The Crow 2024: Initial Thoughts
Never thought I’d see a modern reimagining of the Crow given the untimely death of Brandon Lee back in 1994 and the curse that’s plagued each sequel cast and caused the abrupt stoppage of any remakes over the past ten or so years. However now that we’ve got an official trailer for this I’m very intrigued by it and like how Visceral it appears to be as far as blood and violence go.
In the case of the primary actors Bill Skaarsgard who played Pennywise and FKA Twigs who played in A24’s Honey Boy star in this reboot, I like how good they look together onscreen as the Draven couple so far.
Bill looks to be playing the role of the modern bad boy and FKA Twigs is playing the part of the subdued modern Baddie both are fitting for this era in time and judging from what I’ve seen the 2024 remake aims to retain the 90’s goth/grunge energy and aesthetics that the original 94’ version did as well which put a smile on my face.
However, I am worried about the character of Eric Draven in this newest version more specifically I worry that Eric Draven won’t have the gentleness, optimistic perspective towards life, or as strong of a love and passion for his murdered fiancé that Brandon Lee’s Eric carried because Bills iteration of Eric automatically starts as a tatted up bad boy and I feel that his transformation or revenge killings won’t have as much of an impact because the audience will know that the guy was capable of extreme violence and rage from the very start which could hurt the film.
I hope that we get to see Eric be somewhat of a dark academia-inspired soft boy before going to jail ( which is where he meets FKA twigs by the looks of the trailer) and then through his Stent in jail perhaps being beaten on and constantly having his safety threatened by other inmates and along the way having to harden up to protect himself and his future fiancé. This period in time in jail could change Eric and transform him into the wild Jokeresque individual we see later in the film.
Additionally, in the original film, we didn’t get to spend very much time with the Dravens and only got to see their relationship in spurts through flashbacks so it’d be ideal if we could spend more time with the couple and gradually fall in love with them as people before the inevitable hike invasion/devils night murder occurs.
Moreover, we the audience meet Shelley Draven in her final moments and I for one couldn’t bring myself to care about her death nor Eric’s when I first saw the movie and I honestly didn’t like Brandon Lee’s character all that much either so this time around I hope the film prioritizes building up this couple in a natural/realistic way before the gory travesty hits.
Furthermore, when that murder scene does take place I’d like to experience the whole thing from Shelley’s eyes and see/hear what she did from the knock on the door to the reaper’s call.
All in all, I’m excited for this reboot despite Hollywood’s poor track record with them and I hope that it won’t be too cringe, angsty, or boring. I hope that it endeavors to retain what made the original so special and I hope it takes enough creative risks to be its own unique thing, stand on its own, and carve out its legacy. All of this shouldn’t be too hard to do in our current cinematic hellscape where 8/10 movies made nowadays are flaming trash. In light of the potential this remake has and how intriguing it looks just based on its official trailer, I rate the Crow 2024 5/10 Blood Diamonds for now ♦️♦️♦️♦️♦️
