For years, they—in the general Hollywood sense—have been trying to remake The Crow, the iconic 1994 movie that starred Brandon Lee in what would, tragically, be his final role. A moody, stylish adaptation of the graphic novel by James O’Barr, the original film was directed by Alex Proyas, who had made his name in music videos and went on to direct the also-dark-and-stylish Dark City.
Proyas’s The Crow is a story of supernatural revenge: Eric Draven and his fiancee, Shelley, are brutally murdered; he comes back, undead and unkillable, to avenge her death. One of the most powerful elements in the film—along with Lee’s slinky, heartbroken performance—is that it’s Shelley’s pain that eventually dooms the villain (an outstanding Michael Wincott). Her death and suffering don’t just motivate her lover; they are, ultimately, her killer’s downfall.
What any of that means for this remake remains to be seen. (I still maintain that we deserve a version in which Shelley gets her own revenge.) The first trailer is here, and it’s mostly just … violence. Lots and lots of super-bloody violence, which the dialogue says is not rage, but love. There is also a perplexing voiceover bit which suggests that if Eric (Bill Skarsgård) can get revenge fast enough, he can “save” Shelley (FKA twigs). Here’s the synopsis:
Soulmates Eric Draven (Skarsgård) and Shelly Webster (FKA twigs) are brutally murdered when the demons of her dark past catch up with them. Given the chance to save his true love by sacrificing himself, Eric sets out to seek merciless revenge on their killers, traversing the worlds of the living and the dead to put the wrong things right.
This trailer has two things going for it: One, based on what we see of the murder scene, it seems to have removed the rape. And two, it has Danny Huston as the villain, with Foundation’s excellent Laura Birn as his right-hand woman. Huston is an incredible, often underused actor, and if anyone can fill Michael Wincott’s shoes, he probably can.
But it’s missing the vibes. Director Rupert Sanders was behind Snow White and the Huntman and the live-action Ghost in the Shell, neither of which inspires a lot of confidence. He is also directly responsible for Eric Draven’s weirdly Jared-Leto-as-the-Joker look here; the director told Vanity Fair: “That look was me in the ’90s when we were squat-raving in London, [mixed with some modern influences] like Post Malone and Lil Peep. I hope people who are 19 today look at him and go, ‘That guy is us.’”
Goodbye, goths; hello, squat-ravers. Goodbye, one of the best soundtracks ever; hello, whatever is happening with the music in this trailer. The worst thing about this remake is that it doesn’t need to be this remake: the Crow comics go on to tell the stories of other characters, other people who take on the personal of the Crow. It didn’t have to be Eric Draven again. But here we are.
The Crow flies into theaters on June 7th.
