Comic-Con Gets The Spirit
Writer/director Frank Miller showed off new footage from his upcoming comic-book adaptation The Spirit, including clips of the title hero (Gabriel Macht) with a couple of his signature women and in a fight scene, to a hall of more than 6,500 fans at Comic-Con International in San Diego on Jan. 25.
The new footage featured the film's by-now familiar stylized, saturated look, with blacks, white, grays and a flash of red, though the movie is actually shot in color.
The clips featured Scarlett Johannsson's character, Silken Floss; Eva Mendes' Sand Saref; the villainous Octopus, played by Samuel L. Jackson; and Sarah Paulson's Ellen Dolan.
One clip--an underwater scene--highlighted Miller's filmmaking technique, a la Zack Snyder's 300 and Robert Rodriguez's Sin City. "We found a phantom camera that was able to shoot slower than death, and Eva Mendes was one of the first to work with it," Miller told the audience. "All the scenes you are about to see were shot dry, so there wasn't an ounce of water in them. And Eva was given the instruction to act like the Flash. So everything she did that would take a minute was going by in a couple seconds. That's the remarkable thing about her performance."
In the clip, Eva's character is in the water and falls under attack from the Octopus, dives under the water, swims toward a companion and tries to retrieve two boxes on the bottom before being rescued by the Spirit.
In another clip, the Spirit gets romantic with Dolan in a hospital. "You're in love with every woman you meet, Mr. Spirit," she says. "You say lovely things to all of us, and you mean every word, every word you mean every time. But we don't even know your real name."
In a final clip, the Spirit and the Octopus fight in the mud and the rain. The fight ends with the Octopus smashing the Spirit over the head with a toilet, then laughing as he grabs him: "Come on! Toilets are always funny." The Spirit opens Christmas Day.
