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307 Plays3 years ago
Demond Thompson of the Demond Does and Disputed podcasts returns to discuss the largely forgotten Spawn film from 1997. We talk a little about the comics, Martin Sheen being really out of place, the bad CGI, and how the best thing about this movie is John Leguizamo's take on Clown.
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Transcript
Humorous musings on life and death
00:00:15
Speaker
Master and I are going to have words he knows I hate clowns. You gotta hate them. I hate them all. I hate balls of Ronald Chuckles with their freaking dumb noses and their lousy party hats. I don't mind being short, fat, and ugly, but the pay sucks.
00:00:38
Speaker
What? Hey, easy with that face of me. What does this remind you of, huh? Ah, no, not anymore. Oops. Oh, wait, what? I hope I didn't stain my underwear. Ah, look at that. Get mine. Ha, ha, ha. Get away from me, freak. Oh, coming from a monster that really hurts my feelings. Come back here, you total face.
00:01:04
Speaker
Not done with you yet. Feels like my skin is above it. That's just your viral necoplasm going through its larval stage. Move on. Pretty soon you're gonna get here in funny places. You're gonna start thinking about girls. Getting your chubby suddenly? Come on, the half-guys, am I? Just get me to a hospital. A hospital?
00:01:29
Speaker
Have you looked in the mirror at lately burnt man walking? Even the entire cast of you are! Put your backs together again. How do I put this to you? You're pushing up daisies. You're in permanent nap time. You're a fertilizer. Hey, is any of this sinking in? You're dead. D, D, D. Dead. I guess five years feeding earthworms is even what little brain there was in there. What are you?
00:02:01
Speaker
But allow me to kickstart your memory. Hang on. These flashbacks kill the killers. You are the dead man. See you in hell, Al. No! No!
00:02:53
Speaker
Yes! Yes, I will need your army! Anything for once! If you fail me, you will die. Avenge your murder. Kill just a whim.
00:03:14
Speaker
I found my bulge. I spent five years preparing the earth for your arrival, mister. A little death, a little destruction. Perfect marriage. Speaking of marriage, this is not your fiancé anymore. And the winners are Wanda and Terry. Multiplying like rabbits. And Hoppin. And Porkin. And Eunice. And Lycra. You stay away from her. I don't want Wanda. I want you to take
00:03:44
Speaker
You and the army can kick some angelic buttocks. And in return for your services, we'll get one in the back for you. Heck, you can have everyone on the planet why settle for leftovers, huh?
00:04:09
Speaker
He told me when he had the chance. That's it? That's the spirit? Just think of me as your guardian angel. The clown from hell. You're Jimmy Stewart, and I'm Clarence. Oh, well, well, all the hunt. Every time somebody farts out, a demon catches a wing's eye, you're like, oh, oops, twins. Get away from me, you bunch-packing midget. You still don't get it, do you, Indonesia boy? You're gonna have to dig a little deeper.
00:04:41
Speaker
What is this? This is where old folks go after Florida's son. What is that you say? Can I dig up my body now? Why, certainly. Of course you can. And if
Introduction to Superhero Cinephiles Podcast
00:04:54
Speaker
you strike oil, half of it is mine. Die digging. Hail Satan, horde of all that we can see. In the name of Luther,
00:05:08
Speaker
Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles Podcast. I'm your host, Perry Constantine. And with me today is Daman Thompson, returning guest. Daman, how are you doing today? I am fabulous. Hello, nerds. How are you doing? It's good having you back. It's tough finding time when we can have you on the show because our schedules are pretty incompatible. So we don't get to have you on as much as I'd like. Yeah.
00:05:33
Speaker
I work I work in regular hours on top of us being half a world away. So yeah, you know, it's kind of it's kind of what it is. Yeah. But thank you for having me back. I love it. Well, I'm glad you can just you want to come back, although not so psyched about the movie you picked for today, but we'll get into that in a little bit, because first, I'd rather talk about something a little bit more pleasant. And that is lately, I've been asking guests what
00:05:58
Speaker
What's their thing that they've been interested in? What movies have you been watching? What TV shows are catching your interests? Are you reading anything? Are you playing any games? What has been interesting you lately? I was going to say something really terrible because I'll segue to what I actually want to talk about. But Morbius is on Netflix as of today, as we're recording. Today is the first day in Morbius. So I was going to say that, but that's not true.
00:06:29
Speaker
She-Hulk, I've been really enjoying She-Hulk. Yeah, I've been loving She-Hulk. New episode, they were recording, I think there's a new episode coming out tonight, so I'm really looking forward to watching that tonight. But yeah, that, I think it was the last episode, was it episode three? This is what I was really hoping this show would be, where it's just like, you know,
00:06:52
Speaker
a legal comedy show with superheroes set in the Marvel universe. And that's what it seems like we're getting from this point on. So I love that. And I hope they continue with this. And it made me think, you know, now that we're getting She-Hulk and it seems to be doing well, another thing I'd like to see them do is Doc Sampson, right? Bring back the guy from The Incredible Hulk who
00:07:16
Speaker
He played him in just like a few scenes and have him just being like psychiatrist to the superheroes. Ooh, that would be really cool. That would be really cool too. That would be really cool. Heck yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure you've seen that the discourse around Sheehan. Oh, so ridiculous. It's like, really guys? Calm down. It's supposed to be fun. And I went and looked, I've never read the comics.
00:07:41
Speaker
Okay. But I had heard about him and I knew there was some, I didn't know about the fourth wall breaking, but that it didn't really take itself very seriously. No, no. And so I'm like, eh, what? You know, because they've changed so many other things already with the Marvel Cinematic Universe just to make things fit, make things fit into the story that they want to tell the things that people are griping about. I'm like, it's such small stuff. It's so ridiculous. I mean,
00:08:05
Speaker
Come on, we had a whole movie with fat Thor jokes for crying out loud and you're getting, and we had Tony pissing in his armors. Right. And we had a dance. Sorry, go, oh yeah, the dance off. Yeah, dance off to save the universe. So yeah, I think a little twerking won't hurt anybody. Yeah. So. I mean, that was like one of my, that was my favorite scene in the, and I don't even care much about Megan Thee Stallion, but I just like that scene just had me rolling. It was so good.
00:08:35
Speaker
And it looks like, you know, well, especially that scene, they look like they were having so much fun. Oh, yeah. Like it was just a celebration of just just just having a good time doing what they love to do and something that a whole lot of people get to do. Well, I think I saw something that Tatiana Mosley was probably mispronouncing your name.
00:08:59
Speaker
Tatiana Maslany, I think that's how her name is pronounced. If I'm wrong, I'm sorry about that.
Spawn comics and 1997 movie discussion
00:09:04
Speaker
But I think I read something where she was saying that she is actually a huge fan of Megan Thee Stallion. So like that, so like being able to film that scene was so much fun for her. Yeah. And she evidently can dance. So it was, you know, it was actually her in a mocap suit and stuff. That was, that was just fantastic. And I think too, because she's such a big fan, it makes me wonder if the I will kill for you Megan Thee Stallion line was ad libbed.
00:09:31
Speaker
You know, yeah, that's, that's, that's a, yeah, it's five 50, 50 and that's, that's really cool. I didn't even think about that. That's really funny. Have you seen, I have not seen these yet. I haven't had the chance to sit down, but have you seen rings of power yet?
