The Rotunda

Issue date: 1/21/09 Section: Entertainment

Media Credit: Google Images Movie poster for 'The Spirit'.

This summer was a wonderful time for comic book fans. "Iron Man" in May, "The Incredible Hulk" in June, and "The Dark Knight" in July all breathed a bit of sorely-needed life into the comic book movie genre, and even comic books as a whole. They made being a comic book fan cool. Now, instead of wearing three-times-over taped glasses and navel-night tweed pants, comic nerds wear reflective sunglasses and drive awesome cars because of how cool their heroes have become. Then director Frank Miller ruined it, and it's back to getting your head flushed down the toilet if you dare to pick up a copy of "The Killing Joke."

"The Spirit" came out this Christmas, something I can't think about too much or I might start giving the movie too much credit. "You see," says my subconscious, all suave, "this must mean that it was supposed to be a giant turd with too many special effects and no substance. It was mocking the very commercialization of the holiday it was released on!" But then I remember common sense and the notion that justifying a bad movie doesn't make it any better, it just makes it a bad movie with a purpose. And a bad movie with a purpose is only a little sadder than a rebel with a particularly ridiculous cause, like ensuring that every person with blue eyes gets a free cupcake on Wednesday. It still has a purpose, and it accomplished what it wanted to, but that doesn't take away from the fact that it was a bad movie.

So, "The Spirit" was terrible. If you've had your head out of the sand ever since its release, you won't be surprised to read this. But because just saying a movie is bad doesn't make me nearly as cool as I'd like it to, I'll sit down and take a few minutes to explain why it was so bad.

For me, the biggest problem was that Miller simply doesn't know how to direct. Oh yes, his name was stapled onto "Sin City" as a "co-director," but after seeing "The Spirit," I'm sure that the set of "Sin City" saw Robert Rodriguez doing all the real work while Frank ate all the free donuts and tossed off a few one-liners when asked. And there's no shame in that! It's fine for a man to find his niche in writing kickass comic books. I don't begrudge Frank for that. But there's a reason why you wouldn't take Michael Phelps and make him substitute for Tom Brady in a Patriots game, and the sentiment applies to Miller in the media world.

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