Monday 27 August 2007

Could “The Spirit” work?

Eva Mendes has joined the cast of the upcoming comic to movie film “The Spirit”.
The actress joins Scarlett Johansson (more on her later), Gabriel Macht, and Samuel L. Jackson in the anticipated movie, based on a classic Will Eisner comic and directed by Frank Miller.

Mendes will play femme fatale Sand Sareef, who dated Denny Colt as a teenager but broke from him after his uncle accidentally killed her father.

Denny was killed, but had ended up in suspended animation, waking up in Wildwood Cemetery. He establishes a base there and begins a life of fighting crime wearing a blue suit, fedora hat, gloves and a domino mask for a costume.

Sounds peachy, no? I am one who always gets a little excited at the thought of a comic movies. I am also one of many who is very disappointed upon seeing them.
However this seems like it could be a lot of fun for the actors involved.
The women are all femme fatales, with blood red lips and tiny waists highlighting voluptuous breasts. Plus they get to shoot sassy dialogue and smoke.
And we all know a woman smoking is very very sexy (in a film noir way).

Think Jessica Rabbit, but real.

The source material is also a little better than the usual comic. The hero is, although kind of back from the dead, is a regular man.
Even the bad guy, Octopus, is a regular man only just a criminal mastermind who is never seen (apart from his gloves).
I am thinking this will be more “Batman Returns” than “Ghost Rider”. What would be wonderful is if the director, Frank Miller, uses the feel of “Sin City” but improves upon it.
That was a graphic CGI world, but suited the style of that particular graphic novel.

What is the icing on the cake of me being excited is that Bill Pope has been signed as cinematographer. Yes he did “The Matrix” and “Spiderman” but what he also did was “Bound”. Talk about femme fatales and crime lords being filmed with exquisite beauty.

The man knows how to film women, he knows how to film action, and his work is usually extremely beautiful.

I will set my sites on this film, as I feel “Watchmen” will fail. Just a guess (hope I am wrong) but feel it is too vast for one film.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

the talent involved could pull this off, but it could also fail. the comic is not popular enough to cause a huge outcry if the movie is not 100% faithful, so it gets some leway there. at least.