blame him for the voiceover either. I'm sure that was Frank Miller, because Frank Miller loves his voiceover. Oh, no, I'm saying like, but like, even when he's talking, like there are some times when he's talking to like the deep voice, and then it switches with no real reason to his regular voice. Oh, okay. Okay. Oh, yeah. Okay, like his actual voice when he's talking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Now, I will say this. I did like the eye candy.
00:37:06
Speaker
Cause there's some nice eye candy in her. You got Ava Mendes wearing some, you know, some very revealing little outfits. You got Paz Vega in that belly dancer outfit. Yeah. That was, I'm not complaining about those things at all. You had Scarlett Johansson, you know, looking, looking fine just as she always does. Oh, absolutely. And her and Samuel Jackson actually do seem to be having a lot of fun. Yeah, yeah. Stupid as the characters are. Yeah.
00:37:38
Speaker
They're making it work. But yeah, there's a tremendous amount of talent in this movie, I have to say. There is a look. What's the name? The girl from American Horror Story, Sarah Paulson. Sarah Paulson. Yeah, yeah. You know what I noticed about Sarah Paulson, which it just kind of hit me watching it this time, is that she's got this feel about her that makes her feel like she's from another time period.
00:38:05
Speaker
Yeah. She feels like an actress from like the thirties or forties. She does. I was, you know what? I thought the same thing when I was watching this movie. She actually does look like she could have been working. She could have been in a movie alongside Catherine Hepburn or Betty Davis. I feel like we got to check around for, you know, for a wormhole or something to find out how she got here.
00:38:24
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, she's very good. And everything I've seen her in, you know, I love her. She's a phenomenal actress, you know. And unfortunately, she's wasted in this movie, as is pretty much everybody else. You know, as much as they try.
00:38:43
Speaker
And yeah, you know what I said, Eva Mendez. Okay, listen, you can't, Tom DJ hates her in this movie because he says that she's trying to imitate Raquel Welch. He says, you know, I don't know, I don't see it. But then when Eva Mendez is on screen, I have a hard time thinking.
00:39:04
Speaker
She's not a good actress at all. I would not say that, but she looks damn good. She's damn good. And you know what? She has flair. Yeah, yeah. Matter of fact, know who's a better actress? The girl who plays a character at a younger age. Yeah, Seychelles Gabriel. I was actually really impressed by her.
00:39:23
Speaker
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean the whole, that was a nice little bit in that, in this otherwise crappy movie where you had this like kind of really sweet love story between these two kids that grow up and take different paths of course, that was kind of nice. And like I said, the girl that plays the young sans serif, she's a really good actress. Yeah, yeah, seeing what else she's been in.
00:39:56
Speaker
Oh, she's in the Get Shorty TV show. And I'd be interested in finding out if that beauty mark that she has is actually hers or if that was cosmetic they put on. So she would, you know. It looks like it's cosmetics. I'm looking at a picture of her in IMDB and she doesn't have it.
00:40:12
Speaker
Oh, okay. Yeah. So then it was cosmic, but it was a nice touch. It was a nice touch. Yeah. And you know what I did? You know how we talked about, you mentioned in the past, how you like when they can cast actors who play like, you know, father and son or mother and daughter, and they actually look like each other. They did a really good job casting her as
00:40:33
Speaker
as a young Eva Mendez, like she really looked the part. There was that one scene where like they cut between their two faces to show like the eight, and it looks so seamless. It looks absolutely, yeah, and I recall the scene that you're talking about, yeah. And I love it when they go through that extra, you know, the extra mileage to do that. I hate it when they have a movie and it's a character and then they do a flashback to when they was younger, and it's that looks nothing like them.
00:41:01
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I know what you mean. I said, wait a minute. You spent all this money. You really mean you couldn't be bothered to go ahead and find somebody. Like, what's that movie? Once Upon a Time in America. If you look at the kid actors, they look exactly like their counterparts, you know, their older counterparts. They got a kid that looked exactly like James Wood. They got one look like Robert De Niro, you know.
00:41:26
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's not that hard. At least I don't think it is. I don't make movies, you know, so I don't know. But still, anyway. But yeah, it looks like she was also in the The Falling Skies TV show as well. Oh, okay. I didn't really remember that. That was like an alien invasion type of thing. Yeah, yes. She was in Falling Skies. She's in Get Shorty. She was in a few episodes of Sleepy Hollow as well, it looks like.
00:41:52
Speaker
And she did one of the voices on Legend of Korra, which is the sequel to Avatar, Last Airbender. So yeah, she's got some work. She's in something else called The Tomorrow War that's coming out. You know what other actress I thought was entertaining in it was Stana Kadick as Morgenstern. Yeah, yeah. This was before she became...
00:42:16
Speaker
hit in that show with Nathan Fillion. Castle. Castle, yeah, which to this day I've never seen it. I haven't either because, you know, it's never on any streaming service, so I've never seen it. Oh, okay. Yeah. But she comes into this movie and it's like, she comes in and like most of the other actors in this movie,
00:42:42
Speaker
She takes this part in the spirit in which is given, no pun intended. She knows what type of movie this is. Yeah, which is more than Frank Miller apparently knew. OK, let me say it's about Frank Miller. And this is something you and I have talked about both privately and on here. I am a very firm believer in that when you take a character,
00:43:09
Speaker
Too far away from source material, it is no longer their character. That's why when people talk about, oh, well, James Bond should be black. And I said, no, he shouldn't. Like, people say, oh, well, Batman should be black. I say, well, yeah, you can make Batman black, but you can't make Bruce Wayne black. Right.
00:43:28
Speaker
You know, to me, there is a difference. People say, oh, no, well, it doesn't make, yes, it does make a difference because if you change a character's fundamental nature, it's not that character anymore. Right. That is what Frank Miller has done.
00:43:42
Speaker
to the spirit. He has taken this character so far away from what makes the spirit the spirit in that really what we have here is that we have an original character. It should have been called, if he had called this character something else like the black ghost or
00:43:58
Speaker
you know, the Haunter or something. You know what, I probably would have liked this movie a lot more because then he would have acknowledged that this was an original, because that's what this is, this is an original character, it really is, that he just slapped the spirit name on and he got away with it, I guess, because Will Eisner had passed away and he claimed that they were these great friends that, you know, oh yeah, and he would have loved this and he was like,
00:44:22
Speaker
You know, this is how you honor and respect your friend by taking this character that was his life's work. All right, so before we get too much into that, I wanted to first give people some context for what's happening here. And that's the whole thing about, well, that's why I'm asking you to, because see, you know, my dirty little secret here is I have actually never read a spirit comic book.
00:44:50
Speaker
Really? Yeah, I've never read anything with the spirit. I was actually looking it up online last night on Comixology, because I was thinking like, well, you know, I should actually get around to reading some of this stuff. And they don't really, they don't really have anything on there, so. Interesting. So yeah, so I, so I want you to, because you, I know you've read some, you've read the spirit stuff. So I want to know, give some context. What is the spirit? What kind of character are we talking about here?
