Genre: Action/Drama/Comic Book Adaptation
Premise: A young boy and his mother are murdered by a dark priest, who is part of The Fallen One. The Crow returns the kid's spirit to Earth. The boy forgets these events, becomes a bounty and sets out to avenge his mother's death.
About: Rob Zombie basically wrote this thing as a writing sample for House of 1000 Corpses, and then after 18 months on the project bailed because he was unhappy with the little amount of progress made on the film. This would be the third part of The Crow trilogy, but doesn't really carry along The Crow story line.
Writer: Rob Zombie (who in 1997 didn't have any film credits, but went on to do House of 1000 Corpses, The Devil's Rejects, and a remake of Halloween)
Now I love comics, but I don't know all that much about The Crow. other than it's about a person who is dead coming back to the living, which I guess would kind of make them the same thing as a ghost. Of course we all know that odd, morbid detail that Brandon Lee was killed on the set of the original film. So I was expecting some sort of an origin story. I mean, it's a comic book story and it has a date in it. That's normally a good sign of something pretty faithful to a comic book storyline.
Instead, what we're presented with in The Crow is a secondary story line about this kid who becomes a bounty hunter and little to no reference about The Crow. Turns out the people who were going to produce this script also felt the same, and wanted to take the story out of a crow context. So that's pretty disappointing. It's like watching Cyclops: The Movie and finding out it revolved around Gambit. (Actually that'd probably be more awesome because I love both of those characters).
Once you get back this stumbling block, the script is actually pretty comparable to the type of things I've previously read by Rob Zombie: strange, dark, shocking visuals strung together in a pretty conventional plot arch that occasionally throws a surprise twist or two with dialogue that's very plain except for its dark and sarcastic tone. The problem with this whole script is that it isn't terrible, but due to it not being about The Crow, it really isn't that interesting or unique a take. I mean a bounty hunter back from the dead and characters who don't really engage one another so much as they say "cool things". It's not a film so much as a comic written as a screenplay.
So really. (And this statement becomes increasingly more true as the industry turns to
adaptations of successful material.) Why do I want to watch a surreal action film about second string comic book figures from an obscure graphic novel? I don't know. There really isn't anything memorable to the script, and it was additionally frustrating because I kept waiting for The Crow to become a main figure. Instead, stifled lines and a maudlin story plot do not make a film. Or atl east one I want to go see.
Scooby Doo (Complete Crap)
Atilla (Poor, Few Redeeming Qualities)
[X] - Wedding Crashers (Mediocre)
Hot Rod (Good)
Definitely Maybe (Pretty Darn Good)
What I Learned: The worst part of this script, and it's not a bad script, just not a great one by any stretch of the imagination, is the film makes certain promises in the title and in the genre. It ends up coming through on neither of them. The point being that an audience gains certain expectations of
Isla Prospect: There really aren't any female roles in this thing. At all. So I don't know who you'd cast Isla as, if anyone.
Script Link: This is hard to track down. Email if interested.
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