I saw on the internet
that they are planning a remake of the Crow, not a variation or a
sequel but a remake. My first thought was, here we go again –
instead of choosing one of the poorer films and remaking it to be
good one, they're taking the one that was damn near perfect first
time out, the one that doesn't need a remake, and making it again. It
seems to be the pattern.
My second thought was
that maybe I should watch the four Crow movies again.
So I did.
The first crow movie
is, as I said, damn near perfect. It's visually stylish. Underneath
the violence it has heart and even a streak of sentimentality.
Brandon Lee's performance is excellent and the only thing that mars
the movie slightly for me is that there is a small but significant
change to the original comic book. In that, the original crime was
genuinely motiveless – mayhem and murder for its own sake. The
movie adds a reason in the interests of plot and to my mind that
undermines the actions of the Crow. Still, it's a small point in an
otherwise favourite movie.
Crow: City of Angels
and Crow:Salvation are the second and third movies in the franchise
and there are a couple of serious flaws that they share. The first is
that the directors (Tim Pope and Bharat Nalluri respectively) both
choose visuals over sense. Sensible and consistent plotting is
secondary to whichever visual conceit has crossed the director's
mind. So, for example, in City of Angels the Crow erupts out of the
water where his mortal form was drowned and hangs in a crucifiction
pose hovering in the air. There's no explanation and moments later he
is apparently back in the water and dragging himself painfully up
onto the pier. It looks good but it makes no sense. Similarly in
Salvation the villain likes to insert screws into his arm causing the
major scarring that's the main plot driver but no reason is ever
given for it, just as no reason is ever given as to how or why he has
a secret and rather gruesome taxidermy lab completely unnoticed in
the police station.
The second flaw is that
both directors seem to have got the idea that a vital element of the
Crow mythos is sexual fetishism. It's less of a problem in Salvation
because it's at least vaguely connected to the story – in City of
Angels it just forms a seedy backdrop to the action – but in either
case it's a prominent feature of the movie.
With all that said
Salvation at least tries to take the story in a new direction. Eric
Mabius' Crow is both more menacing and more nuanced than Vincent
Perez manages. City of Angels is just a pale, failed retread of the
first movie with vastly inferior performances and scripting and that
sexual fetishism is just about the most pointless thing in a
pointless movie.
So, what about Wicked
Prayer?
It's bad. It's
excruciatingly bad. From the text-on-screen introduction of the bad
guys to David Boreanaz ludicrous overacting to Edward Furlong's
portrayal of the Crow as a petulant goth teenager, the whole thing is
awful. And that's before we get to the stone bonkers plot about
Boreanaz wanting to become the antichrist and bring hell on Earth or
Dennis Hopper visibly making plans to fire his agent in every scene
he's contractually obliged to appear in. It has about as much in
common with the other Crow movies as a pet goldfish has with a great
white shark. It's a bad Crow movie and it's a bad movie in it's own
right.
For all that I don't
hate it as much as City of Angels. Wicked Prayer is just utterly
incompetent, City of Angels seems to have willfully distilled
everything that was great about The Crow and then thrown it away and
kept and amplified everything else. It rehashes the whole of the
first movie in such an inferior form and with so much gratuitous
rubbish that I actually find it offends me.
What, then, of the
proposed remake?
Personally I'd rather
see a new take on the tale but if the have to remake something, why
not Salvation. Imagine how good it could be if it were remade with
all of its flaws fixed; with the weirder plot points expanded and
explained, with villains who weren't just cardboard cutouts.
That would be a movie
worth seeing.
