The Spirit: The Movie Visual Companion book explains that in the movie we see in a flashback origin sequence that he was Denny Colt, orphaned at a young age and was very poor. He had a first love who left him and she turned to crime. All he wanted to do in his life was to be a cop. He went to collage to become a cop, became a cop and early on he got shot in the back and killed, and he never knows who his killers were, when his body came into the morgue, the Octopus was there at the morgue as a coroner and he was working on this kind of serum. He secretly tried it on Denny Colt and he came back to life but was in suspended animation, and since everyone assumes he's dead, he is buried alive in Wildwood Cemetery. Colt awakens and he has to claw his way out of his grave. He decides to make the mausoleum at Wildwood Cemetery his new home with a floor full of roaming stray cats that he decides to take care of and becomes a vigilante detective called the Spirit. The Spirit and Commissioner Dolan have an agreement. "He's a guy trying to protect his city, so Denny Colt's buried alive moment when you see him clawing out of that grave he's not just trying to save himself - he knows he has more to do," producer F.J. DeSantio explains. "Denny Colt had a life that made sense. He was a cop, he was going to marry Ellen Dolan, maybe even be police commissioner someday. Who knows? But he was murdered...and buried. And now he's back as The Spirit," Frank Miller explains. The Spirit only knows that he somehow came back from the dead. "Why am I alive? Nobody really knows that anyway. You give a voice to what's essentially people's ultimate fears and questions about life, that's very relatable and understandable. It's about that one person alone in the dark of the movie theater. To say, 'I get that, I'm scared of dying too,'" producer Deborah Del Prete said.
He has abilities. Frank Miller explains, Hes not a superhero. He cant fly, he cant throw cars around. But he can take ridiculous amounts of punishment, and heal faster than anybody. He also has acrobatic ability and female attraction (The old Eisner comics were loaded with romance, beautiful and dangerous women, and pheromones was a way to explain the sparks flying between the Spirit and every woman he meets, Frank Miller explained). The Spirit's abilities in the movie have their roots in the old Spirit comics. The ability to take intense physical punishment and recover, acrobatic ability and the female attraction.
