BLOGS
Forget Sam Jackson's cameos in Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk as [SPOILER ALERT FOR PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN CAVES] Nick Fury, Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. -- let's start talking about his Christmas-present turn as a villain in Frank Miller's The Spirit. Miller, co-director of Sin City and author of the Sin City and 300 comics, is back behind the camera, this time adapting the work of one of his comic book forebears, Will Eisner's The Spirit, and Jackson will be playing the Spirit's rarely-seen, striped-glove-wearing foe, the Octopus. Because as everyone knows, Sam Jackson can wear the heck out of a pair of gloves.
In a new Comic-Con Magazine interview, Miller describes the Octopus as "an atom bomb" who "only goes off twice," and "very strange and eccentric, but I think he's going to scare the crap out of you." (PETA representatives are already trembling, if that massive fur collar is any indication.) While Jackson is no stranger to the villain role, having donned the trademark purple clothes of the evil-doer in [SPOILER ALERT FOR PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN REALLY DEEP CAVES] Unbreakable as the disaster-causing Mr. Glass, he is certainly all over the comic-book landscape nowadays, if you count his white-haired appearance in the comic-book-esque Jumper. (Feel free not to.) Which makes sense, since Jackson is a huge comic book buff -- and besides, who could turn down a chance to appear in a movie that stars Scarlett Johannson, Eva Mendes, Jaime King and Paz Vega? Leave it to the ladies-loving Miller to include all of the Spirit's female supporting characters (and therefore all of Hollywood's sexiest women) in the first movie, in case a sequel never materializes. (Taking bets, people!)
Speaking of which, I don't know if the Spirit trailer really captures the feel of the comic. Granted, the original comic took place in the 1940s (I'll ignore DC's so-so remake), and a stylistically accurate film would probably be closer to Dick Tracy than anything else (not that there'd be anything wrong with that) but the movie just looks like a less-bleak Sin City, complete with guys perched on telephone wires and standing in the shadows cast by skylights. (Besides, I think the Spirit lived in a tomb under his own grave, and I'm pretty sure he didn't own that many cats.) Miller himself admits: "It's not a slavish monument built to the comic strip. It's what I believe that young Eisner might just have done with the brand new toys of today." ...In other words, make a Frank Miller comic? Sounds like a plan!
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