The Neverwas: Brad Bird's THE SPIRIT

Frank Miller's recent movie based on Will Eisner's classic comics series The Spirit was an epic disaster, so much so that it appears to have put the kibosh on Miller's previously announced Flash Gordon movie and the Sin City sequel. While Miller's early cartooning displayed a clear Eisner influence, the film played like the work of a guy who was only glancingly familiar with Eisner's work and simply had no idea what made it great.

Back in the early 1980s, Brad Bird - who would go on to direct classics The Iron Giant and The Incredibles - struggled long and hard to launch his own animated movie based on The Spirit. And it sounds like he could've done something great, too.

"I blew a lot of energy and time on it," he told Michael Barrier in 2005, "and I kind of think in my mind it should always be a hand-drawn thing, and right now, Hollywood idiocy being what it is, that's considered the kiss of death. I don't think you could get any money for a big animated feature if you insisted on it being hand-drawn."

Bird was so passionate about making the film his own way that he apparently turned down an offer to direct it as a live-action movie. Fortunately the tide has turned a bit since Bird did that interview, and drawn animation is becoming viable in Hollywood again. That being said, after the spectacular failure of Miller's Spirit, I doubt we'll see another movie based on the property for a generation at least.



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