Awesome Music: Despite the reception of the film itself, the Cult Soundtrack is still pretty highly regarded, featuring songs that have rock and metal bands collaborating with electronica and techno artists and groups.
"(Can’t You) Trip Like I Do," a collaboration between Filter and The Crystal Method. It starts off with Richard Patrick singing over The Crystal Method's "Trip Like I Do," before eventually breaking into Filter's signature hard-hitting guitar riffs and MetalScreams.
"Long Hard Road Out Of Hell" by Marilyn Manson and Sneaker Pimps, an industrial metal song that has a mix of melodic and heavy moments, as well as Kelli Ali’s beautiful vocals, which perfectly fit with Manson’s signature angry style.
Satan by Orbital, the electronica song in the opening credits. The soundtrack version with electric guitars from Kirk Hammett is cool, too.
The already awesome "For Whom The Bell Tolls" gets a great remix by DJ Spooky. While it has nothing on the original, it still manages to be a haunting track on its own, with the instrumentals managing to translate into an electronic format pretty well.
"Skin Up Pin Up" by Mansun gets an even better remix by 808 State, being a blood-pumping Britpop-Industrial hybrid that has perfect energy to match Spawn. The song can be heard during the credits.
No Remorse (I Wanna Die) by Slayer and Atari Teenage Riot is the most unhinged and frenetic track on the album, with Slayer's trademark brand of breakneck thrash mixing surprisingly well with Riot's furiously erratic digital hardcore.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The scene with Clown wearing a pink cheerleading costume doing a dance number which comes out of nowhere, serves no purpose and which the protagonist doesn't even see happening. The devil himself ends the moment by dragging the clown back to hell to tell him to quit fucking around.
Malebolgia, the absolute ruler of Hell, seeks to destroy Heaven. Claiming lost souls for his army, Malebolgia engineers the death of CIA operative Al Simmons to force him to lead the damned, and spends the next five years causing millions of deaths to usher in the Apocalypse. Having Simmons' killer Jason Wynn hook himself up to a bioweapon that will eradicate the Earth, Malebolgia means to manipulate Simmons into killing Wynn to take all of humanity for his forces.
The Violator is the chief lieutenant of Malebolgia. Corrupting souls on Earth in his human guise as Clown, he promises Wynn domain over the Earth in return for helping the forces of Hell take Heaven. Instructed to bring Simmons to Hell, the Violator has Wynn set up a mission to betray and kill Simmons, the fallout allowing Wynn to murder thousands of innocent villagers in an explosion. When Simmons pledges his soul to Malebolgia and is returned to Earth, the Violator watches over him, seeking to corrupt him to evil by having him kill Wynn and after Simmons makes an attempt on Wynn's life, has Wynn connect himself to a switch that will set off a bioweapon and kill all life on Earth when he dies. When Simmons refuses to kill Wynn, the Violator tries to kill his family and rape his ex-fiancée Wanda while making Simmons watch.
CIA Director Jason Wynn is a power-hungry man in league with the forces of Hell. Believing they will allow him to rule Earth, Wynn tricks agents into killing innocents and has Simmons murdered in a dirty mission, setting up an explosion that kills thousands of innocent villagers. Killing millions to perfect his bioweapon, Heat-16, Wynn is convinced to attach himself to the weapon's switch, threatening to wipe out the world if it doesn't submit to his rule. When the revived Simmons tries to kill him, Wynn takes the latter's family hostage, including Simmons' young daughter Cyan.
Ensemble Dark Horse: While the film had mixed reactions from moviegoers, fans, and negative reception from critics alike, one character that stood out was Jessica Priest, who was liked enough that she later became a Canon Immigrant. The fact that she wasn't hard on the eyes didn't hurt either.
Harsher in Hindsight: Spawn is very close with Cyan, with the obvious implication that she's his daughter. But later in the comics, we learn that she is not Al's daughter and he had been in denial about the fact that he was an abusive husband who caused Wanda to miscarry when she was pregnant with his child. Though Resurrection does mitigate this by revealing the claim of abuse was actually a lie itself to manipulate Al.
Jason Wynn's Establishing Character Moment, which tries way too hard to show him as Obviously Evil; he has scorpions in his ashtray, his henchwoman plays with a tarantula, and his office has pictures of nuclear explosions. The ridiculously over-the-top of this scene was mocked by both ERod and The Nostalgia Critic.
Malebolgia's design. Terrible CGI aside, whoever thought that Satan should look like a muppet Chinese crested dog should have their head examined.
As seen in the below trope, the CG that the movie indulges in so heavily looks absolutely terrible nowadays. It's pretty hard to care about the drama of the plot, or even to enjoy the fight scenes, when the CG for your dark, gritty, anti-hero movie looks worse than the animation in ReBoot.
Special Effect Failure: The computer effects—the majority of which were done by ILM—have not aged well since the movie's 1997 release. Spawn's cape only appears when in use (either for dramatic effect or when he makes use of its shapeshifting power), since it was difficult to animate. Plus, Malebolgia'snote Not done by ILM, but by another company. mouth does not remotely sync with his words, and Hell just looks like something out of a (subpar, mind you) Playstation 1 game, complete with Hell's army of JPEG soldiers (who are obviously 2D and loop a short animation). It's especially jarring considering the great practical and make-up effects for Spawn and the Clown.
Squick: You know the part where Clown eats a piece of pizza he found in a dumpster? The one covered in maggots? Leguizamo really ate that.
Let's not forget about Clown sharting himself, and then showing his soiled underwear afterwards. Disgusting. Even the hard boiled Spawn/Simmons is abhorred by it.
Visual Effects of Awesome: Despite the failures of most of the CG, the animation on Violator is actually pretty well done. The practical effects are also good, given make-up and costumes force Michael Jai White and John Leguizamo to become comic book characters.
.Clown: No more clowning around! I am not The Vindicator, or The Victimizer, or The Vaporizer, or The Vibrator! I am, THE VIOLATOR! (transforms)