The Crow vs Hollywood

 

If you are a fan of superhero movies, action movies, or revenge movies, you probably remember the 1994 (twenty-one years!) film starring Brandon Lee entitled “The Crow”.  For those of you who don’t remember, this featured Lee as musician Eric Draven.  Late one evening Mr. Draven and his fiancé are terrorized and ultimately murdered by a gang.  One year later, Draven returns from the grave, summoned by the titular bird, and exact bloody revenge for the crimes that went unpunished.  There is also a fight scene on top of a roof and a pseudo psychic lady.  And Tony Todd is there to, basically being Tony Todd.  It was the 1990’s.

So why do I bring it up now?  Well, the movie spawned a handful of sequels, most of which went straight to video, and one mediocre TV series.  Now, the problem with all of the sequels was that it tried to copy the original, as sequels often do.  You see, there is a common phenomenon when it comes to Hollywood where in when a movies does particularly well at the box office, the studios will immediately try to capitalize on it’s popularity by producing a film nearly identical in story structure with half the budget and none of the returning actors.  This is called cashing in or riding coattails.

What made the original film original was the same thing that made the following sequels terrible.  A good movie, I mean a really good movie, is like a lightning strike.  Its bright, its powerful, and it leaves an impression on everyone who witnessed it.  Sequels are kind of like getting a spot light and shining it in people’s faces and claiming it’s just as good as the original strike, even though everyone present knows full and well it’s not even close.

Back in 1990’s, and still today but especially back then, movie studios didn’t really care about how good the sequel was.  They relied strictly on name brand to carry their product and sat back waiting to count money.  Now what is inexplicable to me is how a studio can crank out a subpar follow up film (in the case of The Crow it was “The Crow: City of Angels”) which makes less money than the original and fans decry as being an inferior film, only to follow it up with progressively worse movies (The Crow: Salvation and The Crow: Wicked Prayer).  These films follow the exact same formula but consistently fail to capture the magic of the original.

The Crow got a decent follow up in the form of the Canadian TV series entitled “The Crow: Stairway to Heaven” which followed the original Crow, Eric Draven now played by Marc Dacascos.  This time, however instead of returning to the grave after his quest is completed, Draven continues to roam the earth fighting evil.  Why did this work when others didn’t?  Well, while fans of the original admitted that it was not the same caliber of the original, they had to admit that it respected the source material and actually tried to spin original stories.  In short, it didn’t do a straight up copy of the original.  It tried to be its own story.

That is where the studios failed.  When CoA failed to perform in the box office, they should have backed up and focused on telling a new, better story.  Not the same story, only with less budget. 

Modern sequels of popular movies have seemed to learn this lesson.  When follow ups to 1989’s “Batman” failed in the forms of “Batman Forever” and “Batman and Robin” Warner Brothers understood where they went wrong.  When “Batman Begins” rebooted the franchise, the follow up “The Dark Knight” was widely credited as being a much better film than the its predecessor.  The same thing happened with Iron-Man 2 and Captain America: the Winter Soldier.  They succeeded because they were going to tell new stories, explore new avenues of the narrative.  Spider-Man 2 was better than Spider-Man (Sam Rami series).  Iron-Man 3 was better than Iron-Man 2.  We’re moving, generally in the right direction with sequels, we’re continuing the story rather than rehashing the old one or telling a sub-par narrative with flashy lights to distract the audience. 

Now as I am typing this, they are working on a reboot of the franchise.  What is actually encouraging is that right now they are on the fourth or fifth attempt at rebooting it, which means they have time to get it right.  Does it mean they will use that time wisely, that’s debatable.