11 Criminally Underrated Superheroes Hollywood Totally Ruined
10. Spawn
New Line Cinema
Spawn is just really, really bad, and features what must be some of the worst special effects ever put to film. Bearing in mind that it was produced on a $40 million budget - not all that bad by nineties standards - and it's clear something has to be up.
Michael Jai White could've made a fantastic Al Simmons, and indeed, there's not even all that much wrong with his portrayal of the character in the film. It's the film's other aspects, however, that really misrepresented the property. Like seriously, how is it even possible to imagine a Spawn film without Sam and Twitch?
Kevin Smith is apparently working on TV show featuring the titular detectives, and given the writer/director's form on The Flash recently, there's enough reason to be cautiously optimistic. Only cautiously though, and while that project has been kept relatively quiet in recent months, the recent announcement of a franchise reboot - written and directed by Spawn creator Todd McFarlane no less - should give fans much to think about in the meantime.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
