Reviews

‘The Spirit’ Film Review and ACMI Experience

‘The Spirit’ by Frank Miller is based on the comic-book series of the same name. Having not read the comic book series myself, I can’t compare any similarities/differences from paper to film. However, comparing what I think is bad and good is something I can do, and I got to admit, this film kind of falls into my ‘bad’ category.

The film’s plot was a resurrected cop (Gabriel Macht) whose taken on a new lifestyle as a almost immortal spy, called ‘The Spirit’, who has a love for his city (Central City), and tries to keep it safe from his arch nemesis The Octopus (aka Samuel L Jacskon), the film’s comical antagonist who, like ‘The Spirit’, is also almost immortal. The Octopus then comes up with a way to become immortal, and that will enable him to rule the world.

The style of the film is the traditional all-CGI backgrounds and real people, being used in most graphic-comic book adaptations, like Sin City and 300. The background was creative showing a unique city-scape that seemed like a hybrid from 1930’s city structures and modern technology. This made added to my difficulty of figuring out if this was modern day, or post-modern.

The opening of the film reminded me of a combination of Mary Poppins meeting The Matrix, with ‘The Spirit’ jumping and running along rooftops and power lines. Shortly after, we’re launched into the film…and into the bad dialogue. I’m not sure if this was to reflect the comic-book style, but I found the ‘look into the camera and verbally narrarate yourself what you’re going to do’ a little bit stupid. This is an action move, not a documentary. If ‘The Spirit’ started to sound like David Attenborough, I’d know for sure it was meant to be comical. Otherwise I found it pointless and time filling. We did get some useful back story from this though, mostly surrounding that ‘The Spirit’ considers himself the physical spirit of his city, Central City, displaying patriotism. At times he said ‘the city provided for him as he protected it’, mostly referring to the snow lying around he uses as weapons/decoy, or the manholes for escape.

The other characters seemed less believable. The commissioner made me think ‘what the hell?’ a few times when he said things along the lines of ‘You love my daughter yet you go off and kiss and sleep with every girl in town’ then he would say something quickly dismissing the whole conversation to keep ‘Spirit’ happy. The Octopuses’ femme fatale assistant seemed almost ‘ordered’ by the script to be this, be that…and show no transition. In her first scene, she’s shown as a serious, hard working accomplice. In another scene, shown or projected to be part of the brains behind thinking up with The Octopus on how to proceed with plans. Another scene displayed her as being a capable actor, giving The Octopus a phone while he was dressed as a Nazi officer, and keeping with her character, marched in, handed the phone, received the phone, and marched out, all this done in front of The Spirit, who was obviously as confused as the audience.

In the natural history of films, the villain must die. In this film era, the film’s audience has grown smarter. You would think the director of a film would meet the challenge. I’m sad to say he didn’t. The Octopus gets his hands on some blood of Hercules (the Greek God/Human), and if you drink it, you become immortal. That is pretty much the driving element of the movie – if the Octopus drinks it, he wins global domination, and if The Spirit drinks it, he’s immortal and able to kill The Octopus without much strain. So during the climactic battle towards the end of the film when Octopus finally gets his vase of blood, he does what every other stereotypical bad guy does: brags about it before trying to drink it. Naturally while he is bragging, someone shoots the vase causing the blood to fall out, and there you go one dead bad guy.
In my opinion, I found the film’s faults lied in the dialogue (what was written and how it was delivered), and in the plot which at times was predictable. My personal favourite moments were when The Octopus was experimenting making a new clone bodyguard, resulting in a foot with a head that makes funny sounds, and when The Octopus towards the end is being attacked by dozens of soldiers and helicopters, reminding me of a player in a computer game using a God-mode cheat. I’d say you probably would want to see if you were a fan of the comics or if you’re a fan of Samuel L. Jackson.

The exhibit at ACMI, where they had assorted concept arts, design schematics, floor plans, scaled building models, ‘Making of’ videos, and set pieces of various films, such as The Matrix, Speed Racer, Australia, The Shining, Alien, The Road, Prince Caspian, The Terminal, and several others.

I found it fascinating just studying the models film crews built to study how shots would be done, where cameras will be placed, and what was going on, particularly with the terminal in The Terminal, which was actually built to suit the film, not filmed someplace else and rebadged. From the screen displaying the information, it mentioned the set designers had to check with all listed shops appearing in The Terminal to ensure that where the stalls were positioned would be a realistic choice. That kind of detail never occurred to me.

The documentaries on ‘Australia’ I found interesting, making me curious to view the actual film. There were several stages of development they did to assemble a believable and almost carbon-copy image of Darwin using CGI, sets, and on-location filming. Using an old phonebook they found, they even managed to get some shops in the right position as they were at the time. As a interesting approach to do the docks, they filmed underneath the piers as they were, due to them being in their original state, then filmed what was on-top of the pier in a sound stage, then using green screens and CGI, blend the two together getting a almost authentic 1940’s appearance.
Most of the exhibit showed images and examples of concept art and location shots. A few screens showed pre-visualisations and animatics of scenes, followed by the completed end results. Sadly the videos were not as detailed or revealing as the ones for ‘Australia’, so little could be said about them.

In general, the exhibit was interesting, but hard to do a report on. Not many ‘behind the scenes’ information was displayed, just images that told very little except the standard practise that any form of pre-production involves a lot of planning, thinking and re-thinking. Something ‘The Spirit’ creation team should take into account, maybe. Perhaps for future consideration, the exhibit should show more set pieces or more detailed videos on what is displayed around the room, instead of being ‘Australia’ oriented.