Movie review: Spawn

Originally published August 29, 1997, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1241

I really, really, really wanted to like the Spawn movie.

First off, I’d gone on record at the Chicago Comic Con as saying that I thought the film was going to gross somewhere in the neighborhood of $145 million. This was based on two factors: (1) the trailer looked rather nifty, and (2) I anticipated a Batman and Robin backlash. Specifically, people had reacted so negatively to the high-camp, stupid, goofy rendition of the former Dark Knight detective that there would be wholesale, massive embracing of any film that at all evoked the late, lamented “serious” approach to comic book movies that Tim Burton had taken. So I figured that people would flock to Spawn in a frenzy of in-your-face support if for no other reason than to send a message to those swell folks at Time-Warner (for let us remember as we pillory Joel Schumacher and Akiva Goldsman that they produced, no more and no less, than the exact film that Warner wanted them to produce. Apparently they were so worried about making a film desirable to licensees that they forgot to make it desirable to audiences.)

Second, nothing would have made me happier than to be able to knock the starch out of those people who love to claim that I’ve got it out for Todd McFarlane (including, on occasion, Todd himself). I thought I’d be able to accomplish that by the simple expedient of liking the Spawn animated series. Unfortunately I had trouble getting past Todd’s intros, which came across like a weird blend of Rod Serling and non-sequitur comedian Steven Wright… and when I did, the show itself either sickened me or bored me.

And third, after the fiasco of Batman and Robin, it would help to have a comic book related film that succeeds. Oh, sure, Men in Black is based on a comic, but—for better or worse—it is movies with guys in tights or sculpted costumes that the average movie-goers think of when they think “comic book films.” And the industry could really use a major triumph with a costumed hero about now.

So I really, really, really wanted to like the movie.

And I really, really, really had problems doing so.

I came into the film with few comics-related preconceptions, in that—aside from an issue here or there—I don’t read the comic book. So I wouldn’t know if the movie was faithful to the comic book; I would only be able to evaluate it as a movie.

For those of you who don’t know, the basic premise is thus: Al Simmons (Michael Jai White) is an government-licensed assassin with flutterings of conscience, working for boss Jason Wynn (Martin Sheen) who doesn’t have to deal with such trivialities. Wynn, in turn, is in league with a satanic Clown seemingly on loan from a Stephen King novel (played by a completely make-up hidden John Leguizamo, who probably never thought he’d come to regard the wardrobe required for Wong Foo as “the good ol’ days.”) And the Clown, in turn, works for a hëll-raising demon named Malebolgia, played by Industrial Light and Magic.

Simmons is murdered, but cuts a deal with Malebolgia wherein he agrees to lead a Satanic army if only he can return to be with his wife. But the deal turns sour as an inhuman Simmons returns, incarnated as Spawn, to discover that he no longer has a place in his wife’s life. It’s as if Christopher Marlowe had penned Robocop.

From the opening, eye-searing credits to the spasmodic closing credits, Spawn as directed by Mark Dippe is either a visual feast or a visual assault, depending upon your taste. The mood is relentlessly gloomy, which I suppose is appropriate for the subject matter. But in a comic book you only have to take it for the ten to fifteen minutes it requires to read the story. Ninety uninterrupted, unvarying minutes of it in a movie theater is more problematic. After about forty-five minutes I found my head hurt and after an hour and ten minutes my attention was seriously starting to wander.

I think part of the problem for me was an element that was also the film’s greatest strength: The make-up. When one is portraying someone who is transformed into a grotesque, it helps tremendously if there is still some visible connection to the lost humanity. It makes the loss that much more poignant. But for an hour and a quarter, we’re forced to try and empathize with a growling guy whose face looks like it was run over with a backhoe. Tough to do.

Think of the aforementioned Robocop. Remember the first time that Robocop removes his helmet? Remember his still-human face looking lost and sad, his head shaved and frightening? For that matter, remember how human Darth Vader looked under the helmet? Here was a villain who had cavalierly killed underlings, tortured Leia and Han, and maimed his own son…and yet we felt compassion for him. In both cases, we connected. On the other hand, ever notice that the Thing is a lot less interesting when the rest of the FF isn’t around? That’s why: The humanity is unseeable, and when that tie is broken, the audience is that much more distanced.

