Claysaba
Excellent, Without a doubt!!
Dynamixor
The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.
Sam Panico
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.Read more at http://bit.ly/2APIBVE
Paul Magne Haakonsen
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.
adonis98-743-186503
An elite mercenary is killed, but comes back from Hell as a reluctant soldier of the Devil. Spawn (1997) is directed by Mark A.Z. Dippé and stars John Leguizamo, Michael Jai White and Martin Sheen and here is my problem with this film if it had less of the Clown played by Leguizamo and more of Al Simmons / Spawn played by Michael Jai White i would have given the film a 10 but don't get me wrong it's still a pretty awesome movie the costume is sick and 100% faithful to the original material, the action was handled pretty well and i loved those fight sequences with Spawn and the Violator although they have changed his origins because if i remember correctly he was a Cop and not an Elite Mercenary but that's fine i loved those shots with him walking away from the fire behind and all this carnage or even the last shot which kinda reminded of Daredevil and even the video-game for Playstation 2. Except the Clown what i didn't like also was some of the effects were really awful i mean like very awful every time the film cut and went straight to Hell you saw around the whole environment looking like a bad green screen and once The Devil Malebolgia appeared the effects went even more wrong as far as costumes tho and actual special effects the film was a genius it's not one of the best from that time but i gotta handle it to them they tried so hard and for a first time try it wasn't that bad and i honestly hope that one day Spawn will return to the big screen better than ever and there are many great actors out there that could take the role like Chiwetel Ejiofor or even Djimon Hounsou there are endless choices of great actors for the role of Simmons A.k.a Spawn and i heard that Todd McFarlane has actually wrote a script so we just have to wait and see what it's going to happen and by the way blink and you will miss it Todd McFarlane himself the creator of Spawn has a cameo in the film as a Hobo. Anyways guys in the end Spawn is not a Masterpiece but for the time it was created and released in Theaters it's still a pretty cool film 8/10 for me.
Mr-Fusion
Given the subject matter of the original comic, a PG-13 "Spawn" is already a lame horse right out of the gate. And that's before you get to the awful acting, inept script and really, really bad '90s CGI (although to its credit, it does seem to wear that as a badge of honor). Everyone in the cast seems put out to be here, but give John Leguizamo a hand for going all-out with Clown/Violator/whatever the hell his name is. It's hard to watch this as a comic book movie when the period offered much better choices ("The Crow", "Blade"). This effort is beyond silly, a relic that shouldn't be unearthed.4/10
