Spawn

There was a time when comic books were not celebrated. When only the disenfranchised cared or knew about them instead of the mainstream. And in those ancient times — let's call them 1992 — no news was bigger than when Marvel's biggest creators left en masse to form Image Comics. At the time, these artists were derided as style over substance. Many of them weren't known for hitting their deadlines. Or even how to draw feet properly. But one of them — Todd McFarlane — took the opportunities that his new home presented and made the most of them, creating his signature character: Spawn.

Spawn is everything that McFarlane loved to draw: a muscular hero covered in spandex, chains and a cape that seems to be way longer than it should be. It was an instant hit, giving birth to a toyline, an HBO animated series (which still holds up) and finally, this movie.

Al Simmons (Michael Jai White, playing one of the first African-American superhero to be a movie lead, as this movie and Shaw's Steel came out at the same time) is a black ops soldier assigned to a mission to investigate a North Korean biochemical weapons site. But he's been set up by his boss, Jason Wynn (Martin Sheen) and is killed by Jessica Priest, Wynn's new top assassin. After being set on fire, he winds up in Hell, where Malebolgia offers him a deal. If Simmons will lead his armies to Heaven's gate, he can see his true love, Wanda, one more time.

You know how those deals with demons work. They're rarely fair. When he returns to Earth, Simmons learns that Wanda is now married to his best friend Terry(D.B. Sweeney, Fire in the Sky, The Cutting Edge), who is raising his daughter, Cyan.

Malebolgia sends one of his demons, Violator (John Leguizamo), to mentor Simmons. But there's also Cogliostro (Nicol Williamson, The Exorcist III), who also sold his soul to become a Hellspawn but who has found his way to Heaven.

Meanwhile, Simmons becomes Spawn and attacks Wynn, now a powerful arms dealer. He easily defeats his killer, Jessica, and escapes an attack by an army of mercenaries thanks to his new powers.

Violator — who either appears as a clown or an Alien-esque demon — gets Wynn to add a device to his heart that will release Heat 16, a biochemical superweapon, if he dies. Malebolgia wants Simmons to kill Wynn and start the end of the world. But Violator has his own agenda and nearly kills our hero before Cagliostro saves him. As he learns how to use his powers just as he also learns that Wynn plans on killing everyone he loves.

What follows is a battle on our earth and in Hell, where Spawn denies his contract with the Devil, bests Violator and returns to our reality, ready for the sequel which never came.

Spawn is very of its time, a film packed with early CGI (nearly half of its effects were unfinished until two weeks before it was released) and a soundtrack that mixes techno with hard rock and metal (the Atari Teenage Riot/Slayer mashup "No Remorse" is a highlight). It's a decent enough film but is a sanitized version of the chaos inside every panel of the Spawn comic. It just feels like something is missing. There's no real heart in the film, nor any real threat to our hero.

After years of talk of a sequel, McFarlane announced a new Spawn adaptation in 2015, with the goal of the creator writing the script and directing. In July of this year, it was confirmed that this was true, with the film being produced by Blumhouse. Here's hoping for something great.

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I remember seeing this film as a kid, and i remember it being pretty bad-ass. Joining IMDb, and seeing it at a 4.9, I was astonished. But having been over twelve years, I decided to go out and buy the Director's cut. Just to be blunt, it's nowhere near worthy of the rating it's at. But, there is quite a bit of wasted potentiality. I'll start off with the good, which really there is a lot of if you think about it. First off, if you're really into action, look no further because this film sports a nice amount of it. And the basic premise is pretty interesting, but even the director's cut clocks in at under an hour and forty minutes , so it fails to dive any deeper than it certainly could've. The cinematography is by Guillermo Navarro, who many of you probably know from his work with director Guillermo del Toro ( "Blade 2", the "Hellboy" series, "Pan's Labyrinth", etc.), and he does a bang up job. With the right direction this could have been a masterpiece by all means. Mark A.Z. Dippé knew and carried out the bare minimum of film making, and if you look into it is busy now-a-days with animated Garfield productions. What a down grade, huh? About 90% of the visuals are pretty damn good actually, and the acting as it is is all right. For these things alone, I enjoyed this movie, where as I despised "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" for its predictable generic storyline and overly done flashy effects. Michael Jai White was far from terrible and John Leguizamo was pretty terrific if not a bit cartoony at times.

