FAQ

In a nutshell, the movie is based on four stories that take place in fictional Basin City. Although Basin City is located somewhere in the U.S. Midwest, it is inspired by the not-so-attractive parts of New York City and Los Angeles, although Marv is seen on a bridge resembling the Golden Gate in San Francisco. The stories are told in the same style as the original comic books, i.e., black and white, although the movie adds a lot more splashes of color.

Sin City is based on a series of comic books by American comic artist Frank Miller. The first series appeared in Dark Horse Presents comics, issues 51-62 from April of 1991 to June of 1992, and was called simply Sin City. Sin City (the movie) is followed by Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014).

In the first story, The Customer is Always Right, the Man [Josh Hartnett] fulfills his promise to a customer [Marley Shelton]. In the second story, That Yellow Bastard, Hartigan [Bruce Willis] saves 11-year-old Nancy Callahan [Makenzie Vega] from being raped and murdered by the Yellow Bastard/Roark Jr [Nick Stahl]. Marv [Mickey Rourke] searches for the killer of his beloved Goldie [Jaime King] in the third story, The Hard Goodbye. In story four, The Big Fat Kill, Dwight [Clive Owen] defends Gail [Rosario Dawson] and her girls from dirty cop Jackie Boy [Benicio Del Toro], accidentally killing him and then trying to hide the body. The four stories end with Hartigan meeting up with Nancy [Jessica Alba] and Roark Jr eight years later. In the final scene, the traitorous Becky [Alexis Bledel] sees the Man in an elevator and says goodbye to her Mom.

The stories featured in the movie were filmed out of order from the stories as written. The story that takes place first is "That Yellow Bastard". This is known because in the book we see Dwight at Kadie's bar, when Hartigan enters; Dwight and Ava have just broken up, while in "A Dame To Kill For" (to be included in the second movie), Dwight states that he hasn't seen Ava for 4 years. The second is "The Hard Goodbye", which, again based on the books, takes place during "A Dame To Kill For" (some of the scenes overlap). So this places "The Hard Goodbye" about 4 years after Hartigan's suicide. "The Big Fat Kill" is next: there's a reference to the events of "The Hard Goodbye" by Gail: "Miho's been aching for some exercise, and things have been so quiet after (the events of "The Hard Goodbye"), and before that, Shelly says to Dwight "...before you came back with your new face," which is a reference to "A Dame To Kill For". Logic suggests that it's months after Marv killed the Cardinal (remember, he was in prison for 18 months). "The Customer Is Always Right", the original comic, is only the opening scene of the movie with the Colonel and the Customer. In the Extended & Recut version a second part is added, which shows the Colonel/the Man with Becky in the elevator. The first part is, according to Rodriguez, a few months before the events of "The Hard Goodbye". The latter part is right after "The Big Fat Kill", as Becky has clearly been to the hospital to treat the gunshot wound she received in the end of "The Big Fat Kill".

Miller intended Sin City to be a mere 48-page story. Instead, as Miller himself said, "It got outta hand. It's all Marv's fault, he started bossing me around." The first story ended up being about 200 pages, total, and Sin City got its own magazine, in which the later stories were released. The original Sin City was collected into graphic novel format in 1993 (Sin City book 1) and was later re-titled The Hard Goodbye at the time of the movie's release. This is, in the movie, essentially "Marv's story". Other stories used for the film were:

• The Big Fat Kill, the third Sin City series, originally published from November 1994 to March 1995 in five issues, later collected into graphic novel format in 1995, as the third book. "Dwight's story" in the movie.

• That Yellow Bastard, the fourth series, originally published from February 1996 to July 1996 in six issues, later collected into graphic novel format in 1997 ("Hartigan's story" in the movie).

• "The Customer Is Always Right", the first-ever Sin City short-story, originally published in the issue The Babe Wore Red And Other Stories, in 1994. Can be found in the collection Booze, Broads & Bullets, published in 2000. It is the opening scene of the movie.

The one part of the movie that was not based on a comic was the ending scene of the theatrical release, with the Man and Becky. It's part of "The Customer Is Always Right" on the special edition DVD.

1. The Hard Goodbye: Originally Published as Sin City over issues 51-62 of Dark Horse Presents and the 5th Anniversary Special. Later collected into a graphic novel in 1993, and retitled THG in 2005.

2. A Dame to Kill For: First Sin City story to have it's own book. Originally published over 6 issues. Later collected into a graphic novel.

