How Bill Skarsg?rd's "The Crow" Swerves From the 1994 Adaptation
This story contains spoilers for the 1994 and 2024 adaptations of The Crow.
Don't call it a reboot—call it a resurrection. In 1994, director Alex Proyas unleashed The Crow, the seminal gothic superhero classic that starred actor Brandon Lee in his final movie role. The film marks the first big-screen adaptation of James O'Barr's indie comics series, which tells of a supernatural black crow that chooses a recently deceased human avatar (in The Crow's case, a man named Eric Draven) and endows them with powers to mete out vengeful justice. Now, The Crow is back, this time from director Rupert Sanders and Bill Skarsg?rd, who you've seen as Pennywise in the blockbuster IT duology—and soon, the creepy Count Orlok in Robert Eggers' Nosferatu.
All versions of The Crow trace back to James O'Barr. Inspired by Native American legend and O'Barr's own grief over his fiance's death by a drunk driver, The Crow's recurring themes of death, rebirth, and retribution underscore the expansive franchise. But towering above all the direct-to-video sequels, TV spin-offs, and anthology novels is still the 1994 movie.
Proyas and Lee's collaboration memorably captured the grimy grunge vibes of the 1990s, whilst beautifully portraying the sorrow and longing in mourning a life taken too soon. In a twist of cruel irony and grim poetry, The Crow star Brandon Lee (whose own father Bruce Lee died at the tender age of thirty-two) was killed in a freak accident during filming. On the verge of breakthrough Hollywood stardom, Lee's tragic death at twenty-eight casts a macabre shadow over his final and most celebrated movie, one that eerily sees him play a restless soul with unfinished business.
In the years since The Crow in 1994, there have seen many attempts at a modern reboot, with big-screen heartthrobs such as Bradley Cooper, Channing Tatum, James McAvoy, Luke Evans, Jason Momoa, and more attached to play Eric Draven at different times. At last, Sanders and Skarsg?rd have succeeded where others have failed, with Eric Draven and The Crow reborn for a new era.
But just how different is The Crow in 2024 from The Crow in 1994? In one word: very. Here are just five big ways that both versions of The Crow stand apart.
The Ballad of Eric Draven and Shelly
Easily the biggest differences between the 1994 and 2024 versions of The Crow are in their interpretations of Eric Draven and love interest Shelly. In the original 1994 movie with Brandon Lee, Eric Draven is an up-and-coming rockstar living a blissful life with fiance Shelly (played by Sofia Shinas). They are set to get married on Halloween when their lives take a dramatic and violent turn for the worse. The film begins in the immediate aftermath of their murders, with the rest of the story following Eric as he rises from his grave and is reborn into The Crow. Meanwhile, Shelly primarily appears in his memories as brief flashes. At the end of the movie, Shelly appears to Eric in spectral form, to comfort him and bring his soul back to rest.
In 2024, Eric Draven (Skarsg?rd) is a troubled young man—see his many Jared Leto Joker-like tattoos—who is institutionalized at a mental hospital when he meets a fellow patient, the captivating Shelly (FKA Twigs). Over time, the two recognize each other as soulmates and even escape the institution together. Much of The Crow's first half is a sort of meet-cute between them, with Eric's transformation into The Crow taking place much later than in the original.
The characters' love for music are dialed up to different decibels in both movies, too. In The Crow (1994), Eric is a guitar virtuoso whose rockstar career was on a meteoric rise before his tragic downfall. Plenty of the movie's action scenes also take place at a rock nightclub owned by the villain Top Dollar; the bands Medicine and My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult (who contributed music to the movie's memorable soundtrack) make cameo appearances as live acts.
Meanwhile, in The Crow (2024), Eric Draven has a penchant for poetry and songwriting while Shelly is a musical prodigy. Eric and Shelly briefly work together on music, and are in the early stages of A Star is Born-esque partnership when things get very, very dark.
One Fateful Night…
The key inciting incident for both adaptations of The Crow is the murder of Eric Draven and Shelly. In the original film, the bad guys break into Eric and Shelly's apartment on Devil's Night—the evening before Halloween, as well as the night before their wedding day—on the orders of the villain Top Dollar (more on them all later). Shelly is raped and murdered, while Eric Draven is shot in the chest and falls to his death out of his apartment window.
In the reboot, there is no sexual assault of Shelly, and their murders have a more plot-oriented motivation. The main antagonist (again, more on him later!) dispatches his goons to kill Eric and Shelly over incriminating evidence that would expose him and his impossible abilities. Eric and Shelly are suffocated, and their deaths kick off the movie's primary narrative: Eric's dark and unholy transformation into the entity called The Crow.
Spirit Guides and Limbo
A key character from O'Barr's comics who was absent in the 1994 movie is the Skull Cowboy. A spiritual entity with an aesthetic best described as "memento mori meets Clint Eastwood," the Skull Cowboy is the one who guides all souls chosen by The Crow. Actor Michael Berryman was cast in the role of the Skull Cowboy, but his scenes were cut after Lee's death prevented them from completing their unfinished dialogue scenes.
