Sam Jackson Compares The Spirit to Looney Tunes

Posted by Neil Miller (neil@filmschoolrejects.com) on September 23, 2008

I’m not sure that the cast of The Spirit is helping Frank Miller’s cause this week. First Gabriel Macht was talking this week about The Spirit’s clumsy nature, then Samuel L. Jackson, who plays the film’s villain Octopus, is comparing it to Wile E. Coyote. In fact, to be more precise, Jackson had this to say in an interview with MTV’s Splash Page:

“['The Spirit'] is a comic book. You can call ‘The Dark Knight’ a comic book, but no, it’s a graphic novel. There’s a difference between a comic book and a graphic novel.”

“‘The Spirit’ is funny. It’s tongue-in-cheek, wry humor,” continued Jackson. “It’s sort of Wile E. Coyote with real people. We hit each other with big things [and] we’re both kind of indestructible, so it’s funny in that way. We get shot up, we get stabbed up, we just don’t die.”

Perhaps it isn’t as bad as I would lead you to believe — perhaps this movie will work with its tongue-in-cheek humor and its silly antics. Perhaps it will also eliminate all of the awkward and corny footage that was shown at Comic-Con this past July and digitally replace it with something that we can all buy into. Perhaps that’s a stretch — I don’t know. What I do know is that whether we like it or not, The Spirit will be in theaters Christmas Day.

On the side of good news, this film is littered with T&A, courtesy of Eva Mendes, Jamie King, Sarah Paulson, Paz Vega and Scarlett Johansson. And who doesn’t like a little T, mixed with a little A?

Are you with me in my battle against The Spirit? Or are you one of those ‘optimists’ who is still holding out hope?

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