3. The Babe Wore Red and Other Stories: A one-shot, includes the short stories And Behind Door Number Three..., The Customer is Always Right, and The Babe Wore Red. All stories were later included in Booze, Broads, & Bullets

4. Silent Night: A one-shot, later included in Booze, Broads, & Bullets

5. The Big Fat Kill: Originally published over 5 issues, later collected into a graphic novel.

6. That Yellow Bastard: Originally published over 6 issues, later collected into a graphic novel.

7. Daddy's Little Girl: First published in A Decade of Dark Horse #1, reprinted in Tales to Offend #1, later included in Booze, Broads, & Bullets

8. Lost, Lonely, & Lethal: A one-shot, includes the short stories Fat Man and Little Boy, Blue Eyes and Rats. All stories were later included in Booze, Broads, & Bullets

9. Sex & Violence: A one-shot, includes the short stories Wrong Turn and Wrong Track. Both stories were later later included in Booze, Broads, & Bullets

10. Just Another Saturday Night: Originally published as Sin City #1/2, a Wizard magazine mail away offer. Later republished for the mass market as JASN. Later included in Booze, Broads, & Bullets

11. Family Values: Original Graphic Novel, the only one of the longer stories that was originally published as a book

12. Hell and Back: Originally published over 9 issues. Later collected into a graphic novel.

13. Booze, Broads, & Bullets: Collection of all the previously published one shots and short stories. Actually published after HAB, even though the numbering on the spines of todays novels has BB&B as #6, and HAB as #7. This is because while the HAB series was published before the BB&B book, the collected volume (the book) was published after.

The stories actually read better in their published order, rather than chronological order. This is because the stories often make references to the other stories which were published before them, and wouldn't make sense if you tried to read them in chronological order (For instance, That Yellow Bastard takes place long before A Dame to Kill For, but if you read TYB first, there's a cameo by Dwight where he references Ava which wouldn't make any sense if you hadn't already read ADTKF.) I personally would reccomend reading the ones that you've already seen in the film too, as there's lots of little things that were glossed over in the film which will enhance your experience when reading the novels (like the scene I just referenced), but if you don't want to, that's up to you.

The published order is (1) The Hard Goodbye (re-title) AKA Sin City (original title), (2) A Dame to Kill For, (3) The Big Fat Kill, (4) That Yellow Bastard, (5) Family Values, (6) Booze, Broads, & Bullets, (7) Hell and Back. Booze, Broads, & Bullets is actually a collection of short stories which were originally published throughout the run (between THG and HAB). All of them were printed before HAB though, and if read as as unit, it makes the most sense to read it sixth (If nothing else, you have to read the 3 Blue Eyes stories from BB&B before you read HAB).

At least some editions contain the main title Sin City in the name, for example Sin City: A Dame To Kill For or Sin City Book 2: A Dame To Kill For and so on. The earlier (or original) collected volumes have bigger page-size than the re-prints that came out at the time the movie was released.

The song in the trailer is an instrumental version of the song "Cells" by a UK band called The Servant. The track Nancy is dancing to is "Absurd" by Fluke.

The IMDb lists Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller as principal directors. Quentin Tarantino is credited as a special guest director. Rodriguez and Miller shared the directing duties for the film, but each of them focused on certain parts of the movie. For example, Miller was mostly responsible for directing Devon Aoki, as Miller loves her character Miho very much. Tarantino directed just one scene in the segment "The Big Fat Kill": the one where we see Dwight driving to the Tar Pits and imagining a conversation with the now-dead Jackie-Boy/Jack Rafferty, until the police stop him. He did it to return a favor for Robert Rodriguez, who scored Kill Bill: Vol. 2 for $1.00. Tarantino agreed to direct one scene for the same price. The directing job also gave Tarantino a chance to test shooting in digital (HD), of which Rodriguez is a supporter, when Tarantino is a promoter of shooting on film. The involvement of Tarantino is connected to Rodriguez resigning from the Director's Guild of America (DGA). When the production of the film began, the DGA told Rodriguez that according to their rules, a film can't have more than one director. Rather than complying with their demands and not giving Miller a full director credit (which he thought that Miller would deserve, as he wanted Miller to be on the set directing to ensure that they stayed true to the original), Rodriguez resigned. At that point, he had no reason not to promote Quentin as a "Special Guest Director", which was a jab at the DGA as well as being great for marketing.

