Spawn (2008)
 

...WHOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Okay, Spawn is coming back. Being a huge fan of the comics, and owning the animated show on DVD, I have high hopes for this thing. Keith David is returning as Spawn.

Okay, that's what I got from IMDB. Wiki tells me that:

Never was a fan of the comics - I'd go as far as to say I really didn't like the comics, in fact - but the movie was okay.

Still, I'm not seeing much here except "We'll make it, I guess, eventually. Whatever."

The movie? Seriously?

That was a total special-effects wank fest. It wasn't really connected to anything... at all. Although, I will admit, the first time you see his cape, it's very cool.

A pretty accurate representation of the Spawn comics in film form, but the movie was thrice as entertaining.

Oh yes, everything is more entertaining when you switch all plot devices with bombs.

Not that I don't think that the comics had many strikes against them, but even the mighty cast of actors couldn't save the movie from its blandified script.

Now that's just plain wrong. Maybe the art of the Spawn comic books have become too associated with the defunct esthetic of a past decade, but nothing's more dated than a tone-deaf special effect orgy like the Spawn movie indulged in. As a matter of fact, it wasn't just the effects that were tone-deaf.

In any case I'm sort of/kind of happy that the franchise might be getting an adaptation re-roll. The original movie was just an infuriating waste, not that I'm a fan or anything. A work doesn't need to have a lot of potential for that potential to be wasted.

They tried to cram the Entire Spawn franchise into a middle-budgeted movie... ofcourse it cant be stellar. Back then, people wouldnt plan for trilogies with heroes first hand... c'mon.

Maybe I'm just misremembering it but like every second or third page of Spawn comics that I've read were like full-on shots of Spawn standing with his cape whipping around him, then he leaps downwards and there's a looking-up shot of the same thing but he's falling, then he shoots and the cape bursts outwards and blah blah blah.

The film may have been a special effects wankfest but I'll be damned if I don't remember Spawn comics making a big deal of Spawn's Spawniness in every conceivable artistic way.

I will grant you that the plot was dry as the Sahara, though. It's a shame because Spawn is a cool concept when you file away all the stupid parts.

Pretty much what Archibo says. I never remember reading the comic where Danny DeVito wires a doomsday device to Wynn's heart in order to jump-start the apocalypse. I remember reading the comics where Malebolgia orders the Violator (not DeVito) to guide Spawn to do evil, tricking him to impregnate his wife with a demon seed, while trying to take over all of Hell in the process.

EDIT Spawn was about a guy named Al Simmons being a highly decorated American soldier. He questions the motives of his government killing unarmed situations, causing him to butt heads with his boss, Jason Wynn. One night, Simmons takes his anger out on the love of his wife, Wanda, who is pregnant with his child. It causes a miscarriage, and plagues Al with guilt. After the newest fight with Wynn, Simmons is betrayed and burned alive.

As a man who killed people for the government, Al Simmons is sent to Hell. There, he meets Malebolgia - essentially Satan - who wants Al to lead the armies of Hell to the gates of Heaven. Spawn agrees on the condition that he can see his wife again. He's sent back to Earth as Spawn, a burned, costumed corpse. Discovering that he's spent five years in Hell, he goes to find his wife, Wanda - seeing her married to his best friend, Terry. They now have a child, Cyan.

Spawn takes refuge in Rat City, an alley, and meets both Clown - the Violator - and Cogliostro; Clown trying to sway Spawn to follow the side of darkness, Cog trying to save Spawns soul from eternal damnation.

That's Spawn.

Hey I said it was "Okay" considering their half-assed attempts at shoving a PG-13 rating onto a movie featuring "Hell" and "Things that come from Hell."

I never said it was good; it was the ultimate mediocre. Like, "Generic Action Movie" mediocre.

EDIT: That's the movie or that's the comics? Because both are true, and if that's what you were looking for you got it in the movie.

Plot is only 1/4 of what makes a movie enjoyable. Plus, for those people that were big into Spawn the movie carries a lot of nostalgia, which makes it hard to be unbiased about. When I saw the movie I thought it was cool in the way Beetlejuice Dragon Ball Z was cool.