00:45:19
Speaker
OK, now, they do get his origin right in this. The spirit is, his real identity is Denny Colt. He's a cop that works in Central City. And he goes after this criminal. I don't remember the name of the criminal. It wasn't the octopus. The octopus comes later on down the road. But he's after this criminal that has this experimental acid that he's going to pour into the water. He's going to pour into the reservoir.
00:45:49
Speaker
and kill everybody. So Denny Colt breaks in, they have a fight, he gets shot and the acid spills upon him and it gets into his system and he's pronounced dead, he's buried, but he comes, but he digs out of his own grave as he does in this movie because apparently the acid or whatever it was, it put him in a state of suspended animation. Okay.
00:46:14
Speaker
OK, so he goes to Commissioner Dolan, who is a much better character in the comics than he is in his movie. I don't know where this character is. I mean, I should hope he's a better character in the comics. Well, yeah, because Commissioner Dolan actually knows that he's Denny Cole, because Denny goes to him and says, well, you know what, I can do a lot more good, remain me dead.
00:46:38
Speaker
And, you know, me and you can work together and I can go places and do things that cops can't do. You know, and Dolan says, yeah, sure, fine, no problem. And that's when the spirit is born. And he's a crime, but he's one of these very public crime fighters because it's like, think 1960s Batman, where, you know, like he's walking around in daylight and, you know, and really, you know, there's really like no difference in personality between the spirit and Danny Cote. He's just Danny Cote with a mask. Right.
00:47:08
Speaker
Don't ask me why nobody else recognizes him, because he freely interacts with people like Ellen, who somehow doesn't realize that this is Denny Cole.
00:47:27
Speaker
His stories were only eight pages long, mind you. Some of them were straight up crime stories. Some of them were love stories. Some of them were stories that the spirit didn't even appear in until maybe like the end. But they were like these little slice of life stories.
00:47:44
Speaker
that he would tell about the city or people in it or be like, this character had no relationship to the spirit at all. And by the end of the story, like I said, in the last two or three panels, the spirit would show up. But combined with the artwork and with the storytelling,
00:48:05
Speaker
you know, because Will Eisner took eight pages to tell a story that comic book writers now, it takes something like a whole 96 page graphic novel to tell. Yeah. You know, I mean, I cannot go
00:48:20
Speaker
It would take me another hour to go into the detail about how Will Iseman is considered to be the father of that method of storytelling, where it's not rushed, it's not compressed, but
00:48:38
Speaker
It's, you would have to read it. That's all I have to say. You would have to read it. The people who have read the spirit, they're nodding right now. They're saying, okay, Dirk, I know where you're going with this. I know where you're going. You would have to read, you truly would have to read his work to properly appreciate what this man did with only eight pages, you know.
00:48:59
Speaker
you get to the end of a spirit story and sometimes you felt like you read a novel. Some of them were very uplifting spiritually and emotionally, some of them were heartbreaking, some of them were wildly hilarious. So it wasn't like a one note thing, like this movie that just gets one note and it stays on that all of grim and gritty. No, no, no, spirit wasn't like that. It wasn't grim and gritty. Yeah, it was dark, sometimes it got dark, sometimes it got dangerous.
00:49:27
Speaker
Mm-hmm. But it was always done with a sense of fun and excitement. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You know, I mean, you read The Spirit, you look forward to reading The Spirit. I read it in...
00:49:40
Speaker
It was Warren publishing, started publishing like these black and white reprints of the Will Eisner. And that's how I was introduced to him. And I mean, I loved him things. I still have them in stories somewhere, I think, all those old spirits that I have. Because those are, like I said, classic stories, man. That's your homework assignment. Get a hold of the spirit and read it.
00:50:08
Speaker
Yeah, I gotta try and, I'm hoping they get the, I'm not sure if it's a rights issue or what, but I hope whatever it is, like that gets sorted out and they can get some stuff up on Comixology soon. The only thing I can find is there's like an 80th anniversary collection of like some select stuff, but it's not like a complete thing or anything.
00:50:25
Speaker
For instance, OK, you take the octopus. Now, the octopus in this movie, of course, played by Samuel L. Jackson, and he's like this mad scientist type with all these guns and stuff like that. Yeah. Well, in the stories, we never actually see the octopus's face. We don't know if he's white, black, European, Asian, or what. The only thing you see of the octopus are those gloves with those three hash marks on them. Like those three marks on them? Right, yeah, yeah.
00:50:53
Speaker
That's all you ever see of the octopus. He's a total man of mystery. So like I said, that's what I'm saying. This is an original creation of Frank Miller, because this octopus is a totally original creation. He didn't have the slinky Scarlett Johansson for his own henchwoman. More often than not, the octopus is killing off his henchpeople.
00:51:20
Speaker
But yeah, yeah, totally. Now here's the thing. Alright, so thanks for giving us that context now. Now to talk about Frank Miller's relationship with this progress. So with this project.
00:51:34
Speaker
So Eisner was apparently very protective of the rights to the spirit, but he believed in the producers to faithfully adapt it. So that was like Michael Uslan, Benjamin Melnicker, and Stephen Meyer. And so Eisner trusted them to do it. And you know, Eisner passed away, and at a memorial service in New York, this was in 2005, it was a few weeks after Sin City had come out, the movie.
00:52:04
Speaker
And Uslan approached Frank Miller at the memorial service. And he said he was interesting in
00:52:13
Speaker
you know, using the kind of techniques they used in Sin City for the spirit. And Miller had, he said, I don't think I can do this. He said, it's too big. I can't possibly do it. And he refused. And then a few minutes later, he says, as I was at the doorway, I turned around and said, nobody else can touch this. And I agreed to the job on the spot.
00:52:34
Speaker
Now, the thing I don't get is if your whole thing was you want to preserve, you know, your mentor's legacy and make sure that someone who actually cares about this property adapts it, why would you turn it into this pile of shit? Yeah. I mean, like I said, I've never read the sphere of comics, but even I can tell that that is not the fucking spirit. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, it's,
00:53:02
Speaker
The only, okay, the popular theory that I've heard is that Frank Miller wanted to do Sin City, but since he couldn't do Sin City, he turned the spirit into Sin City. But this came out after, he got the job after Sin City. Oh, this came out? Yeah, this came out, cause Sin City came out in 2005, this came out in 2008. And it was a few weeks after Sin City had premiered, that Ouzlan approached Miller about directing it. Right.
00:53:32
Speaker
But what I'm saying is that he basically turned the spirit into Sin City. Yes, that I can agree with. Yeah, that's the popular theory that I've heard, that as happy as he was with Sin City, he still felt that he could have did it better if he had directed it. And disproved that he should not have even tried. So that's what he did. He basically turned the spirit into his version of Sin City, which I mean, there could not be two
00:54:01
Speaker
concepts more further apart in tone and the style and the character than the spirit in Sin City. This, you know what, this kind of, this made me think as I'm watching it, I kept thinking of, there were two properties that kept coming to mind. One was Sin City, the other one was the Crow. Yeah. And that's what it is. This is the Crow in Sin City. Exactly. Yeah. You hit it right on the head.
