I think all of this PR is a smart move by the producers of The Spirit because its important to latch on to the super hero craze now while the movie industry is gearing up for a big summer. With six super hero/comic book movies coming out over the next four months (Batman, Iron Man, Hulk, Hellboy, Wanted and Will Smith’s Hancock), The Spirit needs to try and connect with the millions of moviegoers attending those movies now in the hopes that it makes it easier early next year to reconnect with them (and hopefuly entice them to the theaters).
I think The Spirit’s teaser movie trailer does everything it hoped to by teasing the audience of the movie to come without giving any real hint of a storyline or the characters involved. What strikes me as odd is how similar this movie’s look and feel is to Sin City. Obviously I knew Frank Miller was going for a similar look when he decided to employ the same filming techniques he and Robert Rodriguez used on Sin City, but with the teaser’s darkness it almost looks like the same movie.
This worries me considering how different Will Eisner’s The Spirit is from Miller’s Sin City comics. I really hope Miller has stayed true to Eisner’s vision and not turned The Spirit into Sin City lite. As much as I loved both the Sin City comic books and movie, I fear Miller might be using this directing opportunity as a warm up to his production of the Sin City sequels scheduled to hit movie theaters in 2009 and 2010.