In terms of effects, the film is nothing short of phenomenal. Okay, granted, the sequences in Hëll looked more like a music video than a trip through the netherworld. But Spawn’s morphing ability is impressive, he crawls walls with an alacrity that Spider-Man would envy, and his CGI-generated cape looks like, well, a Todd McFarlane cape come to life (indeed, when the cape isn’t around–which is most of the time–the costume is far less effective.). The Clown (who gets all the best lines) is a triumphant combination of costuming and acting (in both deportment and visual, Leguizamo’s own mother wouldn’t recognize him), and his transformation into the more bëšŧìál form of the Violater (which I assume is a blend of puppetry and CGI) is mesmerizing. The entire effect is so convincing that I heard a child several rows behind me complaining loudly, “I’m scared” (a concept that would bother some people, but not me. Let the kids be scared. Hëll, no one has terrorized generations of kids the way Margaret Hamilton has, and Wizard of Oz remains family viewing.)

Still, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I still felt disconnected, disinterested. My eyes were involved, but my mind only a little and my heart not-at-all. And I tried to determine whether there was something wrong with the film, or something wrong with me. Was I, for instance, having trouble being fair because—oh, I dunno—in one issue of Spawn Todd had seen fit to name a couple of vomitus racists Peter and John (a slam, one supposes, directed at John Byrne and myself). No matter how much I wanted to like the film, was I actually capable of doing so?

So I stayed through the closing credits, and when the lights came up, the only ones there other than me were a couple of guys in their late 20s, and the teenaged ushers. I turned to the 20-year-olds and said, “What’d you guys think?”

Their response was immediate and unequivocal: “Terrible.” “Awful.” “Worst film I’ve seen in ages.” “The story was lousy.” “It was boring.” “Bad story. Bad movie.”

And the usher immediately dropped what he was doing and said, “Are you guys crazy? It was fantastic! It was one of the best movies of the summer!”

Shaking their heads, the older guys left, but I stayed and spoke to the usher to find out what he had found so engaging about Spawn.

And he proceeded to tell me Todd McFarlane’s life story. About Todd’s involvement with the founding of Image. Of his building up this character, the movie, the TV series and the toy lines from nothing. “Todd McFarlane is a genius,” he said with utter conviction. “An absolute creative genius. I love the comic book, and this film is an absolutely perfect translation of the comic book. They made a few changes, but otherwise this is absolutely the comic, and I love the comic.”

Which pretty much sums it up, I guess. I mean, it’s hardly a scientific survey or a rigorous questionnaire posed to legions of Spawn fans, but for on-the-fly research, it’s not too bad.

The obvious question to ask is if it’s better than Batman and Robin. Based on my utterly unscientific polling process, the answer would have to be a resounding “yes.” Because for fans of Batman as seen in the comics, Batman and Robin was a disappointment, a betrayal… in short, everything that fans had once feared Tim “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure” Burton’s first film would be. But for people who weren’t followers of the Batman comic, it was just plain stupid.

So with Spawn, for those people who aren’t rabid fans of the comic book, the film is an unending celebration of hopelessness, ghoulishness, and taste ranging from bad to disgusting (the Clown zealously displays stained underwear, licks a woman with a nauseating tongue, and displays an obsession with flatulence unmatched by anyone except for perhaps Howard Stern). For those who are fans of the comic book, however, it is an exciting silver screen realization of a story they’ve enjoyed on the comic pages, and a symbol of a major triumph for a guy they consider a personal hero. And for those who are open to persuasion one way or the other, the film’s long-term success and/or effectiveness will likely come down to whether audiences are willing to accept confusing, lackluster or uninvolving stories as long as there’s a lot of neat stuff and FX happening on the screen. And certainly when it comes to that, the American public has spoken (the cold shoulder for Batman and Robin being more the exception than the rule.)

Or, to put it the way that Don Thompson used to phrase it: For those of you who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you’ll like.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. Best movie he’s seen so far this summer? Contact.)