00:54:32
Speaker
I don't know, I really wish Frank Miller would stop trying to write nor voiceovers because he can't do it. No, no, this, I mean the voiceover, people complain about the voiceover in Blade Runner. The pseudo nor voiceover in this one
00:54:57
Speaker
makes the voiceover in Blade Runner seem like Norman Mailer. Yes. Yeah. Because it's that, I don't know. You know what, Frank Miller
00:55:10
Speaker
writes like he thinks tough guys talk like he's never been around tough guys and and you know like hear tough guys really talk or have any idea how he's got his whole conception of tough guys from those 1930s 40s you know black and white Warner Brothers gangster and noir
00:55:34
Speaker
Yeah. Movies. That's his whole world set. That's his whole mindset. You know what? About like two or three years ago, I rewatched Sin City for the first time in like a decade. And I'm rewatching it. And I'm like, this is actually not that good.
00:55:52
Speaker
Really? I haven't seen, I haven't seen Sin City in years. Yeah, it's just like, we were all so amazed and blown away by it. But when I sat down and I re-watched it, I'm just like, this is not age well at all. I think that actually the, okay.
00:56:11
Speaker
Okay, I don't know about anybody else, but this is me. I was more blown away by the look of Sin City than the actual story. I think all of us were. Yeah. I think all of us were. The only story that really blew me away was the one with Mickey Rourke. Oh, yeah. The Hard Goodbye, I think it's called. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that was the only one. And like all the other, and you know what I realized too, especially the one with
00:56:40
Speaker
um uh Bruce Willis's character that uh that yellow bastard I think it was yeah yeah right that yellow bat yeah I mean that story is so incomprehensible it doesn't make a lick of sense well you know what okay when you really look at it you're looking at it as that the Bruce Willis character had an infatuation for his little girl that he never really like you know
00:57:10
Speaker
consummated, if you know what I mean. Because he rescued her when she was a little girl, and then she grew up, right? If I remember right. Like I said, it's been a while since I've seen it. We ought to put Sin City on our list for the future. But I know myself, I was looking at it, and quite literally, I had never seen a movie that looked like Sin City before.
00:57:32
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And the same thing with the spirit. There's a scene that's in the beginning where he gets the phone call. And he says, OK, well, I'm on my way. And then he puts on his clothes. And then he's bouncing over the rooftops. And he's running across the wires. And I'm saying, oh my god, this is like a living comic book. Yeah. And I mean, it's dazzling. Visually, it's dazzling. Yes. I mean, I love the look of this movie, first of all.
00:57:59
Speaker
Because it's trying to look like Sin City. And yeah, like Sin City, it's something that I had never seen before. And after years and years of seeing movies, seeing something that looked like this was like, I felt like I was looking at a movie from an alternate earth.
00:58:20
Speaker
And that's the impression that I get when I look at the spirit, you know, visually, I mean, I like looking at it. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I only wish that there was some kind of story and characters to go along with the impressive visuals. And a story that even makes any sense because they're, they're after the, when they brought in the whole thing where he's like, we're after the blood of Heracles, I'm like, what?
00:58:42
Speaker
Yeah, you know, the octopus talk about, yeah, well, we're going to be a god and, you know, you and I are just alike and, you know, all this kind of. And they got the clones who always have names that end in OS. And there's that one clone where it's just a foot with the head on top. Yeah, yeah. And even the octopus is like, I don't know. This is weird, isn't it? I'm like, yeah, no fucking shit. It's weird.
00:59:09
Speaker
And I love how Scarlett Johansson, she's just so over this, she's just so bored. He says, isn't this weird? And she says, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's weird. It's weird. I give them a lot of credit though. There's a scene where Sam Jackson is wearing a Nazi uniform. And I give them a lot of credit for, you know,
00:59:30
Speaker
doing that, you know, because that's kind of like a touchy image, a black man wearing. I was thinking the same thing. I was wondering. Yeah. And it was even his eyebrows were like in the SS logo. Yeah. And he's got the SS like he's got it tattooed on the back of his head or something or it's shaved into his hair or something like that.
00:59:47
Speaker
Yeah, that's kind of a touchy image. But if there's one thing that we know about Samuel Jackson that quite often he don't give a fuck. That's just the way to put it. As long as he's getting his paycheck. Exactly. And yeah, like I said, you know what? He throws himself into this movie just like everybody else does. He just goes along with it. He says, well, OK, well, I'm getting paid for this.
01:00:13
Speaker
you know, what the hell. And it does seem like he's having a good time and Scarlett Johansson is having a good time. Everybody except for the guy that plays Commissioner Dolan. Yeah. Who goes through this movie like he's constantly constipated, mentally and physically. Yeah, Dan Loria is his name. Yeah. And I think one of the biggest problems with this movie is, aside from the fact that it's not even close to being the spirit, is
01:00:40
Speaker
I don't even know if Frank Miller knew what kind of movie he was directing, because this feels like, sometimes it feels like it's supposed to be parody. Sometimes it feels like it's supposed to be, you know, Sirius, Neil, nor sometimes it feels like it's supposed to be, you know, like comic books. It just, it doesn't know what it is. It does. Yeah. He doesn't know. Yeah.
01:01:06
Speaker
There are some lines of dialogue. There's some exchanges between the characters, like the spirit after Ellen patches him up. And they're supposedly having this allegedly romantic conversation. And I'm saying Frank Miller has no idea how men and women talk to each other.
01:01:23
Speaker
No. And I said, okay, well, maybe it's supposed to be a satire because you're right. There are a lot of scenes that make you think, okay, well, this is supposed to be a sad. I'm not supposed to be taking this seriously. This is sad. And I think that if he had followed that tone, this movie would have worked a lot better. And if it wasn't the spirit, if it was the spirit, right. Yeah. If it was, if he had called this character anything else, like I said, I think, you know, having grown up, read the actual spirit comic books,
01:01:53
Speaker
you know, I totally reject the notion that this is the spirit in anything but name. If he had called his character anything else, like I said, we call him the black ghost. If you call him the haunt, you know, you know, the Night Wrangler, anything, you know, but I think I would have just sat back and said, okay, well, this is just a stupid ass movie, and I could have enjoyed it on that level.
01:02:15
Speaker
But such a bastardization of such a beloved character is something that I really, you know, leaves a very foul taste in my mouth. I mean, OK. You do have scenes of violence in the original Spirit comic because he takes a lot of punishment. But the violence in this movie is so unnecessarily violent.
01:02:40
Speaker
You know, it's violent. You know, it doesn't, like there's one scene where like he pounds the octopus like 30 times. Like it's a scene that, like I said, their fight scene just go on and on and on for no reason at all. Yeah. And that goes back to the whole cartoonish acts that we were talking about. Like that feels like, especially when like the Nazi eagle falls on the octopus. Yeah. I mean, I could see that happening to like Bugs Bunny. Right.
