'The Crow' Is Less Than a Feeling
'The Crow' Is Less Than a Feeling
The long, strange saga of the misbegotten "reimagining" comes to an end.
I wasn’t even all that excited to see the new version of The Crow. I thought the 1994 adaptation was perfectly good, and trying to get a remake (or “reimagining” since it would be a new adaptation of the original 1989 comic) off the ground felt more like a way to rely more on IP than fertile territory for a new vision. But I had been covering the remake since 2010 when it was announced that Stephen Norrington (Blade) was developing the project. In the 14 years since it went through the following directors:
Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (28 Weeks Later)
F. Javier Gutiérrez (Before the Fall)
Corin Hardy (The Hollow)
And considered the following actors to play the title role:
Mark Wahlberg
Bradley Cooper
Channing Tatum
James McAvoy
Tom Hiddleston
Alexander Skarsgård
Luke Evans
Jack Huston
Jason Momoa
Part of this is that it’s simply difficult to make a movie, especially when there are valuable rights at stake, producers get litigious, and studios crumble. So the fact that somehow this movie even got to the screen—in the end with director Rupert Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman) and Bill Skarsgård in the lead role—that’s something. Unfortunately, what we got has the aura of inevitable disappointment; a movie whose highest goal became mere existence rather than any kind of quality or distinction.
For those unfamiliar with The Crow, the story was borne out of author James O’Barr’s personal tragedy. A drunk driver killed his finacée, and O’Barr poured his grief into the story of Eric Draven. Eric and his girlfriend Shelley are killed by thugs, but Eric, fueled by vengeance, is resurrected by a crow (an animal that escorts souls to their final resting place) to take vengeance against his attackers.
The 1994 movie is a bit of a miracle considering its own tragedy: the death of young star Brandon Lee, who was killed by a prop firearm that hadn’t been properly checked and discharged. Director Alex Proyas was able to somehow complete the movie around Lee’s death, and it went on to become a hit and an enduring classic among fans (hence the value of the IP). When you watch Proyas’ movie, what stands out is that it doesn’t get too bogged down in plot particulars. It is a raw nerve of a movie where Lee’s electric performance and Proyas’ direction channel The Crow’s grief into raw anger. 1994’s The Crow unleashes its main character and expects the audience to come along for the ride.
Thirty years later and with a director as uninspired as Sanders1 and a choice as seemingly random as Skarsgård2 we now have this new Crow, which feels subject to the whims of the current superhero marketplace. Rather than the bold, unique presence of Proyas’ movie, we have overcooked superhero fodder. The movie loads up on exposition and mythology without ever making an interesting choice. The best thing it does is spend a bit more time trying to flesh out the Eric/Shelley relationship, but even here, we’re simply killing time because we know Shelley has to die for Eric to become The Crow. That’s the whole movie. It’s why Batman Begins starts with Bruce Wayne already training to become Batman rather than spending the entire first act hanging out with Bruce’s parents.
The amount of plotting and rules (Eric can be The Crow, which means he can regenerate, but only if his love is pure, but when he doubts his love for Shelley at one point, he can’t regenerate, but then he trades his soul for Shelley’s, which means he now has super Crow powers that somehow includes regeneration and becoming a skilled swordsman, and why did anyone think this was an interesting way to tell the story) kill any momentum the story tries to obtain because we’re not really in The Crow anymore; we’re in sad Deadpool. It’s the same idea—our hero is kind of a screw-up with a dark past, he loses the one person he loved, he gets the power to regenerate his wounds meaning he can’t die, and takes bloody vengeance against those that harmed him using a katana. Swap out jokes with being a sadsack and you have The Crow.
What makes all of this a bummer is that The Crow had an opportunity to be unique in a crowded superhero marketplace, but whereas you could get away with a relatively low-budget supernatural thriller about grief in 1994, now producers think that this bloated, over-plotted mess is what people want. Maybe if they had snuck the movie into the boom superhero time between 2008 and 2019 they would have had a better shot, but I doubt it. What makes The Crow special is also what makes it unpalatable to what audiences are now looking for in their superhero movies. Rather than an exciting movie with a personality all its own, the new version is simply a sad imitation of blockbuster movies it could never be. The Crow 2024 isn’t a spirit of vengeance; it’s a shambling zombie.
There’s some visual panache in Snow White and the Huntsman and his follow-up, Ghost in the Shell, but nothing that stands out or feels particularly thoughtful.
To be fair, looking at the other actors considered, it’s wild that they span from buff guys like Momoa and Wahlberg to lithe fellows like McAvoy and Huston, and I think Bill Skarsgård made the cut because having played Pennywise in IT, he knows how to act under makeup.