Feedback from the first showings anywhere of THE SPIRIT have started to come in and boy they don’t look pretty.

I believe an embargo is lifted tomorrow on a special Frank Miller event we attended earlier this month and it’s my intention to get in touch with Mark Clark right now to see what the status update is. But right now, he’s some of the early negative feedback from the festive release…

El Gringo to AICN…

the spirit could pass for ambitious (but it isn’t), and it lacks a lot of emotional commitment. i found it not so fun to watch, and quite painful to sit through. the lead character, even though bravely supported by actor gabriel macht, is so stupid it’s jaw-dropping (wait to see him get confused by evidence that would get a 5-year old to close the case). he’s absolutely unfathomable as a character, driven by nothing, attached to no-one but his so-called mother (a.k.a. his city).

speaking of which: the film was supposed to be about a city. i mean: it’s on the poster, it’s in the trailers and in the tagline (”my city screams”). well, never has a city resembled so much an empty sound stage – except maybe a sound stage.

Jondough to AICN…

…now I’ve seen something that has taken the top prize from “Battlefield Earth.” I mean, I honestly thought that would never happen…

The real Main Offender here is the company that thought this was good. Thought this was worthy of your twelve bucks. Because they, my friends, are assholes. That’s all it comes down to. They MUST know that this movie is a piece of shit…I mean, it is so bad they literally HAVE to know how bad it is, no matter how cynical you are about the intelligence level of Hollywood producers. Which means that they think so little of the movie-going public that they’ll drop this bomb on us and just expect us to go see it “‘cause it looks like Sin City.”

THE SPIRIT opens in the U.S. one week from tomorrow (or Christmas Day if you prefer!) and in the U.K. on Jan. 1st 2009!