01:03:12
Speaker
And when you have two characters that, okay, you firmly established that they can't kill each other, then what's the point? Yeah. Okay. Then they're all the time threatening to kill each other when they know they can't kill each other. And there's also this, that the way that fight ends where he's just like, okay, we're done here. And I'm just like,
01:03:33
Speaker
What is even happening here? It's like this is just something they do every week, every Friday night. They just get it, they just get jumping into a shit pool and beat the crap out of each other. Yeah, yeah. And matter of fact, going back to the Looney Tunes thing that you made, there's one of my favorite Looney Tunes cartoons is there's a sheepdog and there's a wolf.
01:03:54
Speaker
And we see them in the morning, they get up and, you know, they have their coffee and they brush their teeth and they get up and they go to work and they both put the time clock and they know each other by name and they're talking to each other like best friends. And then they go do their respective jobs. The wolf is trying to eat the sheep and the sheepdog is trying to protect the sheep and they're beating the shit out of each other all day long. And then at five o'clock the whistle blows.
01:04:16
Speaker
and then they go back and they punch out and they go back to being friends. That's kind of the relationship, the spirit and the octopus have in this movie. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know, just like, also his apartment, right? When he gets the call in the beginning of the movie and he's walking through his apartment and it's just like this
01:04:39
Speaker
I know you're supposed to be legally dead, but does that mean you can't have any furniture in your damn house? Yeah, yeah. In the comic books, he actually, because what happens is that he takes the insurance, somehow Commissioner Dolan, because I think he made Commissioner Dolan his beneficiary in his will or something like that. So Commissioner Dolan gives him the money.
01:05:01
Speaker
And yeah, he fixes up a whole apartment in, you know, the cemetery. But it is an apartment. I mean, he's got a kitchen, he's got a den, he's got, you know, like a bedroom and stuff like that. Yeah. If you look at this, all he has is cats in there. Which also I did not understand why. Yeah.
01:05:25
Speaker
Cause he's not actually dead. So at first I thought it's like some sort of supernatural thing. Like, you know, that whole cat's attracted to supernatural types of, or like the undead or all that. But that, that's not even the case here. And as a matter of fact, it's kind of abandoned later on.
01:05:40
Speaker
Yeah. I think that Frank Miller just threw that in there just because it looked cool, and then they have a scene where the spirit is bouncing over the rooftops and everything like that, and one of the cats is following him. And he has a conversation with one of the cats later on, when he's remembering his whole romance when he was a kid with sand. And he's talking to the cat, and then after that, we never see the cats anymore. Yeah, yeah.
01:06:08
Speaker
It's like they were just thrown in, you know, for the... But then again, as you so accurately pointed out, and I freely admit, there is much about this movie that makes absolutely no sense at all. Nothing. And shit that's just thrown in here. Like you said, okay, plaster of Paris. My God, I love looking at her. But there's no... Okay, why is a belly dancer an assassin? And where did the octopus get her?
01:06:36
Speaker
Yeah, you know, she's like, you know, she's just like air lifted in from this other movie and just dropped in here. Yeah.
01:06:46
Speaker
And I have, like, again, you're right. She looks great in that scene. She looks, I got some very strong Salma Hayek vibes in From Dust Till Dawn from that scene. You know something, when I first saw this movie, I thought that was Salma Hayek for me. Yeah, yeah. I'm looking at it, is that Salma Hayek? And I was looking at her, and I said, wait a minute, is that her or is that not? Yeah, there's a very strong resemblance. Definitely, yeah, yeah.
01:07:14
Speaker
But you're right, there's like no real reason for it to be in this movie. I also didn't understand what goes the whole thing with the spirit being a womanizer. That just didn't seem to make any sense at all. Well, that comes because I think because, okay, all of the women that are in this movie,
01:07:31
Speaker
They were characters in the actual, you know, comic book, because much like James Bond, you know, women seem to have a thing, you know, which even Octopus comments on. He said, what is it with you and women? Yeah. Yeah. So there's like a lot of beautiful women.
01:07:48
Speaker
that are in the Spirit's castle characters. Some of them are reoccurring characters that come in and out of his life. But yeah, you know, they are all, so yeah, that's where that comes from. Okay, it just didn't really seem to fit in this movie. Yeah, these are, yeah. Because it just makes it so confusing, right? It's like, is he, because they don't even,
01:08:11
Speaker
do any good job of establishing a love triangle. I think that's kind of what they're trying to get at with the thing between the spirit and Sand and Ellen, but it never really goes anywhere. And it's completely muddled by the fact that he's flirting with all these other women at the same time. And it just, again, it seems like Frank Miller just wanted to throw all the characters into this movie that he could.
01:08:40
Speaker
To be honest, the only real romances in this movie is the one between the spirit and octopus. Yeah, actually, you're right. Yeah, you know, they're the ones who had the real, yeah, they're the ones that, Ellen is just like a distraction. Because, you know, he's going from, because, you know, they're getting ready to do the horizontal bop in her office before her father breaks in.
01:09:02
Speaker
And he comes in, and as soon as he comes in with, what's the name, Lieutenant, you know, what's the name played by Stana... Morgan Stern. Yeah, Morgan Stern. So he turns around, he starts with Morgan Stern. Yeah, yeah, right there. Yeah, he's kissing a hand and he's, you know...
01:09:21
Speaker
And he's making the goo-goo eyes at her, and she's making goo-goo eyes at him. And then you got Commissioner Dolan. Even him is saying, damn, dude. I mean, right in front of my daughter, really? Yeah. So no, but the real romance in this movie is between the spirit and the octopus. Trust me. Because there are only two people in this movie that seem to have real feelings for each other. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
01:09:48
Speaker
But yeah, I don't know. I mean, they're beating up on each other. It's just, you know, foreplay. Yeah, I think this movie is, I think, pretty symbolic of how Frank Miller has jumped the shark because, like I said, he doesn't know if he's doing Frank Miller or if he's doing parodies of Frank Miller these days. And it's so, I don't, nobody really knows. I don't even think he knows.
01:10:13
Speaker
Yeah, from everything I understand, Frank Miller pretty much is like some of his fuses have blown and he has not replaced them. No, definitely not. Yeah, I had grave doubts about where he was going when I remember he was supposed to be doing that thing about Batman was taking on Al-Qaeda. Oh God, yeah, the Holy Terror.
01:10:38
Speaker
Yeah, you had to change that DC like, nah. Yeah, they're like, we're not doing that. Yeah, exactly. We're not doing that. So yeah, but this movie, I think, is just another link in that chain of mental, how can I put this, be kind, mental decline? There's no way to put it in a kind way.