00:09:47
Speaker
No, I haven't. I'm not a big Lord of the Rings guy, to be honest. I saw the movies. They were okay. They were entertaining enough. And I own them, but I've only watched them once since I bought them on DVD.
00:10:03
Speaker
I was never a big, I never saw the Hobbit movies. So I was never really into those. And I, I tried, I read, I tried reading the books because a buddy of mine, he loved the books as a kid. And he told, and when I told him, I'd only seen the movies like, no, you have to read the books. You have to read the books. So I read the first book, struggled my way through it. Cause it's fricking long. There's a lot of navel gazing in it. And then, um,
00:10:29
Speaker
And then when I get to the end, I was going to start reading the second book. And at that point, he had I talked to him again. He's like, yes, when he told me you were reading the books, I had started to reread them. After I read the first book, I realized, you know what? You don't need to read the books. You could just watch the movies. So at that point, I'm like, OK, so I'm done. I put the books aside then. Whoo. Yeah. That's the bullet there. Yeah. Yeah.
00:10:51
Speaker
My wife's a bigger friend than I am. And it was something in the zeitgeist, so I thought I'd ask. Do you like the episodes? Have you seen them? I have not. I have not. I've been trying to... Oddly enough, I have a hard time coordinating with my wife and we're in the same house.
00:11:11
Speaker
So it's just one of those things where we plan on getting around to it. Yeah. Well, the thing that I've been interested in is I just picked up the Kawabunga Collection, which is all the classic Ninja Turtles games on my PS4. And so I cracked that open yesterday and started playing that. And I'm not sure, are you a gamer at all or were you a gamer in the past?
00:11:36
Speaker
I was, I think I faded out probably PlayStation 2-ish time period. Like Tony Hawk, Tony Hawk Pro Skater was like my jam back in the day. I haven't really played so much since then. Okay. It's funny you mentioned Tony Hawk, cause that was a free game offering for the PlayStation Plus. So I actually just downloaded that as well. I'd never played it, but it was free. So I'm like, why not? And anyway, have you ever played the original Nintendo Ninja Turtles games?
00:12:06
Speaker
Yes. We have an emulator at the house that's got like 650 games on it. It's got that one. It's got the tournament fighters one. There's the one where, and I can't remember all the, all these, the game playing titles. There's so many of them. Yeah. There's like four of them that we have in half. But, but I've, but I haven't, but I don't, so I don't know what the rest of the cowabunga.
00:12:30
Speaker
So it's like 16. It's like 17 games in total. Wow. Some of them are the same game on different systems. They've got like the, you know, the Super Nintendo version of a game, the Sega version of the game. They've got like the Nintendo version of the arcade game and they've got the actual arcade game. And I've got it. And I've got a I've got a recall box, too. So I've got a
00:12:51
Speaker
big emulator system of my own. And so I've got most of these games already, but, you know, they come with all enhancements, improved graphics on it, side to side, might as well just buy the whole collection. But I was trying to play the original game and some of the games, they have an option where you can put on God mode and you could just, you know, you don't lose any life for that. They didn't do it with the original game, though. And so I tried playing that again. It's like it is still so fucking hard.
00:13:18
Speaker
The original one on Nintendo. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, man. Nintendo games were no joke back in the day, man. No, no. I wonder how we got through our childhood without slipping our wrists, to be honest.
00:13:30
Speaker
It forged strong-willed people is what it is. Between eating quarters at an arcade, I don't know if anybody remembers those. Oh, yeah, yeah. And really hard-ass Nintendo games. We were four gamers towards the steel. I remember that the original arcade game, the digital arcade game, like summer as we go down to visit my grandparents in Florida, and there was this...
00:14:00
Speaker
like a restaurant place they always like to go to, their friends owned it, and they had the new turtles arcade games. So like, I'd be in there, I just keep pumping in quarters and quarters, and then go and ask my grandmother for more quarters, just nonstop. Oh, man. And yeah, and I was playing the Cowabung collection, I was playing the turtles in time arcade version. And you can see how they bled us out of money because those enemies do not fucking stop. It's just relentless.
00:14:30
Speaker
Yeah, I wonder how much it costs normally to beat those games. I don't know. I don't even want to think of it. But like the Nintendo games where it was like three lives and then you're done, you have to go all the way back to the beginning. Yeah, like nothing. Yeah, that was terrible. So that's pretty much what I've been interested in lately was that.
00:14:57
Speaker
but now I think we're gonna get into the discussion. You brought this on yourself. You brought this to me. Just remember that. Just remember that. Fair enough. You offered like three times you offered and each time I'm like, are you sure? And you're like, okay, yeah, I'm sure. So just remember I gave you plenty of outs on this. It's okay. Actually it was.
00:15:23
Speaker
But honestly, had I seen this in 1997, I didn't really I didn't remember how old this was until I talked to a friend of mine yesterday because I thought it was like 2007 because I know. And he's like he looks at me for a second. He goes, do you mean the one from 1997? I'm like, oh, has it been that long? Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah.
00:15:40
Speaker
It's been that long, yeah. Since I had such low expectations, because this is the first time I actually have ever seen this movie. Oh, really? OK. I'd never seen it before. OK. I knew of it, and it was so... I try not to waste my time with, like, universally panned movies. You know what I mean? Life's too short, and I tend to fall asleep in movies anyway, so I want to watch something I want to watch, or at least take a shot at. Yeah, yeah. And so I watched it, and with all the...
00:16:09
Speaker
the vitriol for this movie. I watched, I was like, I kind of giggled through it. It was like, now if I had paid full price in 1997 for this movie, I'd have been
00:16:23
Speaker
and I understand why people were hot. Yeah, so we're talking about 1997's Spawn. I should have mentioned that, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Directed by Marc Aze Dipe, I think is how his name is pronounced. And this is the only theatrical movie he's ever directed. Everything else he's done has been like direct-to-video stuff, which you can understand why after seeing this movie. And we can tell, yes. Yeah. And, but...
00:16:48
Speaker
Before we jump in the movie, talk a little bit about the source material. Were you at all familiar with the Spawn Comics? Were you a fan of the Spawn Comics at all? I was a bit of a fan. The things that were in the movie that I
00:17:08
Speaker
that were in the movie that were from the source material, I could tell where most of it deviated from. So I wouldn't call myself a super fan, but I knew enough about it. Yeah, because I was like right in the image, heyday thing. That was in college and I had more money so I could collect comics then, so yeah. Okay, so you were in college when the image, when spawn hit big then you said? Yes. So like I was in, when spawn hit big, it was like 92. So I was still in elementary school. And then when I got to junior high is when?
00:17:42
Speaker
When I got to junior high, funny story, the other day I was teaching a movie in my class and it came out in 2005. And I always ask my students when we go through a movie, I ask each of them what they thought of it. And one of the students, she's like, oh yeah, she's like, this is an interesting movie because it came out in 2005 and that was the year I was born. I'm like, what?
00:18:06
Speaker
And another student, when I gave them the list of movies for this semester, he looked at the list. He's like, wow, these are old movies. I'm like, they're all from like the early 2000s. What are you talking about? He's like, yeah, that's old. Oh, man. I just.
