2024-09-03 01:00:35
The Crow comic was exceptional in many ways. It was created in the late 1980s, when superhero stories darkened and began to become adult reading. It was born out of the pain of its author James O’Barr, whose fiancee was killed by a drunk driver. The dark tale of revenge became as famous as the 1994 film version. The current remake does not expect the same. You will forget him before you leave the cinema.
For nineteen-year-old O’Barr, the crow embodied sadness, guilt, and regret. Although it was based on the supernatural motif of an immortal avenger returning from the grave, like many works inspired by painful reality, it was uncomfortably realistic, influenced by the author’s obsession with the tragedy that changed his life. He drew the crow for a long time without having a contract with a publisher.
Even the first adaptation by director Alex Proyas from 1994 was accompanied by turbulent events. Brandon Lee, who played the protagonist Eric Draven, tragically died on set, shot by a movie prop that was unfortunately not a dummy. The film was supposed to make this son of action star Bruce Lee famous – and indeed made him posthumously famous. However, he was only shot with the help of doubles and tricks. It added to the aura of the death-obsessed work.
The comic and its first film adaptation are in many ways imperfect, overloaded with emotional replicas, full of darkness, which, although it comes from real pain, does not always guarantee an equally intense artistic result. Nevertheless, these are gloomy suggestive works, fitting in with the mood of the time, but clearly standing out from the average.
Proyas’ film followed the dark wave of Hollywood thrillers of the 80s, such as James Cameron’s Terminator or Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. And his futuristic Detroit represented a kind of equivalent of the comic book Gotham, where an even scarier and more ruthless avenger of injustice presides over Batman. No moral code. Just full of rage.
Thirty years later, Rupert Sanders, a specialist in strange Hollywood versions of famous models, has unfortunately filmed a new Crow as the cheapest emo kitsch.
Bill Skarsgård as Eric returns from the grave to seek revenge. | Photo: Larry Horricks
The author, who first turned Snow White into an action fantasy, then created a troubled version of the famous Japanese cyberpunk Ghost in the Shell, now tries to strengthen the romance line about lovers murdered by the local mobster’s drives. Furthermore, he wants to expand the mythology behind the hero returning from the dead and intensify the bloodiness of his revenge.
But the original straightforward film turned out to be just a bizarre stump with no idea what it really wants to tell about. Czech cinemas are screening it from Thursday.
The initial romance is perhaps the only thing that works somewhat on screen. Musician FKA Twigs as the girl Shelly and Bill Skarsgård as the emaciated tattooed Eric meet in a drug rehab. When they share their few happy moments as refugees and outcasts, they can be convincing. The rest of the film is interesting just because it was filmed in Prague. The viewer can thus follow where the protagonists are going or which of the more or less well-known Czech actors will die an enormously violent death.
New Crow wants to be as dark as possible from the beginning. In the opening scene, Eric as a boy finds his favorite horse in the middle of a muddy landscape entangled in barbed wire. About a decade later, the young man is hiding from the world, from his own traumas and from himself in a treatment center rather than being treated for addiction.
Most of the scenes continue in a similar vein – like from an interchangeable clip for a song by some average emo band that wants the darkness to be as dark as possible.
The film The Crow was filmed in Prague. The picture features Karel Dobrý as Roman and Laura Birn as Marian. | Photo: Larry Horricks
The lovers read Arthur Rimbaud, have sex, get drunk on all sorts of substances – and that’s still the best part of the movie. The latter tries to make everything from the original Crows even more intense, without the creators realizing that they are already getting over the edge of kitsch and cliché.
A mob boss wouldn’t be scary enough, so he has to have demonic powers and speak in a strange voice. Eric constantly falls into the depths and there he receives lessons about, for example, that his love must be pure in order to remain immortal. It’s mostly ridiculous.
Good dark comic dramas tend to look different these days. It stands on non-black-and-white characters, complicated moral choices, just like Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, but also Matt Reeves’ concept of Batman from last year.
Nová Vrána draws on a period, very straightforward original working mainly with atmosphere, energy and emotions. However, neither can be presented believably. The heroes wander through the center of Prague, but the New Stage of the National Theater and the Rudolfinum are only the backdrop of the film, which is reminiscent of tired B-series dark fantasy thrillers without an idea, such as the vampire series Underworld.
The Czech viewer can enjoy the fact that Karel Dobrý has the medium-sized role of the killer, and watch his expressive grimaces in a slightly different genre world than the one he is used to from domestic productions. And for example, Jan Budař will be stabbed in the head, which doesn’t happen to him much in his domestic performances.
The film cannot offer anything more than similar childish pleasures. In his effort to be as “cool” as possible, he is, on the contrary, too childish himself.
When, after an unimaginative massacre with the help of cut weapons in the bowels of the opera, Eric appears in front of the audience with two severed heads, it perfectly demonstrates the cluelessness and insensitivity of the creators, who have no idea what character they are dealing with. They just randomly, without thinking, use scenes that could look good. And they don’t even look like it. Everything is just for effect.
The crow ended up being the cheapest emo kitsch. Pictured is Bill Skarsgård as Eric. | Photo: Larry Horricks
Instead of an atmospheric story about love and revenge, a languid, exhausted work was created, which makes up for the lack of emotion with the brutality of the action. The lyrics of the song Disorder by Joy Division, included on the soundtrack, say more about the hero than the entire two-hour work.
However, Vrána cannot imitate the captivatingly slow and gradating tempo of this new wave song. Although otherwise, this film seems the whole time, as if someone wanted to film a full-length version of this or another post-punk or emo rock song. Which is not a good idea.
Film
Crow
Director: Rupert Sanders
Vertical Entertainment, Czech premiere on August 29.