Monday Morning Quarterback Part III

By BOP Staff

December 31, 2008

Chad Pennington: The Musical is coming to Broadway any day now, replacing Favre: The Legend.

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Sean Collier: The Spirit was only ever serving as the warm-up band for Watchmen. The abysmal early reviews kept the crowds from showing up early.

Reagen Sulewski: I would hate to have been the exec looking at the first dailies for this. Would you start typing up your resume right then? Note to Frank Miller: learn a new trick.

Daron Aldridge: I gave this the benefit of the doubt with the teaser earlier this year because it intrigued me enough to want more but then as I saw more, that intrigue gave way to boredom. Apparently, I was not alone in my newfound apathy toward it.

Pete Kilmer: Boy...The Spirit...I don't know.

A character the mass audience has zero clue about, a cinematic look that we just saw in Sin City and expect in Sin City 2 and the Looney Tunes aspect that Miller chose to use just didn't work. I think Frank has an eye for scenes and could develop into a pretty solid director. Clearly, a lot of the actors loved him on the set. But he needs someone to really help him with editing and dialogue. Lionsgate really needs to stop with the super hero movies as they have ZERO idea on how to do them. I mean ZERO idea. The Punisher War Zone was a complete disaster and The Spirit is going to be one.




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Jamie Ruccio: As mentioned, without any intense following this looked like a rip-off of Sin City, 300 and maybe even Watchmen - which makes me fearful for Watchmen. As the only man in his late 30s who didn't read this 20 years ago, it looks pretty similar to all the rest of the films mentioned. I'll probably be taken out back and roughed up for this but I wonder if these previous films, all with a similar feel and look, don't damage its potential. We've all seen pop culture iconic material fail at the box office. I write this for posterity in case I am right. If not, let's just forget I ever mentioned it.

Scott Lumley: I've got bad feelings about Watchmen as well, but my feelings have a lot more to do with the rather tepid trailers and that surprising court verdict rather than a faint resemblance to a not very well thought out superhero flick.

As for Jamie, I will advise you that part of the greatness of Watchmen was watching superheroes being treated like ordinary people with foibles, failings, flaws and character defects that we all have. Twenty-odd years later, this is less of a thrill than it used to be. (See Knight, Dark and Man, Iron) Still, Rorschach is a classic character that has me deeply enthused about this film and Zack Snyder's apparent letter-perfect interpretation of this graphic novel. Let's hope that he can carry through on the promise that the initial Watchmen trailer brought.

Kim Hollis: Throwing Watchmen aside, since it doesn't have a lot to do with Frank Miller, I think we can just safely say he's kind of lost it a little bit. Between All-Star Batman & Robin and this effort at directing a movie alone, he's definitely alienating the fan base he had and not adding any new ones. The Spirit is certainly a disappointment, but I'm not sure what Lionsgate was ever going to do to market it. The best thing that could have been done was to go back in time and decide not to greenlight it.


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