00:18:23
Speaker
I said the other day I was, I'm watching Triple X or something else. And I was like, oh, it wasn't that long ago. It was, you know, 2002. Then I stopped myself and went and I did the math real quick. I was like, oh my gosh, it's been really 20 years since that movie came out. It's wild, but yeah. There was a meme I saw like the other day and it was on Twitter and it was like, you know, 1975 to like 2005, 10 years ago.
00:18:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So I got into spawn when I was in junior high school, you know, bought some of the trades and stuff like that, you know, they had the action figures, the McFarland toys. I think that was actually my entry point was the toys. Really? Because those were the, yeah, because I was big in action figures and they had these really super detailed toys and they did something smart. With each toy you bought, it came packaged with a comic book.
00:19:20
Speaker
Ah, right on. So kind of like that. Now, was it a full size one or? Yeah, it was an actual it was an issue of the regular comic book series. Wow. And it was tied to whatever that character was. So you got the basic spawn figure. You got the first issue of spawn. You got the medieval spawn figure. You got the medieval spawn issue that he did that Neil Gaiman did.
00:19:43
Speaker
You know, you got the violator figure, you did that issue where violator fights and all this kind of stuff. So, yeah, it was it was a really smart way of marketing it. I'm not sure how much that did. At least I think it was. I'm not sure how much it actually worked or not, because I know eventually they did stop doing that. But that was the thing they're doing for at least a little bit. And
00:20:02
Speaker
And I had picked up some of the trades and, you know, they had like a bunch of the t-shirts and stuff. Cause the big thing about Spawn was really the art, right? Cause you read those, I'm not sure if you've gone back and read any of those books now, but I picked up one of the Comixology sales. They had the Spawn
Critique on movie's characters and performances
00:20:18
Speaker
Compendiums, which are like these massive trade paperbacks and it's like 50 issues per volume. And they're on sale for like,
00:20:28
Speaker
15, 20 bucks or something like that. So I bought both the committee. So I've got the first hundred issues in these companions. And I read the first book. So I've gone through and I've reread issues one to 50. I haven't read the second one yet. And it's, I'm not gonna say it's bad.
00:20:46
Speaker
but it's a guilty pleasure, right? You're reading those books mainly for Todd McFarland and later Greg Capullo's art. You're not really reading it so much for the writing because the writing's not that great, but it's not offensively bad, like say, a Rob Liefeld.
00:21:06
Speaker
Comics resident punching bag. Yeah. Yeah. It's not like that offensively bad. So, I mean, it's not great. There are tons of plot holes and stuff you notice. And, but, and it's very much that early nineties, you know, extreme style stuff, but it's not as bad as I thought it would be going back to it. It was, it was, it was a fun read. It's a fun, guilty pleasure type of thing. So you're going in, even by the standards of the,
00:21:34
Speaker
the Spawn comics, which again, aren't that great. This movie is still pretty bad. Yeah. So now you said you didn't see that you only saw this movie recently. I saw it in the theater when it came out. Because again, I was into that whole Spawn zeitgeist thing. And I was what, like maybe 14 when this movie came out, I think. And so that was right at the peak of my Spawn fandom. So I loved it the first time I saw it.
00:22:02
Speaker
And then as the years go on and I've gone back and I've re-watched it, I'm like, oh man, this is really fucking terrible. It was, yeah. Yeah.
00:22:15
Speaker
I will say this, one of the things I really enjoyed, and I hope, and John, I- Leguizamo? Yes, he was fantastic. Yeah. He like chewed up every, he was just chewed up every bit of scenery in every scene he was in. He was, he was the focal point for me watching it, which probably helped me get- Oh yeah, absolutely. And you know, the prosthetics work on him was amazingly well done. Like he, I mean, I did,
00:22:45
Speaker
unless you look really closely and pay attention to his facial features, and if you're just looking at a picture, not hearing the voice, you could not tell that's John Leguizamo. They did a really good job of covering him up, yeah.
00:22:57
Speaker
Yeah, if I didn't know that that was him and was like looking for him, yeah, it was, I mean, especially like with the shots where he's, you know, you can see his whole body, because there was a lot of close ups. And, but when he moved around and stuff. Because he had to actually be on his knees the whole time when he was in costume, when they did the whole body shots. Because he, you know, obviously to make, to make the, so yeah, the entire time you see him and he's, he's squatting down basically.
00:23:24
Speaker
Yeah, he really threw it all in there too. What did I read? The scene where, I really don't want to say this, but the scene where he eats the pizza with the maggots on or whatever.
00:23:36
Speaker
That was a real... He actually ate those maggots. They were actually... And then he threw up right after the seat stopped. I'm like, oh! I was like, oh, we didn't have too many takes of that. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. Another scene I saw, like, he had to go to the bathroom at one point, and it was taking too much time to take the suit off that he just ended up going in the suit. Oh, no. Oh, that's the worst. Hopefully, it was just number one and not number two, but... But, yeah, he was... You know, and it's...
00:24:06
Speaker
It's weird watching him in this because his performance is good, but the material he has to work with is so bad. Like it's just so 14. And again, when I was 14, I loved that humor, but you know, looking at it now, I'm like, wow, this is really bad. It's really cheesy. But he does a good job of selling it. I will say that. And he is the only person in the entire movie who looks like he's having a good time.
00:24:31
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Martin Sheen. Yeah, was that Martin Sheen? That's Martin Sheen, yeah. Yeah. I've read that he wanted, he, the only reason he took, one of the reasons he took it is because he always wanted to be in a superhero movie. And that's what you get, I guess. But he was so, he was so over the top. Over, yeah. You know what I mean? Like, he was just so over the top. It was, it was like, oh,
00:25:01
Speaker
Tommy Lee Jones is two-faced man. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, very much so. Which actually... Hold on. They can... Batman Forever came out I think about a year or two years before this.
00:25:15
Speaker
Here it was, 97, Batman and Robin came out that year. Batman and Robin was 97, yeah. Was 97, yeah, came out the same year, Men in Black, and wait for it, your favorite, Steel came out in 97 as well. Yeah, yeah. Came out right after this, actually, I think. Wow, that was a really tough time for superheroes, boy. And ironically enough, I remember back at that time,
00:25:41
Speaker
Spawn was the movie that was the most well-received that year. And then Steel, I think most people just didn't even pay attention to Steel. And then Batman and Robin was the one that got vilified the most. Looking back on it now, Batman and Robin's actually the best movie of the bunch that came out that year.
00:25:57
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. But there is another Men in Black connection though because Will Smith was actually up for the role of Spawn. Yeah. But he turned it down for Men in Black as he was worried that this would tarnish his like, you know, squeaky clean image that he had at that time. Definitely a smart career move to choose Men in Black over this.
00:26:22
Speaker
Absolutely. And it makes, it kind of evens out the fact that he turned down the matrix. So, yeah. The one that got me though, there was a couple of, there was quite a list of people who were up for this. Evidently Denzel Washington was rumored to be up for it. I wonder how true that was. I wonder if that was just the thing like they asked him just to see that he just said no. Cause I don't think he would have ever given this movie serious consideration.
00:26:50
Speaker
The other one, and this sounds believable, Samuel Jackson. Samuel Jackson will do anything if there's a paycheck in it. So I definitely believe that. Wesley Snipes was also up for it too. I believe that too, because he did, Blade came out like I think the year after this.
