Alternative Character Interpretation: There's some ambiguity about whether Becky sets up Jackie Boy to be killed specifically to engineer the mob's attempt to blackmail Old Town, merely takes advantage of it afterward, or is coerced into helping the mob take advantage of it.
Catharsis Factor: The villains in this series are such scum that their deaths are well-deserved, but Hartigan's revenge on Junior is so satisfying.
Complete Monster ("That Yellow Bastard"): Ethan Roark Jr. is the son of a crooked Senator with the appearance of a handsome, young playboy. Really a sadistic pedophile, Jr. moonlights as a rapist and killer of preteen girls, particularly enjoying their screams as he attacks them. His crimes covered up by Roark Sr., he is eventually caught by heroic cop John Hartigan as he abducts the young Nancy Callahan, Hartigan crippling and castrating him before he can attack the girl. His father having Hartigan imprisoned for revenge, Jr. kidnaps the adult Nancy and prepares to torture, rape, and kill her, boasting to Hartigan of the many—possibly dozens—of victims he took while the latter was incarcerated.
Crazy Is Cool: Marv's got this in the bag. No matter how dangerous his opponent, he'll go in and come out of every fight with a smile on his face.
Surprisingly, some fans seems to forget that Senator Roark deliberately framed Hartigan for Roark Junior's crimes purely out of spite, not any kind of fatherly love, or that he hates Junior, but wants a legacy. He even handicaps then murders his illegitimate son for beating him at poker in the sequel story.
Kevin is a sadistic, cannibalistic Serial Killer who only felt remorse for his horrific crimes once in the past. Still, some fans consider him to be a misguided figure who could have been a good guy under different circumstances. It helps that he's Marv's equal in a fight and is played by Elijah Wood in the film.
Miho, the silent but deadly ninja who protects Old Town, is an immensely well-liked secondary character.
Despite being The Mole, Becky has her fanbase for being a somewhat complex and sympathetic character with an interesting The Fake Cutie appearance in both the comic and the film.
Marv's Made of Iron durability has some fans believe that he survives being electrocuted, especially in the movie timeline, due to an Adaptation Induced Plothole that has him alive in a story that apparently takes place after The Hard Goodybe.
Not everyone who watched the movie is convinced that the Salesman really does kill Becky. While her fate in the comics, under different circumstances seems more explicit, she isn't shown falling from her bullet wound and also might have survived at least a little longer, like her film counterpart.
Hilarious in Hindsight: In "Just Another Saturday Night" Marv believes one of the assholes he's chasing called him "Bernie Boy" (he called him "Bernini boy" after the brand of coat Marv was wearing). At the time the comic and film were released (1997 and 2014 respectively) this was a nonsense phrase and would be as meaningless to the viewer as it would be to Marv. However, in 2015-2016 Senator Bernie Sanders' Presidential campaign bid gave rise to the term "Bernie Bro" to describe his popularity among young millennial males, particularly those from a WASP background.
Marv is a brutal and somewhat Politically Incorrect Hero, but he does have a sense of loyalty and decency. His frightening appearance ensures that not even prostitutes will give him the time of day. Some of the people he most cares about are brutally murdered. And then he's made The Scapegoat in a way that involves his mother being threatened.
While Becky can be self-righteous and does betray her (sympathetic) friends in Old Town to ruthless gangsters, it generally isn't viewed as her crossing the Moral Event Horizon. Fans sometimes sympathize with her motivations of wanting a life outside of the sex trade, and feel that she was right to worry that the mob might have been able to kill her mother despite Gail's offer to protect her. It helps that she does seem somewhat remorseful while talking to a captured Gail. Having a chunk of her skin bitten out by a vengeful Gail and being abused and threatened by the mob also makes Becky somewhat pitiable.
Love to Hate: Nick Stahl as The Yellow Bastard makes for an entertainingly monstrous villain in a cast of already morally ambiguous characters, only unlike the rest he has zero redeeming qualities! So it’s no surprise that his death and mutilation at Hartigan's hands is so perversely satisfying something the film couldn’t have had without him in the first place! Junior can be described as many things but boring ain’t one of them.
One True Pairing: Dwight-Shellie in a downplayed fashion. Dwight-Gail has a lot of fans as well, but Dwight-Shellie is felt to be a more stable relationship and has gained some traction since the premature death of Shellie's film actress Brittany Murphy.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Becky's role as an Old Town girl who feels some shame about being a prostitute, and who Gail shows some maternal concern for, could have made her an interesting recurring character. Instead, she's made The Mole for the mob when that isn't absolutely necessary for the storyline.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The Roarks' ancestors being the pimps of the founders of Old Town could have had some interesting dynamics (like an It's Personal vibe on one side or the other when Cardinal Roark starts killing prostitutes, or Senator Roark having Wallenquist's role in The Big Fat Kill). Instead, this is just a minor bit of Back Story with no real significance.
The Woobie: Nancy Callahan is by far the nicest character but is almost raped and later tortured by Ethan Roark, Jr. She also develops a Single-Target Sexuality for John Hartigan, but, due to first meeting her as a little girl, he finds the idea of a relationship with her too creepy, and kills himself meaning she will never have her desires fulfilled. Then the sequel portrays her as a depressed alcholic.
