Trailer Breakdown | The Crow (2024)

hi folks and Welcome to our first ever YouTube video we should point out the following is based on our interpretation of oar's crow comic and the first film your own opinion May differ and that's fine also a brief trigger warning there will be mentions and depictions of self harm included in this video so please bear that in mind with that out of the way let's get straight to it we'll start with the nitpicks then work our way up to the bigger stuff as we go we'll kick off with the look that they

've given Eric who was introduced to readers as a kind of goth Iggy Pop then later to movie goers with that same grungy goth aesthetic here we presented with a SoundCloud rapper less Peter Murphy in combat boots and more Machine Gun Kelly all the God's helpers Jared Leto's joker as one of my friends put it why does Eric Draven have a fade the aesthetic is so intrinsic to the comic as to be fundamental so changing it seems contradictory to the aim of the creators as they like to keep reminding us

it's an adaptation of the comic not a remake of the film but well look at the two side by side and make your own minds up whilst this isn't a deal breaker and certainly doesn't affect the quality of the writing it's still a strike against the film for us the Chang is in aesthetic extent of the set design gone is the decrepit goth tenament of the first film replaced with a sprawling Penthouse apartment which the set dresses have covered in a skips worth of empty bottles and crap making it look m

ore like a cracked Den than ass soon to be married couple's living space unsurprisingly this doesn't work very well no one watching will see this and believe that a struggling couple could afford it much less go on to treat it like a bin the website truly elist a penthouse in Detroit which is where the crow is supposed to take place at $3,500 a month to rent or 1.3 million to buy similarly with shown a confrontation which appears to take place in some kind of mansion with a suited security detai

l it's a far cry from the dingy gangsters in the source material they may as well have been lifted directly from John Wick or The Equalizer or any number of other slick modern films featuring a millionaire career criminal organization but it isn't the crow why does this matter Beyond Aesthetics well we'll get into that a little bit bit later tangentially related to the point of Aesthetics is that of style that's not to say the comic and the original film aren't stylized they are but the choice o

f style is the issue here contrast the 94 adaptations monochrome used world with the new versions of modern orange and teal color grade and the pristine shiny cars in this clip not a spray of mud or scuff in sight take the mannequins in Eric and Shell's Penthouse why are they there it's possible Eric or shell is an artist and uses them for their work but why are they start like this because it looks cool and not because it's consistent with anything in reality this is a particular stickler for u

s because we know and work with multiple contemporary artists some of whom use mannequins in their art and none of them sto their materials like this no one would it's purely an aesthetic decision to insert some shots of Silhouettes under plastic how spook it's just lazy also lazy is the shot of an ass just to get an ass on screen and in the precise angle and scenario that we've seen so many times before this is less about showing the character's depth of affection and more about just showing an

ass this one's both lazy and mildly exploitative double kill and what the hell is she wearing here no one wears this to a beach fire your bloody tassels would catch a light it's there as yet another lazy way to show her as quote unquote an angel these changes in style and aesthetic take the story so far from its roots in the goth postpunk and hardcore subcultures that were intrinsic to it and which form such a fundamental part of its weave that it may as well not be the crow at all again these

things don't necessarily affect the writing but for us at least it's just not exactly a good thing next CGI blood there's not much to say about that it's just CGI blood and what's with this shot in a compound of some sort are we to take it that Eric has become the excon trying to go straight Trope now stories about imperfect struggling people are interesting but this Trope is tired now may as well make him an ex CIA agent or assassin trying to start a new life if Eric is an excon that's just ano

ther step closer to this film being essentially John Wick it's not something we particularly want to see and it's probably not something other Crow fans would want to see either in both the comic and the first film Eric is a normal nice everyday guy albeit one with a band as far as the film goes anyway who finds himself on a collision course with the violence he just isn't equipped to deal with once more such a development wouldn't be a deal breaker in and of itself but these small points are be

ginning to add up now moving on to this shot of one villain appearing to whisper in the ear of a woman who then does this it's not apparent what's going on here but it seems to suggest something Supernatural you may be thinking duh Supernatural stuff in a film about a guy who comes back from the dead what a surprise but the issue is that adding another otherworldly element further ungrounds the film from reality making it harder to relate to it's extraneous and when overused often detrimental pi

cture if you will cronenburg scanners it's effective because there's one type of psychic protag onist SL antagonist start dropping in one that starts fires one that manipulates metal one that can mentally make herself levitate and you've replaced your grounded Supernatural Thriller with an X-Men cartoon for the same reason if the junky criminals in the crow are shown to have ult powers similar to the protagonist the impact of said Powers is dramatically lessened and the world they inhabit become

s something other than our own note that we've been getting into potential script issues with the last two points if the writing is bad a film cannot be good That's the basis of the entire project leaning further into a potential oversaturation of superatural plot points we have handy Exposition Netherworld dwelly when someone dies a crow car their soul to the Land of the Dead but sometimes something so bad happens and the Soul cannot rest until you put the wrong things right the idea of a kind

of afterlife guide character was introduced during the production of the first CR film and subsequently scrapped with good reason because it would introduce an additional unnecessary Supernatural element thus diluting ones already present just like we mentioned earlier and because it was cheesy according to the director you'll also notice that the guide's line here is lifted entirely from Sarah's introductory voiceover from the 94 adaptation when someone dies a crow carries their soul to the Lan

d of the Dead but sometimes something so bad happens that that a terrible sadness is carried with it and the Soul can't rest then sometimes just sometimes the grow can bring that soul back to put the wrong things right but we're totally not remaking the film guys we're Faithfully adapting the comic remember H besides the lazy recycling of ideas this line takes on a different context when spoken by someone with absolute knowledge on the subject rather than a child trying to rationalize their expe