00:27:05
Speaker
from New Line as well. From New Line as well, yeah. Yeah, those were the same producer. Yeah, same studios, yeah. Studio, thank you. But Martin Sheen is just, when I go back and I rewatch this movie, because when I first saw it, I didn't know who Martin Sheen was. So going back and rewatch again now and I'm just like, every time, every now and then you see a movie that's just so bad and you see one of these like A-list actors and you're just like,
00:27:34
Speaker
How the hell did you end up in this? Like, I don't even understand how that works. And he was A-list then, you know what I mean? Like, in the 90s, I think he was, his career had had a bit of a slowdown, I think. He wasn't really doing a whole lot of stuff because this was before the West Wing, like two years before the West Wing. And imagine that he goes from this to doing the West Wing. And the West, because the West Wing was really like a shot in the arm for his career. Okay.
00:28:04
Speaker
Go ahead. And there's also, they also make an apocalypse now joke, which I didn't catch the first time, but I caught this time. But yeah, I mean, he's just, he's just so bad. He's just so over the top in this. And I'm just like, I don't know what you're doing here. Like, did you just, you know, did you have another wing on your house you needed to pay for or what? IRS coming after him. Yeah.
00:28:28
Speaker
But now apparently though, after he had accepted the part, he was telling his grandson about it and his grandson turned out to be a huge fan of the comics. So that was another reason for him to stick with the role was because he wanted to show off for his grandson. And then I get that too. That's, you know, I think Tommy Lee Jones had a similar thing with Two-Face. He was mostly doing it. He was mostly doing it because his kid or his grandkid was a big fan of Two-Face. So he just did it for- Basically, yeah, yeah.
00:28:58
Speaker
Um, and Michael Jai White in this, like, this was, you know, the first thing I'd ever see. And he just wonder how much this like set back his career because I don't think he really did anything again until Black died of note.
00:29:12
Speaker
He was in Dark Knight, believe it or not. Well, yeah, he was in Dark Knight, but that was like a small thing, right? It was just a small thing. Yeah, sure. I'm talking about like where he was like the lead character or something like that. Yeah, I don't. Yeah, it was mostly, well, we can see, well, oh, man, director streaming movies. I guess bad director streaming movies now because they were directed DVD back then if anybody's young, old enough to remember that.
00:29:35
Speaker
Um
Spawn's plot and execution analysis
00:29:36
Speaker
the uh but he's done a quite he's done uh he he was done uh bronze tiger a couple times I think right on an arrow yeah yeah and then he uh I think he's uh is he bronze tiger in the soul of the dragon have you seen that one yeah yeah yeah we covered that um covered that a while last year I think or two years ago so that's what I thought that's what I thought yeah so and so he's done some stuff since then but yeah um there was rumors there might still be talks of uh a
00:30:05
Speaker
a reboot of the Spawns franchise and Jamie Foxx is attached to it or whatever. And somebody asked Michael Jai White about it. He's like, you know, what do you think? I was like, what do you think about them bringing it back? He's like, why?
00:30:22
Speaker
Like that's how much of an impression it made on him, I guess. Well, yeah, he said that it was a really good script, and he said the original cut of the movie was actually much better, but then they gave the director more power, and then he wanted to more control over it, and then he wanted to make all these changes, and that's why we got what we got, which was utter dog shit. He said the original cut of the movie was actually more character-driven. It was much less focused on the action and the effect shots, but when they gave,
00:30:51
Speaker
the director more control, he wanted to add in more effect shots and cut back on the character stuff. Yeah, which goes to show you why this director has only done direct-to-video stuff before and after this. Yeah, yeah. We see what you did with the budget. Mm-hmm, yeah. How much money it made.
00:31:12
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I guess it's, you know, it was a tentpole movie. There weren't a lot of, there wasn't a lot of competition that year, but also, you know, it had a, like, I remember at the time, the special effects, we thought they were amazing. Like we thought the whole CGI cape and all that, we thought it was amazing back in 1997. Looking back now, it is definitely not amazing.
00:31:37
Speaker
It looks, it, no, God, oh God, no. And I think the best comparison is when you look at the scenes with violator, cause there are two types of violators in this movie. There's one where they use like practical effects, like puppetry and all that. Those look pretty damn good. And then when you see it, the CGI violator, it looks like a bad PlayStation cut scene. It looks terrible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was, it was rough. It was, I mean,
00:32:07
Speaker
I guess I'm really glad that I saw it, you know, in 2022 versus 97, because yeah, I would be just as fired up as everybody else. Man, there's some else who I asked you to do. Well, I do want to mention, speaking of, because I caught this when I was watching it last night, and I made sure to look her up. But the actress who plays the reporter, did you recognize her?
00:32:35
Speaker
No. OK, so that's Rabiya Lamorte. Were you a Buffy guy back in the day? Yes. She played Miss Calendar in the first two seasons of Buffy. Really? Yeah, yeah. Because I'm staring at her on the screen. I'm like, I know this actress. I looked her up after, and yeah, it's Rabiya Lamorte.
00:32:56
Speaker
Wow, wow, I didn't make two, I'm watching Angel right now too. So I didn't even make two, I didn't even see two and two together. And this came out, I think the same year that Buffy debuted, actually, if I'm not mistaken. Oh, man, she had a full year then. Yeah, yeah, she was busy that year. But yeah, some other things. Talking about some of the things about this,
00:33:23
Speaker
What did you think of the spawned suit? Because that's like the big visual thing about him in the comics is the suit and the makeup design and all that on him. There's a product of his time, that's for sure.
00:33:40
Speaker
And again, it might be just 20, 22 eyes with a little like, you know, giving some grace. I didn't think the cape was terrible. It was terrible. Yeah, the suit itself didn't feel as egregious. I actually didn't mind it. I didn't think it was too bad. I thought one of the nice little things they added to it was they tried to make it look organic.
00:34:04
Speaker
Right? And I think that, and like it's not a great suit, but I think that really, I appreciated the effort they put into it to try and make it look organic, but also still fit in with the aesthetic of the comic. And I thought the mask looked pretty good. Yeah, I like that. I did like the mask. It's only on for like five minutes, the entire damn movie, but it still looked good when it was there.
00:34:30
Speaker
Right, was there a reason why, did you find out a reason why they had the mask on so little or? I guess it was just. I mean, they rarely rode around it. Yeah, I guess it was just for practical reasons, right? Cause if you have the mask on with the glowing eyes, it's hard for the character, for the actor to emote at all. So I think that might be the reason why is the only thing I get, cause it obviously wasn't about showing Michael Jai White's face because A, he wasn't a big name at the time and B he's, you know,
00:34:58
Speaker
covered in, you know, makeup, burn makeup for the entire, for most of them. Right, right. So yeah, that's, that's interesting. I didn't know if you had any ideas on it. That's a good, that's a good answer. It's a good answer. And I thought that the burn effects looked decent enough on him, although from what I recall in the comic books, it wasn't so much that he was burned, but it was more just like he was a rotting corpse is what I thought it was. Yeah, that's what I thought it was. That's what I thought it was. Why did it,
00:35:27
Speaker
Okay, again, it's been a long time since I've read these comics. The gentleman who ends up, his best friend who ends up marrying his wife after he dies. Oh yeah, Terry. Terry, thank you. Wasn't he black in the comics? Yeah, he was. And in fact,
00:35:45
Speaker
1997 thinking folks, all right, but they were worried that if they had a black guy play Terry, that there would be too many black actors in the movie and audiences would think this is a movie, this is a movie for black people. And it's not a movie for general audience, is the thinking. And I know you're, I could see your face and I know you're counting in your head, how many black actors were actually in this movie? There were three in the movie. You had Michael Jai White, you had,
00:36:14
Speaker
the actors who played Wanda and you had the actors who played Cyan. And that was it. And I'm gonna, Theresa Randall who played Wanda and then Cyan was played by Sidney Bodoine. And that was it. Those were the only main black actors in the movie. And they thought if we added a fourth in there, that would be too much. Well, call the source to war. Are you kidding me? Wow.