01:11:08
Speaker
You know, yeah, because I do not understand. I cannot see somebody who maintains as much as he does how much he loved Will Eisner and how much he loved the spirit. And then he turned around and makes this movie. Yeah. You know, I don't see how you do that. No, definitely not. That would be like if I died and you took Dylan
01:11:36
Speaker
And you transmogrify him into what you think he should be instead of saying, well, you know what? I'm going to continue writing this character just the way that Derek would. Right. You know what I mean? Yeah.
01:11:52
Speaker
Instead of saying, well, you know what, he's mine now, so I'm gonna do whatever I want with him. Right, exactly. Which is pretty much what Frank Miller did here. Oh, yeah. You know, he took space, so I'm gonna, well, he's dead, he can't complain. Which is, I'm sorry, folks, you know, I don't want to presume to know the mind of the man, but all I can go by is the evidence of what I see. Yeah.
01:12:13
Speaker
And yeah, the evidence is not favorable to Frank Miller. Exactly. It's not. It's like, you know, well, he can't do anything about it because he's dead. So what the hell? Yeah. Oh, it's just.
01:12:27
Speaker
off like I think without a hands down the worst movie we've watched since we started the show. Oh, yeah, absolutely. This is yeah, this is this is without a doubt. And you know what? I I am a person, you know, I'm kind of an optimist. I try to find the good in everything that we and like you said, even the movies that we don't like or that we found something good about it. Right. I can say
01:12:55
Speaker
Truly and honestly. Okay, let me try to find something good to say about this. If you like Sam Jackson in full-blown Sam Jackson mode, cussing and acting crazy and everything, yeah. Oh, wild-eyed and crazy. Yeah, he does that really well. He does that. Yeah, he's in full-blown. If you want to see him and Scarlett Johansson together having a good time,
01:13:19
Speaker
Yes, okay, this is the movie for you. If you wanna see Paz Vega and Eva Mendes looking really sexy, then yeah. There's plenty of eye candy. Matter of fact, in that fact, yeah. There is a magnificent shot of Eva Mendes' naked behind in this movie. Yeah. So yes, I mean. That just reminded me of something else. When she leaves the photocopy of her ass,
01:13:47
Speaker
yeah and he's going around to the hotel showing it to the yeah yeah yeah he's going around saying have you seen this ass you know because apparently she's very proud of her ass apparently yeah well i mean she's got good reason to be let's be honest yes she does she has she has
01:14:08
Speaker
great reason to be. So this movie has great eye candy. Again, as I said earlier, if you like Sin City, yeah, you'll like this because the visuals are terrific. Visually, this movie is a knockout.
01:14:25
Speaker
But unfortunately, those are the only things that I can say good about this movie. The story is all over the place. It makes no, and like you said, when they bring in this whole thing, like the blood of Hercules and what, which I must, has absolutely nothing to do with, there is so much in this movie that has absolutely nothing to do with Will Eisner's spirit. You know, we haven't started the videos yet, but if you were, if we were doing this on video, you would see me just like shaking my head in disbelief right now.
01:14:54
Speaker
Yeah, yes. There is so much that has absolutely nothing to do with Willy's and the spirit. I mean, he doesn't even dress like the spirit. He dressed all in black. Yeah. You know, the spirit dressed like the spirit. And also, I can understand, what was the up with him wearing the gym shoes too? Is that something from the, I don't think that's from the comics. No, the gym shoes with the light up soles. Yeah.
01:15:23
Speaker
Cause I noticed that apparently Frank Miller loved those light up souls because he kept showing them. It seems to be something that's happening I noticed with some of his later work is Frank Miller loves drawing superheroes wearing gym shoes.
01:15:39
Speaker
I don't know why, but like in The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Carrie Kelly has become Catgirl instead of Robin. And she goes through like, you know, a dozen different outfits. And each time she's wearing gym shoes with them. The new costume that the Barry Allen Flash gets in The Dark Knight Strikes Again, it's got gym shoes on it. It's like, I don't know, but he's got some weird, he's developed some weird fixation on superheroes wearing gym shoes. I don't know why. Yeah, yeah.
01:16:05
Speaker
Yeah. And it carries over here, too. I mean, you know, like you said, because the spirit, that's what he wears, you know? Yeah. And like I said, there are plenty of shots in here that is, yeah, that that's what he's wearing, gym shoes. Yeah. And I'm saying, wait a minute, there's even like an extended period where he's going around barefoot and Frank Miller makes a big deal about the fact that he's walking around barefoot. I'm saying, well, what does this mean in the context of the movie?
01:16:31
Speaker
Yeah, we have no clue. No clue whatsoever. No clue. The only thing that I can say is that, excuse me, I am pleased that this movie went nowhere.
01:16:45
Speaker
Yes. And Frank Miller never got to make another movie and there are very few directors that I would say that about because I believe everybody should be given a second chance but I'm glad Frank Miller did not have another chance. That's
Comics vs. Film: Storytelling Challenges
01:17:01
Speaker
not to say that he doesn't know where to put the camera at and how to
01:17:06
Speaker
film like action scenes and stuff like that because he because yeah there's a bunch of action scenes that he does film quite well to be you know to give him something to do yeah he doesn't know how to put a camera and let the actors do their thing he does he's not trying to be like all stylish and you know put these meaningless visual flourishes in there that you know don't mean anything
01:17:30
Speaker
Yeah. It seems like he did learn a few things from Robert Rodriguez. Yes, he did. He did. Because if I did not know that this was not directed by Robert Rodriguez, I would probably say it was. Because it's very much in his style. Because Robert Rodriguez does that, too. He knows how to put the camera down and let the actors do what they do. And that's what Frank Miller does. To give him his credit, he does that. He's not into the flashy visuals.
01:17:59
Speaker
just for the sake of being flashy. Right, you know. But you know what? Yeah, I see what you're saying there. And I think Miller's problem is he needs someone to rein in his excesses.
01:18:17
Speaker
because he really needs a co-director because someone's got to rein him in on this stuff. And he shouldn't be writing the screenplays he directs either, because he wrote this screenplay. And it shows, because there's so many Frank Millerisms in it. Yeah. And also, you know what? I don't think that just because, OK, I know some people that say, OK, well,
01:18:46
Speaker
If I can write a comic script, I can write a screenplay. No. And the thing is... Not necessarily. But see, the thing is, Frank Miller proved this already because he wrote the scripts for Robocop 2 and 3. Oh my God, yeah. And so I'm just like...
01:19:06
Speaker
I don't think that necessarily the skill set in one area of writing carries over into another one. Just because you can write a novel does not automatically mean that you can write a comic book script or write a screenplay.
01:19:25
Speaker
And I'm someone who knows this, because I have written all three. And they are very, very different skill sets. Well, that's why I brought it up, because I know that you've written all three. So I know that you, yeah, you would know exactly where I was coming from with this. And there's so much that people don't consider when they're, because when you're writing a novel, and you know this, because you, because we've worked together on adapting one of your stories into a comic script.
