SPAWN 1997
A film review by Timothy Voon
Copyright 1997 Timothy Voon
2 :-( :-( for the bad smell of Spawn
Cast: Michael Jai White, John Leguizamo, Martin Sheen, Nicol Williamson, D. B. Sweeney, Theresa Randle, Melinda Clarke Director: Mark A.Z. Dippe Screenplay: Alan McElroy based on the comic book by Todd McFarlane
Confusion.
Satan's first choice to be the General of Hell's armies is a good guy assassin who gets murdered. He sells his soul to Satan to see his wife again and gets resurrected as "Spawn" the ultimate fighting machine from Hell. All of a sudden, Spawn (Michael Jai White) decides he doesn't want to be a bad guy after all and starts beating the crap out of all the other bad guys. Wait a minute - didn't he just sell his soul to Satan a moment ago? Fickle, fickle, fickle.
Mass Confusion.
Satan's plans are entrusted to an old fart known as 'Clown' (John Leguizzamo). The general whiff of things is to nuke the world with biological weapons before Hell's armies invade. Clown's elaborate scheme is to get an evil entrepreneur 'Wynn' (Martin Sheen) to murder Spawn; put a pace maker in the heart of Wynn that will trigger the biological bombs if he dies; then resurrect Spawn to murder Wynn thus ending the world. A simple analogy to this is - buy a cat to murder a rat; then resurrect the rat and make it bionic. Encourage the rat to murder the cat with a specially implanted time bomb that will destroy the entire cat population so the dogs from hell can take over. Now all we need is a hat and we've got Dr Seuss.
Mayhem.
The final battle in hell - Satan does nothing but holler and scream - even I can do that. Clown is bigger and badder than Spawn, yet is overlooked for the position of General of Hell's armies. Why bother with silly little piffy bombs, just invade earth and get it over with - from the look of things there are a lot of baddies down there. What does God have to say about all of this? Why is Spawn called Spawn? Is there any relevance to breeding? If so shouldn't there be a good guy of equivalent power representing the good side, someone perhaps called 'Sperm'? Sperm and Spawn the Heroes from Heaven and Hell carries a ring to it.
In Summation.
I hope the comic makes better sense that this movie - cause Spawn sure smells like a carton of rotten eggs. The only thing that fascinated me about the entire movie was my fixation with Spawn's crimson red, flowing cloak. Now if someone can tell me where I can my hands on one of these, and don't tell me Hell cause I have no intention of going there.
Timothy Voon e-mail: stirling@netlink.com.au
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