Too much of everything

Fresh and Exciting

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Spawn the movie isn't as "dark" as the toilet paper it's based on. You won't find a lot of similarities with the violent (but still more childish than Superfriends) animated series. But as with those two, it's still impossible to tell who this is made for. For ten year-old kids or forty year-old men who never moved out of mom's basement? Because some of the content in this movie is inappropriate for kids (or decent people in general). But the rest of the movie is like watching a very small child play with his deformed Batman and Joker (tm) figures while making loud fart sounds. "Hahaha! Look at my skid marks, Batman!!".The movie costume is actually pretty faithful to the original; it looks just as stupid as the suit Toy McFairlane borrowed from Spider-Man, Venom, Prowler, Batman and Ghost Rider. The action scenes are uninteresting and boring. Terrible CGI. Not terrible as in "Playstation 2 graphics". It's not even PS1. No, this is Super Nintendo graphics...think Donkey Kong Country. The worst part in Spawn is the hell level, where you have to kill King K. Roo...oh yeah, I almost forgot, it's a movie.Malebolgia doesn't even move his mouth when he speaks. To be fair, they may have tried to stay true to the comic book. After all, we never see any lip movement in the funny papers.Is the movie immoral? Yeah...it's disgusting and perverted. There's a lot of talk about hell and demons, but nothing about God (just like the terrible comic) etc. But it's still hard to really be offended by anything in it. We don't put dogs in jail for indecent exposure. I love the TV spot for this movie, where the narrator says: "This is not your father's superhero!" Like he's warning us to stay away from the movie. They probably removed the part where he yells: "BECAUSE THIS IS PURE GARBAGE!!!!"

Nowadays you can't move at the cinema for someone dressing up in a cape and silly costume and fighting the forces of darkness while flying around a major US city. However, back in 1997 superhero films weren't - believe it or not - guaranteed Box Office gold like they are today. I'd never read any of the 'Spawn' comics, so I went into the movie kind of blind. And I enjoyed it. It was only a few years later during the birth of the internet did I realise how much everyone seemed to hate this film. I've watched it again (a few times, believe it or not) and I can see where the masses are coming from. It's hardly 'high art' (but I enjoyed it anyway!).It's about a Government hitman who gets double-crossed by his shady employer (when will these hitmen ever learn?) and ends up getting killed. If that wasn't bad enough he wakes up after his 'death' to find he's spent the last five years in hell and the devil has asked him (or rather blackmailed him) into leading his dark army on a siege of Earth. Luckily, our hitman decides that's probably not a great career option and with the help of a 'knight' (or rather modern day homeless mentor Obi-wan Kenobi figure who once was a knight) chooses to fight the forces of darkness instead.When I first watched it I guess I hadn't seen that many superhero films (Tim Burton's Batman duo excluded), so I enjoyed the dark tone, the cool suit our anti-hero wore and the action in general. Michael Jai White gives a good performance as the grizzled 'Spawn' and the real stand-out performance is the (totally unrecognisable, thanks to excellent make-up) John Leguizamo as the most memorable bad-guy 'The Violator.' However, I guess nowadays it's fair to say that it hasn't aged well. Any criticism you may hear regarding how the special effects look like they've been rendered for a Playstation 2 are pretty on the nose (and even at the time I wondered why the beast-like Devil's lips never moved when he spoke), but, looking at it afresh, I can't help but notice how bad Martin Sheen's dialogue is. He's supposed to be the main villain and yet he's even more cliché than any Bond super-villain you've ever seen. The whole film basically 'tell' not 'show.' Every piece of dialogue is some sort of 'set-up' to give the viewer information and let them know what's happening, solely designed to move the plot forward and avoid confusion. 'Spawn' is never really going to be remembered as much more than a missed opportunity. It's certainly not up to the coherent standards of today's superhero movies. I still watch it, because - for some reason - I feel quite a twang of nostalgia for it (despite its numerous flaws!). But even people who saw it back in the late nineties don't hold it in the same - reasonably - high regard as me. I hear there's a 'reboot' on the way, so maybe that will bring Spawn to the audience he probably deserves to be show to. But John Leguizamo is definitely awesome in this - if you hate absolutely everything else about this film, you should appreciate his performance as sheer evil foulness.

Watching this movie on NETFLIX. The dialog has been changed, several words have been cut out. Some politically correct fat ass has destroyed a movie. This is wrong. Having the dialog edited takes away from the movie, I have watched an original version released and purchased from Walmart and can definitely someone has edited the dialog. To do this to any movie alters it in a bad way.

When I watched this film for the first time I hated it passionately, considering it as an aberration. Years afterwards I watched part of it again on television and had a completely different opinion. It is a quite innovative film for the genre, with some smart dialogues. Visual effects are no bad as I considered for the first time (well, some of them are, like the horrible CGI master demon); the way Spawn's black costume appears and connects to his body is nice. The blue clown demon Violator seemed to be awful when I saw images of him before watching the movie; after watching it for the first time I thought it not good, but still the best thing in the film; now I consider him a very funny and interesting character.