"Can't rain all the time" ::: 30 years of The Crow

​2024 marked the 30-year anniversary of the masterpiece that is 'The Crow', originally released in 1994.  Directed by the visionary Alex Proyas and featuring a career defining performance from the dearly departed Brandon Lee, 'The Crow' has established itself as a timeless piece of work and an exquisite adaptation of James O'Barr's 1989 graphic novel origin.

The 30 year milestone has been marked by the release of the latest iteration of the vengeful vigilante, this time with Rupert Sanders at the helm leading a cast of Bill Skarsgård, FKA Twigs and Danny Huston.  It would be fair to cite the film as a critical and commercial failure seemingly putting a halt to any suggestion of a sequel that may or may not have been in the works.

But what makes 'The Crow' a franchise studios keep returning to?

Following the 1994 original, subsequent entries within the franchise were marked by 'The Crow: City of Angels' (1996), 'The Crow: Salvation' (2000) and 'The Crow: Wicked Prayer' (2005) with neither generating favourable reviews or the money required to really justify the iteration that would follow.  'The Crow: Stairway to Heaven' - the 1998 TV series - perhaps generated the most favourable reviews but didn't get the chance to continue their story with the planned second season which never came to fruition; yet more Crows followed with a mix of the stories recounting the forlorn tragedy of the ill-fated lovers Eric Draven and Shelly Webster amongst others who were wronged by the harsh cruelty of an unjust life.

It would be fair to cite The Crow as having fallen into a very specific template which sees the resurrected recount their respective tragedy, usually one associated with the crime-riddled inner city they resided in, adapt to their new persona and purpose and subsequently wreak vengeance on the criminal element one sinner at a time.

It's proved to be a template that binds each iteration of the character into a rhythm and routine that it should actually be free from.  The Crow's lore is established at the outset determining that there were numerous resurrected people prior to Eric and there would likely be numerous after which should afford the franchise the freedom to steer each story in a variety of different places and times - a remote French village in the 1930s should be as apt a setting as London in the 2930s.

​Despite the unbridled scope actually attached to the notion of each story, The Crow finds itself bound by those same freedoms placing each of our heroes in a long, black coat, white make-up and dark lipstick, navigating their way through a grimey inner city set against a heavy rock aesthetic.  The 2024 version of 'The Crow' may not have connected with audiences as studios would have hoped to but at the very least, they should be applauded for the creative steps taken to steer the story in a new direction.

Having said that, despite the new setting, background story, love attached to the original film, we are still inexplicably introduced to another version of Eric Draven and Shelly Webster despite them being completely different people - the reintroduction of the beloved couple may have served as the initial misstep in the reimagining of the story.

One of the most obvious changes to the aforementioned template is that we don't open the film with the resurrection of Eric Draven, which tends to happen within the first few minutes of the film.  In this version, we actually see the relationship of Eric and Shelly play out from the point of initially meeting all the way to their fabled end without the need to recount their story through flashbacks. 

We also see Skarsgård's Eric have his mission laid out to him by his guide, Kronos, with an almost trepidatious Eric somewhat hesitant about indulging in an epic killing spree.

Past iterations of The Crow have denied us the chance to *meet* our protagonist prior to his adoption of The Crow mantle with us only seeing glimpses of their past through flashbacks so it actually makes for an intriguing creative trope to be able to meet a shy, withdrawn and timid version of Eric prior to the transformation that awaits him.  

As I say, the film may have missed the mark in many areas but it still warrants points for finally generating an adaptation that embraces the freedoms it has had all along.  As an example, if we regard the lore around Batman - we have a young boy named Bruce Wayne whose parents are murdered on the streets of Gotham in front of him, he is then raised by his butler and finds a way to channel his rage via a commitment to the betterment of the city through life as a vigilante.  These are all rules that any Batman story has to be rooted in as a basis for any subsequent story it wishes to tell.  

On the other hand, the mysterious crow bringing the protagonist back from the dead is nearly the only rule the story has had to adhere to: the face paint, the clothing, the aforementioned template were only ever attributed to Eric Draven's story yet found itself the format for every iteration going forward.  As a devout fan of the 1994 version of 'The Crow', I doubt we'll ever see anything better but I also don't doubt that there's a sensational reimagining of the story that's waiting to be made.  It just needs to fall to the right storyteller.