Few box-office sensations are as intrinsically of their own moment as The Crow , the baroque lullaby of beyond-the-grave retribution that swooped into theaters on a tailwind of tragedy in the summer of 1994. Brandon Lee, the film’s 28-year-old star (and the son of martial-arts legend Bruce Lee), was killed on set in a freak accident involving a prop gun. The dark truth is that his death lent the whole movie a chill of morbid, art-imitating-life gravitas.
You weren’t just watching an actor play a superhero rising from the dirt to avenge his true love. You were seeing, in a sense, the ghost of that actor, conjured on screen via a posthumous performance that blurred the line between real and fictional loss. Thankfully for all involved, no grave misfortune hangs over the reboot of The Crow, whose behind-the-scenes troubles were more mundane – a string of exiting stars and creative teams that kept it in development hell for years.
Of course, it was more than just the ghoulish fascination of Lee’s presence that made the original a hit. That film was a junky runway show of a comic-book fantasia that got by on style and attitude and fashion sense, on the way it synthesized its goth influences into a highly marketable brand. This new Crow never tries to party like it’s 1994, which is both a relief and one reason it's destined to become a footnote.
Watching it, you’re more aware than ever of how inextricable The Crow is from his Gen X genesis. Directed by Rupert Sanders, wh.