The bad points really hit this film hard. The pacing, attuned to its short run time, zooms by way too quickly with annoying video game like transitions and a score that didn't fit the film too well. Every time I was expecting more to be developed, I was let down. "Oh, this is a cool plot line-wait, what, we're moving on already? oh..okay..". And lastly, amongst 90% of the great CGI and make-up, the battle in hell is painstakingly terrible. They should've gone with an elaborate set and CGI here and there, but it becomes hopeless so you have to sit threw what you would call a lackluster climax.

But for what it is, I highly recommended this movie for its dark humor and awesome action.

I loved the comic book back in the day, and I was with it from the early beginning. So when there was news about a feature movie based on Spawn was in the works, it was naturally thrilling news. And furthermore, with New Line Cinema involved, it could be nothing but good. Right? Well, while "Spawn" certainly has its moments, it is not without its flaws. And believe you me, the flaws in this movie were monumental.

There is a good amount of action throughout the movie, which is essentially the movie's strongest side. Well, that and the fact that it is based on a very popular comic book franchise. The storyline in the 1997 "Spawn" movie wasn't particularly thrilling, and it was essentially just to bring in new fans to the franchise. Especially since most of what was brought to life on the screen had already been covered in the comic books.

Malbolgia was rather poorly animated and why didn't his mouth move as he spoke? Furthermore, why did he sound like Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget whenever he was speaking? It just didn't really add up to anything worthwhile.

As for fan service, then it was nice to see Angela make a cameo appearance but why didn't she intefere at the galla? Saving her for a later movie perhaps? But I still think that it would have been so much better to have her in the movie more than just a few seconds long cameo.

While we are on cameos; it was also a nice cameo by Todd McFarlane when he showed up and came face to face with his own creation - literally.

John Leguizamo was a good choice to play The Violator, because his rugged voice, wits and charms really transcended well into the character. The cast in "Spawn" was quite good, and there was some good names on the cast list.

"Spawn" does have some pretty good CGI effects. Well, except for the billowing cape which was just out of tune with everything else. Sure, I know it was supposed to be a huge cape, but it just looked so poorly animated. And when Clown was entertaining Cyan, where his eyes and tongue came out of the head, then I was actually ready to turn off the movie. That whole thing just added a very unnecessary layer of stupidity to the movie.

Certain parts of the movie did not correspond with the comic book. Especially the thing with Terry being a white guy.

The practical effects, such as Spawn's skin, was quite good. And the special effects team really brought a lot of life to the characters and the environment.

"Spawn" didn't really do justice to the comic book, but it still was an entertaining movie for what it turned out to be. Just take it as a separate entity away from the comic book and you'll be fine.

This is also the type of movie that you can watch every now and again, and I think I had now seen it four or five times since it was released back in 1997, although years pass in between every viewing.

This is a tough movie to vote. I personally liked it more than not, but only because I have always been fascinated with comic book super heroes, but that's it, Other than that, and some occasionally very well done special effects, this movie pretty much sucked. The parts where Hell or whatever that ridiculous place is supposed to be are done so poorly I won't even bother loosing words about it. The acting isn't as bad as some claim (well, what exactly can you expect from Martin Sheen anyway)and Theresa Randle is gorgeous as ever. The atmosphere of the movie is very, very dark and morbid, so I would recommend this movie to comic-hero fans ONLY!

This film is just like the comic that inspired it: Great visuals (I still really like McFarlane's superhero art style), but much like the majority of "Spawn" stories, it really doesn't go anywhere. The set looks good, the characters look good, the cape looks REALLY good, but the story? Other than telling the origin and the standard "must stop the bad guy" motive, it doesn't do as much as it should. And yes, I know it's a Hell-based movie, but the metal soundtrack just got distracting and annoying, instead of enhancing the story like it should have. John Williams or Danny Elfman it wasn't.

Need to see the film? It's a great visual ride. Just don't expect much more than that. It did make for some cool toys, though.