One of the things I hated from previous superhero movies was the way they always set up an origin story. While it’s always nice to often see how a character came to be, it became a little tedious from a pacing perspective because inevitably the film would take a long time set up its fiction. It became even worse when we had two Spider-Man movies in succession and then we were somehow forced to watch the same origin story.
It is a trend which has been changing lately. While we still need to see origin stories, especially for certain character which we perhaps aren’t familiar with, it’s nice to see many superhero characters simply getting introduced with all their superpower ability already intact so that we can simply get on with the story of superhero/es versus villain/s. After all, isn’t a sense of mystery part of what makes superheroes so much fun in the first place?
This is something which Spawn creator Todd Macfarlane is taking into consideration with the planned Spawn reboot. A Spawn movie was made back in 1997, but it was not really well received, but Macfarlane wants to ensure this new reboot which Macfarlane will be writing and directing himself learns from that previous effort.
That first Spawn movie, which starred Michael Jai White in the titular role as Spawn, aka deceased marine Al Simmons, told the story of Simmon’s Faustian pact with Malebolgia, a ruler of hell who creates his super-powered alter-ego. ,This is a portion of the story that Macfarlane doesn’t want to retell and instead wants to focus on how the character rebels against these demonic influences and turns into a hero instead, as he recently shared with Yahoo!:
I always come back to Jaws – not that I have a shark in Spawn! But that shark was enormous. And at any time in the movie, did they tell me why the shark was so damn big? No! Did it matter to me? No! All that mattered was that it was big and in the same vicinity as humans. Or John Carpenter’s The Thing: where do the aliens come from? I don’t know! What was its reason for taking over bodies? I don’t know! It just was. I’m okay without an origin. Just give me a compelling story, scare the s*** out off me from time to time, and I’m along for the ride… To me, this story is my way of saying, ‘Spawn’s been around for 25 years, and he’s been evolving for 25 years. This is where he’s at now’. I can’t do the same story over and over.
I agree with this approach as I definitely think the movie will be able to cover weightier issues through its characters if it doesn’t get too carried away with these details. Not only does he want to give it a dark, gritty R-rated approach, but he also wants Spawn to be more of a shadowy influence on the film. This unique approach to the story will certainly make it stand-out from the rest and add a nice sense of mystery to the character, which is always a good thing.
Spawn will start shooting in February 2018 with an expected release somewhere in 2019. We have a lot of potentially excellent superhero films to get through before this time from both Marvel and DC. But it will be nice to see something different come to our screens if Macfarlane can definitely deliver on this Spawn premise the way he suggests he could.
Last Updated: October 17, 2017
