Comic Tales: Spawn
1997
I was a big Todd McFarlane fan, I’d loved his Spider-Man work and I enjoyed Spawn. Not only did I like his art, I thought what he was doing with Image comics was a commendable endeavour. I went to see Spawn at the cinema and, while it was certainly a watered down version of the comics, it filled my craving to see comic book heroes translated to the big screen. With the exception of Batman and Superman few had made the transition and, with no new Superman film for 10 years and Batman on a downward spiral (1997 was the year of Batman and Robin), anything new was cause for excitement.
2008
Just over 10 years later much has changed. McFarlane has been revealed for the money grabbing executive he is, Image no longer publish anything of interest (apart from Fell) and these’s now an abundance of superhero action on the big screen.
With films like Spider-Man, X-Men and Batman Begins showing how to make a comic based film that will appeal to more than just the geek audience, the dark days of 1997 seem a long time ago. Re-watching Spawn now shows what a poor film it really was. The effects look truly awful (hard to believe ILM had a hand in this) and it’s amazing they had the balls to put so much in the finished film.
It’s not just the effects that made this revisit a painful one, the film is full of simplistic characters with Martin Sheen’s villainous turn, that’s straight out of the “How to play a Villain” handbook circa 1923, (all he really needs is a top hat, a train track to tie Spawn’s wife to, and some moustache twirling and he’d be perfect) the worst example. He’s far from alone in being bad; Nicol Williamson redoes Merlin as Spawn’s mentor and provides a voice over narration for anyone with ADD, while Michael Jai White’s Spawn elicits about as much sympathy as a politician in a sex scandal.
There is one bright spot, John Leguizamo’s evil clown. Crude, rude and lewd he’s the only character that improves on the comic version. Funny, but also unpleasantly creepy as only a clown can be, he really deserves a better film.
Thank god for Sam Raimi, Chris Nolan and Bryan Singer (even if he did make Superman Returns) for elevating the superhero movie to new heights and ensuring that comic fans no longer have to rely on trash like this to get their fix of big screen thrills.