Quentin did not have a cameo role in the movie. Some viewers have suggested that the character Weevil, who is sitting next to Marv at Kadie's bar during the segment That Yellow Bastard, is Tarantino, but Weevil is played by Tommy Nix.

Rodriguez said that they had filmed the stories in their entirety to be faithful to the books, and that the scenes missing from the theatrical release would be re-inserted into the movie on the Special Extended & Re-Cut version of the movie. While some scenes were indeed added, totaling just under 8 minutes of actual footage added, some scenes weren't there and are assumed to not ever have been filmed. Several scenes had been altered slightly, with some characters replacing others and changes in dialogue. Among the scenes totally missing were:

The Hard Goodbye: The dialogue between Marv and his mom is cut short.

The Hard Goodbye: There's a hilarious scene in which Marv, after he and Wendy have agreed to go after Goldie's killer, is unable to sleep at night with her in the same room and actually manages to confuse her with Goldie and gets slapped for it. This is a continuation of Marv losing all clarity of thought when Wendy lights him a cigarette in the car as he is again reminded of Goldie.

The Big Fat Kill: Dwight refers to the Battle of the Hot Gates. In the book there's a picture of a Spartan warrior, and the situations are compared. Miller actually wrote the graphic novel 300 about the battle a few years later, which in turn was filmed by Zack Snyder in 2007.

That Yellow Bastard: Hartigan simply looking Nancy Callahan up in the phone book to know where she lives. Unlike the Roarks, he knew her real name. This caused some confusion, as some people wondered how was he able to find her.

That Yellow Bastard: When Hartigan is being "interrogated" by Liebowitzs, he hallucinates jumping from the chair, breaking his handcuffs and hitting Liebowitzs in the head, causing a mushroom cloud-explosion ("(I have) the power of God"). Miller admitted stealing the idea for the mushroom cloud-explosion punch from a Mad Magazine story called "Superduperman". The scene ends with Hartigan realizing he's still in the chair and that it was just his mind playing tricks. It can be speculated that the scene was removed because of its similarity to the scene of Dwight imagining the dead Jack Rafferty talking to him in the car (the scene directed by Tarantino), but no official explanation has been given. Also, the scene in the book where Hartigan's wife talks to him when he is in the hospital was cut from the movie.

First of all, the main difference is that on the latter version the stories are to be viewed separately. Although it was advertised to be about 20 minutes longer, the truth is that there is about 7 minutes of actual added footage; the rest is because all the stories now have credits at the end, which makes up for another 13 minutes total.

Beyond the extended cut of the film, there are plenty of reasons to get the extended cut package.

According to the back of the package, included with the "Extended, Recut, Unrated" version are:

• Original theatrical release:

There are three alternate audio tracks that go with the theatrical version: Rodriguez & Miller commentary; Rodriguez and Tarantino Commentary (with Bruce Willis popping in at the end); audience reaction track, recorded at the premiere in Austin, TX.

• 15-Minute Flick School:

Every special edition of a Rodriguez movie has a film school feature that talks about some of the details of how the movie was made that would have been impossible to cover in a commentary.

• The Long Take:

14 minutes of footage taken of Dwight and Jackie-Boy in the car as directed by Tarantino. Part of the point of this—some of which was used in the final version of the film—is to show how much flexibility is afforded by using digital technology. You can simply keep the camera rolling and have the actors work their way through the scene, including extra input from the director.

• Sin City Live:

Shot at a party for the filmmakers, cast, and crew. Features Rodriguez performing with his band.

• 10-Minute Cooking School:

Rodriguez loves to cook, and this is his second mini-doc on how to prepare food-in this case, Sin City Breakfast Tacos. Fun to watch...but I haven't tried to make the food.

• High-Speed Green Screen Version:

All the raw footage from the film, condensed into about a 12-minute running time. A piece for the curious who want to know what the whole thing looked like when it was being shot.

• Sin-Chroni-City Interactive Game:

Really more of a database than a game—breaks the events of the story into their correct timeline and lets you see how characters, locations, etc. all connect to each other. It's not included in some R2 editions, if in any.

• Various mini-docs on the cars, costumes, makeup, props, and directors.

The DVD edition of the Extended & Recut version also included a trade paperback copy of The Hard Goodbye, which was reduced in size to fit inside the box set. The copy of the graphic novel was not included in the Blu-ray version, which contains all of the video features in the DVD version.

