C'mon Hollywood #188

I have to admit that I was actually surprised when I read the news Hollywood is interested in remaking THE CROW. I hate the idea of remakes in the first place, but if you’re going to remake a film, it needs to either be a very old film or a film that was done so horribly wrong the first time, it didn’t get a fair shot. In the case of THE CROW, neither of those are true. But my first question about this is; when does the remaking stop? How old does a film have to be before Hollywood thinks it should be remade?

I’m not upset because I think THE CROW is some sort of sacred and cherished film that shouldn’t be touched. I’m upset because they’re remaking a film that came out less than 15 years ago. How sad is the creative flow in Hollywood that we’re now reaching back in the 90’s to find films to remake? Does this mean we need to remake PULP FICTION next? Regardless of how you fell about THE CROW, you have to feel disheartened that a movie as recent as 1994 is being remade.

I also don’t know why they would want to remain truer to the source material than what Proyas did. Okay…now THE CROW wasn’t a shot for shot retelling of the original comic by any means, but was it really so far off that someone needs to make another film? Definitely not. The general theme of the comics was there and there were enough similar scenes to make it predominantly true to the comic book. You can nitpick if you want, but after reading the comic, I didn’t think to myself “someone needs to make a word for word retelling of this”. Proyas did a fine job with his film and I can’t imagine O’Barr was so upset with it that he’s been pushing for a retelling.

Finally, there may be a reason Norrington hasn’t been able to excite anyone with his visions. Making a “documentary” style movie about the CROW is another bad idea. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but why would you want to? It’s about a guy that gets resurrected by an unknown force to exact vengeance on bad guys. How are you going to make that any more realistic than what Proyas did? I thought Proyas kept his pretty realistic given the subject matter. Norrington is aware this isn’t a true story…right?

Maybe I’m partial to the original CROW, but I really don’t want it to be remade. I put up with the sequels because I accept that any halfway decent film will get a sequel. But remaking a film that’s less than 15 years old is a really bad precedent. If Hollywood has to make a comic book film, the shelves at your local bookstore are lined with stories that can be made into great films. Let the CROW have its place in movie history and focus on creating new, original films.

C’mon Hollywood #188