“I’m not a real comic book fan”: the irony behind Scarlett Johansson’s worst movie
The problem with making movies that are adaptations of comic books is that if you make a bad one, or one that doesn’t fit with a certain aesthetic, or doesn’t do the original characters justice, then you have an army of millions ready to weigh in and completely destroy it from the comfort of their basements. Sometimes it’s deserved, sometimes it isn’t, but one that falls firmly into the former camp is The Spirit with Scarlett Johansson.
A 2008 effort from comic book legend Frank Miller, it was a neo-noir about a young cop killed on the job who comes back as a ghost to continue to hunt down bad guys. Coming hot on the heels of two very successful Miller adaptations in the form of 2006’s Sin City, co-directed by Miller and Robert Rodriguez, and 300, the blood-soaked action epic helmed by Zack Snyder, there were high hopes for the movie, and it was no surprise that several big names signed on.
Aside from Johansson, who played the role of ‘Silken Floss’, a secretary and femme fatale, there was Samuel L Jackson, Eva Mendes and Sarah Paulson, but the cast and the director’s genre pedigree weren’t enough to save the film from a disastrous showing at the box office and a mauling at the hands of critics.
Johansson, in her defense, was one of the most in demand actors in the world at the time, working on movies like Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige and Brian De Palma’s The Black Dahlia in the mid-2000s, and having appeared in films with that calibre of director it would appear she wanted to add what she felt was another to the list.
She told film writer Paul Fischer at the time: “I really just wanted to work with Frank (Miller). I’m not a real comic book fan… comics always seemed – that whole world seemed kind of exclusive, a little bit. But I read Sin City, and I really loved 300, and I thought that Frank must be an interesting guy.”
To say The Spirit went down badly on release is an understatement. At the time, it was criticised for being massively sexist, and it has not aged well at all, plus the main character has an outfit that seems to merge SS Officer with 1970s New York pimp. But it didn’t seem to dim Johansson’s experience of working with Miller too much, as she added: “I met with Frank. We talked for three hours, and had this amazing time just talking about New York and all the things that we loved about the city. And – I don’t know, we just had a lot to talk about. And at the end of it, it was like – “Well, I hope we can work together someday.”
It proved to be a bit of a turning point for Miller however; he hasn’t directed a movie solo in the 17 years since, although he did team up with Rodriguez once more for the Sin City sequel A Dame to Kill For in 2014. Johansson had no such issues, of course, going on to land major roles in franchises that have made her one of the highest-grossing actors in history, including Marvel’s Avengers, Jurassic World and the kids’ animation Sing.
She’s currently working on a new movie opposite Tom Cruise called The Gauntlet, a remake of a 1977 Clint Eastwood movie about an alcoholic detective escorting a witness to testify in a trial.
