The Spirit Movie Poster

The Message: Comic book legend Will Eisner's shadowy vigilante acting out of a sense of duty to a personified city? Sounds like Batman's loyalty to Gotham taken to a whole new level. And just look at that fluttering tie!

The Truth: We underestimated just how much of the movie's coolness would hinge on the tie. Not even that billowing trench coat could save it. And you know how much we love trench coats.

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The most outstanding entry on our list (not a compliment), The Spirit is one of the few movies in recent memory that was much, much worse than almost any of the posters used to promote it. And yes, we mean all of the posters.

That in itself is truly baffling feat, and a marketers worst nightmare. There's just no two ways about it: the movie managed to kill every ounce of excitement that the posters were building among audiences who couldn't smell this one a mile away.

Back when Frank Miller's only contribution to the world of black and white was Sin City, also as author to the source material, the idea of him being trusted with Eisner's masked crimefighter seemed promising. And when this first poster was released, we couldn't help but be optimistic. Equal parts Batman and Sin City, the tagline seemed to possess the same tongue-in-cheek mature camp...boy were we wrong.

Regardless of just how bad the movie is, the poster still survives. As long as we tell ourselves it's a tribute to the comic book, not the movie that taught Frank Miller that writing movies and directing them is really hard.

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