The Crow’s Director on Bad Buzz, Curses, and a Gothic Love Story

Don’t check the calendar. It’s not April Fools’ Day. This week, a new film version of The Crow is actually coming to theaters. It’s a reimagining almost 20 years in the making, during which dozens of filmmakers and actors attempted to bring it back to the big screen. For whatever reasons though, including the myth that the series has been cursed since Brandon Lee died on the set of the first film, it just never happened. Until now.

Director Rupert Sanders (Foundation, Snow White and the Huntsman, Ghost in the Shell) cast Bill Skarsgård (It) as the title character alongside musician FKA twigs (Honey Boy) as his love interest, Shelly. Much like James O’Barr’s original comics, Sanders’ vision of The Crow follows a couple that’s killed, and the man brought back to life with the intent of seeking vengeance for the woman he loves. Unlike the 1994 cult classic though, Sanders dives deep into the relationship between Eric and Shelly, making a more grounded, human, romantic film… that eventually becomes a symphony of brutal violence.

And even though it took so long to get made, and even though you may have read negative things about it online, The Crow is about to surprise some people—which is where our conversation with Sanders begins. Check it out below.

Germain Lussier, io9: So, I saw the movie yesterday and I really liked it. Which honestly felt weird because I was not expecting to, just based on kind of everything I’d been hearing about it. So my first question is do you feel like you’re in an uphill battle, releasing the film based on this early random buzz?

Rupert Sanders: No, not really, because I think as people are exposed to it, they have a similar reaction to you. I think that any discourse is good in the marketplace because people want to know why people are saying this and that. And so they look in a bit deeper to things. But, you know, it’s always a challenge of making something that people care about. And I hope that I have attacked it with a similar sensibility to the original movie based on the same piece of source material. The source material and the original movie were very different and the source material and this movie are very different. As artists, we are interpreters and I interpreted this movie through my lens.

io9: That kind of leads to my next question, which is I was looking back on our website and the first article we had about the remake of The Crow was in 2008 and it probably predates that. So many other directors and stars have had their hands on it at certain points, did you feel that at all while you were making the movie? And when you came on, did you see any of the previous materials or did you start fresh?

Sanders: I didn’t really know much about the (other versions). I don’t really read the trades that much. I knew that there’d been versions that got close and I know Jason (Momoa) a bit and I know that he was attached, but I didn’t really ask him what went down. Films are very hard to make, as you know. There’s no simple red carpet leading to set. It’s a struggle. It’s a ferocious battle to get a movie made. I think we made this movie inexpensively with a very interesting cast. We made it R-rated. We made it, in a way, the same way as the original movie was made. We shot it in Europe. We finished the movie in London. We had a very UK-based, Czech-based crew. And we just did our thing. Do you know what I mean? We did my version of The Crow with a group of very collaborative and artistic people who invested in that vision and all saw it. And I hope that the young audience will be as obsessed with this movie as the people who are now our age are about the original movie.

io9: That was my initial thought coming out of it.  I think that it will have that kind of effect. But when you came on though, you weren’t beholden to anything that anybody did before? This is completely just yours and the writers?

Sanders: (Nods) I had a very clear vision speaking to the producers when they were interviewing for who was going to do it. I had a very clear vision almost broken down into scenes of what I wanted the movie to be and the vibe and what I wanted it to look like.

io9: All right. Excellent. What do you think it is about the story and the property that so many people really tried to make it and you finally got across the finish line. What about it resonates?

Sanders: To me I think what resonated, I can’t speak for the others, was it was a love story and it dealt with the universal themes of love and loss and grief. We’re all going to lose people we love and we’re all going to die. And there was just something about exploring that in a way that kind of embraced the melancholy of that. I was going through grief at the time and that was very present to me. And so I felt very, like, heightened to that, I guess. But yeah, I think that was kind of the big draw for me was just the thematics were very deep and resonant and I think because we made it as an independent movie, we were able to make something that was emotional and was weird and was a bit druggy and a bit violent. But at its essence, it’s a really beautiful love story for young people. James O’Barr describes his book as a Cure song. I feel the movie is a Cure song.

io9: Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised about how much it is a romance, how much it focuses on the relationship. Talk to me about like the balance of that. I mean, it feels like it’s almost half the movie. It really draws you in. Dd you play with that at all in the editing? Making a little shorter? Get to the action sooner?

Sanders: Oh, yeah, there were people who wanted it to be four minutes.

io9: (Laughs) Well, I’m glad it’s not that.

Sanders: No, me too. I fought hard to have it. It’s unconventional. But another big departure from the original source material is that Shelly is a real character. Shelly is a woman. There was no real female sensibility to the previous movie. And I really wanted her to be the driving engine of the movie that if you don’t understand their love, then how can you understand what someone will do for that love? So it’s very important that we fell in love with her as much as Eric did. And also, Eric’s not on a blind mission of revenge. That feels outdated to me. Like he’s killing people. He’s crying while he’s doing it because he doesn’t want to do it. But he knows it’s the only way he’s going to bring her back. And also he’s prepared to give up his eternal soul for her mortal life. And I think that’s deeply romantic.

io9: Yeah, absolutely. I think what really makes the movie is that relationship, but also, Bill and twigs who are both incredible in it and their chemistry is incredible. So I’m wondering for both of them, did you seek them out? Did they audition? And what were your conversations with each of them about kind of finding that balance of these are not good people, but they have an innocence that we completely embrace?