In The Crow (2024), a new spiritual guide is introduced. His name is Kronos, played by Sami Bouajilla. Looking more like a fellow lost traveler in limbo—which has been designed as an abandoned waystation overrun by crows and foliage—Kronos mentors and challenges Eric Draven during his stint as The Crow. At one point in the movie, Eric learns more about Shelly that he didn't know, sewing seeds of doubt that compromise his powers. It's Kronos who reminds Eric the abilities of The Crow only work when Eric keeps his full-throated commitment to Shelly.
The Villains (and What They Want)
Every hero needs a bad guy. In both versions of The Crow, Eric Draven pursues vengeance against the criminal underworld that robbed him of his happiness. But what underworld crime looks like in these movies are kind of, sort of different.
In the 1994 movie, Michael Wincott plays the crime boss Top Dollar (originating from the comics) whose enterprises include real-estate in addition to illegal drugs, weapons trafficking, and prostitution—you know, bad guy stuff. The movie slowly reveals that Top Dollar had interests in the apartment building where Eric and Shelly resided, and was using force to evict its tenants. Eric and Shelly's vocal protests against Top Dollar landed them on his hit list, which led to their horrific murders.
In 2024, the villain of The Crow is a new character named Vincent Roeg, played by Danny Huston. Roeg is a wealthy businessman and philanthropist with a taste for fine art and classical music. He is secretly powered by demonic forces, blessing him with the power of suggestion. Roeg is also very old, having bargained for apparent immortality by targeting innocent young women and killing them to "feed" his demonic benefactors.
Unlike Top Dollar, who wanted financial gain and sought to kill the Dravens to get it, Roeg simply seeks to keep his unholy lifestyle intact. Shelly possesses a cell phone video that reveals Roeg's power of suggestion—or at the very least, his responsibility for someone's murder—which threatens Roeg. Hence, Roeg wanted Shelly dead. What Roeg doesn't expect is for The Crow to select Eric.
Friends on Earth
All heroes rely on allies, and both versions of The Crow have living souls who aid The Crow's mission. However, the 2024 reboot significantly de-emphasizes this part versus the 1994 original, with its version of Eric Draven left mostly relying on himself and his Crow powers. The closest "ally" Eric has in the movie is Chance (Jordan Bolger), a tattoo artist who isn't really introduced until the second half of the movie and is brutally murdered anyway.
In the 1994 film, The Crow is populated by more characters who add different points-of-view into the rise of a new neighborhood vigilante. One of them is a wayward teenage girl named Sarah, who met Eric and Shelly prior to their deaths. The two gave Sarah a warm home, which she lacked at her real house shared with her aloof, drug-addicted mother. Sarah is later targeted by Top Dollar, who kidnaps her to lure Eric/The Crow to them in the movie's climax.
Ghostbusters star Ernie Hudson also co-stars as a city cop, Sergeant Daryl Albrecht. Throughout the movie, we find out Albrecht was demoted from detective back to beat cop duties after messing up on the job. He befriends Sarah after meeting her on the night of Eric and Shelly's murders. When Eric returns as The Crow, Albrecht explains to him what exactly happened the night he died, and the two work together to bring down Top Dollar while protecting Sarah.
Brandon Lee's Justice vs. Bill Skarsg?rd Rescue
Both versions of The Crow are mired in pitch-black definitions of justice and revenge, and how the two concepts becoming indistinguishable when things are personal. This is also where the two films differ greatly, with one movie emphasizing poetic justice while the other suddenly morphs into a plot-centric rescue mission.
In the 1994 film, The Crow chooses Eric Draven when the severity of his and Shelly's murders necessitate justice for that heinous wrong. Nothing Eric does in the movie will bring Shelly back, or rewind time, or whatever other impossible thing conventional superhero movies do nowadays. With the aforementioned Skull Cowboy's scenes removed from the final cut, The Crow generally feels less supernatural, with only Eric's resurrection by a mysterious crow as its only real footprints of mysticism. No one tells Eric the reason why he's brought back either. We can only piece things together from the prologue narration (spoken by Sarah) and the movie's ending, when Shelly's ghost helps lead Eric peacefully back to his grave.
This stands in contrast to the 2024 revival, where Eric's mission has more than revenge at stake and is generally more marinated in the paranormal. In the film, Eric frequently visits limbo, envisioned as an ethereal "waystation" domain ruled by crows. When Eric and Shelly are murdered, Shelly's soul is dragged into a black abyss—a safe assumption being that her soul is damned to Hell. We quickly learn Eric's endowment as The Crow means he not only gets a chance to exact revenge and save Shelly, but help the supernatural world by bringing the rogue demon within Roeg back to them.
Eric's mission gets complicated when Eric finds out that Shelly was ordered by Roeg to kill someone in the video. Suddenly the terms change, and Eric bargains to kill Roeg in exchange for resurrecting Shelly (and only Shelly) in return. In the end, Eric brings Roeg back to the demon world and gives Shelly a second shot at life. Tragically, he isn't there to join her. But true love always asks for the greatest of sacrifices. As someone once said, it can't rain all the time.
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