Back in 1994, The Crow landed in theaters, telling the tale of a dark antihero that had never been seen before. Based on the comic book series by James O’Barr, The Crow garnered controversy for its touchy subject matter of death, the afterlife, and violent imagery.
On August 23, 2024, Lionsgate released a remake. Alas, critics and audiences had mostly terrible things to say. It didn’t do the original justice. Newbies couldn’t support the aim of the film. Even the director himself thought it was going to be a “shameless cash grab” of a remake.
Yet, it failed at being a cash grab. The movie flopped at the box office, losing almost half of its initial budget.
The Crow: Born as a Tragic Comic
[Image via Caliber Comics]
The Crow started as a comic in 1989 written by James O’Barr. Caliber Press published the story as Caliber Presents #1. O’Barr himself created the story in part to cope with the loss of his girlfriend, who was killed by a drunk driver.
The plot follows Eric Draven, a down-on-his-luck mechanic, who hopes to turn his life around. He decides to take his girlfriend, Shelly, to the beach. As they struggle to repair their car on the side of the road, a violent gang pulls over and attacks them. Eric is shot and nearly killed. Shelly endures a sexual assault before being beaten to death in front of Eric’s eyes.
Eric wakes in a hospital bed as the police press him for answers. Then, Eric utters the iconic phrase:
The crows said “don’t look.”
These words turn out to be his last.
Or do they? The crows here refer to an old tale Eric once learned, about how crows carry souls to the land of the dead. If something terrible happens, crows can also bring the souls back to set the wrong right again. Hence, one year after his death, a crow leads Eric’s soul back to the land of the living, where he resurrects and seeks revenge.
One by one, Eric hunts down the men who murdered him and Shelly, killing them in brutal ways that are just as brutal, if not more, than how the young couple died. Throughout his rampage, the Crow transforms into an angel of death with no pity or remorse.
After finally finishing them off, Eric finally rests in peace alongside Shelly.
This does not end the tale of the Crow, however. Many other characters have donned this persona.
Controversy in The Crow
[Image via Crows Productions]
In case the summary didn’t convince, The Crow is a very dark and rather depressing comic book. Sure, dark comic heroes like Batman and the Punisher exist, not to mention Spawn. Yet The Crow tackles subjects that most would normally avoid.
The Crow is a tale of sadness, agony, and revenge. It shows the ugly side of humanity that people want to ignore.
However, it’s also important to acknowledge this darkness. The horrors Eric and Shelly endure happen in the real world. Sometimes we want to believe we don’t live in a dark world. Yet the news tells us we do. Even without resorting to headlines, the reality for those who grow up enduring cruelty is all too often that darkness is all we can look forward to.
Eric Draven is not a beacon of justice. He’s not even someone who has morals and values. Instead, Eric is a man robbed of life under very painful circumstances. When he returns, Eric struggles to figure out not only who he is, but what happened to him. Intentional or not, this is a very real trauma response.
After touching some objects Eric previously owned, memories rush back. His fiancée. The fun they had and the love they shared. How it was all taken from them both.
It’s a tale that begins in death and ends with death.
A Movie Worth Dying For
[Image via Miramax Films]
In 1994, Hollywood first adapted The Crow into a movie adaptation. The movie altered the plot from the comics.
In the film, Eric Draven serves as a member of a rock band who has just proposed to Shelly at midnight just before Halloween. Then, a gang led by a man named Top Dollar murders Eric. As Shelly is beaten and assaulted, the gang throws Eric out of the window. He dies as he looks up to the sky.
One year later, Eric comes back from the dead to exact his revenge.
The film starred Brandon Lee, the son of Bruce Lee. Brandon Lee specifically wanted to bring The Crow to the big screen. Of course, tragedy struck on set. A defective gun malfunctioned, killing Lee.
Paramount Pictures wavered on whether to scrap the whole movie or release it as is. They decided on the latter, wanting to give Brandon Lee a decent send-off. Using CGI to create of the scenes that Lee had not yet filmed, the movie became a huge success. Thus began a cult following from fans craving more of the undead antihero.
Inevitably, also to attempts at more movie adaptations for The Crow.
The Crow’s Attempts At More Movies
[Image via Miramax Films]
Two years after the first movie, studios saw potential to transform The Crow into a franchise in the same vein as Batman and Spiderman. However, both critics and fans of the series panned pretty much everything after the original movie.
Tim Pope directed The Crow: City of Angels, released in 1996. Originally, before Brandon Lee’s accidental death, Pope actually planned to make three more movies for The Crow franchise. After much consideration, Lee’s role was given the role to Vincent Perez.
A violent gang leader kills Ashe Corven and his 8-year-old son, then drops the two in the harbor after Ashe witnessesa hit on a drug dealer. On All Saint’s Day, a crow brings Ashe back to life, where his close friend Sarah shelters him. Together, they hunt down the ones responsible for the death of his son and seek to avenge him.
On paper, this sounds like it could work for a plot for The Crow. Yet in execution, it fell apart.
