11 Criminally Underrated Superheroes Hollywood Totally Ruined
2. The Spirit
Lionsgate
Will Eisner was one of the great pioneers of the comic book medium, and at the summit of his many (many) achievements rests The Spirit, a serialised comic strip printed for the Des Moines Register's Tribune Syndicate. The Spirit - a masked vigilante and former detective - is the archetypal vigilante, and probably one that Frank Miller should've stayed away from. Especially post-Dark Knight Miller.
2008's The Spirit really is a woeful film - one that's derivative, cliched, and even dismissive of the character's roots. Ultimately, neither The Spirit or A Dame to Kill For could stand up to Miller's work in 2005's Sin City, with both relying too much on the heavily stylised inflections of his artwork, diminished with a now unremarkable and distracting monochromatic filter.
Word on a potential reboot has been virtually non-existent since 2008, so it looks as though The Spirit's one opportunity for cinematic success has come and gone - some would say for the better.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
