Directed by Mark A.Z. Dippe
Based on the comic book created by Todd McFarlane
Starring
Michael Jai White as Al Simmons/Spawn
John Leguizamo as Clown/Violator
Nicol Williamson as Cogliostro
Martin Sheen as Jason Wynn
Melinda Clarke as Priest
Frank Welker as Malebolgia
Theresa Randle as Wanda
D.B. Sweeney as Terry
. . .
"Are there any normal people left on Earth? Or is everyone just back from Hell?"
. . .
Review by William D. Tucker.
1997 AD (Anime Domini) . . .
In the Year of Final Fantasy VII . . .
In Eagleland, USofA . . .
In the city of Los Angeles . . .
A US Marine named Al Simmons does all of the things. He lives. He dies. He lives again.
Al Simmons is a shadow assassin for Uncle Sam. He's got night vision. He can fire a submachine gun in slow motion and kill a roomful of villains just by firing from the hip, doesn't even have to aim. Simmons has a portable rocket launcher system synchronized to his night vision goggles which are themselves GPS enhanced via satellite uplink/download. Simmons is a ninja with missiles, more or less.
Simmons has a beautiful wife and a beautiful child. More importantly, his best friend is played by D.B. Sweeney who made a memorable impression as an alien abductee in the feature film Fire in the Sky and was also the lead of the long forgotten TV show Strange Luck . . . who among us can claim a perennially underrated character actor as our bestie, eh? I think we can also safely assume that Sweeney hooked Simmons up with VHS dubs of Strange Luck. Look, I imagine it's kinda like being best friends with Rick Dees. If Dees is your bestie, then you just know he's gonna get you the full run of Into the Night with Rick Dees on Betamax. Disco Duck memorabilia ain't gonna cut it. You gotta put out, Dees, if you're gonna roll with me, buddy!
Simmons's boss is an evil dude named Jason Wynn, played by Martin Sheen, who has the most expensive raven haired dyejob to grace the silver screen pre-John Wick. Also, I have extensive Jason Wynn/The West Wing fanfic available if anyone wants to fuck with that. Wynn is the head of an organization called A6, which is some kind of a private military corporation that has set itself up as a greedy, violent alternative to the United Nations. Yes, this is one of those movies that imagines that it takes a sinister, Cobra/SPECTRE/Yoyodyne/Umbrella Corporation type outfit to sabotage the UN, as opposed to internal workaday political gridlock, and the disproportionate influence of the US, Russia, and China-oh movies! You're so innocent! You're so fun!
Wynn orders Simmons to invade North Korea to destroy a bioweapons lab, and Simmons gets to audition for protagonist of Metal Gear Solid, Thief, Splinter Cell, and Syphon Filter by getting his stealth on, and sneaking up on stunt performers, and pantomiming snapping their necks. When Simmons gets to the end of the bioweapons stage, he discovers that the place is already rigged with explosives. And then Wynn appears with his number one femme fatale, Priest, and fires bullets into Simmons's body. This should be an intense, visceral scene full of squibs blasting crimson corn syrup and chunks of raw hamburger meat all over the joint to evoke the evacuation of internal body tissues-but this is a PG-13 flick, so no dice and what a drag.
Priest sprays incendiary goo all over Simmons, and then she and Wynn skedaddle, and the joint blows up, and Simmons, obviously, goes to hell for his sins, where a demon called Malbolgia curses our hero with the burden of being a Hellspawn. Malbolgia looks like he could be a summon attack monster from Final Fantasy VII, which is most likely meant to suggest that video games are part of some Satanic conspiracy. Only Hollywood has the righteousness! God damn all these 'new media' abominations straight to hell!
A Hellspawn is, essentially, a Special Forces operator . . . but working for the devil against Heaven. BTW, Malbolgia sounds just like Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget. I'm still waiting for that Spawn/Gadget crossover. I live in hope.
Simmons, who now has a Freddy Krueger face but an awesome suit of metamorphic armor, ends up living among flawlessly art directed homeless people and prostitutes in a gothic heavy metal music video version of Skid Row. Simmons wanders back into the suburbs to try to reconnect with his wife and child only to discover that he's been dead for awhile, and D.B. Sweeney has swooped in to play house. That ratfuck bastard! Simmons doesn't even attempt to retrieve the VHS tapes of Strange Luck. Maybe it's a deleted scene.
Now, Simmons is supposed to be reskilling to become a Hellspawn, a soldier in the army of hell, and to that end a creepy clown known as . . . Clown begins hassling him, mocking him, basically acting as the devil on his scorched shoulder. Clown is obnoxious, crass, and lacking in empathy. Hellspawn training isn't about mastering the powers of the occult in a systematic fashion. Basically, Malebolgia just sends a Clown to fuck with your ass, and then, at some point, you go Full Vader? This aspect of the script felt underdeveloped to me.
