While the summer movie season has been generally strong for the last couple of months, this past weekend was a bumpy ride so far as new releases were concerned. MGM’s “Blink Twice,” the feature directorial debut of Zoe Kravitz, did well enough for itself with a $7.3 million domestic start. Unfortunately for Lionsgate, the long-gestating “The Crow” remake didn’t fare nearly as well, to put it mildly. The new adaptation of James O’Barr’s graphic novel of the same name had nothing shy of a disastrous start to its box office run.
Director Rupert Sanders’ “The Crow” took in an estimated $4.6 million on its opening weekend, placing at number eight on the domestic charts. That was just barely above “Despicable Me 4” ($4.4 million), a movie that has been in theaters for going on two months. It also failed to gross more than the “Coraline” 15th anniversary re-release ($5 million), which is on its second weekend. Not only was this well below already low projections, it was less than half of what the original “Crow” made on its opening weekend in 1994, as that version opened to $11.7 million in its day.
What went wrong here? How did the producers miss the mark so badly? We’re going to go over the biggest reasons that “The Crow” failed to fly high at the box office. Let’s get into it.
The reasons are:
- The Crow failed to impress critics and audiences
- The Crow’s competition didn’t help matters
- The stench of development hell surrounding The Crow lingers
- The Crow franchise has been dead for years
- The Crow was another reboot nobody asked for
Here’s actually why: They took the story about Eric and Shelly, two sweet and innocent beacons of light in their community of poverty and crime, whose lives were snuffed out for standing up for their community against a criminal slumlord, with Eric’s undying love for his bride-to-be transforming him into a vessel for righteous retribution and they fucking turned it into a story about a couple lustful hedonists on a two week bender after escaping rehab. Shelly and Eric are murdered by the most forgettable villain who for some reason can ASMR you into killing yourself not to unlike the first half of this boring snooze fest of a plot finally punctuated by a cool action sequence when Eric goes to the Opera, kills every security guard on duty. I’m pretty sure one of those guys was one day away from retirement and another wasn’t even supposed to be there that day. To bad Eric is gonna murder hobo your ass because some patron inside killed his new fuck-buddy. And to top it all off SPOILER ALERT the whole fucking thing never happened because surprise surprise the EMT only had one NARCAN injection left and he used it on Shelly. I guess it was all a drug-fueled near death experience. 1/10 don’t even pirate it.
still the 2nd best crow movie ever.
No love for Wicked Prayer? 🤣
Holy shit, is that the actual ending?! Jfc, it might be a worse tragedy than Brandon’s passing.
There’s some narrative wiggle room if you want to be generous with the interpretation of the ending, but essentially yeah that’s the ending. Total dumpster fire.
So the whole movie plot is just a fever dream? I’m pretty sure plot twists like that just completely invalidate the whole story you went through, because they didn’t fucking happen, which begs the question why you’d even want to watch / read / play it in the first place?
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I thank you for saving me the trouble of looking up the wikipedia article for the plot synopsis.
Thanks, that does sound pretty weak
It sounds insulting and stupid.
The only marketing for this movie that I’ve seen was the star saying he didn’t like the ending.
So, I mean… Lots of excitement there. Lol
No mention of how fucking good the original Crow soundtrack was.
And it still holds up as one of the best soundtracks ever.
I was working in a record store at the time, and I knew the soundtrack way before I saw the movie. I still break it out at least once every year or so and play it through.
- It was very bad
Sigh…
It wasn’t “very bad”.
It just wasn’t very good.There are different types of bad movies. There are those that find an unintended audience after the fact, reframing them as sources of amusement to be ridiculed, those that are simply too dull to be thought of ever again and then there are those that are made with such staggering incompetence that they barely even exist. The latter category is the one that I find hardest to endure, films such as The Snowman (a head-scratchingly awful thriller that was technically unfinished yet still released) veering from bad to refund-level unwatchable.
It was no real surprise that a tortured update of 1994’s cursed goth revenge thriller The Crow would be a misfire – it’s been in development since 2008 with multiple directors and actors attached ever since – but it’s genuinely startling just how utterly wretched the finished product is and how unfit it is for a wide release. Filmed two years ago and dumped on a low-expectation late summer weekend, The Crow 2.0 is a total, head-in-hands disaster, incoherently plotted and sloppily made, destined to join the annals of the very worst and most pointless remakes ever made.
