It can’t rain all the time
The many re-incarnations of The Crow
James O’Barr suffered a tragedy. He lost his fiancée in a car crash caused by a drunk driver. Like any artist, he channeled his emotions into his art. He began writing a comic book.
In the comic, O’Barr and his fiancée become Eric and Shelly, a couple whose car breaks down on the side of a highway. The real drunk driver is replaced in the comic by a gang of drug dealers who pull up alongside them and the real accident becomes a fictional rape and murder.
A year later, Eric returns to his home, plagued by sinister hallucinations and followed everywhere by a creepily-knowing bird. He paints his face in a death mask and sets out to find and take his revenge on the men who killed Shelly; but is Eric simply an angry man with nothing left to lose or has he returned from death as the personification of grief? O’Barr keeps us guessing until the penultimate chapter and even then leaves room for interpretation.
On the surface, the story is simply a gothic superhero tale, but it’s also one of the most beautiful pieces of literature ever created. It perfectly sums up love, loss, pain and tragedy, but overcomes the depression with a catharsis that you’d have to lack a soul to fail to identify with. In 1994, the clock-obsessed master of the gothic noir, Alex Proyas tried to put all of that on screen and was only partially successful.
“Buildings burn, people die, but real love is forever”
Originally intended to be a low-budget, direct-to-video actioner, Proyas’ film shot to cult status and a cinema release when the lead, Brandon Lee — son of Bruce Lee — was accidentally killed on set. Taking advantage of the accident’s notoriety, the mercenary studio upgraded The Crow to a cinema release, but, despite the tragedy, the film secured a fanbase for its own merits rather than its behind-the-scenes story.
While almost as affecting as the comic, Proyas’ film rode roughshod over the ambiguity about whether The Crow was a supernatural being or just a man driven insane by his miraculous recovery from a horrific trauma. The gang’s leader became a villainous, incestuous Michael Wincott, partnered with his half-sister, Bai Ling, a sordid sorceress who understands the power of The Crow, providing a Kryptonite threat to the dark superhero that the story never needed.
All of this can be seen as the Hollywoodisation of O’Barr’s art and, indeed, his tragedy. Still, it’s hard to dislike the movie, given that it’s all done with such passion. It may just be a dark superhero flick, but Proyas’ direction is, as always, glorious. Lee and Wincott make for a fantastic screen conflict and the film has one of the best soundtracks ever put together. Best of all, the script still retains the emotional core of the comic, even in its diversions from the plot.
Given that the film earned high box office and gathered a cult following, Miramax soon ordered a sequel… which was almost-universally hated. It’s easy to see why — more so when you look into its development. The studio passed around fantastic ideas such as setting the film in Victorian London or having a female crow like the (largely mediocre) second comic book sequel. In the end, however, Hollywood gravitated to a rehash of the original. They hired David Goyer of DCEU fame to write the script, and despite his dubious resume, he managed to inject some value into the new story that is often overlooked.
“One crow, sorrow. Two crows, joy. Three crows, a letter. Four crows, a boy.”
City of Angels swaps the tragically murdered couple for Vincent Perez, a single father who dies holding the corpse of his son, killed for stumbling across a gang of drug dealers in the middle of an execution. Returning to life as a Crow, he teams up with a grown-up version of Lee’s teenage sidekick from the first film, now played by Mia Kirshner.
This is a nice bit of continuity and the film continues to world-build, explaining that the Crows who succeed in their mission, as Eric did, return in avian form to guide other lost souls in their quest for vengeance. Once again, we have a drug-lord villain with a modern-day sorceress as a sidekick, but this time, he actually succeeds in stealing The Crow’s power. It all serves to expand on the previous film’s story and is one of Goyer’s better scripts.
The problem is with music-video veteran Tim Pope’s direction, which is so over-stylised that it makes you feel queasy. Equally, while Perez’ physical acting is good, his thick accent makes it hard to decipher his lines. Pope chose to round off the cast with two rock legends — Ian Dury and Iggy Pop — and a former Power Ranger — Thuy Trang — who, while fun to see and with respect, can’t act. Lastly, a wonderful idea for the climax is ruined by general ham-fistedness and some terrible effects.
The backlash against the sequel didn’t deter Hollywood, however, and they proceeded with a TV reboot. While this brought cult-favourite martial arts expert Mark Dacascos to the attention of mainstream audiences, there was very little else to recommend Stairway To Heaven, which never had the budget to achieve its ambitions. It lasted a single season before cancellation, merely hinting at the kind of plot elements that could have saved it.
“The dead can return given sufficient motivation”
Still chasing that cash, Hollywood commissioned yet another sequel the following year. It’s a shame that Salvation was, like the TV series, unable to raise the budget to achieve what it wanted to.
The original script was penned by Chip Johannessen, producer of every halfway-decent TV series of the 90s, and borrowed liberally from horror author Poppy Z Brite’s brilliant Crow spin-off novel, The Lazarus Heart. Another actor who deserves better than his lot, Eric Mabius takes the role of the titular zombie avenger, this time a ne’er-do-well falsely accused of the murder of his trust-fund girlfriend. Returning from the electric chair, this Crow grabs another female sidekick, played by Kirsten Dunst, and uncovers a conspiracy of corrupt cops led by yet another occult villain with yet another deranged paramore. The cut-and-run edit of the script left a fair few plot holes and stuttered over the pacing, but it’s a lot more relatable than City of Angels and has enough fresh ideas to keep it afloat.
“What happens to an angel that loses his wings?”
Last on the spiral of diminishing returns, the less said about Wicked Prayer, the better. While it tried to take on the Native American trappings of the comic’s first sequel, set in the 1800s, the film chickened out and went with a modern plotline about Satanic rites and the birth of the antichrist, something out of sync with The Crow’s unique and subtle mythology. It’s a shame as the movie somehow drew in a semi-big-name cast including Ed Furlong, David Boreanaz, Tara Reid, Danny Trejo and even Dennis Hopper.
Eleven years later and we find Hollywood about to launch a “re-invention” of the Crow, more faithful to the original comic. On the plus side, O’Barr is on board, so to speak, but the never-ending stream of actors and directors linked and unlinked to the film leaves some serious doubt about whether it will actually happen at all. That’s without even considering the success rate, or lack of such, “re-imaginings” of classic movie franchises have achieved to date. Still, to quote the movie, it can’t rain all the time…
This article was originally published on the New Empress website in 2013
