The Crow (2024)

[dwmarch]

Here's the official (red band gory violent) trailer:

Feedback on the internet is mixed. Lots of folks regard the original movie as something sacred, particularly given Brandon Lee's tragic death during filming. But I have also seen reactions from people who haven't seen the original and who think this looks great. I'm curious and optimistic myself. I have seen a lot of recasting and reboots and franchises changing hands over the years. Mostly I think it's important to remember that this movie doesn't overwrite the original. It's still out there for those who want to enjoy it.

As regards the trailer, I think they're going in a different direction with this one. More of Eric and Shelley before the bad guys show up. The Crow powers seem like they are somewhat of a curse here. You can see Eric starts off bleeding red (when the guy with the shotgun blasts him) but when he's storming that performance hall his blood is black sludge. Good guys don't bleed black sludge. So it looks to me like he's turning into something that is at odds with the idea of reuniting with his true love. That could be interesting. I also love the single second shot of him throwing two heads into a crowd. I didn't see any really iconic shots (like the flaming crow outline from the first movie) but the movie does look stylish in its own way. For a remake I hope this is more The Italian Job than say... Robocop. At the very least we know it's going to be violent although whether that is a plus or minus remains to be seen. The first movie had brutal kills but wasn't particularly gory (except for a couple of brief moments near the end).

Anyone else curious about this one?

[Spaceman Spiff]

I caught this trailer this week and it was just a giant NOPE for me. The look they gave Eric made me cringe as it looks like he was a reject for Jared Leto's Joker which was the worst interpretation of that character.

So I am in the group that loves the original and saw no need for a remake. It's a sad time when the only ideas they come up with these days is doing remakes of movies that don't need to be remade (see Roadhouse).

[Tenshinhan]

I think people should remember that the Crow is a comic book series first, and a movie second.  There is definitely room for more adaptations.  A new version of the Crow does not automatically mean that the original film is somehow being disrespected or insulted.

The Crow is about much more than just Brandon Lee.  There can be sequels and reboots that continue the story's legacy.  Just so long as they are written well.

[methodwriter85]

I personally like that this doesn't seem like a re-tread of the OG, so I'll give it a chance.

[BetterButter]

 

[BetterButter]

 

[dwmarch]

Well I did end up going to see this. I didn't find it terrible but it is a very different movie from the 1994 one.

This movie is a lot slower paced and spends too much time with Eric and Shelly. In the 1994 movie, they are deliberately under-developed as characters. Shelly is in the movie for about five minutes in total, has very few speaking lines and is basically there to be a symbol of purity that the bad guys do terrible things to. And what do we know about Eric? He's in a band, has a cat, helps look out for a neighborhood kid, disapproves of tobacco use and that's about it. We don't know what his childhood was like. We don't meet any of his friends. We don't hear about his background.

Unfortunately, this new Crow does get a backstory and it's not a great one. We see him getting pushed around at rehab and he doesn't fight back. We see him generally being a wimp which makes it weird when he can all of a sudden fight at the end. And as for Shelly, she's not particularly sympathetic either. The movie spends a lot of time on the relationship but doesn't make it compelling enough to feel her loss. Compare this to the 1994 version which has you on Shelly's side immediately as she struggles to survive.

We also get an interesting bad guy in the 2024 version but no development on him. I can't even remember the character's name. Compare this to Top Dollar whose name I will never forget even though it is never actually said in the 1994 film! 2024 brings us a villain from the realm of the supernatural which could be great if done right but doesn't amount to anything here. It's not even clear why he is so hell-bent on getting this video back. If this movie is set in 2024, he can't make it go away by capturing the cell phone it originated from. This is the cloud my guy, data lives forever out there! And there's also nothing in that video worth seeing. Shelly stabs someone after he whispers in her ear. Okay, if I saw that on Youtube my first assumption would be that it is fake or that it's a viral video for a coming horror movie or something. I'm not going to jump to the idea that Evil Nameless Corporate Villain is secretly sending ingenues to hell with his whispering.

I also wanted more out of the bad guys. Again, the originals were Tin-Tin, Skank, T-Bird and Fun Boy. I can match their names to their faces with ease even though I haven't watched the 1994 film a whole ton of times. They are just memorable characters. They are also irredeemably evil. The mooks in the 2024 film are nameless and faceless. There was a big dude with a shotgun. There was a corrupt cop. There was the guy in the car who is very deadpan when he says "we killed you" and again, this guy isn't memorable enough for me to recall if he was even at the murder scene! There was a stylish lady who runs around making panicked phone calls for the whole movie. The rest of the bad guys are just mooks. They have no characterization at all and the only thing that establishes them as bad guys is that they work for the bad guy. In the 1994 film, there is a whole table of mooks at the end but we know they are bad guys who have answered Top Dollar's call for Devil's Night minions who will burn the whole city down. In the 2024 film, I don't know if the guy who had something stuck in his teeth was a bad guy or if he just picked a bad day to go work security at the opera house. We could have established some more about the company. An Evil Corporation is pretty stock standard in these kinds of films so any character could have had a line about how only bad people work there.

Another thing that was missing from the 2024 movie was humor. There are not really any jokes in the film at all except for the deliberately unfunny one Shelly tells. There are no good laugh lines or moments. 1994's film was by no means a comedy but it did have some humor in it. "Look what you did to my sheets!" is a hilarious reaction given the situation. Sarah makes a fart joke. Eric does a little dance before disappearing in the big battle. There are no lines in the 2024 film with the same wicked humor as "is that gasoline I smell?"

The violence was also weird. Lots of brutal sword deaths on those mooks. But Eric Draven of the 1994 movie was creative in his kills, sending a clear message that death was coming with each one. He kills each bad guy in a particular way that mirrors some aspect of their personality. In 2024, we get a lot of blood and guts but no awesome setups. He just goes from point A to point B in rote fashion because the movie hasn't really sold me on the idea that he is on a revenge quest.

The timeline is also weird. Shelly dies and is off to hell but apparently souls just very gently float down while their vengeful companions get their shit together. It's not super clear how much time passes in the movie but the ticking clock is very flexible here. We also get a weird time jump at the end where Shelly wakes up shortly after dying, having been revived by paramedics. So did we jump over to an alternate timeline where the bad guys just aren't there anymore? Or is there now a dead Eric on the floor and a live Eric out killing bad guys at the same time? That was weird. It's a movie with supernatural stuff in it, there's no reason why you can't have Shelly wake up three days later.

There was also some music in the movie. The soundtrack from 1994 is iconic and has some incredible songs on it that are still bangers today. I don't remember any songs from the new movie other than thinking that the music was not aligning well with what was going on.

All in all, would I recommend it? I'd say wait for streaming on this one if you absolutely must see it. And it is a lot better than The Crow: Wicked Prayer, so at least it's got that going for it.

[Palimelon]

If it ain't broke, no need to fix it.

[dwmarch]

There were so many production companies listed at the beginning of the movie that I think the real problem they were trying to fix was either some money that needed laundering or some taxes that needed evading. Perhaps both. I guess it's time for me to start writing a movie about a Crow protagonist who goes after white collar criminals.