Sanders: Yeah, I mean, we’re all we’re all broken people, do you know what I mean? I think especially in this world of movies, the kind of superhero or anti-hero movies, there’s quite a lot of the times those kinds of characters are one dimensional and just the world doesn’t feel like it’s real. It feels like the graffiti is from the back of a Frosted Flakes package. It doesn’t feel like you’re in kind of the ’90s Brooklyn of Keith Haring and stuff. And I think that they both come from an independent world whether it be in film or music. And I think both of them were really conscious of trying to create this realism between the two of them. I remember the first day we shot at the lake and they were just hanging out together and kissing and Bill was rolling joints and it was just very beautiful. And I was just like, “Wow, these two have really got something that I think people are going to really relate to.” There’s a real natural emotion to them.

io9: But how did you like end up finding that?

Sanders: Bill, I’d actually, I’d cast before. I was working on the adaptation of The Things They Carried, the Tim O’Brien novel, and I cast Bill in that so I’ve had a couple of conversations with Bill. And I spoke to a few actors, but Bill and I just kept talking and discussing the role and then he started sending me pictures and then he sent me some video of him on stage, because I described the opera scene to him. There was no script at that stage and he shot some stuff. He was on Boy Kills World and he was really ripped and he’s such an amazing physical performer that it was literally like he did a little action set piece with some of the stunt guys he was working with. And it was really just like, “Wow, there was no question that it was Bill.”

And then I only met one actress and that was twigs and we had tea together and spent an hour together and I was like, “She’s just amazing and I want her to be Shelly.” And then the chemistry really was just the first day on set. We shot it. So we were lucky and, you know, maybe I’m just a really good matchmaker.

io9: Wow, okay. Yes I think so. One of the other stars in the movie are the crows. There are so many crows. I’m curious, were there any practical crows? Were they CG? I couldn’t really tell which is the point.

Sanders: We were prudent in how many we did practically. We start with a fairly big crew and as the days and nights go on and you’re in the dying hours it was me, a crow, and a man with a leather glove and a camera. So I shot a lot of the close-ups of the crows and then we did some CG. Obviously, when you’re flying through cities and stuff it’s much harder but like probably 60% of the crows are practical and that was a financial necessity, There’s very little green screen in the movie apart from what we shot the crows on and I think that was about it. We built one set so it’s very much an in-camera, down-and-dirty movie and we had to find a production hub that allowed that. That gave us the scope and that was Prague.

io9: Yeah, you mentioned talking about kind of the balance of the movie, how some people wanted there to be less romance and obviously it’s more there, and I felt the same about the violence at the end, the opera house specifically. That is such a drastic shift. Did you talk about a balance of “how hard do you want to go with it,” because it goes pretty dang hard, and balancing that with the rest of the movie to make sure it paid off thematically?

Sanders: I mean, to be honest, I wish I could tell you that it was a kind of a rule book that I’ve written myself but it’s pretty instinctual to be honest. It’s just like, “Yeah, that’s cool, let’s fuck him up that way” and then there like… I don’t know what you’d call it, a kind of graphic nature to the violence, but it’s always in character. Like I said, Bill is crying because he doesn’t want to kill anymore and also the opera to me, it was like the height of the human soul. The ability to sing and to dance on stage and what humans can achieve but then also humans are this. We’re like primal, guttural, violent beings who will unseam each other and bask in the blood of another and that’s really what the opera scene is. It’s both ends of the spectrum but both are given the same kind of grandeur. I’m very pleased with how the opera sequence turned out because you never know. I just imagined this great piece of opera that’s called Robert the Devil which is a similar story about a couple who are pulled to hell, so there’s a lot of layers of metaphor within the movie that I think on second and third viewing will permeate deeper as well.

io9: Interesting, I’ll do that. Now I read your director’s statement in the press notes which I found really interesting and you talk in there about how you see your film versus Alex Proyes’ film. Maybe this will be a gateway into that as well as the source material. I’m hoping you’ll elaborate a little bit on how you see that relationship. Do you see them as kind of symbiotic in a way and do you think about people who would have seen that movie and what they will think about your movie?

Sanders: I mean, I think it’s like theater. Every month there’s a new adaptation of Macbeth. Amazing people have done it throughout history and those performances have become celebrated and I think that’s kind of the same with what we do, you know? So I hope people will really love this movie who know nothing about The Crow and I hope that they will investigate James’ graphic novel and want to find out more. I also hope people who saw the original and loved it will see this and go, “Wow, it’s different to what I thought but I really like it.” That would be the dream.

io9: My last thing here is, ever since the death of Brandon Lee filming The Crow, this franchise has had this sort of urban myth that it’s cursed, right? And then this movie can never get made so it’s cursed. Now that your movie is done, it’s coming out, where do you stand on the urban myth of The Crow being a cursed franchise?

Sanders: Well, in order to make the film I had to stand out in Louisiana at a crossroads at midnight on the first of whatever month with a knife and blood on my hand waiting for the ferryman.

io9: (laughs)

Sanders:  But I think what happened to Brandon was a tragedy and film sets are dangerous and thankfully there’s a protocol. We had no live-firing guns at all on set. Everything was done afterward because there was no reason to. And so I think it’s happened, sadly, again on Rust and it’s tragic, but there are also thousands of movies made a year with explosions, car chases, machine guns, high falls, stair falls, where thankfully the protocols are there to keep everyone safe. To me safety is primary. I would never put anyone at risk. If we’re shooting a stunt late at night and the stunt performer’s not feeling 100%, I will do it the next day. It’s just not worth the risk. And there’s things that you can do to make everything safer and that was definitely one of those things that we decided early on that there would be no gun that could hold a bullet.

io9: All right. Mr. Sanders, thank you so much for your time today and congrats on the movie. I hope even if it doesn’t find the big box office that it finds the life it deserves.

Sanders: Yeah, I think it will.

io9: I think so too.

The Crow opens Friday.

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