The premise may seem far-fetched, but not if you consider that Morocco offered bomb-sniffing monkeys to the “coalition of the willing” for the Iraq War. The leader of the G-Force team is an unconventional human scientist named Ben. The guinea pigs are cast as racial stereotypes.
The making of The Spirit is unfathomable, other than to cash in on the success of the Sin City franchise. It has the same graphic style as muted colours fill the background while occasionally one random object, like a tie, is given a blast of bright colour. The unoriginality doesn’t stop there, as this default Super Hero flick follows several pre-determined formulas to progress the plot.
As if we didn’t get enough of Christian Bale’s coughing shouts as Batman in The Dark Night, or Rorschach’s grating and harsh dialogue from Watchmen, this film serves up the left-overs of the tired narrative monologue. The film starts off with the protagonist hero “the Spirit” running around on rooftops while describing his city through metaphors. If you can get past the voice that sounds like sandpaper rubbing up against a cheese grater, you hear about his beloved city and his fetishism for its gritty and concrete features. Now all he has to do is pose epically next to some Gargoyle statues in the rain and a lightning bolt in the background completes the cliché.
The Spirit’s powers feature an enhanced recovery time from injury. He could be shot in the head and have several bones shattered, yet still be able to heal within a few hours, if not minutes. All he’s missing now are steel claws that come out of his fists and some yellow spandex to become the next Wolverine.
Spider-Man gets rippe
d off also, with Samuel L. Jackson playing the lead antagonist simply known as the “Octopus”. He is thus named because he has an obsessive compulsive tendency to own 8 of everything. Although at first this seems convenient for his villainy, wielding 8 guns, it raises the question as to how practical his compulsion would be. Would this mean he has to wash his hands 8 times after each fight? Does he own 8 toasters and insist on having 8 slices of bread for breakfast each morning? With comic book logic like that he might as well identify himself with a more formidable name like “Dr. Octagon”.
As for the villain’s motive, he seems determined to gain immortality and then take over the world. In the meantime, he runs a drug cartel with a gang of cloned goons that have laughably low IQs. It’s like an episode of Pinky and the Brain, with the mad scientist’s intellect being frustrated by his bumbling imbecile henchmen (nARF).
There is a lot of back story as to how he plans to accomplish this goal of world domination. In a nutshell, he has to invent some magic juice that has more power than Redbull and Gatorade combined. This involves a mystical vase which contains the blood of Hercules, which when combined with the power of a serum he’s developed, will turn him into a God. The Spirit is his only competition, since he was a test subject of the same serum, if he drank the magic potion he would gain the same Godly power.
There are also several romantic sub-plots whereby the Spirit has a number of conflicting emotions on the women involved in his lifetime. This involves a hot nurse, a sexy diamond thief, a French belly dancer, and a leather clad policewoman. Oddly enough he even scores with death incarnate, represented as a mythological temptress. Sadly these tacky fantasy women only made me wish for my own death.
To wrap things up, the good guys and the bad guys duke it out in the end, the sub-plot of the romance is somewhat resolved, and vague indications are given at the possibility of a sequel. To help bear the burden of that possibility, it would be better to go home and drink spirits rather than watching the movie with the same name.
Tags: Dr. Octopus, Samuel L. Jackson, The Spirit