Simmons meets a fellow homeless guy named Cogliostro, who ends up being the angel on his other, also scorched shoulder. Cogliostro is, like Simmons, a Hellspawn, originally recruited four hundred years ago in Europe. Cogliostro's played by Nicol Williamson, and, yes, I have Cogliostro/John Boorman's Excalibur fanfic if you want to fuck with that one of these days. Actually, I like Williamson as Cogliostro. I wanted more scenes between him and Simmons, who end up having a Skywalker/Kenobi style relationship.
Simmons ends up resisting the corrupting influence of Clown, and decides to retaliate against Wynn and his A6 organization. Storm and stress ensue as Simmons masters his new occult powers and he's able to transform his body-which has merged with the living substance of his metamorphic armor-into whatever the moment demands. Simmons can climb walls like Spider-Man. He can rapidly recover from grievous injuries like Wolverine. Simmons's strength gets a Hulk-level upgrade. He can create all sorts of weapons and structures out of the substance of his living suit of armor like Venom and Carnage . . . and a little bit like the Green Lantern, now that I think about it. Simmons can glide on the air currents with his cape like Nightwing, and he can perch high above the city streets brooding like Batman. If he really wanted to, Simmons could probably cut and shape some of his armor and mold it into an ambulatory Robin-esque sidekick. At the climax, Simmons uses his powers to perform laser surgery just like Laser Surgery Man. Simmons is a totally cool, multipurpose superhero.
Creator Todd McFarlane spent a number of years working for both DC and Marvel prior to going independent to create Spawn, and I have no doubts whatsoever that none of this-not even a tiny bit-is a giant middle finger to his former bosses. No way. No how. Just you try to prove it in court, buddy!
It should be noted that this movie-Spawn-is based on a comic book-Spawn-originally published by Image Comics, which, contrary to Internet rumor, was never supposed to be called Substance Comics. It was always Image . . . and nothing else.
All right, look . . . no one has ever claimed Spawn'97 as some kind of a masterpiece. It has the same thematic progression as comic book adjacent flicks Robocop and Darkman: good guy gets killed, comes back to life in superheroic form, kicks maximum ass, begins to accept his new existence, lay groundwork for sequels, roll credits. The plot is needlessly convoluted. I haven't even mentioned the thread about Wynn also fighting on behalf of Malbolgia. Something to do with unleashing a genetically modified designer plague stolen from the North Korean bioweapons lab. It's a pizza buffet of 1990s shit: 007, Tom Clancy, The X-Files, Robin Cook, you even get D. B. Sweeney doing some movie hacker shit. The visuals of hell play like instant punchline memes.
You could write some sort of academic essay about Spawn'97 expressing Hollywood's Neo-Freudian Late Capitalist 'digital envy' of video games in its attempt to emulate their eclectic narratives and endlessly malleable protagonists. Final Fantasy VII would see a global release in the Fall, and change the course of pop culture media to this very moment.
I like Spawn'97. I like it ironically. I like it unironically. Michael Jai White is perfect casting as Simmons. In another timeline, Al Simmons is a household name just like Bruce Wayne or James Bond. And John Leguizamo was perfectly cast as Clown. He disappears into the role of comic book villain in the same way Danny DeVito did as Penguin or Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger did as the Joker. Clown, like everything else here, is kitbashed from other materials, but Leguizamo brings a crass zeal to his role equal parts Satanic Bugs Bunny and pro wrastling heel, talking shit and cutting promos in his attempts to provoke Simmons into embracing the dark side. Too bad the script lets 'em down. White and Leguizamo give it their all.
I also like seeing Martin Sheen as a full-on snarling villain. He looks like he's enjoying himself.
Cogliostro is terrific, but underused, and delightfully played by Nicol Williamson. Williamson memorably portrayed the wizard Merlin in the fascinating, yet incomprehensible Excalibur. Was that Williamson's curse as an actor? To be associated with technically ambitious, utterly inscrutable movies? Ah, well.
Would you be shocked if I told you the women barely exist in this flick? Too bad. Theresa Randle and Melinda Clarke are pretty much wasted.
The special effects are the real stars. Simmons's metamorphic Hellspawn powers are fun. Too bad he only has two dustups with the Clown in his Violator Mode. Those are the best scenes. Clown, when necessary, hulks out into a fanged, drooling demon form. It's neat. The rest of the battles involve Simmons contending with generic paramilitary fodder. Guess who doesn’t lose.
I also find it fascinating that this is a story about a guy who goes from being a high end techno-soldier-almost a cyborg, really-to being a superbeing powered by black magic . . . and he kinda comes to accept himself in the end. This is the same character arc as Robocop.
In Robocop, the titular hero says, "I'm not arresting you anymore," and that's when we know he's accepted his new mode of being. I love this moment in Robocop. It might be my favorite moment in the entire movie.
I always love it when a cyborg or a monster stops beating themselves up and embraces their power. Fuck the world.
Simmons's moment comes when he's sitting on the floor of what used to be his living room next to his occult sensei Cogliostro. Simmons has just decapitated a demon clown, and he's finally starting to realize you can't go home again. It's the one effectively understated moment in this grotesquely overstuffed special effects showreel that's almost a movie.
Oh, what could've been . . .
