In a perfect world, remakes and reboots wouldn’t need to exist at all. Or if they did, the final product would be the result of truly careful, measured storytelling methods that only served to elevate rather than insult the original. Alas, as most know, the world is far from perfect. In fact, it’s as much of a shitshow as the one portrayed in Rupert Sanders’ version of The Crow. And as Sanders’ third movie as director, it’s done little to boost his prospects for directing in the future. This further compounded by his previous credits being Snow White and the Huntsman (mired in scandal when Sanders, then married, was caught having an affair with the film’s star, Kristen Stewart) and Ghost in the Shell. The latter being yet another remake that was panned for more than just casting Scarlett Johansson in a Japanese woman’s role (though that didn’t cause nearly as much outrage as her brief bid to play a trans man). Still, the reviews for Ghost in the Shell seem utterly kind in comparison to what’s been lobbed at The Crow, and from no less than the film’s original director, Alex Proyas, calling it a “a cynical cash grab,” then adding, “Not much cash to grab it seems.”
True indeed, for The Crow made just barely under five million dollars in its opening weekend. It had a fifty-million-dollar budget to recoup. Unfortunately for the studio (Lionsgate), it couldn’t even manage to beat out 2009’s Coraline, which placed at number seven in the United States’ top ten box office (to The Crow’s number eight) after being re-released in theaters in honor of its fifteenth anniversary. The likelihood of The Crow remaining in the top ten at all during its second week of release doesn’t seem promising. All of which is to say: what the hell what wrong? That question isn’t too hard to answer.
For a start, with a movie like The Crow, which has such a strong and devoted following, the OG fans of the film were likely never going to get on board with an “updated” (read: far more “corporatized”) version. Especially one that so often feels as though it desperately wants to check off multiple boxes in different genres. For there’s the “romantic” aspect of it, which often mirrors what Joker and Harley Quinn seem to have going on in the upcoming Joker: Folie à Deux, complete with Eric (Bill Skarsgård) and Shelly (FKA Twigs) meeting at a rehab facility called Serenity, the supernatural aspect and the Tarantino-level revenge and violence aspect. Something that FKA Twigs herself called out in an interview promoting the film, foolishly thinking that it was a good thing that The Crow has such “hodgepodge energy” by saying, “I was amazed at the juxtaposition between the front half, the middle and the end of the movie. It’s almost like there’s three genres in one. At the beginning, you have this incredible coming-of-age love story about these two outsiders who are just desperate to feel at home… and then in the middle, it’s this psychological thriller, and then at the end, you know, it’s kind of pure gore and horror…”
In short, it’s all “kind of” whatever, trying to be everything to everyone perhaps because the writers were aware that it was never going to measure up to the 1994 version, so why not just try to appeal to as many audience members as possible? A “strategy” that, in the end, serves to appeal to no one. Save for, at best, those who have no knowledge of The Crow’s previous iterations as a comic book or Proyas film.
Funnily enough, one of the writers in question of The Crow 2024, Zach Baylin, was not so long ago nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for King Richard (which lost that year to Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast). So yes, it’s quite an about-face to go from Oscar-nominated to more than likely Razzie-nominated. As for his co-writer, William Schneider, The Crow inauspiciously marks his first writing credit on a full-length feature. It seems both writers ended up on autopilot after a certain point, mish-mashing the timeline of the narrative and eventually losing all sight of anything resembling “logical time” with an ending that not only reverts to a lazy “rewind” tactic, but totally excises the original killers in favor of having the two OD as a reason for their death (or, in Shelly’s case, near death). And, speaking of being junkies, Skarsgård and Twigs have way-too-perfect teeth to fit that casting bill.
