28 years after Todd McFarlane’s cult comic book antihero got his long-awaited (and much-maligned) feature film debut, Spawn has been given a thorough and surprisingly fantastic 4K restoration. Arrow Video restored both the theatrical and director’s cuts of Spawn from the original camera negatives for a massive physical media upgrade, and brought back many of the original cast and crew members for a special feature smorgasbord that is impressive even by Arrow’s lofty standards.
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October 7th marked the release of Arrow’s Spawn Limited Edition 4K set (you can grab your copy here), which includes both versions of the movie on their own disc, each presented in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible) and featuring a DTS-HD 5.1 surround audio track. The packaging contains reversible artwork, allowing you to choose between the original poster and Arrow’s cover art, as well as a “collector’s booklet” with new writing on the film and a reversible poster.
It’s clear out of the gate that a LOT of work went into this release, and that there are folks at Arrow who care a great deal about Spawn. The picture itself is better than you imagine it can be, given how much of the film is completely shrouded in darkness. Not speaking to the movie itself, the picture here has such a vibrant life than I never expected to see from a Spawn restoration.
As great as the restoration is, though, real hero of this release is the special feature content that’s packed onto the first disc. Arrow always brings some new features to the table for these projects, but it’s impressive just how much new content there is here that includes the original talent. While some of these Arrow editions have hours of interviews and discussions with film historians or writers, most of the features included on Spawn are focused on the people who actually worked on the film.
Perhaps the crown jewel of the lineup is a featurette called “Hell’s Perfect Son,” which is a new, surprisingly transparent interview with star Michael Jai White. He opens up about a lot from the film’s production and gives a ton of insight into some of the decisions that fans have felt rather baffling. Through this interview alone, you can see the kind of movie that he and others were setting out to make, but he still shows a touching amount of pride for what was ultimately delivered.
Other features include an interview with actors Melinda Clarke and D.B. Sweeney, and interview with music supervisor Happy Walters, an interview with editor Michael Knue, and a chat with makeup/special effects gurus Howard Berger and Greg Nicotero (I can’t recommend this last one enough).
The real “issue” with this release is Spawn itself. If you’re reading this, you’re probably aware that Spawn is…not a great movie. And that’s being quite generous. There are great individual elements at work here — the animatronics (when they were used), the performances of White and John Leguizamo — but overall it’s a misfire on almost every count. If you’ve never seen it and are hoping history has been kind to the Image Comics adaptation, I hate to tell you that it hasn’t. Not by a long shot.
Sort of like with the Deep Blue Sea 4K release, Arrow’s restoration of Spawn makes the film look so good that the terrible computer effects (perhaps some of the worst in movie history in a couple of scenes) look even worse by comparison. And no amount of fixing a picture or boosting the sound (also excellent) can make up for a script that seems to be at war with its director’s ambitions.
Spawn is a bad movie, but bad movies deserve dedicated fan bases, too (if I, Frankenstein has just one fan, it’s me). There are a lot of people out there who love Spawn, and I would never dream of yucking their yum. If you love the Spawn movie, you absolutely need to buy this 4K release — it’s the best the movie will ever look and there is more insight into the making of the film on this disc than you get from probably 95% of physical releases.
If you’re not into Spawn, though, the quality of this disc and its horde of fantastic content isn’t going to make you like the movie any more.
A copy of Arrow’s Spawn 4K was provided for the purpose of this review.
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