01:19:51
Speaker
You know, one time years ago, and like when you're writing a novel, you can just go nuts with the dialogue with the with the descriptions with the inner monologuing right you've have no restrictions like a novel is actually like the freest form of writing you can do. Right.
01:20:11
Speaker
A movie script is more restrictive because you can't describe things in too much detail because then you're taking stuff away from the director, you're taking stuff away from the actor, you have to be willing to let a lot of things go. And also you have to adhere to the
01:20:28
Speaker
You got to keep the pacing up. You got to keep it to the structure that a movie demands. And it's a very different thing. Novels can meander. They don't really have to have a structure. But movies need that structure. Comic books, even more so. Because with a movie, you've got leeways with time and
01:20:47
Speaker
with running time and all that. But comic books don't. Comic book, you've got 22 pages, boom, that's it. There's only so much literally you can physically fit on a single page. And the more panels you have, the less dialogue you can have, right? The more action you want to have, the less dialogue you want to have because you don't want to cover up all that action. So you have to be very careful about how you place all that stuff. And it takes a lot of, it's a lot of juggling when you're writing a comic book script.
01:21:17
Speaker
Yeah, and see the thing about that, okay, the one thing that I find so fascinating is that when you write a comic book, it's truly a collaborative thing because you have to leave something for the artist to show. There's no point in you describing something that the artist is gonna
01:21:35
Speaker
you know, draw. You have to rely on him to show a lot of stuff. As a matter of fact, you should just write dialogue and that's it. And just let, you know, okay, well, here's the dialogue. You just go nuts. Well, there is, there are some people who do that, but you have to really trust your artist to be a really good visual storyteller to do that.
01:21:53
Speaker
Like that's the problem. And so if you're like, that's how Stan Lee worked, right? He would give them like a two page plot outline. He'd give it to Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko. And they go out and draw 22 pages, then Stan would go back and write the dialogue. That's how Stan was able to write so many damn comics every month. Because he was doing a shorter form. He wasn't figuring out how to lay out all the panels and all that. He wasn't doing any of that stuff. He was writing in what he called the Marvel method.
01:22:22
Speaker
which to me seems like the best way to do it myself. Yeah, you know, listen. In some ways, but it depends on the, it depends on how much control you as the writer want over the comic book. And also depends on like how good your artist is at, because Warren Ellis, I remember years ago when he had a, I think he had like a weekly column or something on the website. And he had talked about this. And he had talked about how the different styles of writing
01:22:48
Speaker
Congress and he talked about the Marvel style and he talked about the full script style and he said the Marvel style is great if you have an artist that you have a really good rapport with that who you know is a really good visual storyteller but if you guys haven't worked together before if you don't really know what that artist's strengths are then you're going to want to go full script because
01:23:09
Speaker
Otherwise, if you're not specific, you don't know what your artist will put in there. And next thing you know, you get back 22 pages that are nothing like the story you wrote. So yeah, you do have to be, you have to have, there are careful considerations to be had with that.
01:23:28
Speaker
That's understandable. I mean, like I said, every, you know what, every medium has its own master that it has to serve. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, comic, but I guess maybe that's why I've never even attempted to try to write a comic book script. I'm much more, I'm, okay, you made a very good point earlier that with a novel, you can just about
01:23:49
Speaker
go ahead and just do whatever you want to do because my first drafts are very sloppy things because I tend to like go up on tangents and I put in scenes and dialogue. They have absolutely nothing to do with the story I'm telling, which is why usually I end up like I'll have a first draft for like 300 pages.
01:24:10
Speaker
And I will literally lose half of that because it's got nothing to do. It has absolutely nothing to do with the freaking story I'm telling. It was just me having fun and entertaining my brain and you know and okay well let me see where this scene goes and it goes nowhere I said that's okay.
01:24:25
Speaker
I'm going to take it out later on. Now, some people may say that that's a waste of time. Well, no, not exactly, because a lot of that stuff ends up getting recycled into other work anyway. Right. But, you know, that's the way, you know, after many years of, you know, trial and error, that's the way I found the work. Now, Screenplays,
01:24:47
Speaker
A lot of people compared them to comic books, but you're right when you say that, yeah, with a comic book, you only have like 22 pages, bam. And once that comic is printed, you can't edit it or supposedly it's already edited before it goes out. You can have a movie and you can have like three or four hours and you can edit that down to like a manageable story. Whereas you can't do that with, I mean,
01:25:16
Speaker
you know, like a comic book. Right. Exactly. Yeah. And because they're expecting, also they're expecting 22 pages to begin with. Yeah. So they're not expecting extra pages that they can then pick and choose.
01:25:27
Speaker
Right. Exactly. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. When you deliver 20, I mean, you're delivering 22 pages and that's it. Yeah. And also, and it's very hard to like change, like even with, you know, with digital technology and all that, like a lot of comics are produced digitally anyway. So yeah, theoretically you could move panels from one page to another, but the problem, there is a problem with that because there is a flow to each page when you've laid out the, when the artist has laid out the panels and designed it to be read a certain way.
01:25:54
Speaker
Right, right. I mean, even with, you know, like a movie, like now what we're seeing now, we're seeing all these director's cuts come on with, you know, where the director say, well, that's not my movie. You know, here's my movie. I heard that Stallone was even doing a director's cut of Rocky III, for God's sake. Oh, shit. Yeah. You know, I have no idea if that's serious or not, but I've read it in a couple of places. I'm saying, wait a minute, this has got to be a joke. Yeah.
01:26:21
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I mean, but yeah, you're right. It is a very, and it's like, also with a comic book, you've got a little, as a writer, you've got a little bit more freedom. You've got a little bit more, not freedom, more control than you do as a script writer. As a writer, you're the ultimate authority on a comic book.
01:26:38
Speaker
Same thing with the novel. You're the ultimate authority on it. In that, they're alike. But with a movie, the writer is not the ultimate authority. The writer is just the first step in the process. The director is the ultimate authority. And the director can say, we're not going to do this, we're going to do this. And the actors have the ability to
01:26:56
Speaker
interpret the words how they want to be like you can you can give as a writer you can give some direction to the actors but you don't really want to do that too much because then you're going to piss off the director you're going to piss off the actors because they got their own interpretation of how they want those lines to be interpreted. Matter of fact okay you will hear people complain all the time about oh well this movie is bad this movie bad this movie
01:27:20
Speaker
The thing that never fails to amaze me is how many good movies we actually do get considering how many people have input into the final product. Yeah, yeah. It's amazing how many good movies we actually do get because everybody wants to put their fingerprint on it. Oh, yeah, definitely.
01:27:38
Speaker
Yeah. So, I mean, you broke it down. I mean, you know, because of course you got the actors. They said, well, my character wouldn't say that. And go to writing. You said, well, how do you know? I wrote the character. Yeah, but it's not your character anymore. Exactly. You know? And then you got the director. He's saying, listen, I'm the big toe on this foot. What I say goes. And then you got the producer. He comes in and says, well, I'm putting up the money. So I want this done. I want this done. Oh, and by the way, can you find a role for my girlfriend over? Yeah.