The opening where the Man kills the girl in the red dress is a standalone short story called "The Customer is Always Right". It has nothing to do with any of the other stories, and is complete as you see it on screen. The idea is that Hartnett is a hitman, and the woman paid to have herself killed (hence the line "I'll never know what she was running from. I'll cash her check in the morning"). Miller explains this on the DVD commentary. Further, Miller expands that he told Marley Shelton, the actress who plays the Customer, that the point was the she got involved with a man who turned out to be a professional criminal. When she tried to break up with him, he promised her a horrible death. Rather then facing that, she hired the Man to kill her, but to do it as gently as possible. Hence the line "I didn't come here for the party. I came here for you," at which point the Customer realizes he's the hitman. Whether this was what Miller actually had in mind when he drew the story or something he came up when asked for an explanation is open to speculation. In any case, that explanation is not necessary for understanding of the scene. You see what you are meant to see, and you are meant to draw your own conclusions. This scene was actually shot as a "test shoot" that Rodriguez organized so that he could prove to Miller that Sin City could be done "right." It was later shown to the other actors in order entice them into signing onto the project. It was shot months before the film went into full production. As an opening to the film, it serves as an introduction to the passion and violence of Sin City, and it also serves to introduce Josh Hartnett's character as a hitman. Additionally, Miller has confirmed that, in the comics, the assassin is in fact the Colonel (issue "Sex & Violence", BLAM! section, page 29), who is featured in the "Blue-Eyes"—short stories and Sin City Book 7: Hell And Back. Whether the characters are one and the same in the movies remains to be seen, as some shorts that are to be filmed for the second movie feature the Colonel.

Basically, Dwight is exactly what he says he is, a murderer with a new face. The story of "Dwight's new face" is told in the graphic novel A Dame To Kill For, the second novel in the series. The Big Fat Kill, the Dwight story in the film, is the third novel in the series, and takes place after ADTKF. The spoiler-free version is: Dwight is wanted for murder and has had major facial surgery done to him. ADTKF is the key story in the second Sin City movie.

No. In the books, Miho [Devon Aoki] is referred to as an assassin, (for example, in The Big Fat Kill: "...with a whore and her assassin pal,") but never as a prostitute. According to some sources, Miho means "beautiful guardian." She is a friend and a protector of the Old Town Girls, but not their colleague.

There are two swastikas in the movie.

One swastika is a shuriken held by Miho. Miho is Asiatic and thus not likely to have a Nazi affiliation much less a Neo-Nazi affiliation; since the Nazi Party was disbanded (in Nazi Germany's defeat), and she is decidedly not "Aryan" (Germanic/Finnish/Scandinavian), a primary criterion for "Nazi" membership. (There was the designation "honorary Aryan" for other people, given the Axis powers' relationship: Germany's Tripartite Pact with "non-Aryan" nations Italy and Japan, and their affiliations with various other nations spanning Eurasia.) The swastika (or manji) has a long history in South Asian culture (Indus Valley Civilization) as a symbol of peace and good luck (long before it was co-opted by the Nazis), and there have indeed been actual shuriken designed in its image. It is far more likely that Miho's shuriken was representative of the South Asian culture than that of the Nazi Party, even though collaboration between India's short-lived Azad Hind and the Nazis may present slight obfuscation of the matter.

The other swastika is tattooed on the forehead of Stuka, a bald gang member, and it's a Nazi-style swastika. He can be assumed to be a Nazi (rather a Neo-Nazi), or at least someone who pretends to be one in order to look tough (since he seems to have no issues with taking orders from Manute, a black man). Also his name, Stuka, is taken from the name of a German dive bomber used by the Luftwaffe in the second World War. While this swastika (characterized by sharp corners and being rotated 45°) does imply Nazism, there is no glorification of said system in the movie. Stuka is clearly a bad guy, and he meets his end with an arrow through the skull—which actually goes directly through the swastika. This arrow is courtesy of Miho, not so coincidentally. If one is into symbolism, the act could even be seen as a form of taking back the symbol from those who have perverted its meaning.

The swastika appears several times in Frank Miller's original works. In his 4-part graphic novel, Give Me Liberty, its hero, Martha Washington, does battle with a group of homosexual Nazi men who use the swastika as their emblem. It also appears in The Dark Knight Returns as an emblem covering the breasts of a female gang member with whom Batman does battle. The shuriken that Miho uses appears in The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Miller's sequel to his largely successful 1986 graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns.