00:36:37
Speaker
Oh, my gosh. Well, we have a black movie, can we? Oh, my gosh. It is. Yeah. We're we're still almost 20 years away from Black Panther, I guess. So. And then his face, his face was covered up the whole movie. You can't even really tell. Yeah. He's only black for like five minutes. Right. Then he's. And then.
00:37:04
Speaker
There's been progress. There's been progress. Yeah. I mean, you mentioned Black Panther. You look at that and there's two white guys in the entire movie. Right. Perfect. Yeah. And I'm trying to figure out why they even cast white in this movie because he
00:37:28
Speaker
The whole reason you would cast Michael Jai White at this point in his career would be presumably for his martial arts skills. But he only gets to use like two kicks in the whole movie. So it doesn't seem like he, you really showing off his, you're not hiring him really for those skills. You're definitely not hiring him for his acting skills because he doesn't really do a lot. He just basically growls throughout the entire movie. Right. It's, um, I,
00:37:52
Speaker
I wonder, well because it was like you said it was a temple movie, and maybe it's just one of those things where we're trying to find a diamond in the rough you know like you know, Star Wars, you know, Mark Hamill you know that kind that like that kind of.
00:38:08
Speaker
that kind of get, you know? And yeah, they didn't, yeah, they, if they had maybe used him to his, to his fault, you know, of what he was good at, then maybe, at least Wesley Snipes dodged this one. Yeah, yeah. Another thing is, I had some issues with the whole storyline. Like first, the structure of the story. We waste all this time with him
00:38:34
Speaker
in his human life before and like the acts and then the assassination attempt and all that. And then, and I think what the comic did that I think was really smart is it opens up with him five years later, waking up as spawn and having very little memory of his life before that. And
Spawn's cinematic potential and future
00:38:55
Speaker
I think that would have been a much more interesting way to structure this story is if you
00:38:59
Speaker
you just start off with him as spawn and having that amnesia and trying to put the pieces of his life back together.
00:39:07
Speaker
as we discover along with him on what's going on and stuff like that, yeah. And that would have made the, and honestly, that would have made the reveal that he's black at, you know, worth it. Cause in the comics, if I'm not mistaken, you find out that he's black because he uses his powers to like, if I'm not mistaken, he uses his powers to transform into a human form and he turns into his blonde, blonde hair, blue hat, white guy.
00:39:32
Speaker
Yeah, that does happen. Although by that point in the comics, we've already known he's black. Oh, okay. But yeah, that was a big thing. Like every time he tried to, he found out he could use his powers to change his appearance, but every time he tried to make himself look like a normal guy, he kept changing into the same blonde haired, blue eyed, white guy. Right. And I'm surprised they didn't like play with that some. That would have added something to it anyway.
00:40:01
Speaker
Well, I mean, I think it's because that would be something to deal with character. And obviously this director wasn't interested in anything to do with character. Fair enough. My bad. My bad. My bad. Yeah. Another thing that I couldn't figure out why they did it this way was the whole idea of Cogliosto training him because it doesn't seem like Cogliosto tells him anything useful that actually helps him in the final battle. Because he seems pretty...
00:40:29
Speaker
adept with his powers before Cagliosto's whole training thing. Yeah. I mean, the most creative uses of his powers are when he tries to attack Jason at that benefit, right? He turns his hands into the suction cup. He's using the cape to fly around. He's able to control all these aspects of his suit. He's able to use the cape to camouflage himself. He's able to do all these different things with the suit.
00:40:57
Speaker
And then after he goes and he trained with Cogliostro and he doesn't really learn anything new. So it just seemed like a really weird way to construct that. Yeah, that doesn't make, that didn't make any sense at all now that you put it that way.
00:41:15
Speaker
I really don't have anything to add, I'm sorry. Well, I mean, that character, he just seems like a very pointless addition to this movie overall. Because he does that really bad voiceover at the beginning, which is unnecessary. His training stuff is unnecessary. The explanations he's given are also unnecessary because we can get all this information through clown or through other means. We don't need Kogliostro in this movie at all. Is he in the comics?
00:41:44
Speaker
He is, he is, and if I'm recalling correctly, he was a pretty minor character in the comics. So it was just an unnecessary addition to this movie. Basically, yeah. Pretty much. Another unnecessary addition is that little homeless kid in the alley. Yeah, I didn't quite get what his whole point, what the whole point of that whole thing was.
00:42:08
Speaker
I mean, yeah, because it's like you have the humanizing element when Spawn develops a relationship with cyan already. So you don't need it with this random kid. Another thing I thought, and I think it's just that this is just 90s thinking. In the 80s and the 90s, studios were obsessed with this idea that if you want kids to see the movie, you have to have a kid in the movie.
00:42:34
Speaker
And obviously little white boys can't relate to little black girls. So we have to have a little white boy in the movie instead is what I think the thinking was. And I don't know, speaking for me, cause I was a kid in the eighties and nineties. I never related to the little white kid in the movies. Like I always thought that kid was annoying as shit with the exception of short round. Short round was the one exception. All the other ones, I always hated those kids.
00:43:00
Speaker
I didn't care about, you know, the little kid's sidekick. I wanted to be the hero in the movie. Right. And and and that's how I felt during my course. You know, they didn't look like me, but I mean, that's who you want to be. Indiana Jones, you don't want to be short round. You know, I didn't. Yeah. Looking back, I mean, it's not something I thought about until I became an adult. But yeah, that doesn't make any sense. It's it's kind of it's like the scrappy do syndrome. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. Well, let's do let's stick a little one in there. But
00:43:29
Speaker
It's not nearly as popular as the focal point or the person who's there to see. Right. And what purpose of what is there any other like story purposes that they usually serve? Not that I can think of. Like I said, the only time I've ever liked a kid sidekick was short round. The only one that I liked and that was more because of that actor was just he had great kind of timing. Other than that, they've always been really irritating. So
00:43:56
Speaker
I don't know what it is. I think it's just they felt that we have to. And they even back in the, you know, back in the Super Friends cartoon, remember, they had Wendy and Marvin on that. And that was another way to because we have to have a point of view here that the kids can relate to.
00:44:10
Speaker
Right, like I wanted to be Batman. Who are these cats, man? I want to be Batman. I want to be Superman or whoever. Do they have focus groups or something? They got to. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe it's focus grouped or something. I don't know. But whatever the case, it was always, at least for me, I never, and I don't know, someone out there may have been like, hey, I actually really related to that little kid and whatever. Okay. Never worked for me. It never did anything for me, though.
