The Crow (1994): Comic-to-Screen Analysis

[Silver Nemesis]

Special thanks to Azrael for restoring the pictures to this thread.

The period of comic history between 1986 and the late nineties is commonly referred to as the Dark Age of the medium. There are few titles more exemplary of this era than James O'Barr's 1989 graphic novel The Crow and the 1994 film adaptation directed by Alex Proyas.

Many of the scenes in the film are adapted directly from the comic. However the order in which these scenes occur in the book doesn't necessarily correspond with the film. For the purpose of this analysis I'm going by the order of events in the adaptation, not the comic.

The first thing to mention about the movie is the soundtrack. O'Barr's comic features numerous references to song titles and lyrics by bands that inspired him, including The Cure and Joy Division. The movie's soundtrack includes a cover of Joy Division's 'Dead Souls', while The Cure contributed the song 'Burn'.

The main protagonist in both the comic and the film is a young man named Eric, played in the movie by Brandon Lee. In the film his last name is revealed as Draven, whereas in the comic his surname is never disclosed. Draven returns from the grave to avenge his own death and that of his murdered fiancé. In the film Eric had been a rock musician in life, but in the comic his occupation is never revealed. The decision to make him a musician is a fitting one, seeing as O'Barr's original depiction of Eric was influenced by Peter Murphy, Iggy Pop and Robert Smith.

One year after his death, Draven rises from the dead and begins wandering the streets of Detroit. Both stories take place in October.

In both the comic and the film he is guided by a mysterious crow. In the comic Eric himself is sometimes referred to as 'The Crow'.

He returns to the abandoned apartment where he and Shelly had once lived.

There he relives the painful memory of their deaths.

Hanging in the apartment are white masks painted with clown makeup.

Eric paints his own face in the same style.

Both the comic and the film reveal past events in the form of fragmented nonlinear flashbacks. O'Barr frequently inserts single panels depicting past events into scenes that otherwise occur in the present. Proyas does something similar in the film, intercutting between scenes in the present and short clips of earlier incidents. The effect is similar in both versions of the story.

The murder of Eric and Shelly is depicted early in the film, whereas in the comic the full details of what happened are not disclosed until the second half of the book. In the film Eric and Shelly were attacked as part of a premeditated scheme to forcibly evict the tenants from their apartment building. Shelly had contested the eviction order, so the slumlord sent his henchmen round to make an example out of her. Eric walked in and found the criminals gang raping his fiancé. The villains then stabbed and shot Eric before throwing him out of the window. Shelly died in hospital several hours later.

In the comic the attack was much more random. Eric and Shelly had broken down by the side of the road and were attempting to repair their car. A gang of joyriding criminals sped past and caught a glimpse of Shelly. The thugs then turned their vehicle around and went back to molest the young couple. Eric tried to defend Shelly but was shot in the back of the head by a gang member named T-Bird. However the bullet didn't kill him, but instead left him in a state of death-like paralysis. Eric watched helplessly as the gang took it in turns beating and raping Shelly. Eventually her screams angered T-Bird to the point that he shot her in the head, killing her instantly. Another gang member named Funboy then continued to rape her corpse while Eric lay on the ground watching. Eric himself died in hospital some hours later.

The first killer Draven hunts down in both the comic and the film is Tin Tin. In both versions of the story they face one another in an alleyway at night.

Tin Tin's dreadlocked appearance in the film is closer to that of T-Bird in the comic.

In the film Tin Tin hurls throwing blades at Draven. Draven catches one of them and throws it back at Tin Tin. In the comic Tin Tin uses a revolver instead of blades. He fires at Eric, but the gunshots have no effect. Eric then returns fire with his own gun, wounding Tin Tin and knocking him to the ground. In both the comic and the film, Draven crouches over Tin Tin and jogs his memory about the night of Shelly's death.

The scene in the comic is punctuated with panels that alternate between the confrontation in the present and flashback scenes between Eric and Shelly. The scene in the film is similarly punctuated with flashbacks.

In the film Draven kills Tin Tin by impaling him with his own knives. In the comic he blows his brains out with a revolver.

The scene where Draven recovers Shelly's stolen ring from Gideon's pawn shop is taken straight from the comic. In the comic Eric tortures a gang member named Tom Tom into revealing the whereabouts of the stolen ring. Tom Tom does not appear in the movie and his role is instead filled by Skank, a minor character from the book.

In both the comic and the film, Gideon is alone in his shop at night counting his money when someone knocks at the door.

Gideon responds in the movie by shouting "Hey, p*** off! We're closed!" His response in the comic is equally inelegant.

Undeterred, the knocking continues. When Gideon yells at him to go away, Draven smashes through the glass door.

Much of the dialogue in this scene is taken practically verbatim from the comic.

•   DRAVEN: "I'm looking for something in an engagement ring."
•   GIDEON: "You're looking for a coroner, s*** for brains."

•   DRAVEN: "Mr. Gideon, you're not paying attention."

When Gideon resists his inquiries, Draven pins the shop owner's hand to the counter with a knife.

Gideon directs Draven to a box filled with rings. Draven sits cross-legged on the floor and inspects them one by one until he locates Shelly's.

In the comic Eric kills Gideon, but in the film he spares him. The line "Is that gasoline I smell?" is derived from a similar line spoken in the book.