As for the Eric Draven (Brandon Lee) and Shelly Webster (Sofia Shinas) of 1994’s The Crow, let’s just say there was a lot more depth to their characters that didn’t rely on the sole “trait” of making them drug addicts. Indeed, Eric and Shelly aren’t junkies at all in the original, just two “ghouls” in love (with Eric also being a musician). As though to highlight how “emo” they are in their love for each other (Jack and Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas-style) from the get-go, upon unearthing their bodies right after they’re murdered in their Detroit loft, Sergeant Albrecht (Ernie Hudson, of Ghostbusters fame) finds a wedding invitation for the following day, October 31st, prompting one of his fellow policemen to ask, “Who the fuck gets married on Halloween anyhow?” Albrecht replies, “Nobody.”
That was the answer then. The answer now is: plenty of people. Some of whom were likely influenced by the “macabre” stylings of Eric and Shelly’s coupledom (later mirrored in such “unions” as the ones shown in Candy, Corpse Bride and even Only Lovers Left Alive). That sense of, “If you jump, I jump” (or, in The Notebook’s case, “If you’re a bird, I’m a bird”—an appropriate saying for The Crow). And yes, jumping off a bridge does come up in The Crow 2024, with Shelly asking Eric if he would, essentially, die for her. The answer is, needless to say, a resounding yes. But the “intensity” of their “love” for one another often feels forced rather than authentic—even though that’s clearly the aim of the actors involved. And yes, Skarsgård and Twigs seem to be doing the best they can with the material they’re given, with Twigs likely attracted to the project because it furnished her with her first opportunity to play a lead role. Though perhaps she might have been better off sticking to the periphery if this was going to be the result…
As for the decision to add the demonic element into the mix (all in keeping with the trend of satanic panic this year) via Vincent Roeg (Danny Huston), it’s utterly underdeveloped—along with just about everything else in the movie. But this isn’t to say that The Crow 2024 lacks style where substance is totally missing. The soundtrack, visual effects and, yes, “aesthetic” are nothing to be balked at, even if they can never capture (or even dream of recreating) the genuine “lo-fi grit” of Proyas’ film. The effect, instead, is a prime example of what happens when a corporate entity tries to commodify something truly artistic: the authenticity is lost, blatantly so.
In many ways, an “update” (or “reinvention,” as Stephen Norrington, at one point attached to write the script in the early period of its development hell) of The Crow was always going to be doomed. The film was already known for being “cursed” after Brandon Lee died on set after an improperly loaded prop gun killed him. What’s more, in trying to get a “reboot”/“remake” off the ground, a number of actors so ill-suited to the part (e.g., Bradley Cooper) became attached that any fan of the original couldn’t possibly have high hopes.
A few years back, when the project seemed permanently foiled, Proyas hit the nail on the head in terms of addressing the core issue of trying to remake The Crow at all: “It’s not just a movie that can be remade. It’s one man’s legacy. And it should be treated with that level of respect.” Obviously, though, there wasn’t much respect for the original if they weren’t even going to include at least a nod to Sarah (Rochelle Davis), who served not only as a key thread of the film, but also its narrator, the one who tells the audience from the outset, “People once believed that when someone dies, a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead. But sometimes, something so bad happens, that a terrible sadness is carried with it and the soul can’t rest. Then sometimes, just sometimes, the crow can bring that soul back to put the wrong things right.”
Alas, “the crow” can’t right this particular wrong: The Crow 2024. Another one of its fundamental problems being what The Crow comic book creator James O’Barr boiled it down to: “I think the reality is, no matter who you get to star in it, or if you get Ridley Scott to direct it and spend two hundred million dollars, you’re still not gonna top what Brandon Lee and Alex Proyas did in that first ten-million-dollar movie” (Side note: it was originally a fifteen-million-dollar budget, with an additional eight added to it when Proyas decided to complete the remaining scenes with Lee with CGI and a stand-in.)
But, if nothing else comes out of The Crow 2024 (apart from disappointment and tarnished reputations), there is certainly the silver lining that filming in Prague, with all its underground raves and nightclubs, ended up inspiring the sound and tone of FKA Twigs’ upcoming album, Eusexua.
