Walking out of an afternoon showing of Wall-E last weekend, I noticed some big cardboard movie displays advertising The Spirit, a forthcoming movie based on the classic Will Eisner comic book series, to be written and directed by Frank Miller. We're clearly living in a Frank Miller heyday, and it's been a long time coming...[four-paragraph summary of Miller's career]...but to be honest I'm worried that Miller's descent into over-stylization and self-parody, both visually and verbally, is too deep to reverse, and that he'll end up crashing and burning at the very moment when decades of influential work are finally bringing him fame and fortune."
From The Onion AV Club, this week:
In comics, it took Miller decades to devolve into embarrassing self-parody. In film, he’s made that leap over the course of a single disastrous film. A.V. Club Rating: D
From the New York Times:
To ask why anything happens in Frank Miller’s sludgy, hyper-stylized adaptation of a fabled comic book series by Will Eisner may be an exercise in futility. The only halfway interesting question is why the thing exists at all...a talky, pretentious stew of film noir poses and crime-fighter clichés.
Etc., etc. It's a shame.
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