rience after the fact in a limited voice over wraparound this issue points to a larger issue with the dialogue at best it's lame and uninspired and at worst it sounds like something out of a perfume ad how many people have you loved what would you do for love let's compare and contrast the comic Eric speaks eloquently and poetically when Sorrows come they come not single spies but in battalions I have allies in heaven Jack I have comrades in Hell say hello for me Brandon Lee's version quotes po

suddenly I heard a tapping as of someone gently rapping rapping at my chamber door and this guy say [ __ ] like this I'm going to kill them every single one of them and not just the men but the women and the children too okay now we're getting into the big stuff there's three points specifically that we want to bring up one the antagonists two the music choice and three one line of dialogue that hints at a change so big that it will ruin the entire story so one the antagonists we mentioned earli

er that we'd get back to them and why it mattered Beyond Simple Aesthetics in both the comic and the first film the bad guys were not career criminals but rather grimy Street creatures who exist in the shadows that's not to say that they don't need and use money as Pat of their crimes particularly for the film version's top dollar but it was always a means to an end of vehicle from which they could burn everything around them they do it for fun are we having fun or what again this is intrinsic t

o the world James Oar created the point and the horror is that Eric's life is ruined by a type of Senseless animal violence for no other reason than because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time it could happen to any of us at any time a version of it did happen to our bar but more on that later we are not likely to encounter anyone like the villains in this new film in the evil premeditation necessary for this kind of criminality they are both removed from us and conversely Bland this guy

looks like he voted for brexit it's a severe departure from the comic and to a lesser extent from the 94 film in which each of the villains is distinct and yes most certainly exaggerated but also recognizable as the kind of low life you might actually meet on to number two the music as alluded to already the comic has its roots in Goth Post Punk and hardcore going so far as to have the lyrics of songs by The Cure and jooy Division Road printed on the pages obar also cites the band big black as

an [Music] influence the music is soaked into the DNA of this work and into that of the first film it's almost a narrative device in and of itself and it's Inseparable from the other elements so with that in mind what the [ __ ] is [Music] this soullessly autotuned painfully generic completely removed from the source material and wly overr don't get us wrong Aussie is a legend but this was not his finest moment out to that that in 94 the industrial nature of much of the soundtrack was cutting ed

ge for a mainstream film Industrial music was not new but it wasn't commonly used on film soundtracks which at the time was still trying to come to terms with the fact that bombastic AES his Rock was no longer okay to use so once again this film has taken something imaginative and replaced it with whatever everyone else is doing three the unease pended by that one line for us if it's what it appears to be then it would be the final nail in the coffin but you're running out of time to save her we

don't know know the context of this line for sure but the implication is that Eric is somehow working to rescue Shelly this assumption is corroborated by the line it's not anger it's love it's not anger it's love suggesting that Eric is not seeking Revenge but is on a mission of hope that being to rescue his fiance in some way this is a complete and utter bastardization of the story let's look into why at some point in the 70s James oar's fiance Beverly was struck and killed by a drunk driver i

n order to deal with his grief he started working on the crow as a kind of catharsis as the forward of the comic says this book was a place for James to put all of the rage and anger he felt at having someone who he loved torn away for this reason the comic is bitter and raw nihilistic even when not dispatching his Killers Eric hams himself in his despair cutting his own flesh and at one point unloading to quote funboy a whole CC of medical grade morph into his heart he is grief and rage incarna

te miserable and Unstoppable in the comic the only solution is to let grief run its cost despite the destruction it might bring it ends with Eric quietly returning to his grave Having learned only to exist within his condition essentially unchanged by the events that take place after his resurrection bloody Revenge having not fixed anything that really matters what he is not is a God with the power to rescue you were given the power of a God on the contrary he is quote pilot error fetal distress

the random chromosone he is complete and total Madness obar started writing the comic in ' 81 only a few years after the death of his fiance more than a decade later in the 1994 film adaptation on which oah collaborated Eric actively overcomes his grief it is this that secures his victory over the main antagonist of the film he literally States I don't want it anymore I don't want it anymore before unburdening himself of it thus completing his revenge and moving on from it this version of Eric

returns to his grave having set things right and having reached some form of Enlightenment and growth both of these stories deal with grief in both Shelly being irretrievably and immutably gone is essential to the message but having been written at different times in oba's life they have different things to say on the subject neither interpretation is less valid they just present different perspectives and this is exactly why any new interpretation in which shell is still able to be saved on any

level whatsoever is such a terrible idea it turns a story about living with or overcoming grief into a story about not living with it not dealing with it trying to reverse it which is not related able to anybody's lived experience and cannot provide cathis for anybody if this is the story the new film is pursuing it fundamentally has nothing to say before we wrap up it's worth mentioning that Oar has voiced his thoughts on the film he's been quoted as saying that he thinks the new film is unnec

essary however he is also a consultant on the film so perhaps his opinion has changed since that quote regardless this is all opinion and spec ulation based on a three-minute trailer so perhaps the assumptions made here in are wrong and the film will be great but to put it bluntly we won't be seeing it at the cinema and thank you for watching as we mentioned at the beginning this is our first ever YouTube video this channel was originally created to promote our own short films but we had so many

thoughts about this trailer that we thought we'd give some essaying a try if you enjoyed feel free to subscribe you can expect some more film criticism along with with short films trailers and music videos we create we hope to see you next time