00:44:38
Speaker
Man, well, not in this, the one in this movie didn't. Definitely not in this movie, no. God, that kid was just a waste of space. A bit, yeah, yeah. Jeez Louise. Let's see, what other things about this movie? Oh, CGI in the hell scene was just, oh, that was just so bad. It's like, and when you have,
00:45:05
Speaker
The thing I don't get is I can understand you have to use CGI on the violator's action scenes because he's doing all these things. Malbolgia is not doing anything but standing there. So why do you have to CGI him? Why can't you just use practical effects for that? And this, what throws me about like, especially something like that is, was it ILM?
00:45:30
Speaker
Is that those initials? Yeah. ILM was the group that did Terminator 2, they did Jurassic Park. So they had really talented people. You know what I mean? How do you fumble the bag that bad? You know what I think it is? I think it's because it depends a lot on the director who's involved because with Jurassic Park and with Terminator 2,
00:45:59
Speaker
you know, James Cameron and Steven Spielberg, they understood the limitations of the technology. And also those movies came to be fair to those movies came out, you know, earlier than this right Terminator two was 92 I believe and Jurassic Park was 93 so the CGI using computers for everything was not as advanced
00:46:17
Speaker
at that point. So there was a much more concern for having to do practical effects as well. By this point, CGI had developed to the point where they could have everything CGI in the movie. And I think a big part of it is it was two things. One, it was, you know, the director didn't have the foresight to think, you know, we need to have some more practical effects in here. And two, I think it's the thing that, you know, it's the new toy. We all want to play with it type of thing.
00:46:44
Speaker
Mm-hmm, kind of like a shaky cam. Yeah, exactly. Oh, God, yeah. God, don't get, don't remind me about shaky cam. That was one of the worst advancements ever. Advancements and scare quotes. Yeah. Paul Greengrass, like, I don't know, he built like his entire goddamn career on shaky cam scenes. And I remember watching the last two Bourne movies and just like getting motion sick while I was watching them.
00:47:15
Speaker
Yeah, I can, I think I only watched the first one of that, but yeah, anytime I see it, it just, it really gives me, I can't even play, but one of the reasons I'm not a gamer, I know these aren't the only games, but one of the reasons I stopped gaming is because of the pro life, because so many people started playing first person shooters, and I get motion sickness. Oh, right, right. So like, yeah, Shaky Camp, I'm like, what is happening? Like, stop that. Like, it'll give me a headache.
00:47:45
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not a big fan of first-person shooters for that. I don't get motion sick when I'm watching, when I'm playing them, but I do, it doesn't feel as, it's not as immersive for me as the third person ones are. Which is what annoys me about Cyberpunk because there's no third person option for
Comparing Spawn movie and comics
00:48:02
Speaker
that. It's all first person.
00:48:04
Speaker
Oh, that's terrible. Yeah, I played the I played the role playing like the pen and paper role playing game of cyberpunk 2020, which came out in like 89. But
00:48:18
Speaker
But yeah, that makes me sad. If you're looking for cyberpunk content though, they got a Netflix series coming out soon, an animated series set in the world. Yeah, yeah. Ooh, that's exciting. I don't have to write that down. It's like cyberpunk edge runners or something like that. I think it's called. Oh, okay, okay. Right on, right on. Okay, cool. Yeah, I'm gonna throw mine. It looks pretty cool. I saw the trailer a few days ago. It looks pretty cool. When's that supposed to come out?
00:48:46
Speaker
I'm not sure actually. Looking up later, we'll talk later afterwards. But yeah, going back to the movie, the hell effects are just so bad. It's not much else to say about it than that. But yeah, I mean, it's not like, even by, again, even by the low standards I have for what a spawn movie should be, like this is just not that good. It's just,
00:49:10
Speaker
It's, and I'm trying to think about stuff I like. I like John Leguizamo for the most part in this. He's the only thing. Although if I think if the script had been better, I think his performance would be irritating, but because the script is so bad, he ends up being the best thing in it. Yeah, yeah, he's, that's not even close. Another good thing I will, we can talk about with this movie is the soundtrack. Oh yeah, yeah. The soundtrack was, was way,
00:49:39
Speaker
I don't know if it's comparatively speaking, but it was better received than the movie. Oh, definitely. In fact, more than some awards, I believe. And it was in the, it was in, yeah, it was on a billboard charts for like six months, which is unusual, especially for a soundtrack back then, because it wasn't, because I think it was a few years, and it starts, a soundtrack started to become a bigger part of the whole marketing package, if you will. I remember Batman Forever soundtrack. I remember being really,
00:50:08
Speaker
Um, up there for awhile. I remember that being talked about a lot back in the day. So that would have been like two years before this. Okay. So yeah. Um, and then, um, the one, one that I remember, uh, that at least for me paying attention to it anyway, that started that off. Do you remember the movie juice? I I've heard of it, but I've never seen it.
00:50:30
Speaker
It was, it got a, the, again, the soundtrack was much more popular than the actual movie. Although the movie's good. I enjoyed the movie. I haven't seen it in a while, so I will, so I may reserve judgment if it's bad now, but here's not, I mean, this isn't quite the same example because the movie was really good too, but the crow soundtrack, that was another one that was really well received and was really popular.
00:50:51
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I do remember that. I believe it might have been the Batman soundtrack, the 89 version that really kind of started because the big thing about that was Prince was doing the soundtrack. Yes, yes. As soon as you said Batman, I was like, yeah, that's right. Prince did that whole thing, which I thought it was weird at the time. Right. Well, that was kind of an outlier even at the time, wasn't it? To have such a big focus on the soundtrack.
00:51:17
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And, you know, Prince was a huge name at that point. Right. Yeah. For him to do the whole album was, you know, unprecedented. I won't say unprecedented, but it was unheard of for that time period. And, you know, he did the whole deal. Yeah. So... Oh, sorry. Go ahead. No, I... No, go ahead. Go ahead.
00:51:40
Speaker
I was just gonna say that we also had another change in the comic books, because in the comics, the assassin that kills Al isn't Jessica Priest. She was a character created for the movie.
00:51:52
Speaker
In the comics, it was Chappell from Rob Liefeld's Youngblood comics, because back when Image was launched, they were doing the whole shared universe thing. So Chappell was responsible for killing Al Simmons, and they couldn't use him in this because Liefeld had the rights, although I guess they were able to work something out because they did use Chappell in the HBO animated series. Yeah, I do remember that, which was way better. Yeah.
00:52:20
Speaker
I think that's on HBO Max. Watch that on HBO Max. And they introduced Jessica Preece into the comics later, didn't they? That's what I read. Like, I think at the point I'm reading, they hadn't they hadn't introduced her yet. But I do. I did read in the trivia last night that they later introduced her in the comics, too. I want to say it was
00:52:42
Speaker
I haven't written down. Yeah, it was issue 61 is when they introduced her and then kind of developed her into more into the lore, I guess that's really important. Yeah, I'm just looking it up now. It looks like she becomes a spawn herself too, actually. But yeah, you're right. Spawn number 61, that's when she got introduced into the comics. Yeah, I mean, she just...
