Cinema disaster in sight? The new film adaptation of “The Crow” was a huge flop in the USA. Will that be repeated here from September 12th? On the contrary: The original from 1994 remains a must-see for fans of dark comic dramas!
“The Crow”: Tragic fame through Brandon Lee
When fantasy horror meets real horror: When the comic book adaptation “The Crow” When the film was released 30 years ago, it had already achieved tragic fame long before that. In March 1993, during filming, a ominous accident Lead actor Brandon Lee was killed by a real bullet at just 28 years old. This is (unfortunately) reminiscent of the film “Rust” by and with Alec Baldwin, in which camerawoman Halyna Hutchins was fatally injured on set in October 2021, and director Joel Souza was injured in the process. Production was subsequently put on hold.
The situation was different with “The Crow”: At the request of Brandon Lee’s family, the film was nevertheless completed. For this, some scenes that had not yet been shot had to be re-shot with the help of a body double and digital Trick-Technik constructed with film scrap material – given the possibilities at the time and the comparatively low budget revolutionary!
What makes “The Crow” from 1994 so special
But it was not only because of the dramatic background that the fantasy revenge drama became a Milestone in film history. Fans and critics were thrilled by both Brandon Lee’s acting and the atmospheric density of the film, in which the industrial city of Detroit becomes an apocalyptic hellscape. Soundtrack With (partly cover) songs by “The Cure”, “Pantera” and “Rage Against The Machine” among others, “The Crow” became a total work of art.
“The Crow” – This is what it’s about in the original:
A state of emergency prevails in Detroit: Gangs are looting the streets, and musician Eric Draven (Brandon Lee) and his fiancée Shelly (Sofia Shinas) are cruelly murderedBut an old legend emerges from the depths: A crow brings Eric back to the world of the living as an invulnerable avenger. A year later, he returns to bring his murderers to justice. With cold precision, he hunts the perpetrators – until he meets the merciless gang leader Top Dollar (Michael Wincott), who challenges him. A dark Revenge campaign takes its course …
The remake is a flop
The new film with Bill Skarsgård and FKA Twigs, which will be released in German cinemas on September 12, 2024, not a classic remake of the film at that time, but a Neu-Interpretation the comic book original. Nevertheless, according to the film review website “Rotten Tomatoes”, only 22% of all critics have a positive attitude towards the film – a catastrophic figure! For comparison: The original received 86% positive reviews.
Anyone who dares to tackle a cult theme really has to offer something new and extraordinary in order to convince, which in the eyes of most people was not achieved here. The “Rolling Stone Magazine” describes the film as a “failed attempt […] to introduce a cult character from a cult comic/film into today’s all-superheroes-everything-is-the-same entertainment landscape.” Or in short: you don’t like the film.
This is what the new “The Crow” looks like:
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Even the author distances himself
Even the first, later replaced screenwriter Cliff Dorfman distanced himself from the new film. In a now deleted post on “X” (formerly Twitter) he wrote: “If you happen to see a screening of ‘The Crow’, which Lionsgate is showing in August [in den USA] you could say that it is terrible, that you can’t watch it, that you can’t Don’t waste money or that one cannot believe that he has much worse than the original is. But he is.”
A bitter result for the independent film company Lionsgate, which has already had flops this year such as the video game adaptation “Borderlands” or the horror film “Imaginary”. Lionsgate is also behind Francis Ford Coppola’s huge project “Megalopolis” with Adam Driver in the lead role, which was recently met with vulgar statements from the old director that he “didn’t want to make a woke film”. A fake trailer also made the rounds, with false quotes from critics, which Lionsgate quickly made disappear.
Now “The Crow”. But the best thing is to form your own opinion and just watch both films. The more important of the two is clearly the Cult Film from 1994. On Joyn you can watch it at any time:
