The characters basic conceit is that he's a human assassin named Albert Simmons (Michael Jai White) who is double-crossed and murdered by his superiors, including Jason Wynn (Martin Sheen). Once he dies, Simmons is sent to Hell and given an opportunity by Malebolgia (Frank Welker) to reunite with his wife Wanda (Theresa Randle). All he must do to be returned to his wife is lead his army of Hell soldiers as the entity known as Spawn. Albert agrees to this and awakens in a purgatory area that looks like a back alley where he discovers his face scarred beyond recognition and that he is now at the mercy of Malebolgia and his henchman The Violator (John Leguizamo).
It also turns out that Wanda has remarried in the last five years and has hooked up with Albert's former best pal Terry Fitzgerald (D.B. Sweeney) no less! The movie's story structure from here gets kind of weird, as Albert, after attempting to assassinating Jason Wynn at a big gala event, just sort of bumps around before he's given some super brief training by Cogliostro (Nicol Williamson) in the third act on how to use his newfound Spawn powers for good. It feels like this training stuff should have happened a lot earlier but it comes and goes abruptly before we get to a climax whose lameness feels appropriate for what's preceded it.
Being unfamiliar with Spawn as a character prior to watching this movie, I must say Spawn comes off as quite the incredibly boring character in this movie. His power set as a superhero is ill-defined and feels like it just keeps changing on the fly (he can make spears emerge from his body and transform vehicles he's riding into other objects and his cape can also do stuff, those were my big takeaways in regards to his superpowers) and what little action he engages in is rote and uninspired. You'd think they'd be using the fact that Hell plays such a big part in the character's world to create some memorable supernatural action sequences, but that would have been too much fun I guess.
Michael Jai White is fine in the lead role (he turns in the best work in the cast) and the makeup effects to create his scarred face are really good but he gets far too little to do and his characters longing to return to his wife is clumsily handled (they have to do these awkward flashbacks when he starts pining for his love since they did such a bad job establishing their relationship prior to his death), particularly in its resolution. What really kills the movie, in my book, is the two villains, who both seem like they wandered off from a truly 90's kid's movies. Neither of them is menacing in the slightest and they're not even entertaining caricatures. Martin Sheen is going through the motions as a generic evil businessman while John Leguizamo plays The Violator like a bad version of Robin Williams Genie, constantly throwing out wisecracks and pop culture referneces that just aren't funny in the least.
At least The Violator's demon mode allows for some cool animatronic monster moments but even those too rarely show up in Spawn to make all that much of a difference. The rest of the movie is tediously forgettable with everything from the score to the directing to even the production design seemingly going through the motions. The only thing that has even a whiff of personality to it are the fire-laced scene transitions and even those get old very quickly. We had some good and even great 20th century superhero movies but Spawn very much isn't one of those films. If Spawn isn't much more interesting as a character in the comics than he is in this movie, then I can see why he's been mostly forgotten in the modern day superhero landscape.
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