01:28:05
Speaker
you know, it's amazing how many good movies we actually do get out of this process. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And yeah, I think that's all I basically have to say about that. But yeah, and well, going back to the trust thing you mentioned, we were talking about before about the art, like, I know if you and I were to work on a comic, for instance, first off, you wouldn't even be writing a script for me to go off of.
01:28:32
Speaker
Um, but second, like I would be able to, I take that story and you would trust me to interpret that. Oh yeah. Absolutely. Cause we've, we've known each other long enough. You know, like my style, I know your style. So we would be able to, we have that, we'd have that kind of rapport. We'd be able to figure this out.
01:28:48
Speaker
But a lot of times, a lot of writers wouldn't have that option. A lot of writer and artist teams, so they would have to use at least for the first few issues, they would have to do full script. And then as time goes on, and I've seen writers and artists talk about this, like, yeah, you started off giving lots of description and stuff in the panels. And then after I got a feel for their style, we kind of pulled back a little bit, right? And I started giving them less in the script.
01:29:11
Speaker
You know what I think it is also, too? I think also is that, I think also that ego plays a lot. Oh, yeah. Because, especially with writers, because you know, writers don't want anybody to touch their words. Yeah. And oh, yeah, you got to do this exactly as I want. A lot of it, especially when you're coming into a collaborative process,
01:29:34
Speaker
You have to put down your ego. You really do. Yes. Because you know what? You're not going to get everything your way. If you want everything your way, then you learn how to write and draw. So you can do it exactly the way you want it done. Or you just stick to novels. Right. Exactly. Or stick to novels. Or even like, for instance, a collaborative thing. Even like this podcast. We have to agree on a lot of stuff. Because it's not just you. It's not just me. Right.
01:30:01
Speaker
And I don't think a lot of writers are able to do that. They're not able to put down their ego and say, OK, well, you know what? It doesn't have to be my way all the time.
Final Thoughts and Listener Engagement
01:30:12
Speaker
You know, I'm doing this with somebody. Yeah. And we both had that experience in the past where we've worked on projects with other people and ego did get in the way. Oh, God. I could tell stories, but I'm not going to. I'm not going to because I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. But yeah.
01:30:31
Speaker
Let me just say that there are some people that I will never work with. And know what? Know what? Let me say it's not because I don't like them. There are some people, some who may be listening to this, and I love them tremendously. I like them tremendously. I love their work. But having dealt with them personally and stuff like that, I just know that we know. You know what?
01:30:56
Speaker
We can't work together. Some people just, yeah, some people, it's just, it's a different kind of dynamic, but there are some people that I work really well together, but you know, you tell me, do I want to go and hang out with them, have a beer with them? Fuck no. Yeah. Oh.
01:31:12
Speaker
But there are also people that, you know, I get along with amazingly well that I, you know, I love spending time with them and love hanging out with them. Would I ever work with them on something? Fuck no. Right. I wouldn't work with them. Exactly. I wouldn't know what. Nope. Nope. I mean, and I have had people that have asked me to collaborate with them or something. And I've said to them, I said, listen, you know what?
01:31:34
Speaker
We're friends. We've been friends for a while. I want us to stay friends. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think we should. I don't think this is a good idea for us. Yeah. And you know, some of them took it in the spirit of which it was intended. Someone didn't, but that's okay. You know what? I'd rather do it that way than get into something and that wastes their time and my time. And on top of that ends up with bad feelings. Yeah, exactly. We're not friends after that. Nah, it's not worth it.
01:32:04
Speaker
Okay, so I think we pretty much said all we had to say about- That having been said, I hate your guts, and this is my last episode. Isn't that my line? Because you made me watch this piece of shit movie? I'm sorry, man. I'm sorry. It's all right, it's all right. All right, so now that we finally got that out of the way, do you have anything else to say about the spirit?
01:32:34
Speaker
I have nothing to say about the spirit, only that if you do decide to see it, I strongly advise that you find some way to watch it for free. Do not pay any money at all to see this thing, if you're at all curious about it. But I suspect that most of you listening to this podcast, you have already seen it, or you have heard from friends that you trust,
01:33:02
Speaker
that you shouldn't see this and uh and they would be right yeah they would be right i mean if you're home and you really can't find anything else to watch or not in the mood to watch anything else and if you're just curious i mean even in that case i would still suggest paint drying over this movie
01:33:19
Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot of other stuff that you can, you know, go watch The Wild Bunch. Yeah, go watch Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia. I mean, if you really need something to do, I mean, you know, you could use a root canal, just saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, this movie is...
01:33:41
Speaker
The best thing that I could say about this movie, like I said, the visuals, you got Sam Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, you know, Eva Mendez, pass Vega, a whole bunch of, I can't, you know, the visuals, but outside of that, there's nothing about this movie that I can say would be worth your time. Yeah, unless you find it entertaining to watch Frank Miller slowly lose his mind year by year. Yeah, yeah.
01:34:11
Speaker
I mean, really, out of all the superhero movies that I have seen, and yeah, I know that a lot of y'all dump on Batman and Robert, but at least Batman and Robert is entertaining. Yeah. Like I said, this is the movie that's an hour and a half, and it feels like a mini-series. God, it felt so long. I was saying this before we started recording, but at one point, I got up, I hit pause, went to the bathroom, and I came back, and I checked the timer on TV, and I'm like,
01:34:41
Speaker
There's still 45 minutes left in this movie. How? Holy shit, how long is this thing? And I finished that movie and I'm like, oh my God, that was like six hours long. And then I look at the timer and it says, oh, it's an hour and 30 minutes. I'm like, no, no, you're fucking lying, TV.
01:34:59
Speaker
Whereas you have a movie like Once Upon a Time in America, which is almost four hours long. And to me, it seems like an hour and a half. Or like Avengers Endgame too. Like I can watch that movie on repeat. And I have, because I was on a plane when it came out. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I watched that damn thing on repeat. Yeah, that movie's what, like three hours long? Three and a half hours long. Three and a half hours long, yeah. Three and a half hours long, yeah. And I watch it and it feels like an hour and a half. Yeah, yeah. It just flies by.
01:35:29
Speaker
Yeah. This on the other hand is an unforgiving slog. You think a guy who has written comics all his life and who has written well-paced comics would know a little bit something about story pacing, but no. No. Well, like I said before, the skill set in one area doesn't necessarily transfer over to
01:35:54
Speaker
you know, the other. Yeah. And Fred Miller is living proof of that. Yeah. Because I mean, you know, like, uh, what's that one you wrote with the samurai in the future? Ronin. Yeah. Yeah. Ronin. I mean, that's a Kurosawa movie on paper. If I ever saw one. Yeah. You know, that's pace one, you know, great pacing, but this one. I got to actually read that one of these days. I got to pick up the trade next time it comes on sale.
