Why does this man still have a career? He's been a cancer on the toy and comic book industry for years. His influence single-handedly ruined the way action figures are conceived, sacrificing style over substance, or is it substance over style?. This is not hyperbole, right Octopunk? [Damn right! --O.]From Moviesonline, "Todd McFarlane spoke about his involvement with the sequel to his comic book creation Spawn which he produced in back in 1997. Though he plans for a 2007 release of a Spawn 2, he does confirm that there will be most definitly be a sequel.
"I'm in the middle of the script and will have to do some rewrites, but I'm hoping by the end of the year, I'll be behind the camera," says McFarlane. "You can do wonderful movies for under $10 million...I've got the money, so I'm going to write it, produce it and direct it." You can read the rest of the article right here.
McFarlane also notes that the second film will focus mainly on a character named Twitch. If this is so, where is Twitch's other half, Sam? Twitch and Sam are a duo villain pair. Twitch is the brains of the two who is also an superb marksmen.
One of the most popular independent comic books of its decade was transformed into this dark, bloody adventure intended to launch a profitable superhero franchise. Michael Jai White stars as Al Simmons, a corrupt assassin betrayed and murdered by his evil government supervisor, Jason Wynn (Martin Sheen). Sent to Hell, Simmons is offered a chance to return to the earthly plane if he will become a "Hellspawn" ("Spawn" for short), one of many super-powered creatures assigned to encourage living souls along the path to damnation. Simmons hastily agrees to this deal and becomes a twisted, scarred version of his former self, living in a dingy alleyway, with no hope of regaining his life, as several years have passed and his wife Wanda (Theresa Randle) has married his best friend, Terry Fitzgerald (D.B. Sweeney). Despite the best efforts of his mentor, a demonic clown (John Leguizamo), Spawn performs mostly heroic acts, though he is not above seeking revenge on Wynn. Despite the film's middling box office take, plans for a sequel were announced. The same summer that Spawn was released, the comic was also the basis of a well-received cable TV series."
7 comments:
A cancer indeed. Notice how he's writing, producing, directing? That's probably because nobody else will touch this turkey. That way he can sound all street when he says he's making it for 10 million, just like he tried to sound all "just folks" when he bought the Mark Macguire baseball, saying "I'm not Bill Gates." I heard at the time he was worth 72 million, which means he's right about not being Gates, but wrong if he's trying to identify with me.
The great thing about that whole baseball stupidness is that soon after someone else broke that record, rendering McFarlane's baseball useless! Remember how he traveled around with that stupid baseball which included some stupid plaque stating, "From the private collection of Todd McFarlane" or soemthing pretentious like that? It should've said, "A baseball that some dumbass spent millions to acquire".
Damn you guys are cold. If nothing else, McFarlane jumpstarted the trend to make action figures out of characters that were never thought to be made into action figures. I still love the Yellow Submarine guys and getting my hands on Blood-Splattered-Leatherface for the first time was a joy.
I always thought Spawn was kind of interesting, and McFarlane's drawing style has a perverse distorted nasty quality that I kind of like. But the thing doesn't really stand up under real (read: "cinematic") scrutiny, and the man himself is clearly a pretentious jerk.
Summerisle, are you saying McFarlane's indirectly responsible for the "Edith Keeler" action figure? That's cool.
I had to look up Edith Keeler and now I'm more confused than ever...
Anyone lacking the proper hatred for McFarlane need only watch the beginning of one of his animated Spawn shows, b/c Todd himself talks to the viewer. I remember him asking the cable audience if they, like the Spawn guy, would make a bargain with the devil while hovering moments from death. His speech had this "think about it..." thing to it that made me want to kick over his lemonade stand. Spawn's whole plot setup comes from a "tricked by the devil" story notion boosted from numerous short stories written by 8th grade boys, and I can't stand his art. Every time my eye has been grabbed by some element of his art, usually a hot chick, a second's further inspection reveals the exaggeration has been pushed too far. This is the same experience I've had countless times looking at his action figures.
I find everything coming out of his imagination to be aesthetically bankrupt.
I do give Todd McFarlane credit for making creator-owned comics the industry standard it is today. That was a damn good idea, and it's what got him his money.
And I'm glad I have Yellow Submarine figures, too, but my objections to the way that company makes action figures are far too lenghty to go into here.
But did we really need figures of those three doofi from Slapshot? Ask yourself that.
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