Book vs Movie: The Crow – What’s the Difference?

Is The Crow one of your favourite cult movies? Well, it should be. CineFix discuss the movie and the comic it was based upon in this month’s What’s the Difference?

The Crow remains one of my favourite films, which probably says a lot about my teenage years. The comic it is based upon, however, was not a book I enjoyed reading.

As the video mentions, author James O’Barr wrote the comic as a way of coping with the death of his girlfriend at the hands of a drunk driver. The book is bleak, and when not being directly about revenge, it is darkly introspective and depressing. The main character is clearly a form of Super Id – drawn as lean, muscular, 6’5″, invulnerable, unstoppable – and acts as a form of cathartic revenge against a cruel world. That might be fine for a Steven Seagal movie, but there’s a reason why you had to look up who Seagal was just now.

The movie is an example of a great adaptation, especially considering the film couldn’t be completed as intended after the unfortunate death of Brandon Lee. They managed to capture so much of the tone and character of the book whilst not making a movie that would have you slitting your wrists halfway through. The video refers to this as Hollywoodising, but I think they are being too harsh. The story was a revenge tale, but the movie manages to create an actual character arc and have more compelling bad guys. Case in point: Michael Wincott’s Top Dollar. The movie also trims off the bleak stuff in favour of a more cohesive narrative. This is why I had a poster from the movie on my wall and gave the comic away.