Forget about the central dramatic conflict in this 2009 release--from the stunning footage that was screened today, it's all about Will Eisner vs. Frank Miller.  And although this is a wild generalization based upon scant evidence, visually the movie looks about 60% Eisner and 40% Miller.  But this is not a bad thing, not at all.  The audience is the real winner here because the nice part about this particular stylistic "battle" is that, while you can clearly pick out the elements that belong to each artist, the two sensibilities work beautifully together.

We get the bold, deep blacks that drive the compositions à la Sin City, both the movie and the comic.  But we also get the wonderful fluidity of movement and unexpected delicacy of Eisner.  For me, the cinematic work to date that comes closest to evoking Eisner's genius has been that of Orson Welles, and only then in brief glimpses.  I'm thinking of the trial scene in Lady from Shanghai (particularly the sped-up section when Welles breaks free of his captors) and of certain shots in Touch of Evil in which one feels the lurid color of neon even in a black-and-white movie.  Yet such similarities are the products of chance and more likely represent my longing to see Eisner's vision transported to the big screen even if by accident.

But the success of the teaser's "distillation" (Miller's word) of The Spirit, which is now in post-production, is clearly no happy accident.  The friendship between the two men, and the huge admiration the younger always had for the elder--topics touched upon by Miller prior to the screening--point to the care, both artistic and technical, that has been taken to do justice to Eisner's work. 
 
The teaser features our mostly-silhouetted title character answering the call of duty (literally), then springing into action against the backdrop of an ultra-noir Central City.  He speaks in monosyllables when on the phone, and in Romantic aphorisms when off it (i.e., the voice-over's "The city screams...", from the tagline).  Color-wise what's most striking is the black-and-white-with-red-accent motif, a combination apparent in the movie posters and which was also echoed in the panelists' clothing.  The Spirit runs across rooftops, but he is obviously no Daredevil.  As in the comic, one gets the feeling that he just barely pulls off some of the stuff he tries but he hardly seems to care, perhaps since he already "died" once.  That sense of just getting along by the seat of his pants, while never overdone by Eisner, was one of the strip's most endearing features.  And again, Miller seems well aware of the source material's strengths, since he went out of his way in his remarks to comment on this same aspect of Eisner's work.  And the wonderful swirling mist and smoke that Eisner would use to produce such lyricism is also faithfully brought to the screen by Miller, who consequently uses a fourth major color, gray, to masterful effect.

Interestingly, Eva Mendes, who was present for the Q&A, did not really appear to be featured in the teaser.  And the other stars, Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johansen, were not evidenced at all.

One last thing to note:  the teaser also benefitted from a score appropriated from Morricone's music for The Untouchables.  One can only hope that the movie's actual score will be equally well-suited to Miller's inspired visuals.