I have no idea; I haven’t seen it. But the initial reports aren’t great.
it’s genuinely startling just how utterly wretched the finished product is and how unfit it is for a wide release […] incoherently plotted and sloppily made
I have seen it, and can tell you this review is sensationalized for views.
It’s not remotely that bad. In fact I’d say it’s the opposite of incoherently plotted. The plot is overly coherent. I think it would benefit from some more ambiguity and mystery.
And it’s not at all sloppily made. The cinematography, set design, and general production, are easily average. Even quite good at times.The story is it’s biggest weakness. It’s not an adaptation. It’s more like “Inspired By”. And none of the story changes improve anything. Some hurt things quite a bit.
I would have liked this movie more if they had dug Brandon Lee up out of his grave and rigged him up with animatronics and used AI to recreate his voice.
I say that to say do you have any idea how little I would like a movie if they dug Brandon Lee up out of the grave and rigged him up with animatronics and used AI to recreate his voice?
That’s how little I like even the very concept of a continuation or sequel or reboot of this franchise.
Jason Lee?
Fuuuuuuuuuuck! I meant Brandon Lee. Thank you
Lol now I want to see the crow remade with Jason Lee, thank you.
The Crow certainly isn’t for everyone.
Bro I think you have either exceptionally bad taste, or an almost inhuman tolerance for the putrescent. Probably both actually.
Dude I think you have exceptionally binary taste, or unrealistic expectations for most works of art. Almost certainly both actually.
I’d recommend you watch the The Room (2003), to re-calibrate your perception of how bad a movie can be.
I didn’t know it came out, and I’m generally in the loop on movies… does the general public know it exists?
I only heard of it because it sucked so bad everyone started taking about it being shit.
A horrible marketing strategy imo but whatever…
I loved the original. But there is no doubt that both the movie and the original graphic novel were thematically “of the 90s”.
Goth, dark lighting, tortured hero, etc…
Basically a Marilyn Manson video.
The remake bombed for the same reason a 1950s beach movie would bomb. It doesn’t fit in the current world of pop culture.
I think we may be nearing that culture peak again. This movie may have ironically released a bit too early.
I see jncos and goth kids with skateboards all over right now. They look identical to my peer group growing up squarely in the mid-90’s. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this era crow merch flooding hot topic next year.
Yeah, it’s wild to witness the embarrassments of my youth somehow coming back with a bang.
But it’s all subjective I suppose. I just hope we don’t do 80’s again
In time, maybe this movie will become some sort of cult classic.
I was too busy seeing alien: cromulant a second time.
This is like the only movie I’ve actually wanted to go see in a long while. Haven’t yet, but I will.
Skarsgard is dope, and the trailer made it look really bloody, in a good way. That shotgun blast right to the face…
Doesn’t mean it won’t be a dissapointment. It just looked promising to me.
I’m not sure how big a deal the third point is and the last two shouldn’t stop people from trying another adaptation (which I can’t imagine people are usually crying out for). It’s all about what it brings to the table that is new and Interesting.
So The Thing worked because it wss a much closer adaptation of Who Goes There? the The Thing From Another World. Partly this is down to the advances in special effects but also because I doubt Hollywood had a stomach for that kind of horror back then.
Edgar Wright has re-adaptations of Barbarella and The Running Man but you know he wouldn’t be doing this cynically - if he is investing his time in them then he must have a good angle on how to make his films distinct from their predecessors and he brings his own specific style to everything he does, so they will definitely feel different. Also he’s not put a foot wrong so far and he has to be considered a safe pair of hands that you can trust to do a good job. That should be enough to help him navigate the critical shoals that aren’t necessarily welcoming to sequels, requels, reboots and re-adaptations. Hopefully.
Yeah, the last three points don’t matter at all if it’s a good movie. Most people have no idea how long a movie has taken to get made unless it’s advertised, like how Metropolis is advertised as a movie 30 years in the making or something.
I missed this story so I just read the list and agree. There’s only two reasons that have any real bearing on the films success. The other three are just petty digs.
Well for one I had no idea it was out, at all, and I didn’t see it on the ShowTimes listing recently. Did it just hit? Oenjust leave theaters?
I didn’t even knew there was a remake in the making.
