The Crow, Art Imitates Life?

In Cinemas 29 Aug

We haven’t seen a movie like The Crow since we last saw The Crow in 1994. Based on the comics The Crow comes from the same alt-kid supernatural goth melting pot of the late 80s that brought us Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics. Coming out at the same time in 1989 these stories have a flavour and aesthetic flare that has echoed over the years. While shows like Stranger Things revels in mall culture and cold war fear, The Crow is more concerned with the decade’s seedy underbelly and the angst roiling in it.

It seems this season the silver screen is going to be beset by lanky face painted weirdos. In one theatre we have Joaquin Phoenix cackling his way toward another Oscar while in the other we have Bill Skarsgård doing his best impression of a meth dealer. Both have pop star girlfriends backing them up. Phoenix is accompanied by Lady Gaga, also strutting her way toward what will probably be “best original song” oscar. Meanwhile Skarsgård has FKA Twigs, who is doing her best impression of a meth dealer’s girlfriend. One way or the other we have a buffet of R-Rated dark rainy comic book cities to look forward to.

Twigs’ character Shelly has plenty of demons in her past, and they all catch up to the young couple… Terminally.

You can skip this paragraph if you want to go in completely blind but the premise is that after getting iced Skarsgård’s character doesn’t get ferried to the afterlife like normal, instead he’s got unfinished business cleaning up the mooks who took him and Twigs out. If he can kill them all he might be able to bring her back, but everything is on a deadline, literally. Since he can’t die he’s got nothing to lose and everything to gain. Cue from here on out a bloody warpath as he takes out as many guys as he can before his invincibility runs out. It follows the essence of the cult classic but ups the ante for modern audiences. Directed by Rupert Sanders and starring Bill Skarsgård this is one of the most anticipated films of the year.

Unlike the original film this one dwells longer on the relationship that kicks off the bloodbath. “I wanted to invest audiences in their love story, and to have them understand what Eric will do when that love is taken from him,” says director Rupert Sanders. “So, THE CROW is two movies in one: an action-thriller story of revenge, and a romance.”

In casting the role of Eric, Sanders was looking for an actor who could convey authenticity, as well as a critical mix of inner fragility and external violence and rage that fill Eric in his journey to save his girl. They found all those in Bill Skarsgård.

“Bill, after working in the horror genre [as Pennywise the Clown in the blockbuster film adaptations of Stephen King’s It], was ready to step out from those veils of makeup and become himself,” Sanders explains. “He’s an incredibly emotional actor, with huge eyes that convey feelings of longing, pain, boyish wonder, and love. But when they harden, those eyes become terrifying.”

Since Skarsgård was picked out as the anti-hero who was left to play the final big bad villain? That job fell to Danny Huston (30 Days of Night, Yellowstone). For Sanders, Huston was ideal to take on the powerful and dark magnate. “Danny is an incredible actor with the ability to charm in the darkest of places,” he notes. “The devil is a charmer; he seduces with a silk tongue, and Danny really conveys the feeling that Vincent has lived for many centuries. Danny is terrifying when playing Vincent’s dark turns.”

Principal photography of The Crow took place in Prague, Czech Republic. Notable sets created by production designer Robin Brown and his team included Kronos’s in-between world of the living and dead, which was inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky’s landmark 1979 film Stalker. If you’re a gamer then yes, there is a lot of STALKER in Stalker. Also just as an aside, if you’re a scifi fan you owe it to yourself to read Roadside Picnic. Sorry, back to the movie.

When Sanders came aboard for the production he looked at some of his favorite films from the ‘80s and ‘90s, like Diva and Subway, which, he says, “have this great aesthetic that feels very modern, yet timeless and otherworldly.”

One of the “otherworldy” environments they found was an abandoned railyard which they promptly flooded.

“I wanted The Crow to have a grounded aesthetic,” Sanders continues. “Even the supernatural elements had to feel authentic. I didn’t want anything to feel too fantastical.”

So what’s Bill Skarsgård’s opinion on the whole thing? Personally he was more of a fan of a different ending than the one we’re going to get. “I personally preferred something more definitive.”

Make of that what you will.

When Art Immitates Life

1994’s The Crow had a tragic air hanging over it, as it became the 90s analogue to Heath Ledgers ‘The Dark Knight’.

The leader actor cast for The Crow was up and coming actor Brandon Lee, son of Bruce Lee. As a young boy Bruce Lee would take Brandon on set of his films, giving the impressionable youth a taste of what he would later want to become following in his Dad’s footsteps. Bruce Lee passed away at age 32 due to cerebral edema when Brandon was just 8.

He started his career humble but strong with a lead role in the hong kong action film Legacy of Rage of which he was nominated for an award. He did some successful straight to VHS stuff before heading to Hollywood. When he was cast in The Crow it was expected to be his breakout role.

Unfortunately during filming a prop gun had a round lodged halfway down its barrel in a previous scene. When it was later used in the next scene with blanks the dummy round had enough force to clear the barrel directly into Lee. He died aged 28 and was buried beside his dad.

Lee was only required for 3 more days of filming and his final shots used body doubles and newly developed special effects to digitally render him into the remaining scenes. No easy feat in the early 90s.

The film was subsequently dedicated to him with the quote “The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.”

The entire misadventure left a pall over the film, especially given the subject matter.

One reviewer, James Berardinelli called the film “a case of ‘art imitating death’, and that specter will always hang over The Crow”.