The Spirit - who's bringing it?

More speculation. Still wondering how a film like The Spirit came to be. There are so many things wrong with it that it's not even instructionally useful.

There's probably a bit of the Lucasitis here. Miller is fresh off two hits in Sin City and 300. That, plus his iconic status probably creates a great deal of critical deference. He has two fans in fx supervisor Stu Maschwitz and DP Bill Pope.

I also wonder if the problem is that no one knew who was supposed to "bring it?" Green screen films tend to be multi-modal; the performance is carried in different ways, sometimes by the actors, sometimes by the production design, sometimes by the visuals. On Sin City, Robert Rodriguez served as director, fx supervisor and DP, so he knew how the film was supposed to work. But on The Spirit, I wonder if no one knew who was bringing it?

I can imagine that on Sin City, Frank Miller was more of a kibitzer, offering suggestions here and there. The Spirit has a kind of kibitzed directorial approach in that it's full of details and affectations but there's no structure. It's like Miller didn't fully understand what Rodriguez brought to Sin City and thought that somehow magically, The Spirit was going to come together. It's like Bill Pope thought that Maschwitz was going to bring it and Maschwitz thought that Miller was going to bring it and in the end, no one really did.

A potentially interesting study of art and leadership.