1. Hire a Real Writer and Director.
I'm sorry, but Frank Miller is not a director, nor is he a screenwriter. Well, let me clarify that: Miller has never directed anything on his own, without the able assistance of Robert Rodriguez, and he has not written any screenplays that were produced besides Robocop 2 and 3, which hardly count. He is merely a talented comic writer and artist. Or, at least, he used to be -- his artwork has gotten pretty fast and loose (see The Dark Knight Strikes Again), and his writing has descended into self-parody (see All-Star Batman & Robin). Which leads me to wonder why anyone would go to Miller and offer him first crack at a movie, aside from the fact that his mentor and hero Will Eisner created the character -- especially since Miller's apparent wish to "protect" Eisner's character resulted in the most bastardized, unrecognizable version of him imaginable. A real director could have modulated the movie's over-the-top performances, and a real writer could have captured the spirit of The Spirit without trying to turn it into Sin City 1.5.

2. Less Superhero, More Sam Spade.
It's true that Denny Colt was bathed in some sort of substance in a lab in his earliest comic adventure. Yes, it apparently brought him back to life after a period of suspended animation, during which he was believed dead. And yes, he seems to be able to absorb a lot of punishment. But the stories were never about how he became what he was, or what he could do. They were about this guy who lived in a cemetery and went out and solved crimes and murders, and punched people. Sometimes, the trail led to the Octopus, but usually they led to a sexy dame, with plenty of fistfights along the way. The origin was almost incidental. The movie, meanwhile is all about how much punishment The Spirit could take, and the Octopus too, for that matter. His relentlessness isn't simply a result of his strong character, it's a healing factor that literally makes wounds go away, which the Octopus puts to the test as often as possible. (It also apparently allows him to back-flip up a fire escape, but let's just ignore that.) It's like a series of vivisection experiments in place of a plot, and it makes The Spirit and The Octopus into brothers in harm, like a somehow more ridiculous Wolverine and Sabretooth. This is not X-Men Origins, people. I actually loved the core plot, to gain the blood of Heracles and take on the powers of a god, but I could have done without the whole "only we two can drink it, because we're special" deal, as well as the tiny cloned head attached to the regular-sized foot that Octopus gawks at for ten minutes.

3. Make the Octopus Mysterious.
In the comics, the Octopus was like the prototype of Inspector Gadget's Dr. Claw; You only ever saw his gloved hands, and his face was always in shadow as he manipulated chess pieces from behind the scenes. A cool character, he would occasionally trade blows with The Spirit, and he certainly had an interest in scientific endeavors, but he was by no means an in-your-face, Joker-like character. Meanwhile Samuel L. Jackson's Octopus steps out of the shadows in a zoot suit in the first 15 minutes, and proceeds to have a Looney Tunes-style slugfest with The Spirit. He later dresses up like a samurai, a doctor and a Nazi. This is not stuff that the Octopus has ever done, as far as my extensive Spirit reading experiences go. (Someone please correct me if I am wrong.) This is all weird shit that is in Frank Miller's head. I saw it in Dark Knight Strikes Again, I saw it in Happy Endings, I saw it Sin City: Hell and Back. If someone wanted to make a movie about the shit in Frank Miller's head, I wish they had just done that, rather than ruining a piece of America's pulp history.

4. Kill the Voiceover.
Even at his peak, Miller's mastery of comic writing in books like Batman: Year One and Daredevil relied heavily on caption-box "voiceovers." While they can be used to great effect in comics, providing exposition and literary references that would seem out of place in dialogue and thought balloons, they don't always translate to good cinema, especially at the levels Miller is used to. The amount of Spirit voiceover in this film verges on the ridiculous. True, the Spirit comics had a lot of "My Dear Reader..." narration, which I often imagined in the voice of Alfred Hitchcock or Boris Karloff, but The Spirit's overindulgent street poetry is classic Miller, straight out of Sin City or Dark Knight Returns, only here it's troweled on so thick it could hold together a brick wall.

5. Find Stana Katic Something Better To Do.
Seriously, what was she doing here? I'm not saying she's a precious natural resource that must be saved for better things (although Castle certainly is better), I just mean that her character, the squeaky-voiced rookie cop Morgenstern, is incredibly annoying -- almost as annoying as The Octopus. Granted, none of the performances in the movie are stellar: Gabriel Macht doesn't seem to have the sense of humor necessary to play Denny (sadly, a younger Bruce Campbell would have nailed it). Dan Lauria makes a fine Commissioner Dolan, I suppose, but Sarah Paulson comes off looking a little too old to play Ellen -- although if she was any younger, the whole doctor thing would fall apart. (Ellen was not a doctor in the comics, of course.) Scarlett Johannson's Silken Floss is not terrible, although her willingness to play dress-up for The Octopus further undermines her believability as a brilliant researcher, and Eva Mendes I actually didn't despise for possibly the first time in my life as Sand Saref. Paz Vega as the prancing, jealous belly dancer Plaster of Paris was totally unnecessary, and Jaime King as the Bedazzled Lorelei was just bizarre. But at least she doesn't talk like a 1930s newsboy like Morgenstern. Getting back on topic, was Katic supposed to be comic relief, replacing The Spirit's young black sidekick Ebony? I thought The Octopus was the comic relief in this movie! Regardless, the way she talks -- and the way she walks, like she's in the military or something -- is so distracting that it kept pulling me out of the movie whenever she came on screen. ...So maybe I should thank her?

What did you think of the movie? What did you like? Not like? What would you change? Rant along with Zach below, and buy the movie here.