The Crow (movie)
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Template:The Crow The Crow is an film adaptation of James O'Barr's comic book of the same name (see The Crow). It was directed by Alex Proyas and starred Brandon Lee, gaining instant notoriety even before its release when Lee was accidentally killed during filming.
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Plot
The story tells about a man named Eric who was murdered along with his fiancée, Shelly, who was also raped, by a gang of street thugs who came across the pair when they were stranded on a roadside by car trouble. One year later, he is resurrected by a crow and seeks out vengeance on his murderers, killing them one at a time. He is able to defeat his enemies because the crow that brought him back to life has given him the power of invulnerability - nothing can kill him, and all injuries he takes are healed almost instantly, no matter how serious they are.
Changes from the comic book
Eric is given the last name Draven and is portrayed by Lee as a guitarist, while Shelly is portrayed as an artist. The two are murdered during the violence and chaos of Devil's Night, the day before their wedding on Halloween, in their home by a gang of criminals working for a larger crime syndicate, who ordered Shelly's death in retaliation for fighting tenant eviction in a neighborhood it controlled.
Some characters were changed: Sarah, in the comic a street urchin Eric doesn't meet until after his rebirth, was recast as his and Shelley's surrogate daughter, played by Rochelle Davis; Top Dollar went from a low-level drug dealer to a powerful crime lord, played by Michael Wincott; T-Bird, from the head of the gang that murders Eric and Shelley to Top Dollar's chief lieutenant, played by David Patrick Kelly; and Officer Albrecht, from a beat cop unimportant to the story to Eric's main (non-supernatural) ally, played by Ernie Hudson.
Also, Eric and Shelley's murderers went from being just a gang of vicious thugs who committed the murders for fun to members of a Mafia-like crime syndicate that unofficially runs the city and orders them to kill the two lovers.
Soundtracks
The The Crow original soundtrack featured songs from the movie and was a chart-topping album. In included work by The Cure, Nine Inch Nails, Rage Against The Machine and Pantera. The Crow Score consisted of original music written for the motion picture.
Later films' soundtracks were less successful, despite also having famous artists (including PJ Harvey, the Deftones and Hole) on them.
Awards
The film won the 1995 BMI Film Music Award from the BMI Film & TV Awards. It also won the 1995 MTV Movie Award for Best Movie Song ("Big Empty" by Stone Temple Pilots). It was nominated for the 1995 MTV Movie Awards for Best Movie and Best Male Performance (Brandon Lee).
Brandon Lee's death
Brandon Lee, the son of Bruce Lee playing the main character in the movie adaptation, was accidentally shot during the filming. On March 31, 1993, the scene being shot was that of character Eric's death. The character of Funboy, played by Michael Massee, was to fire a revolver loaded with blanks at Lee. Unfortunately, a piece of a dummy bullet used earlier in close-up shots remained in the barrel, and the blank charge propelled the fragment into Lee's abdomen, breaking his spine. The footage with this scene was destroyed. There is a rumour that the sound of the shot which killed Lee was used somewhere in the movie, but as no proof has ever been established, it is widely dismissed as an urban legend.
Following his death the original studio, Paramount Pictures bowed out, and the movie was taken up by Miramax. Lee's mother, Linda Lee Caldwell, filed a civil suit, but the matter was settled out of court. However both his mother and his fiancee, Eliza Hutton, were supportive of completion of the film. The death scene was redone, other scenes were rewritten, and shot with a double followed by digitally adding Lee's face on to the double. The closing credits carried the dedication "For Brandon and Eliza."
See also
- 1990s in film
- 1993 in film
- Devil's Night
- List of fictional birds
- List of works published posthumously
External links
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- CrowFanClub.com, a fan site for The Crow and James O'Barr (http://www.crowfanclub.com/)
- All Movie Guide entry for The Crow (http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=A131155)
- Urban legend on the Brandon Lee death scene (http://www.snopes.com/movies/actors/brandlee.htm)
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- Template:Imdb titlede:The Crow