SPAWN (1997)- Not As Bad As You Think

say that the 1997 spawn film had a pretty big impact on me is an understatement clearly look how much use I got out of this bastard when the film was gearing up for its release date with trailers and merchandise were doing the rounds I was obsessed but upon release I wasn't allowed to see the film mum thought it was way too violent it was only until it finally came out on VHS I could see it and back then it took bloody ages for movies to go from the cinema to VHS and I was instantly in love with what I saw on screen upon watching the VHS it had everything demons hell spikes chains clowns farts and uh hyper realistic capes but over the years the film hasn't exactly aged well despite some incredible practical costumes and concept ideas however according to actor Michael Jai White there was a completely different version of the film that could have been oh so good but due to a director who came from the visual effects World it seemingly lost its way with what started out as a film about love tragedy Revenge with originally 77 visual effects shops ended up as a [ __ ] of a film with over 400 visual effects shots regardless of what we ultimately got we're going to explore the making of Spawn and if it holds up today and what could have been with its original concept slash cut of the film [Music] spawn was released on August 7 1997 and it grossed over 19 million dollars that opening week and ranking its second behind Air Force One for its second weekend the film dropped to number three in the box office reflecting a decreased earnings of 54.7 and a gross of just shy of 9 million the film gross 54.9 million in the United States and Canada and 32.9 million internationally grossing a total of 87.9 million worldwide against a production budget between 40 to 45 million now the film is based on Todd McFarlane's creation that he'd been working on since he was 16 years old and the first published Spawn comic hit the shelves in May of 1992 selling over 1.7 million copies fast forward five years later and the IP had its first feature film debut Columbia Pictures showed interest in making a film adaptation of Spawn when the comic book was launched in 92 but unfortunately negotiations fell through as Todd McFarlane felt the studio was was not giving him enough creative control he eventually sold the film rights to new line Cinema for a whopping one dollar in exchange for Creative input and Merchandising rights new line president Mike DeLuca a comic book collector himself expressed interest in having a character that has an established an audience like spawn while declaring that success hinged on an adaption that quote unquote maintains a PG-13 rating but retains its darkness which is interesting as DeLuca penned the script for Freddy's Dead aiming for the same concept of keeping a PG-13 while still including the gore Factor it clearly that didn't work the film was to be produced by pull down your pants pictures a Company formed by industrial lion Magic Artist Mark depay Clint Goldman and Steve spaz Williams who evidently had his nickname given to the dog in the film depay was slated to direct the film with Goldman as a producer and Williams as second unit director and visual effects supervisor to pay and Williams who at the time were the only one of the three still attached to ilm called the film opportunity our ticket out of the company the script would be written by Alan B McElroy who along with riding the spawned comic book also wrote many episodes of Todd McFarlane spawn's animated series as well as Halloween for the return of Michael Myers now when it came to Casting we have Michael Jai White as Al Simmons slash born and Michael Jai White found Al Simmons's character appealing he described spawn as the most tragic character I've encountered in any cinematic production he says it was a challenge to make audiences sympathize with a government assassin who comes back from hell and also he had to endure four hours of makeup work including a fully glued on bodysuit yellow contact lenses that irritated his eyes and a full over the head prosthetic that restricted his breathing now when it came to the clown slash The Violator we have John Leguizamo who at the time I thought was such an unconventional choice but when you see him in that beautiful makeup design by K B effects he was absolutely perfect he is definitely one of the standouts in the film and you've got to look at that beautiful bodysuit it just changed his whole Aesthetics his posture his height looks like it's been affected even though he is a pretty average height human much like Michael Jai White Leguizamo had to endure hours of heavy heavy prosthetic makeup that left him with welts on the back of his neck wow that hurt for real we have Martin Sheen portraying Jason Wynn now he wasn't familiar with the Spawn comics until his grandson mentioned that spawn is one of the biggest comic books of all time and he also mentioned hey I'm also auditioning for this film called spawn and I'm auditioning for the character of Jason Wynn it was then his grandson that persuaded him to take the the role of Jason Wynne I think he does a great job he's fine he's menacing he's evil exactly how Jason Nguyen is in the comics just that stoic calmness as well now there are two characters in the film one has been changed in terms of their race and one has been completely changed because they couldn't get the rights to a certain character so let's start with DB Sweeney as Terry Fitzgerald so Fitzgerald Al sermons his best friend before his death is black in the comics but in the film he is white and he's portrayed by D.B Sweeney and Todd McFarland explained that his change was made by the studio to avoid having too many black leads Jesus Christ as they believe this would give the false impression that the film's target audience was the African-American demographic I think it would have been fine man now in the comics Al Simmons is murdered by Chapel a character created by Rob leefield for the comic now a lot of people may know Rob Lee Phil created Deadpool Jessica priest a character creator for the film took Chapel's place in the movie and the comic book storyline was later reconnected so that the original character Jessica priest would take his place while Al's killer was Jason Wynn Chapel's involvement was completely forgotten there were also hints that Rob leefield wouldn't sign over the rights of Chapel to be used in the film rounding out the cast we have Teresa Randall as Wanda Blake who in my opinion is criminally underutilized in the film we've got Miko Hughes playing a young homeless child by the name of Zack who resides in Rat City and comes into contact with spawn and befriends him and last but not least we have the classically trained Nicole Williamson playing cogliostro who is a 500 year old Knight who essentially trained spawned and teaches him to harness his powers or as spawn calls him