00:53:09
Speaker
She's one of those characters in the movie, like her and Wynn are annoying just because they're evil, just to be evil. They have no real reason to do any of this stuff. I mean, like, you know, Jason's developing this biological weapon that can wipe out all of humanity for what purpose? Like I get why, I mean, I don't even really get why clown and Melbosa want to do it too, because I don't see how destroying humanity really accomplishes their goals. So,
00:53:41
Speaker
And you just, this just popped in my head when they set it up where like they, they operate on when, and his heart, his, his heart is connected to the bomb. Basically. If his heart stops, stops beating, you know, the bomb goes off.
00:54:04
Speaker
after they said, I'm like, why would, why is he excited about this? That doesn't make any sense. Like, wait a minute. So somebody could, so he could just die on accident. And then it goes, I didn't, I couldn't wrap my head around that. Cause I know why clowns doing it cause clowns doing it. Cause he wants to trigger the virus, but I, it doesn't make any sense because, you know,
00:54:24
Speaker
When seems to think he's like, oh, well, if I have the bomb, then Spawn won't kill me is what his thinking is. But Spawn doesn't fucking know. It's like it never registers to him that, oh, he doesn't know that if he kills me, all these people are gonna die until the very end, then he says it. And it's such flawed logic. I'm like, why would you put yourself in that position? And somebody who is supposed to be, you have to be intelligent to rise to those, well,
00:54:55
Speaker
Theoretically, theoretically you would have some kind of intelligence or nothing else to get yourself into that position. And then for something- Mike Pompeo was the CIA director. So I think that kind of nixed that idea. That's why I paused. I was like, well, maybe not. I mean, maybe not. I don't know. Yeah, that was the one thing that I remember sticking out was like, wait, what? I don't understand.
00:55:24
Speaker
It's such, that's like the biggest plot hole in the movie is that. That and just like the whole, oh, another thing they mentioned is, and this is something they brought in the comics, the fact that if Spawn uses too much of his powers, he'll go straight back to hell. Okay. Now, even in the comics, I never quite understood that because I'm like, why do you have that option, right? Because the whole thing is,
00:55:49
Speaker
spawn doesn't, he doesn't want to be like, why are you, it just makes no sense. It doesn't seem like any, I don't understand how that benefits Malbolgia to put spawn on earth and give him these powers. And then, oh, but if you use the powers too much, then you come back to hell. I'm like, you had him in hell anyway, in the first place. Why do you have to, I don't get it. It doesn't make any sense to me. Yeah.
00:56:10
Speaker
But it makes even less sense in the movie because Cogliostro tells him, oh, if you use too much of their powers, you die and you go back to hell. But it's never mentioned again. It has no impact on the story whatsoever. It doesn't stop Spawn from using his powers because he's still using his powers all the fucking time. So there's no reason for it.
00:56:28
Speaker
And they never, yeah, they never meant, like you said, they never mentioned it again. There's no drama about, you know, him getting drained or the, what I liked, again, I'm starting to remember more things from the comics. The comics had a timer.
00:56:43
Speaker
And every time we saw him use his powers or periodically after a fight scene or whatever, they would show the timer going down until he's supposed to go back to Hill again, which doesn't make any sense. But yeah, there was a feeling of some kind of stakes involved with the timer. Right. There was an indication something was going to go down.
00:57:08
Speaker
Well, and also in the comics, that's why he loads up on the weaponry, because he knows if he uses his powers, he'll, you know, they'll deplete too much, he'll go back to hell. So he doesn't, so that's why he picks up all the guns and stuff. But in this movie, he gets all the guns before Cogliostro tells him about the timer. So it doesn't even serve a purpose in that way, in that most basic sense. Yeah, it's almost like,
00:57:37
Speaker
And, you know, sometimes I wonder if these directors who get now, nowadays they do, but it seems like the directors who get some of these properties don't even read the source material or like take a lot of time to read the source material to figure out how things work together. This is, you know, this wasn't the first or the last to do that, but this was seems really egregious. Yeah. Yeah.
00:58:04
Speaker
And it's weird because Todd McFarline fought for creative control in this movie. He had creative control. And I don't know, you know, I remember interviews as I was rewatching this movie. I remember interviews he was doing back then and him saying things in interviews like, I want people to watch this movie then come out of it thinking Batman is shit and all this kind of stuff. And I'm like, dude, you've got like the most popular independent comic of all time. Why do you have a chip on your shoulder about not being as big as Batman? Chill the fuck out.
00:58:35
Speaker
And he had a toy line, which was amazing. I remember seeing the toys. They were so detailed, so amazing. I think probably the only independent comic that could rival spawn in terms of longevity and popularity is the Ninja Turtles. Yeah, that's it. It's one in one A or whatever. Yeah.
00:58:59
Speaker
So, yeah, well, and there was also a lot of talk about what would happen in a sequel because the sequel was in development hell for a long time with this. And Michael Jai White was still attached to come back like even as early as the 2000 as late as the as the mid
Closing and promotions
00:59:14
Speaker
mid-late aughts, he was saying that if there's a sequel, he'll still do it. Wow. So he was still attached to it for a while. And then only recent, and McFarline kept saying, oh, yeah, yeah, we're going to do the sequel. We're going to do the sequel. It's going to focus on Sam and tWitch, who we see at the end of this movie, and just that brief cameo, which is, again, it's weird because they were such a big part of those early issues. Right. Right. Yeah. Why weren't they?
00:59:37
Speaker
Yeah, I was about to mention Sam and Twitch, because I couldn't remember exactly where they were. I've read they were in the movie, but I couldn't remember where they were. Yeah. They were right at the end. Yeah, they're the ones who are escorting wind out of the house. Got it. On the nose. Yeah. Yeah. Well, also the whole thing about, I think if you're going to do a Spawn movie, I think you really should set it up as like,
01:00:06
Speaker
a series, like you shouldn't go full on with Malbolgia and Violator and the first, yeah, have clown there as like, you know, this annoying, you know, you know, antagonist type of thing, but not like the main villain, but, and it shouldn't even be Winn. Winn should be like a background character, but you should focus on something else. Like the comics had all these, like they had the whole thing with the mob stuff that was going on. You had the serial killer, Billy Kincaid, all of that stuff, which was handled really well in the animated series.
01:00:36
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. But there's so many other things you can do that gives you a better chance to explore his character in his new world before you start going into this whole, the whole stuff with heaven and hell and all that. Yeah. I'm watching angels. I'll use that as an example. Joss Whedon has a thing with his seasons where you'll,
01:01:03
Speaker
right around the middle of the season, like you have some nine, 10 or something like that. That's when they introduced the big bad, like there's a couple of monsters of the week or, you know, there's somebody, you know, there's your Wolfram and Hart. They're kind of always there, but then they have the big bad, like, oh my, the world ending threat. And that's something they could have introduced. Like they were talking, you know, I would assume they would have been talking trilogy. So,
01:01:28
Speaker
You know, you have your first movie with, you know, the mob stuff, the more street level stuff, you know, you use Marvel parlance or whatever, and then go into introducing the bigger and the higher stakes and, you know, introduce all the grander, bigger world of, you know, spawn. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Any of that stuff would have been made far more sense. Yeah, but we got this instead. We got this. I don't know. Anything else we want to say about this piece of shit?