Nancy isn't actually a stripper, not literally, as she doesn't strip. She dances topless or almost completely nude, though. Jessica Alba, on the other hand, has a no-nudity clause in her contract. She signed on for the role, apparently without realizing she would have to be topless/nude. Whether this is true or not, a fact is that at some point when the issue came up, Miller and Rodriguez agreed with her decision not to do nude scenes and she kept/got the role. This caused some pretty heated discussion on IMDb, mainly for three reasons:

1. Some people argued that Nancy should have been nude and if Alba refused, another actress should have been cast. They felt that character was changed too much and that turning her into an "exotic dancer" was a bad decision.

2. According to some, Nancy not being nude totally changed the dynamics of a scene, which had a big impact on the story. The scene in question is the one where Hartigan walks into Kadie's after being released from prison. Nancy Callahan has been the only thing that has kept him going for the last eight years (as he says himself), and he considers her his daughter. Truth is, he really doesn't know much about her. He doesn't think Nancy Callahan would have anything to do with a bar like Kadie's. Yet as he walks in he sees:

• Nancy, his "daughter" and reason to live, almost completely nude and being drooled on by a bunch of alcoholics and dregs, performing a dance act (book).

• Nancy, his "daughter" and reason to live, clothed so that she's showing some skin but is pretty decent, being watched by a bunch of a alcoholics and dregs, performing a dance act (movie).

Some people argued that there's a huge difference in what kind of impact it would have on Hartigan and that the book-version was much stronger.

3. As IMDb user DesiredFX wrote: Nancy's performances in the comics effectively "stop time." Miller indulges himself with several full-page spreads of her act because the intent is that all eyes are supposed to be on her, and everyone watching drops everything else while she performs. It has been argued whether Alba's performance managed to live up to that or not. Many feel that she should have done a whole lot better, nude or not. Then again, Alba's performance was voted as the "sexiest of the year" on MTV.

Sin City can be argued as a reference to the original film noir genre of the 1940s, where the black & white film was used in combination of extreme degrees of contrast, showing an overall light-shadow relationship. In film noir, that photography technique was meant to show absolute values, such as good versus evil, or truth against lies. The look of the films is meant to mirror the look of the comics. Note how often in the original comic book as well the movie adaptation, a character is depicted as an absolute shadow, then again almost as a light source. The comics were straight up black and white (no shades of gray) with some spot coloring to highlight certain objects, concept never used in original film noir features.

In the comics, there was never any red blood. Blood was either black or white. It was white when it appeared on a black surface (like clothing), and black when it appeared on a white surface (like a face). This was simply for contrast, so that you could see it. The movie attempted to mirror this look. However, when they tried to do black blood, they felt that it came out looking a little too much like mud. So in instances where the blood should have been black, it was turned red. Thus, in the movie, blood is red when it appears on a light surface (like a face) and white when it appears on a dark surface (like clothing).

However, there are two or three instances in the movie where the blood does remain black (for instance, when Shellie is bleeding from the nose). It's not clear if the filmmakers just thought that the black blood looked fine in those instances, if they were just overlooked, or if there was some other reason that prevented them from using red blood.

Regular movie blood couldn't provide the stark look the crew wanted so they had to use fluorescent red liquid and bathe it in black light. In post-production, the liquid was turned white.

In other parts of the movie, color was sometimes used:

• to highlight an object, for example the "Basin City" sign changes between the stories to hint that some time has passed in between. Also, color was used to differentiate between Goldie and her twin sister, Wendy (Goldie had golden hair, whilst Wendy's hair stayed within the black-and-white spectrum).

• because the black-and-white version of the object didn't look good, for example the light blue of Jack Rafferty's car was left in color because it turned a really dull shade of grey in B&W,

Kadie's bar is in color because it was an actual set as opposed to the green screen studio and hence could not be lit with the same amount of freedom, resulting in a different look in the movie, color or not, so it made more sense to leave it in (washed-up) color.

But there is absolutely no symbolism to the specific color used.

Of the comics that were adapted to the screen for this movie, the only item that originally appeared in color in the comics is the Yellow Bastard, who was indeed colored Yellow (for obvious reasons) in the comics. The meaning of this single special case has never been addressed by Frank Miller.

Black-colored blood was also an image that was used heavily in Miller's other series Hard Boiled.