spawn Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Now that our Superhero Tournament is nearing the home stretch, I've been looking at some of the 'losers' and thinking about all the costumed heroes that have fallen by the wayside over the years. But then I remembered that reboot fever is alive and well in Hollywood, and the latest victim is Todd McFarlane, who's apparently working on a new Spawn script according to various reports. (But isn't he always working on a new Spawn script?)

Considering how beloved Spawn is in the world of comic books, it really is a shame that he wound up with such a crappy movie -- and if the Rotten Tomatoes rating is any indication, time has not improved this flick in the eyes of fans. Luckily for us then that McFarlane will be starting from scratch, and by the sounds of things, thankfully, there will be far fewer fart jokes. McFarlane told Coming Soon's sources, "The story has been in my head for 7 or 8 years. The movie idea is neither a recap or continuation. It is a standalone story that will be R-rated. Creepy and scary."

McFarlane has only just started writing, so it could be some time before we see a finished product -- but, when we do, it's going to be a brand new Spawn. McFarlane told CS, "the tone of this 'Spawn' movie will be for a more older audience. Like the film 'Departed.'" Okay, that might be a bit of a strange comparison, but then again, I'm all for taking superheroes a little more seriously.

After the jump: the five 'masked avengers' I think deserved better on the big screen...

I was 13 years old in the summer of 1997. I don't know if it's my favorite movie summer, but I do know that it was seminal -- at least in the sense that it was the first summer when I made a concerted effort to keep up with Hollywood's weekly output and see as much of it as I could. Already, I was jotting down my thoughts on everything I saw, fancying myself a budding film critic. The following year, I would start my own website on the now-defunct Geocities, and the rest would be history.

But, 1997. I didn't see everything (so I won't try to cover everything), and there's a lot I haven't caught up with. Still, looking back, I can see the beginnings of my current tastes and predilections. And amazingly, I can still remember the circumstances under which I saw some of these movies. Here are some of my memories.

May 23

The Lost World: Jurassic Park: I remember the talk about whether The Lost World would join the exclusive $200 million club, which just seems so darn quaint now. (It did, by the way.) I also remember the hype about it being the largest opening ever (3,281 screens). I saw the actual movie while visiting family friends in Tennessee. I loved it. Arguably, it began my love affair with Steven Spielberg (I had not, at the time, seen Raiders of the Lost Ark, though I believe I had seen E.T.)

Beginning with the summer of Surf Ninjas and concluding with last year's Underdog, Vulture has compiled a list arguing that August movies generally blow. Sifting through the titles from the past fifteen years, it's hard to ignore their point. If Bushwhacked, Spawn and The Thirteenth Warrior don't convince you, how about Hollow Man? The Adventures of Pluto Nash? Anacondas?

August usually means a lot to America. It's big for vacationers. The sun comes out and everyone gets one last hurrah before the summer recedes for the year. So why would studios dump their worst movies at this time? Maybe it's just a coincidence, but either way, it's hard to say whether or not this August will break the trend. Swing Vote seems to confirm Vulture's dire prediction, but Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder will surely find some appreciative audiences. And we all know The Dark Knight will continue to make bank. However, before you start thinking that a turnaround is on the way, consider the third Mummy movie -- and, once again, Vulture might have something here: Variety has called it "cheeseball stuff." Could that be the codeword for "typical August movie"? It would seem so.

Yes, we've had similar headlines before. The first time we heard from Todd McFarlane about a second Spawn movie was in 2005. Then we heard again from him in 2006. It's now 2007 -- has been for awhile -- and it's time to hear from McFarlane again -- just in time for Comic-Con (ponder all this new info while waiting in those long lines). Now, I make no secret about my disappointment and hatred for the first Spawn adaptation (especially the bad special effects), but this new interview with MTV has me really intrigued about the sequel or reboot or whatever he wants to call it.

First of all, let me point out that we've already heard the strange idea that in Spawn 2 the title character will not talk. We also already heard McFarlane cite Jaws (as well as Frankenstein and King Kong) as how the movie will play out. But there are a lot of new bits in MTV's interview. One is that McFarlane, who has now begun the screenplay, failed to get a studio interested -- he tried again with New Line and then with Sony -- and so he is doing the thing independently. He even calls it his "Passion of the Anti-Christ" after Mel Gibson's passion project. Apparently nobody in Hollywood wants an R-rated adaptation of such a popular comic book in which the 'superhero' doesn't talk, and he isn't even a superhero. McFarlane says that not only will Spawn be silent, we won't even see his costume or cape because he'll always be in the shadows.

We fans of the comic will get some "wink-wink" stuff in the movie, but otherwise it is a new movie for people unfamiliar with the character. There is no origin or Al Simmons at all. Basically it's just a spooky horror movie for kids like his daughter. But it will be more real, according to McFarlane. He says the style will be more Crash than 300 and that the story will be like L.A. Confidential or The Godfather with "this little boogeyman in it -- a moving shadow." Hmm. I can't wait to see the end result, because that sounds both brilliant and stupid at the same time.