01:36:20
Speaker
Oh, you never read it? I never read it, yeah. I'm surprised given your interest in the culture. I am too, actually. It's one of those things, you know, it's just like, it's always been around. It's always like, yeah, I got to get around to reading that at some point and just never, never got around to it for whatever reason.
01:36:42
Speaker
Oh, okay. Well, that's understandable. There's a lot of stuff out there. So out of Miller's work, you've read the Daredevil stuff, of course. Yeah, I've read the Daredevil stuff, you know, the original run, and then Man Without Fear and Born Again. So I read all his Daredevil work. I haven't read Electro Assassin. I haven't read that. Which he did with Sinkevich, he did.
01:37:02
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And then, and I've read his Batman stuff, right? All the Batman stuff, the Dark Knight Returns, Year One, and the Dark Knight sequels I've read, and also the prequel. What was it? The Last Crusade, I read that as well. Yeah. So I read all that. I've read some of the Sin City stuff. And, yeah, okay, again.
01:37:27
Speaker
Perfect example, Batman Year One. You read that thing, that's like a storyboard right there. Oh, yeah. That's all in your hand, yeah. It's like a storyboard. Well, yeah, and, you know, Dark Knight Returns as well, like he was, that did amazing work on that as well, as far as like, and that especially is more him because he actually did the art on that one, whereas Year One, it was,
01:37:53
Speaker
Who was it who did your one? I think maybe it was Janssen, yeah. But yeah, and then his later stuff, like when he did the Dark Knight sequels, when he did a Dark Knight Strikes Again, that was just, I don't know what the hell that was.
01:38:14
Speaker
And I read like- What was that other craziness he did that he wrote the- Oh, that All-Star Batman and Robin. That was the other one. All-Star Batman and Robin. That was the one I had tried to block out. Oh, yeah, yeah. But you know that the popular rumor behind that is that DC kept offering him money to do it, and he kept turning it down. So he said, well, you know something? I'm going to go out and I'm going to deliberately write the worst piece of shit that I can. Just see how long they go with it before they cancel it.
01:38:43
Speaker
Yeah, but you know, after seeing this and after seeing Dark Knight Strikes Again and that the holy terror thing. Yeah. I'm wondering how much of that is him just ass covering after everybody hated it. Yeah, I think maybe that's what it was too. I think that that whole story was one that he cooked up to cover his ass because God knows that thing. I read that and I said, what? Is this man on drugs?
01:39:16
Speaker
The goddamn Batman. Really? Is this man on whatever he's on? And it's not the good drugs either. No. No, no, no. Definitely not. Oh my god. Yeah.
01:39:32
Speaker
But yeah, so anyway, folks, that's it. This is our first review, our first criticism where we trashed the movie. So take it for what it is.
01:39:50
Speaker
All right, so now that means it's my pick for next week. Yes. And I'm sure you're going to redeem us. Well, I'm going to try. So I'm actually going to kind of connect it to two things that we had happen in this episode. First thing I'm going to connect it to is, so this week we had an adaptation that was a terrible adaptation and also a terrible movie. So next week I want to go with a movie that is also a terrible adaptation, but it's actually a pretty entertaining movie.
01:40:18
Speaker
And it's also, and the other callback is because we mentioned, we talked about Keanu Reeves at the beginning of this episode. So I put that in, that was foreshadowing for all you guys out there. So, because next week I think we're gonna watch Constantine.
01:40:34
Speaker
Oh, okay. Yeah. One of your favorite movies. I want to say my favorite, but it's a movie that I really enjoy. Yeah. You enjoyed the morning you thought it was. And I'll talk about this more last week, but I hated it when I first saw it. And then a few years later, I watched it again. And I'm like, you know what, this is actually not too bad. And now I've come to enjoy it. Okay, fair enough. So yeah, it's a movie that my view has definitely evolved on over time.
01:40:58
Speaker
And let me stick in one thing here that I meant to put in that this isn't the only spirit movie. There was a TV movie. Yes, I was going to mention that as well in 87. Right, pilot. So if you guys out there are at all interested in us, because I've never seen it. I would like to see it. I've never seen it. But if you guys would be interested in us watching that and talking about that as well, please let us know. Yeah, see if we can find it too.
01:41:28
Speaker
Yeah, because one is hard as hell to find. But from the people I know who have seen it, they say it is infinitely better than this. Right. I read a review. Actually, I stumbled upon this last night when I was reading stuff about about this movie. And I found someone who had done like a comparison review of both this one and the 87 version. And they said the 87 version is still over the top. And it's and it's really it kind of goes in the opposite. It's it's like more it's goofier. It's like more of like the
01:41:58
Speaker
It's like, you know, kind of can't be it type of thing. Yeah. And that's what I've read about it. So it's still, it's still got a lot of problems, but it's got problems in different ways. With Sam Jones of Flash School and Fame playing the spirit. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Jones played the spirit in that one.
01:42:18
Speaker
All right, so that does it for this week. As always head on over to Superhero Cinephiles, look up our group on Facebook and join in. We've still got the running poll asking for suggestions for our 50th anniversary episode when we're going to be doing a live commentary on a movie that you guys pick. So you wanna go there, you wanna go and
01:42:45
Speaker
Give us suggestions, because otherwise Derek's going to recommend something like the spirit. And you don't want to do that. And trust me, I will find something of equal, if not worse quality than the spirit. Don't underestimate him. Don't challenge him on this. I say this at the end of every episode. Trust me, you do not want to leave this up to me, folks.
01:43:14
Speaker
So yeah, go ahead and do that. And yeah, go out, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts if you can, or Stitcher, wherever you listen to this podcast. Every time you leave a review, that helps us out. We've got a YouTube page now. I'm starting to put the audio versions of the episodes we've already done up on there. And when we start doing video with the 50th episode, those will be on YouTube as well. But if you want to help us out,
01:43:42
Speaker
go over to SuperheroCinephiles.com, there's a link to the YouTube page on the side and go click on that and subscribe to our YouTube page because that will help us prepare to get some more people interested in it because YouTube starts showing it to more people when they get more subscribers. And yeah, that does it for now. Thanks so much for listening and we will talk to you next time.
01:44:08
Speaker
Good night, God bless, thank you for listening and sorry for the spirit folks. Maybe you're forgiven for now until I find a worst movie to punish you with. All right, we'll talk to you next time.
01:44:29
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Superhero Cinephiles Podcast. If you have any questions or comments about this or any other episode, or if you have a superhero movie or TV show you'd like us to cover in a future episode, you can email us at superheroescinephiles at gmail.com, or you can also visit us on the web at superheroescinephiles.com.
01:44:49
Speaker
If you like what you hear, leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. Each review helps us reach more potential listeners. You can also support the show by renting or purchasing the movies discussed, or by picking up our books, all of which can be accessed through the website, as well as find links to our social media presences. The theme music for this show is a shortened version of Superhero Showdown, a royalty-free piece of music, courtesy of ezlionstudios.com.