Spawn, 1997.
Directed by Mark A.Z. Dippé.
Starring Michael Jai White, John Leguizamo, Martin Sheen, Theresa Randle, Melinda Clarke, Miko Hughes, Nicol Williamson, and D.B. Sweeney.
SYNOPSIS:
A CIA mercenary is double-crossed and killed, returning to Earth as a soldier for the Devil.
It may come as a shock to some but there was a period in the late 1990s when superhero movies weren’t the guaranteed money maker they are these days. You can place a lot of that blame on Joel Schumacher for his campy take on Batman that came after Tim Burton had successfully taken the Caped Crusader back to the shadows, but you could also point the finger at the movie studios, who simply did not know what direction to take when it came to big budget superhero action.
But before Blade and X-Men came along to put things right there was Spawn, which sees CIA mercenary Al Simmons (Michael Jai White) sent to infiltrate a North Korean biochemical weapons plant on the orders of his boss Jason Wynn (Martin Sheen). However, due to voicing his moral concerns at the nature of his work, Simmons is killed by Wynn and his top assassin Jessica Priest (Melinda Clarke), but his charred body is sent to Hell where the forces of darkness offer him a deal – fight against the forces of good by leading an army into Heaven and he can see his wife and family again.
Reluctantly agreeing, five years later Simmons returns to Earth as a Hellspawn (or Spawn, as he will henceforth be known) to discover that his wife Wanda (Theresa Randle) has married his best friend Terry (D.B. Sweeney). He also meets Clown (John Leguizamo), an agent of Hell who is there to guide him in his quest, not knowing that Clown is also in league with Wynn, who is now a full-blown arms dealer. Fortunately, an agent of Heaven named Cogliostro (Nicol Williamson) is also on hand to teach Spawn how to use his new powers, unaware that Clown is manipulating him and Wynn, and that Terry has information on Wynn that the rest of the world might be interested in, forcing Wynn to kidnap Spawn’s family in a desperate bid for world domination.
Or something like that. It’s all very messy and very confusing as characters double-cross each other, bargains are made and lots of digital effects fill the screen in an impressive display of late-‘90s CGI that isn’t quite as terrible as you would imagine (to be honest, there have been more modern movies that have featured worse).
But the effects are there to distract you from the fact that this adaptation of Todd McFarlane’s comic book series is really devoid of anything coherent and relies on superhero movie tropes to help you piece together what is actually happening. Being an origin story, we get the setup of Al Simmons with his family – for all of one scene that lasts about 30 seconds – and Wanda’s name being mentioned far too many times for normal conversation after that, so we know that she will be the target of the villain later, but who is the real villain?
Well, Wynn obviously, because he is the first double-crosser, has a trained henchwoman in Jessica Priest (great name) and is played with ghoulish relish by Martin Sheen, who wasn’t really an obvious choice for a big bad in movies at this point in his career, which could mean that maybe he isn’t really the biggest villain here.
Clown is the other obvious candidate, as he really is evil, farts and says inappropriate things in front of children, and can transform into a giant demon monster when he feels like it, plus you never really know whether his interactions with characters are genuine. After all, he is a demon and a trickster, working for the Devil – who is really the big bad here, but that all-out battle between Heaven and Hell never actually takes place – but he does have the knowledge that Spawn needs to succeed in his quest.
So is Spawn himself evil? He does work for the Devil, after all, although it is reluctantly. Al Simmons’ moral compass shines through when necessary – and sometimes gets forgotten about, so whatever the script requires at any given moment – and we know that as a human Simmons was a good man at heart, but should we root for him? Spawn isn’t a hero in the accepted sense, and whether he is an antihero is up for debate, as the script doesn’t really allow for that much character scrutiny.
Anyway, Spawn the movie is the origin story of Spawn the character, who is a soldier of Hell but wants to see his human wife and daughter again before getting revenge on those that wronged him and then leading the armies of Hell into battle with God. That last bit never happens, because in 1997 a superhero movie was never going to go that big, and so what are left with is the basic outline of a revenge story with too many characters in it and no real sense of structure. Whether a sequel would have addressed a battle with the angels we will never know, because this movie bombed upon release.
However, Arrow Video’s 4K UHD remaster is quite a thing to behold, as many of the primitive (by today’s standards) CGI effects look bright and sharp in HDR; don’t get too excited, as some graphics like the opening credits and the scenes in Hell do look like between-level scenes in a PlayStation game, but they are executed with fluid movement and look very crisp when compared to other effects-heavy movies that came after it. Spawn also has a thumping soundtrack – featuring the collaborative likes of Korn & The Dust Brothers, Marilyn Manson & Sneaker Pimps, Henry Rollins & Goldie and Metallica & DJ Spooky, amongst others – which, when combined with the CGI, does give you a screenshot of 1997 that would probably bemuse anyone under the age of 30, but to those of us of a certain age it does have a nostalgic charm about it.
But charming or not, nothing can disguise the fact that – objectively – Spawn is not a very good movie. It’s messy, incoherent and tonally all over the place, trying to tap into the dark introspection of The Crow whilst also trying to appeal to fans of Batman, and not necessarily the good Batman movies. Performances are mostly fun, especially John Leguizamo who really seems to enjoy chewing the scenery, but the fart jokes don’t really sit right with the idea of a family man being murdered and not being able to reunite with his family. The world wasn’t – and maybe still isn’t – ready for that sort of crossover.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Chris Ward
