Yes, you thought it was dead in court, but no! The Weinstein Company, aka “the people who made the first decent one and beat the franchise into the ground”, and Relativity Media, aka “another investment fund with no artistic soul whatsoever”, have settled their differences and are going to back to beat this dead horse yet again.
To be honest: either adapt J. O’Barr’s comic faithfully, guys, or go home. The original “Crow” was a solid comic book movie for 1994, but it has dated and it has dated painfully, what with its BDSM villains, industrial soundtrack, and action movie framework fitted awkwardly alongside moments lifted wholesale from the comic that Brandon Lee just wasn’t up to as an actor. The comic is, in moments, genuinely hard to read as O’Barr’s personal anguish just spills out over the page, and in other moments absolutely creepy as you wonder if the Crow is supernatural or a dangerous homicidal maniac. It was always kind of horrible that this and Lee’s death were used to push T-shirts onto Goth kids, so there’s a chance here to make things right.
Then again, the original comic features a “hero” who is either a zombie or utterly psychotic surrounded by a miasma of urban rot, who also happens to have poetic/horrific nightmares. We doubt that tests well in Bumblewhud, Nebrahoma, so let’s slap some mascara on a B-list action star and remake “Death Wish” for the Hot Topic crowd! Again!
image courtesy Penguin Publishing