Herr Wallenquist's irritation with Ava Lord's attempted flirtations can be read a number of ways. Perhaps he wants their relationship to be strictly professional, but his line "I have no use for your charms" could imply that he's either gay or asexual. Or perhaps it's some combination of both motives.
Awesome Art: While the quality of the art itself is pretty contentious, it's a fairly unanimous agreement that Frank Miller's work with negative space is at its peak strength here, creating a memorable visual style that shows why, for all his faults, Miller is considered the pro he is in the medium.
Complete Monster: The Colonel, also known as The Salesman, is one of the top enforcers in Herr Wallenquist's Basin City Mob. He runs and partakes in a clandestine division of contract killers, also recruiting and corrupting new trainees into killing machines, inducing one of them to murder the only man she ever loved before assigning her the codename "Blue Eyes". The Colonel's largest operation is the "Human Resources" division, a massive kidnapping, brainwashing, organ harvesting and sexual slavery operation. He brutally kills off one of his henchmen and murders his male lover on the off chance that the hero Wallace might track the minion down. When the loyalty of Lt. Leibowitz might falter, the Colonel threatens to have his entire family killed and orders his teenage son's arm to be broken as a warning. The Colonel is a sociopath who displays no character traits other than hinting at a wish to direct the bodies of the people around him, to see their "full potential" realized.
Franchise Original Sin: Some of the most negative traits of Frank Miller's later work (the oversexualization of women, the repetitive, choppy phrasing, the sketchy artwork) can be found in this series. However, it mostly works here because of the dark, noir-esque tone. It's when these traits migrated into other genres that Miller's weaknesses became ever more apparent.
Hard-to-Adapt Work: Frank Miller actually made the series with the intention of making it impossible to adapt to film, since he'd had bad experiences working in film previously. Robert Rodriguez eventually proved it could be done.
In The Big Fat Kill, Dwight makes comparisons to the Battle of The Battle of Thermopylae, which would form the basis of Frank Miller's 300. Leonidas also appears as a hallucination in Hell & Back.
In The Big Fat Kill, Dwight compares chaos to a Star Wars dogfight. Benicio del Toro, who played Jackie-Boy in the film, would later appear in The Last Jedi, while Rosario Dawson, who played Gail, would later play the live action version of Ahsoka Tano in the Disney Plus series.
I Am Not Shazam: The Yellow Bastard is the character's name in Fanon, as well as the title of the story in which he appears, and is used by Frank Miller himself but as far as Canon goes, he is simply Junior Roark.
" An old man dies. A young woman lives. Fair trade. (BLAM)
Eleven year old Nancy: "Still alive and still a virgin. All thanks to you."
Marv: I got 'em good for you, didn't I, Goldie?
Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: These stories are DARK, dark enough that it's hard to care for anyone or be shocked by the obscene body count.
The movie:
Awesome Music: The usage of Cells in the trailer and closing credits is so memorable that it's often called the "Sin City Theme" even though it's not the theme and predates the movie.
Can't Un-Hear It: The whole damn cast. In particular, Mickey Rourke has the kind of voice that's perfect for a character like Marv. In fact, he got the part after one meeting with Frank Miller, who recalled:
I was only able to note one thig - Jesus Christ, he is Marv.
Gratuitous Special Effects: The movie is an action/crime-noir film, the likes of which, are typically done with few special effects. This movie broke new ground in Green Screen.
Visual Effects of Awesome: The movie's use of green screen allowed for gorgeous visuals throughout, both in the obvious ways (the environments and spot coloring) and the less obvious ways (Mickey Rourke has a fight scene with Elijah Wood, despite Wood not even having been cast when Rourke was shooting). Also, the green screen not only made production go by very smoothly but each actor was able to be lit individually without worrying about lighting the backgrounds which was the only way to get the Sin City look.
Best Known for the Fanservice: Three words—Eva Green naked. Even before the movie came out, roughly 50% of the film's publicity stemmed from the controversy of the Ava Lord poster having Eva in a very see-through linen dress/robe. No Such Thing as Bad Publicity, indeed, especially after the infamous use of the more reserved Jessica Alba playing a stripper that never actually gets naked.
Complete Monster: Ava Lord, despite her innocent act, is a ruthless Femme Fatale who acknowledges herself as truly evil. Ava enjoys seducing men, toying with them, destroying everyone around them, and finally arranging their deaths. Doing this to dozens, it has led her right-hand man Manute to see her as a dark goddess. Arranging her husband's death at the hands of Dwight McCarthy, Ava proceeds to seduce and destroy an honest policeman, Mort, to protect herself. When that fails, Ava happily tries to kill Manute to convince Dwight to be a monster like her.
Just Here for Godzilla: Some viewers are more interested in the two original segments of the anthology than the ones adapted from Miller's stories. "Long Bad Night" is well-liked for its interesting storyline and the excellent performance of Joseph Gordon-Levitt. "Nancy's Last Dance" is a big draw due to the Karma Houdini Warranty of the reviled Senator Roark.
Roark honors the memory of his dead son by keeping photos of him around his study...and all the photos depict him in his deformed yellow state.
Clive Owen was unable to return to play Dwight post-reconstructive surgery, so it's Josh Brolin wearing an unconvincing wig. No wonder Manute spots him easily.