Yoda now when it came to the costumes and the Prosthetics we have K and B effects headed by Robert kurtzman Greg nicotero and Howard Berger that make up the K and B now when it comes to these costumes and Prosthetics I think they are definitely the standout and the highlight of the film much next to leguizamo's Performance and Michael Jai White's casting as Al Simmons spawn these costumes still hold up today much like the 1992 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle costumes done by the Jim Henson company you look at these and they are ripped straight from the comics when it comes to spawn and the clown it's incredible to see how well they have aged on screen the coloring the sculpture everything is perfect and Michael Jai White looks incredible in those burn Prosthetics and you can tell he is acting so much through those Prosthetics when it comes to wearing Prosthetics you really have to amplify your acting otherwise the Prosthetics are going to override your performance but himself and Leguizamo do an incredible job it's the perfect pairing of good acting and damn good Prosthetics and Specialty costuming now going back to the visual effects spawn was originally green lit with a budget of 20 million dollars and the scale of visual effects led new line to continually increase the Project's budget which grew to 40 to 45 million a third of which was spent on the effects the shooting schedule was only 63 days and a cup production Time by a week Goldman lent one million dollars to engage John gower's Santa Barbara Studios to develop the digitally produced hell sequences now originally hell was not in the film it was originally going to be a dark room that was a stand-in for hell and as the crew got closer to filming they realized that room was not going to work so they devised a way to get a budget to get those new scenes and include a Hell in the film the visual effects shots count increased from 77 to over 400 and this was created by 22 companies in the United States Canada and Japan requiring 70 people and nearly 11 months to complete industrial Light and Magic did most of the work creating 85 shots at a cost of 8.5 million dollars more than half of the final effect shots were delivered just two weeks before the film's release the film was released on VHS on May 5th of 1998 in a PG-13 version and an R-rated director's cut version now the director's cut version included 45 minutes of additional footage and a making of Spawn featurette and an interview with Todd McFarlane now director's cut version was released on DVD on January 9 1998 and on Blu-ray of July 10 2012. now there are a lot of differences between the PG-13 cut and the R rated director's cut and if you are going to view the film for the first time or just want to keep viewing it I highly recommend the director's cut the PG-13 is just too watered down and it's just not spawned spawn is all about blood gore tragedy revenge and you just don't get that in the PG-13 cut whereas the ra director's cut they do not hold back and of course upon the film's release it gathered mostly negative reviews and I think it's one of the things where spawn was way too ahead of its time for when it was initially released I mean keep in mind this is the same year we got Batman and Robin so it's very chalk and cheese in terms of the campiness and the gothic undertones so when it all comes down to it could this version of Spawn have been made today and better sure absolutely given the right crew and visual effects now visual effects can get a bad rap these days especially lately with Thor love and thunder and of course the flash but after watching a tick tock of a visual effects art is explained that at the end of the day most Studios don't really care about quality VFX they just care about a mandate and a release date and I think in the case of Spawn that was it it was just quantity over quality I mean the idea of a dark room standing in for hell sounds actually better than what we got in the film The Idea feels more claustrophobic whilst having flashes or glimpses of a redesigned male Bulger I reckon that could have been a winner and focusing more on the relationship between Al Simmons and Wanda like we hardly see their relationship at all in the original cut of the film having their relationship on display adds more tragedy to spawn's story and when we see spawn confront Wanda and Terry in the climax of the film you think it would be much more impactful but all we got was this now I did mention that Michael Jai White has gone on the record to say that there was an original cut of the film that was so much better than the cut we ultimately got now this clip I'm about to show you comes from collider and this is when Christian harloff was interviewing Michael Jai White about the original cut of Spawn and he goes on to say unfortunately I was privy to the first cut yeah I mean fortunately for me but I the the first cut had something like 71 special effects some special effect uh uh things in it and the story was absolutely intact you see my character starts off you know in a loving relationship and you see what his home life is and and why he wants to get out of doing the things he he's doing right the story elements just suffered and suffered and they were no longer any scenes that depicted you know Al Simmons early life right and so now I seem to come off as a disgruntled you know Hamburger fate it's about the human element yeah and if you take that out you disconnect folks Spawn 1997 is a film that could have been [ __ ] perfect for the time it came out as cliche as it sounds it was too ahead of its time upon its release and it was just opting for quantity over quality with too many visual effects what the [ __ ] with that being said you have a brilliant cost some amazing practical costumes and effects that were overshadowed by an array of Rush CGI shots and if you are going to watch the film it's the director's cut all the way now be rude to me not to mention the obvious fact that there's a new spawn film in development with Todd McFarlane in the director's chair as well as Jamie Foxx in the lead role as Al Simmons spawn now this film supposedly takes place from the perspective of Sam and twitch the detectives in the comics it seems the film is in development hell so only time will tell until we ultimately get an update with what the hell is happening at the end of the day spawn is a damn decent attempt at the source material the idea was there but uh [Music] thank you

Channel: Chris Stanley

Views: 5,301

Keywords: Spawn, Spawn 1997, Todd Mcfarlane, Todd McFarlane Spawn, Image Comics, Jim Lee, Michael Jai White, Comic Book, New Line Cinema, Video Essay, Batman & Robin, Martin Sheen, The Clown, 1997, Film Making, Behind The Scenes, McFarlane Toys, Action Figures, Spawn Action Figure, Spawn Movie, Spawn HBO

Id: JVZY8In_fFo

Length: 13min 5sec (785 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 06 2023