The Crow

It’s funny for me to discuss The Crow after all this time. I saw the film for the first time when I was five; I remember asking my mom what the f-word meant (and my father what the word “hooker” meant – he answered “a woman who crochets”). The soundtrack of the film sent me down the musical path I’ve meandered around ever since then. My e-mail, until I had to apply to college, was Thecrow12789. And… I didn’t even know it was based on a comic when I first saw it.
I’ll come right out and say, despite my feelings on almost everything else in the world, that the movie is better than the book. James O’Barr’s first comic work is really an exercise of thinly veiled catharsis. The film, directed by Alex Proyas, turns that anger and depression into a unique film experience. While inconsistency plagues the comic (it was completed over a period of time, and early in O’Barr’s career), the visual identity of the film is clear and pronounced. And, for as action-oriented as the film is, Brandon Lee instills Eric Draven with a shocking amount of depth lacking from the comic protagonist.
Not enough can be said about the soundtrack. Featuring cuts from The Cure, Nine Inch Nails, Stone Temple Pilots, Rage Against the Machine, and more, the music of the film creates a mood the comic never managed to do for very long. In an era of music known for its unbridled rage, The Crow managed to gather some of the very best and use it as a perfect outlet for Draven’s passionate quest.
It’s a shame that subsequent iterations failed to capture the same zeitgeist of the first film. The Crow: City of Angels has a suitably good soundtrack, but the supernatural elements of the plot and the convoluted behind-the-scenes drama resulted in a disappointing follow-up to the original cult classic (though Iggy Pop fits the material perfectly as villain Curve). The second two films, and the television series, all misinterpret completely what made the first film so impactful, becoming rote action flicks and a bizarrely dull spiritual journey, respectively.

Much hullaballoo surrounded a potential remake of the film starring, of all people, Bradley Cooper, but it looks like progress on that has thankfully halted. I have no doubt that, like many comic plots, a new version of the story could be successful. However, no film today will unseat the original as a time-specific masterpiece. It remains to be seen if a new film can find a way to be faithful to the concept while being relevant to the twenty-teens in the same way the first film was to the early nineties.