01:02:00
Speaker
One thing that just tickled me to no end, and I'm not really sure why, but the fact that Scooby-Doo is the bad guy in this movie. It just tickled me to no end. Oh, that's the voice of- They am, they can't, yes. Yeah, that's Frank Welker. Which is funny because he looks like a hairless dog in this movie.
01:02:27
Speaker
It's like the CGI on him is so bad. It's just so terrible. It was rough, but it was one of those things like, well, okay, that was an hour and a half my life. I can't get back, but you know what? I promised Perry I was right.
01:02:40
Speaker
I would watch. Remember, you did this to yourself. You did this to yourself. Yes. And I deserve and I deserve all. I deserve all the punishment that I will say this whenever we had when we were doing the when Derek was still alive and we we talked about doing the black superhero movies for Black History Month, every time we was like, OK, we're not going to do he's like, we're not doing spawn. We're not doing steel.
01:03:04
Speaker
No, those are movies that set you back, man. Yeah, he eventually did do steel. And but we had fun with that one. Yeah. But yeah, this is just it's so bad. And like even
01:03:19
Speaker
It feels weird saying this, but Spawn deserved better. Like it's not a good movie. And honestly, like if I was McFarline, I would probably just sell the rights and let some director who has more talent take the creative control because I don't think him having more creative control is the answer here. No, no. Oh, there is something else. He sold the rights to Spawn to New Line for a dollar.
01:03:47
Speaker
Oh, the film rights? Yeah. Oh, okay. A freaking dollar, man. I guess that was probably in exchange for the creative control. Yeah, probably. But I saw it was like, really, a dollar? But yeah, now that you say that, that makes more sense. Because yeah, nothing connect.
01:04:03
Speaker
The things that I've read about it didn't connect those two. So that makes a lot more sense. Yeah, there were a lot of studios that were interested in adapting Spawn, but he kept turning down offers because they didn't want to give him too much creative control. And I guess New Line finally did, and that's why he sold it so cheap to them. Yeah, that makes more sense. That's the only thing that can I think of. Yeah, it's not like he didn't have offers. He had plenty of offers. But yeah.
01:04:30
Speaker
more creative control is not a good thing. And the weird thing is we had the animated series, like we mentioned, which is far superior. Like it's so good. Probably even better than the comics I'd say.
01:04:44
Speaker
Wow, that's, wow, really? Yeah, I mean, cause it's really, like I said, the comics, it's all about the artwork and the writing's not that great. The writing in the HBO show, they take those elements from the comics and just like the way they handle the atmosphere and all that, it's just handled much better in the animated series, I think. I remember enjoying it immensely. I'm just kind of spotty on my memory of this stuff, but I remember like the feeling I got from it and I remember enjoying it quite a bit.
01:05:13
Speaker
Yeah. But yeah, that's, that's fun.
01:05:19
Speaker
Yes, it was. Yeah. But also, I don't think McFarland has really learned the right lessons for this because, you know, talking about that reboot he's talking about is he wants it to be a movie where the focus is on salmon, which is the main characters and then spawns going to be just like a minor background character, which feels like you're completely cutting yourself off at the knees because people are going to see this movie because they want to see spawn. They're not going to see the movie because they want to see, you know, this fat detective and his and his thin partner.
01:05:51
Speaker
Yeah, you'd have to introduce them first and have, you know, have us fall in love with them. Cause the average person and I'm like, I wouldn't have known who Sam and Twitch were. Yeah. You know what I mean? So, and I mean, I'm a guy. If you're doing a TV show, I can understand that approach. That would make sense. But, but for doing it as a movie, you know, putting the focus on these two side characters, I think is a big mistake. So, um, I don't know why you'd want to go down that route, but we'll see if it ever gets made because he's been talking about this for like, what, 10 years now.
01:06:21
Speaker
Yeah, I saw an interview that Jamie Foxx did. It was for Dayshift. And the guy interviewed him, asked him about Spawn. And he really gave a non-answer. As I listened to him, I was like, wait a minute, he's not really saying anything.
01:06:43
Speaker
But evidently, you know, he's met with Todd McFarlane and he's seen some concepts and things like that, but there was no dates or anything of substance, and this was like a month ago, so still in the air. Yeah. All right. Well, that does it for this. Daman, why don't you tell people where they can find you?
01:07:03
Speaker
Uh, you can find me on all, this is really simple. You can find me on all the social medias, uh, at demand does, uh, on Instagram, um, Twitter and Facebook. I do, um, I podcast and I write, um, I write that bad dad jokes in a haiku form every day. Yeah, you do. Yeah. So I'm not going to sit there and say that you're going to laugh, but it is something interesting to read first thing in the morning. So it is, it is. I will say that.
01:07:31
Speaker
I will say one more thing about Spawn though is, so last night I get on to, it's Thursday morning when we're recording my time now. Wednesday night I've got a night class that I have to go to. So Wednesday afternoon, I'm just kind of looking up on Netflix and saying, cause I remember this movie was on Netflix up until like a week ago. And I'm looking on Netflix and just double checking. I'm like, wait a second, it's not here.
01:07:59
Speaker
it had just gone off Netflix. So I had to go to the video store right after work, rent a copy and then bring it home. Oh, well, if you had to spend more money on it. Yeah. I mean, it was only like a buck. So it wasn't that bad, but still. They've taken it up for my time. Yeah. See what I do for you guys. You know, I see what I sacrifice for you. And you know, on behalf of the super cinephile universe or the super superhero cinephile cinematic universe. Yeah, there we go.
01:08:29
Speaker
We thank you. We thank you for renting spawn to entertain the masses. All right.
01:08:37
Speaker
All right, Daman, well, thanks again for coming on. And that does it for this episode of Superhero Cinephiles. Superherocinephiles.com is the website, and we are SuperCinemapod on Twitter and Instagram. And don't forget, you sign up for the Patreon, you get these episodes a week in advance, and you also get access to the Superhero Cinephiles Book Club companion podcast, where we talk about comic books and all that fun stuff. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.
01:09:02
Speaker
Hey guys, there's just one more thing I wanted to add to this episode that I forgot to talk about, but I wanted to mention, so I just thought I'd throw it in here at the end as a little postscript. So you might be wondering, there are actually two versions of this movie. There's a theatrical cut and there is a director's cut.
01:09:19
Speaker
I believe most of what you see on streaming or on DVD or Blu-ray is the director's cut, but even if it's not, just to let you know, there's not really much difference between the two. There's some slightly extended scenes, some alternate shots in some scenes, and slightly more violence.
01:09:41
Speaker
And that's about it. Otherwise, there aren't too many differences between the director's cut and the theatrical cut. The director's cut is just like a total of maybe two minutes longer. So you're not looking at something like the Daredevil director's cut or anything like that. So if you were wondering, I just wanted to throw that in and let you know. Thanks again for listening, and I will see you next time.
01:10:02
Speaker
If you enjoy the Superhero Cinephiles, then you'll also love my companion podcast, the Superhero Cinephiles Book Club. All my Patreon subscribers get access to this exclusive podcast where I review superhero comics and graphic novels. Not sure what comics you want to read next or what you should dive into? I've got you covered on that. I'll be doing reviews, recommendations, and also talking to you about useful entry points.
01:10:23
Speaker
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01:11:06
Speaker
Thank you for listening and as always good night. Good evening. God bless.