Overview: From the producers of Blade and The Crow comes Spawn, a dark, action-packed supernatural thriller that redefined the comic book movie with cutting-edge visual effects and a haunting origin story of vengeance, damnation, and redemption.

Al Simmons (Michael Jai White) is a top-tier Black Ops agent, ruthlessly efficient and fiercely loyal - until he’s double-crossed and executed by his commanding officer, Jason Wynn (Martin Sheen). But Simmons is resurrected by the devil Malebolgia and becomes Spawn, a demonic antihero with terrifying powers. Caught between Earth and the Underworld, Spawn is determined to exact bloody revenge on Wynn and must choose to serve his new infernal masters or fight for the salvation of his immortal soul.

Based on Todd McFarlane’s groundbreaking comic, Spawn is a visually explosive cult classic that blends horror, action, and gothic fantasy, available for the first time in a fiery new 4K restoration that breathes new life into Hell’s most iconic warrior.

Blu-ray Verdict: We see a masked man kick in the door at an airbase and shoot up the people inside it before setting up a rocket launcher to assassinate his target. You see him wearing night-vision goggles that have unrealistic zoom but also give him eyes similar to that of hellspawn; so it is foreshadowing in way. After five minutes or so of opening credits we get to see a news report covering the rocket attack, we’re also introduced to a fat guy in the shadows who is talking with the head of some assassin service that is making a biological weapon.

Al Simmons and his friend go to visit the head of the service to show his disdain at the fact of him having to kill civilians, he wants out and is sent on a final mission to take out a bio-weapons plant in North Korea. Simmons gets to the main part of the plant but finds out it was a trap and is betrayed by the people he works for and sent to hell. Simmons is then brought back from the dead but is still completely disfigured because of the burning and has to live among the homeless and the same guy from the beginning gives us exposition of what is happening and why Simmons was brought back.

He then has to go through training or sorts with Clown/Violator a short fat demon who ironically hates clowns, this character is what I like to call painful comic relief. The Violator makes him go through flashbacks so we can find out what happened after he died, and it turns out he made a deal with the devil which had strings attached. He is then taken into another flashback of when he rises from the grave and scared a couple goths who were hanging around the graves. This is also the part where we get to see the actual Spawn suit as the memories came and eat away at Spawn.

The bad guy and Spawn’s old friend Terry have gone to a party full of world officials. This is when Spawn breaks in through the sky light, tries to kill Jason the big bad. Spawn gets to Wanda’s house where there is a trap waiting for him, an interesting little twist is there as well, but after Spawn does the right thing, he then kills the clown after battling with him in hell and sends him back to hell.

Michael Jai White is a great choice for Spawn; he is able to present the sorrow and aggression that the character would be feeling. He wears the cloak of Spawn and owns it. It would be hard to top his performance, I also think than not even Snipes could have hit the nail on the head as White does. My feelings about John Leguizamo as Violator have been mentioned earlier how I have nothing against the actor, it’s just the fact I do not like the character; but regardless he comes across as vile, vulgar and vicious. Just how the character should be, so he is a good actor in this.

The voyeuristic shots from the birthday party scene are where we first start to see the decent use of camera angles, before this it is the standards of close ups, mid shots and wide shots. This is an interesting thing that the movie does, it has Spawns cloak cover the screen so it can be used as a transition, this is nicely done and is a piece of editing not camera work, but is still creative as all hell.

The scene that takes place after the police scene is a great shot, it has Spawn standing on the edge of a church with his cloak blowing in the winds, it works well regardless of which dark caped crusader does it. Be it Spawn, Batman or (insert other dark brooding caped hero here).

The CGI hasn’t dated too well on this movie, but the effects are very nice to look at but not all too realistic for the most part. The world leaders meeting scene has Spawn breaking in through a sky light and his cloak stopping the fall, his cloak does look blatantly CGI, but it looks majestic as all hell, so I don’t really care that much. The CGI for the Violator’s transformation scene is well done similar to that of Spawns transformation and stands up to that of late 2000’s CGI. There are also some popping eyeballs that look like they are from the mask.

We are first introduced to Spawn’s suit in the graveyard scene and apart from the cheesy CGI green lighting the suit is BA to the extreme in the way it looks like suits that are made for today’s movies. It looks similar to the venom symbiotic suit in Spiderman 3. It matches the comic suit perfectly as well. My only complaint would be that he spends most of the movie with his mask off and I have a feeling that White asked for this so he could have more screen time, similar to what Stallone wanted in the movie Judge Dredd. That or voices couldn’t be heard that well from within it.

In closing, I also have a couple of interesting facts about Spawn - the first being this was the first superhero movie to feature an African American as the lead character, there is the movie Steel which came out a fortnight after which also had an African American lead superhero. Secondly, Wesley Snipes was considered for the part of Spawn, but that was handed over to Michael Jai White instead, Snipes would then go to play the BA vampire killer Blade the year after. Also I will warn you now, this movie has a number of God awful puns with some puns which are actually good!

4K ULTRA HD BLU-RAY LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS:
4K restorations of both the Director’s Cut and Theatrical Cut of the film from the original camera negatives by Arrow Films
Reversible sleeve featuring two original artwork options
Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by John Torrani
Double-sided foldout poster featuring two original artwork options

DISC 1 – DIRECTOR’S CUT:
4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
Original DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround audio and lossless stereo audio options
Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
Brand new audio commentary with comic book expert and podcast host Dave Baxter
Audio commentary with Todd McFarlane, Mark A.Z. Dippé, Clint Goldman, and Steve Williams (1998)
Hell’s Perfect Son, a brand new interview with actor Michael Jai White
Spawn Support, a brand new interview with actors Melinda Clarke and D.B. Sweeney
The Devil’s in the Details, a brand new interview with animatronic creature and special makeup effects artists Howard Berger and Greg Nicotero
The Devil’s Music, a brand new interview with music supervisor Happy Walters
Order Out of Chaos, a brand new interview with editor Michael Knue
Todd McFarlane: Chapter & Verse, an archival featurette from 1998 in which Spawn creator Todd McFarlane reflects on how the film adaptation stacks up against his original comic book vision
The Making of Spawn, archival behind-the-scenes featurette
Preview: Todd McFarlane’s Spawn – The Animated Movie
Theatrical trailer
Scene-to-storyboard comparisons
Original Todd McFarlane sketches
Spawn concept and sketch gallery

DISC 2 – THEATRICAL CUT:
4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
Original DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround audio and lossless stereo audio options
Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

Official Purchase Link

www.arrowvideo.com