Spawn (1997)
Last Watch Date - January 7, 2025
Total Times Watched - Hmmm, at least 3
Comments
When this movie came out, I was pretty young and super psyched for it. Really good special effects for movies were a newer thing of that time and this movie promised to be a special effects magic show. Maybe they should've promised a better story and execution. And maybe they shouldn't have promised so much on special effects...
I was never a big comics person of any variety. I was into more of like Garfield, Mother Goose & Grimm, and to a lesser extent old Batman. There was a time when I was into the X-Men around the time of the animated series in the early 90s, but that was a pretty small amount of time. I never knew anything about Spawn until this movie's hype started. At that point, Spawn was everywhere. My most clear memories around Spawn in general were more around the action figures they were producing for it. Prior to the McFarlane toys lines, action figures were pretty rudimentary and clunky. Once the McFarlane versions started coming out, you saw incredible detail and it became less of a toy, more of a collector's item.
I wish he had put as much time and care into some of the other IP that came out. This movie and the Playstation game in particular could've really used some more attention. I'll forget about the PSX game for now, but man was that a waste of money. The movie had so much promise to be the coolest super hero movie ever. Thematically, Spawn is so much different than others even if the general beats of the story are the same as so many others. He's going to lead hell's army!? His armor is from his skin!? He has a weird fat clown sidekick who is constantly making fun of him??
Speaking of the Violator, John Leguizamo is really good in this movie. He brings the clown to life like I'm not sure anyone else really could. He's creepy and funny in all the right doses. The makeup for the clown is really quite good, and for the most part the computerized version of Violator looks GREAT (at least in the street fight scene). Did they blow all of their budget on that?
Spawn himself is kind of a whiny little bitch and it's hard to really like him because of that. I find myself in this position with many super hero types who follow a similar back story as him. I'm sure it's difficult to be told you died 5 years ago and now everyone has moved on without you, but what do you want them to do? 5 years is a long time to sit and pine for someone. Just ask Helen Hunt from Castaway.
I wish we got more fighting with Spawn and not as much talking. There's really a lot of dialogue in this movie with some paper thin villainry. Martin Sheen even does the stereotypical villain laugh after speaking sometimes. They don't even try to make it good. On top of that, he's possibly the worst villain ever. He isn't really doing much of anything. For whatever reason, they need Spawn to kill him to cause an apocalyptic set of events worldwide? Why not just have Wynn do it now? What's the point of waiting? Why does Spawn need to do it? And why are there so many rules on how Violator can deal with people?! I'm sure some of this is explained in the comics somewhere, but in this movie, there's nothing.
Ultimately what this movie promises is to be a special effects bonanza and because of that, I have to knock a billion points off for the Hell scenes. What in the everloving hog is going on down there? Malebolgia looks like some sort of early 90s computer CG creation. He doesn't even move his mouth when he talks. The flames behind him look more like a dense pasta than flames. And all the little hellspawns look like tiny clunky toys. It's actually so bad that you'll laugh at it and I'm pretty sure that was not their intention. I read that they had to ship some of the production over to another company to finish the movie up quickly and I can only assume this company was like "yeah we can totally do that" while having never touched a computer or art of any form before.
Recommended?
Having said all that, I DO recommend this movie. It's as stupid as it is fun. John Leguizamo makes it worth the price of admission alone (which btw is $0 if you have a way to watch Tubi right now, although it's cut a bit to make it less "adult").
