Scarlett Johansson has a rich filmography consisting of films like Lucy, Lost in Translation, Her, and more, apart from the MCU films she has been part of for more than a decade. But the 38-year-old actress has had her fair share of box office and critical duds as well. And one of them was way worse than the others.
None of her poorly received projects may ever come close to the debacle that was the 2008 film directed by comic book writer and trailblazer Frank Miller. Now, Miller is mainly known for reinventing characters like Daredevil and Batman on paper as a writer. So him getting a directing job went about as well as one would expect.
How Did Frank Miller Come Onboard Will Eisner’s The Spirit?
Will Eisner wrote The Spirit comic strips between 1940 to 1952, and for a long time, there was an effort to get it adapted for the big screen. Director William Friedkin first tried to get the project up and running in the 1970s after getting film rights to The Spirit. He contacted Will Eisner to pen the script. But he refused and instead put Harlan Ellison in charge of writing.
Friedkin and Ellison had a falling out and the project never got off the ground. In the 1980s, there was agsin an effort made, this time to make an animated series, but that went nowhere as well. In the 1990s, Michael Uslan, Benjamin Melniker, and Steven Maier got the rights for a live-action adaptation. They tried to get their film made, but again, nothing came of it.
In 2004, OddLot Entertainment got the rights and collaborated with Uslan, Melniker, and Maier to adapt the story. They had Eisner’s blessings to go ahead with the project. The team approached Frank Miller at Eisner’s memorial service. Miller initially didn’t feel that he was the right man for the job but ultimately went ahead, saying:
“The only thought in my mind was, ‘It’s too big—I can’t possibly do it.’ And I refused. And about three minutes later 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.”
However, he didn’t nail the project at all. Instead, he pretty much tarnished Will Eisner’s legacy.
How Frank Miller Bombed Will Eisner’s Legacy And Wasted Scarlett Johansson’s Acting Skills
Initially, Frank Miller wanted to be faithful to the source material left behind by Will Eisner while adding his own touch to it. But no matter how honest his intentions were, he failed to do that and the film adaptation of The Spirit starring stalwarts like Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, and Eva Mendes, looked stylish but also caricaturist, cringey, and stereotypical.
The film grossed only $60 million on a $39 million budget, and it holds a Rotten Tomatoes score of only 14%. Fans of Eisner and The Spirit criticized the decision to give Frank Miller the keys to the kingdom when he had directorial experience in helming only one project back then- Sin City (2005). Overall, many were of the view that someone else could have written a good script and used the talented actors better.
Sin City is available on Amazon Prime Video, and The Spirit is on Netflix.
Source: Movie Web
