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
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Yep, that’s some good haten right there.
Money is always a factor, but consider they wanted to cast Bradley Cooper in this before there was a rights argument.
Did you expect any less? The people who make movies are so god awful at their jobs I am surprised that they did not try to cast Steve-O in some capacity. They will probably let Zack Galifianakis write the script because he was funny for eight seconds in a movie.
These are the people who hear the same rom-com pitch every few months (“Female character with tough outer shell working at magazine in big city falls for man, loses man, realizes she needs man, then regains man”) and greenlight it every damn time.
They are almost as bad as the guy at Nintendo who keeps saying that the world really needs one more Pokemon game.
To be fair, there are people in Hollywood who get it. “The Dark Knight” would NEVER have been made even ten years ago. “Thor” managed to be funny and lighthearted without being campy. “Spider-Man 2″ had only two screenwriters, not the usual committee, and they were an award winning novelist and an Oscar-winning screenwriter. It’s just that I think it’s starting to come apart.
…and action movie framework fitted awkwardly alongside moments lifted wholesale from the comic that Brandon Lee just wasn’t up to as an actor
You bite your tongue! That movie was perfect in every way!
Like I said, for 1994, and considering the source material, it’s way better than it has any right to be.
Right, how things play in the heartland are always front and centre in the minds of hollywood producers. The Crow was emo before emo was played out.
Actually, how things play to TEENAGERS is front and center in the minds of Hollywood producers. But they worry, at length, about offending people.
I can see mainstream Hollywood f*cking this up. The Crow is one of those movies that I hold dear to my heart yet, can laugh at that very fact. Yes, it’s one of those films that can’t be taken too seriously but, it’s one of those dark action flicks that cannot be done as well as it was then. I remember seeing a brief Mtv segment reporting Brandon Lee’s death during filming and from that point on, my 12 year old self became obsessed with it. I think I saw it a total of four times while it was in theaters, bought the soundtrack, a movie poster, the graphic novel, t-shirt, etc. Hell, I even dressed up as Draven himself for Halloween. I know, I know CSB, tl;dr! Anyways, what I’m trying to say is, even though it’s considered a classic among weirdos, weirdos are the ones that should speak up and call this deal off. Right?
Tim Burton’s
THE CROW
Starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter
*snort*
No, no, no, they already made that. It was “Sweeney Todd”. Or maybe “Dark Shadows”.
What? The Crow still has the best soundtrack of all time (note that I did not say “score”)! After the Flesh is still kick-ass.
What, you’re going to say that Dark of the Moon had a better soundtrack? That what movies need is more nu metal, instead of Bowie, NIN, Pantera and Violent Femmes?
Because you KNOW that Hollywood is somehow going to force Drowning Pool’s “Bodies” into it somewhere. *sigh*
The soundtrack is good, but it’s better away from the movie, in my opinion, and the score…let’s just say we’re in agreement.