The Crow: Four Movies, Only One Great One

In the summer of 1994, I went to see The Crow in the theater, twice in the same week. This began my fascination with this movie, which still remains one of my favorite movies of all time. At the same time, I've always been the sort of person who doesn't like to stop watching a movie once I've started, no matter how bad the movie is. The same seems to go for series of movies, as I have, over the years, watched every Crow movie that has been released.

The thing that has always drawn me to The Crow is that the movie is filled with intense emotion from start to finish. There are but precious few moments when the viewer gets a break from the pathos that is unfolding on the screen. The biggest part of this, in my opinion, comes from Brandon Lee, portraying Eric Draven. Brandon Lee's earlier movies were fairly run-of-the-mill action flicks, but in The Crow, he proved that he was actually a talented actor. Unfortunately, he never had a chance to continue exhibiting his skill, as he died during the making of The Crow. This, too, probably makes this movie all the more poignant and touching.

The Crow: City of Angels (1996) was not a bad movie. Its biggest flaw, unfortunately, was that it was not the original The Crow. Had it been a stand-alone movie, not tied to something which already existed, The Crow: City of Angels may have had a better reception amongst movie-goers. The acting in this movie is quality, and the plot works with the existing Crow mythos without being a complete rip-off of the first movie. I particularly liked the inclusion of the character of Sarah--the skateboarding young girl from the first movie, all grown up and working as a tattoo artist in City of Angels. This tie-in with the first movie does City of Angels the disservice of tying it closely to The Crow, which only serves to cause viewers to draw unfavorable comparisons between the two. Still, this movie qualifies as not too bad in the grand scheme of things.

On the other hand, The Crow: Salvation (2000) has pretty much no redeeming qualities. I thought perhaps it wouldn't be so bad, since Kirsten Dunst had agreed to act in this movie. She ends up being the one shining spot in an otherwise atrocious movie. Eric Mabius, who portrays Alex Corvis/The Crow, seems to have gotten all of his ideas for how to portray his character from watching Brandon Lee in The Crow. On several occasions, he seemed to be trying to mimic Lee as precisely as possible. Though some people might have seen this as an homage to Lee, it seemed really creepy and morbid to me. It is pretty apparent why this movie was simply released straight to video--it wasn't worthy of being given time in a theater.

Finally, in 2005, The Crow: Wicked Prayer, the fourth movie in the series, opened in a limited number of theaters. Looking at the cast list for this movie would make a viewer think that they might be in for a good movie--Edward Furlong, David Boreanaz, and Tara Reid all grace the cover of the movie, and Dennis Hopper plays a small role towards the end. However, a good cast doesn't necessarily make a good movie. Wicked Prayer diverges sharply from the basic idea of the mythos of The Crow, by having as the main protagonist a person who seems to be less of a victim than any of his predecessors. While the exact situation that turns Jimmy Cuervo (Furlong) into the character of The Crow does cast him in the role of the victim, his actions earlier in life would definitely put him in the category of the morally worst man-turned-Crow. It makes the viewer not want to sympathize with his plight as much as they may have in the previous three Crow movies. In addition to the odd plot, I noticed at least a couple of things blatantly ripped off from The Crow--specifically, a speech that Sarah gave in the first movie, placed into an exceptionally strange context here, and slightly modified background music which I immediately recognized from the score of the first movie.

All in all, while I am glad to have seen all four of the Crow movies, I sincerely hope that Hollywood stops rehashing this idea. They did it well once, and poorly three other times (and I'm not even getting into the brief lived TV show). Hopefully Hollywood can learn that it just isn't working, and perhaps they should try to find some new idea to make, remake, and overdo.