In this day and age you can do anything with special effects. But can you do it well? I believe that you can, but Hollywood doesn't seem to be in agreement with my belief. Studios continue to put out movies with special effects that disappoint, and I think it is disrespectful to audiences. Either figure it out, or leave it out. Every time I see a bad effect in a movie, I know it could have been done better, or more imaginatively, and it frustrates the heck out of me. The worst is when I see a bad effect in a movie with mostly great effects, such as in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

A visual effect doesn't have to be great or even realistic as long as it works with the story and is believable -- I'll take Harryhausen or Henson over most of the CGI attempts lately. Unfortunately, Hollywood seems to half-heartedly strive for greatness and realism with every movie, and more often than not it fails to achieve either. In my thirty years I've seen some terrible visual effects, some only terrible in retrospect, some only terrible in perspective with what else has been done. I'm not usually surprised by bad effects, though, because I've developed a cynicism about effects, particularly about CGI, that causes me to expect the worst. Nonetheless, I've picked seven movies that did actually surprise me -- a lot.

1. King Kong (2005)

In The Return of the King, Peter Jackson has some bad effects shots, but at least they're just shots. In his next film, King Kong, he has bad effects sequences. And as with The Return of the King, they are all the more apparent and all the more frustrating because there are actually some great effects shots and sequences in King Kong (it did deserve the Oscar). The worst example in Kong is the dinosaur stampede. At first the sequence is tolerable because the dinos are rendered beautifully and the weak green-screen compositing is not any worse than what many of us grew up with. But as the sequence progresses, the interaction between the actors and the computer-generated dinos looks too fake, too much like something made long ago, before computers were even used. Both the part on the cliff and the part where the animals fall over each other are sloppy and unacceptable. It is a completely ironic sequence, too, since it begins with an exchange about movies looking real. At least someone thought to score the thing sped up with "Yakkety Sax" or it wouldn't be completely useless.

Between the next Indiana Jones movie and the next Batman movie, location spies are really keeping busy. For the Batman pic, The Dark Knight, we've gotten cell phone photos from the unofficial Dark Knight blog, a report from JoBlo about the Joker, a report from Superhero Hype! about Scarecrow and a video from the Mancow radio show showing us footage of the Tumbler. MTV Movies Blog now has some further info for us regarding a new character named Gamble. The character is yet another villain, though certainly not as prominent a bad guy as The Joker. Cast in the role is an actor well-known to comic book fans: Michael Jai White, who played the title superhero in Spawn and who also has voiced characters in the Justice League cartoon. White won the part over rapper/actor David Banner, who MTV had previously reported as having excitedly auditioned back in May.

Many comic and movie fans may be worried that having another villain in The Dark Knight could make it too much like the crowded Batman and Robin or Spider-Man 3. According to MTV Movies Blog, however, Gamble is only a minor thug. The blog got the scoop directly from producers Emma Thomas and Charles Roven that Gamble is one of the crime bosses attempting to fill the place of Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson's character in Batman Begins). The plot of The Dark Knight will begin with Batman having to decide what criminal is a bigger priority, Gamble or The Joker, an dobviously he will choose The Joker. We also know that Scarecrow is in the film, and there are other characters who may later become villains, such as Harvey Dent (Two-Face) and possibly Edward Nygma (The Riddler).

The last time we heard about Luke Cage, back in February, director John Singleton (Boys n the Hood) said the comic adaptation is developing slowly because of the main character's skin color. Sure, such a statement makes little sense after the popularity of the Blade franchise, but then again, for every Blade movie, there's a Spawn or Steel or Meteor Man to make studios wary about black superheroes. Apparently, though, it may be even worse for a black superhero movie that also deals with black issues. Black Panther, which for years was said to be in the works with Wesley Snipes (before he became Blade), is another project that couldn't seem to get the greenlight, possibly because its main character deals with problems in Africa.

The person most rumored to play Luke Cage in Singleton's pic is Tyrese Gibson, and in a new interview to promote Transformers, the actor has confirmed that he's set to fill the character's shoes. He also says the movie is continuing development, with the script (by Ben Ramsey) currently in a rewrite stage. Gibson will be meeting with Singleton and others soon, though, to present the project to Sony and see if they can move forward. Personally I was hoping the project would add Cage's old partner Iron Fist in order to widen the appeal, but otherwise I'm excited about the progress, and I hope Sony is into what they have. Between his Shaft remake and 2 Fast 2 Furious, Singleton is losing a lot of credit as a good filmmaker, but if he can at least make a hit with Luke Cage, if not a great film, then he might be able to save himself from becoming a hero director for hire in the future.