Fans and critics critically panned the movie, calling it a lazy sequel that didn’t capture the mood and tone of the first movie. To compare, the first movie was shot in a dark gloomy atmosphere. Think Tim Burton’s adaptation of Batman. In City of Angels, though, the atmosphere came across as a cheap edit with gloom tacked on in editing. Furthermore, the action sequences made no sense.
Are These Movies Worth Mentioning?
[Image via Dimension Films]
The Crow spawned a total of three sequel films. None of them replicated the telltale atmosphere of the first movie. Unfortunately, if anything, every sequel became progressively worse than the last.
City of Angels was a rushed sequel that had almost nothing to do with the first movie. The Crow: Salvation attempted to pose as something of a crime drama involving an innocent man wrongfully executed. Again, the idea checks out. Alas, yet again, the execution failed. n fact, production only released it in a singular movie theater.
Next, The Crow: Wicked Prayer tortured fans. This movie stumbled under its own lofting genre-bending goals, coming across as a Western movie adopting a gothic Satanic cosplay. Fans widely consider this the weakest of the bunch. No surprise producers released it on DVD just one week after its theatrical release.
In addition to the movies, a TV series called The Crow: Stairway to Heaven aired. The story retold the first movie’s events. Despite not starring Brandon Lee as Eric Draven, Stairway to Heaven achieved decent success. The storytelling improved, as did the visual effects. Yet despite positive reviews, Universal bought out its production company before a second season could be made. The powers that be chopped The Crow.
The Crow: Video Game Potential
[Image via Akklaim]
Considering that The Crow involves a lot of violent action sequences, martial arts, gunplay, and even some magic, well, you’d think that this would be perfect for a video game. In fact, developers attempted to make The Crow into the gaming scene several times.
Alas, the curse of furthering from what Brandon Lee set out to do jumped medium from film to game.
A loose video game adaptation of The Crow: City of Angels hit PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and PC in 1997. Originally, developers aimed to release the game at the same time as the movie. However, creators struggled to finish the game in time, thus delaying its relaese.
Despite the interesting visuals and great opening cutscenes, critics panned the game for its clunky gameplay controls, awful voice acting, and nonsensical fixed camera positions. In fact, the gameplay made it an impossible to play it on any platform.
A company called Ojom then created a Java game adaptation for mobile in 2005. A 2D platformer takes on the role of Eric Draven as he takes on his enemies through the city. However, the game never officially released in North America. Now, it’s virtually impossible to find.
Rebooting The Crow
[Image via Lionsgate Flims]
Fans of The Crow often joked that any adaptation without Brandon Lee playing the titular role was cursed to failure. Which is very ironic! After all, The Crow was Lee’s biggest passion project.
Then out of nowhere, Lionsgate announced a reboot of The Crow to hit theaters in August of 2024.
The story now portrays Eric as a patient at a rehabilitation center for drug use. Eric meets Shelly after she gets arrested for similar charges. Yet as things turn out, Shelly only got into the institution as a means of hiding from a Satanic cult murdering people in exchange for eternal life. The two lovers escape but are eventually killed.
However, unlike what one would expect, a crow doesn’t lead Eric back to life. No, instead a character called Kronos acts as a spirit to guide Eric in his revenge path.
To the surprise of no one, The Crow was a commercial failure, not even making half of its initial budget at the box office upon release date. The story was not paced well and yet again failed to capture the dark and gloomy mood that the 1994 film set out for. The director of the original movie, Alex Proyas, felt like this film was, to quote, “a cynical cash-grab.”
Is it a bad movie? Well, it’s not the worst. Yet it isn’t the best send-off to Brandon Lee.
The Crow: Original Vs. Remake
[Image via Lionsgate Flims]
No matter how good any reboot is as its own story, many fans will not accept any version of The Crow outside of the comic books and Brandon Lee’s film. The film cannot be replicated, as the star died for this to work. In many ways, it immortalized Lee and the story as a cathartic, bittersweet experience.
After all, the story itself isn’t just about seeking revenge for Eric and Shelly. It’s a lesson about life. Any day could be someone’s last. We should always cherish those small moments that we share with the ones with love. People around us suffer. Is resurrection or immortality even a good thing if you use it to cause more pain? Where is the line between justice and corruption?
The Crow isn’t just another superhero comic. It’s a tale of loss and pain from someone who was given a wrongful death. It asks everyone that question: how far are you willing to go to set the wrong things right again? These are all questions facing people in real life, too. The poignance of Lee’s passion for the story and untimely death created a mythos that allows fans to experience the story and face the darkness many of us often turn to superhero movies to ignore rather than face.
If you want to get into this series, the comic books and the 1994 film are very good candidates. The TV series from 1998 is also a very decent choice if you’re not the movie type. It’s very unlikely that we’ll ever get anything new from The Crow in terms of movies or other media.
Yet at the end of the day, we never needed more of a good thing to begin with. Cherishing what we had, even briefly, is enough.
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