We’ve learned a new key piece of information about the upcoming ‘Spawn‘ reboot and that is it won’t be an origin story! This could be a hit or miss as while many comic fans will know Spawn’s origin, casual moviegoers might be confused as to who and what he is. However, as it appears to be a completely new telling of the character, it might benefit his new cinematic debut by keeping his history shrouded in mystery.
The news came from Todd McFarlane himself who doesn’t want to make the same mistakes that the 1997 New Line movie had made. While omitting the origin of say Batman or Spider-Man (who have a far reach both in films and comics) may make sense, this is something that could be hit or miss with audiences. Honestly, I think for the horror factor alone, the fewer people know going into this for the first time, the better it could play out. Hell, if they want to take the franchise in a new direction after the first film, this lack of details could significantly expand their options as McFarlane obviously doesn’t need to stick to his source material if this is a different iteration than the Al Simmons version of the character.
When talking about not including an origin in the upcoming film, McFarlane went into detail on the tone he wanted saying:
“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.”
We’ve seen different Hellspawns over the course of the comic run so far and having this be an entirely new iteration which is based on the original, or just the idea of the Hellspawns, sounds like what McFarlane has in mind. While Detective Twitch Williams is the lead detective here, I’m betting we’ll have a new take on Spawn which is closer to the original HBO animated series but with more mystery involving Spawn’s actual nature.
Are you happy to hear that we won’t be hearing Spawn’s origin story here and jumping right into a pre-existing world or would you rather have seen how he came to be on screen? Share your thoughts below!