Outside the pawn shop Draven is confronted by a police officer named Albrecht (his name is spelled 'Albrect' in the comic, but 'Albrecht' in the credits of the movie). In the comic this scene takes place inside Gideon's store, just before Eric blows it up. But in the movie the scene takes place outside after the shop has already been destroyed. In the film Albrecht says "Don't move!" and Draven replies "I thought the police always said 'Freeze!'" In the comic Albrect says "Freeze!"

Draven walks right up to the policeman's gun, bows and says "Shoot, if you will."

In the comic Albrect is an inexperienced young rookie, while in the movie he's a middle-aged cop played by Ernie Hudson. The Albrecht in the film more closely resembles another policeman from the comic named Sergeant Hook. Hudson's character is basically an amalgamation of these two characters.

Draven's line "He was already dead. He died a year ago the moment he touched her" echoes something similar he says to Funboy in the comic.

[Silver Nemesis]

It's soon after this scene that Draven bumps into a neglected young girl named Sarah. Sarah is based on a character from the comic named Sherri. In the movie Sarah had been friends with Eric and Shelly prior to their murder, while in the comic Eric only meets Sherri for the first time after he's risen from the grave. In both the comic and the film, the first time Sarah/Sherri sees the resurrected Draven she asks if he is a clown.

In the comic Sherri's mother is called Sandy, while in the movie Sarah's mother is called Darla. In both stories the mother is sleeping with Funboy, who is in turn supplying her with morphine to fuel her drug addiction. When Draven breaks into Funboy's apartment he catches the two of them in bed together.

In the movie Draven tells a joke to Funboy before killing him: "Jesus Christ walks into a hotel. He hands the innkeeper three nails, and he asks 'Can you put me up for the night?'" In the comic Eric tells Tom Tom the exact same joke before killing him.

Draven tells Sarah/Sherri's mother to go home to her daughter. One of his lines in this scene is taken straight from the comic.

•   DRAVEN: "Mother is the name for God on the lips and hearts of all children. Do you understand?"

In the film Draven kills Funboy by sticking him full of needles and giving him an overdose of morphine. In the comic he initially spares Funboy so he can use him to send messages to the other criminals. Towards the end of the book Eric finally eliminates Funboy by forcing him to commit suicide through a lethal overdose of morphine.

Draven learns that Albrecht/Hook was the cop who investigated his and Shelly's murder. In the movie Albrecht stayed by Shelly's hospital bedside until her death. In the comic it was Eric himself that Hook visited in hospital. Albrecht tells Draven he's sorry for what happened to him and Shelly. Hook told Eric something similar in the comic when he visited him in hospital.

The next criminal Draven kills in the film is T-Bird. In the comic T-Bird is the central antagonist and the final villain to be hunted down by Eric. In the movie the name T-Bird is given to a lower ranking villain played by David Patrick Kelly. Kelly's character in the film resembles the comic character Sanchez, who was also slain by Eric.

The car chase in the movie evokes the finale of the comic, where Eric pursues T-Bird to the outskirts of the city and kills him on the same stretch of road where Shelly was murdered. In the movie Draven is in the same car as T-Bird as they are pursued by the police, while in the comic Eric is driving the vehicle that chases T-Bird's. In both stories the fleeing vehicle eventually stops in a deserted part of the city where Draven kills the driver.

In the film T-Bird recites a quotation from John Milton's Paradise Lost. He first reads from Shelly's copy during the rape scene, and later recites the same quote immediately before his own death. In the comic Eric references Milton to Funboy prior to the latter's death.

In the film Draven then returns to his apartment and burns mementoes of his life with Shelly.

Draven owns a white cat named Gabriel. In the comic he acquires this cat as an anniversary gift for Shelly one year after her death. In the film Eric and Shelly owned Gabriel before they were murdered.

Only one of the original gang members remains in the movie, and that is Skank. Skank seeks sanctuary under the protection of Top Dollar, the head honcho who originally ordered the hit on Eric and Shelly. In the comic Top Dollar is a minor criminal who gets killed fairly early on in the story. In the film he is the main antagonist (played by Michael Wincott) and is roughly analogous to T-Bird in the book.

The action sequence where Draven crashes Top Dollar's meeting combines elements from several scenes in the comic. Firstly, it evokes a scene early in the book where Top Dollar is sat around a table with his underlings.

Their meeting is interrupted by the arrival of an unexpected visitor.

The shootout at the gang meeting also recalls another scene from the comic, where Eric faces off against Funboy and his friends at the Gin Mill.

The line "You're all going to die" is taken from this scene in the comic.

In the movie Draven takes a katana from Top Dollar's sword collection and wields it against his opponents. He also uses a samurai sword in the comic, though at a different point in the story.

The moment where Draven jumps up onto the table and opens fire on the surrounding criminals evokes the shootout preceding Top Dollar's death scene in the comic.

In the film Skank is now the only remaining criminal from the gang that raped Shelly. In the comic Skank is only a minor character that appears briefly in one scene before being decapitated by Eric. In the film he has a bigger role. The moment where Draven confronts him in the aftermath of the shootout recalls Top Dollar's death in the book.

Draven kills Skank in the movie by throwing him out of a window. In the comic he kills Top Dollar with a revolver.

Top Dollar has a right-hand man in the film named Grange, played by Tony Todd. Grange is similar to the comic book character Shelby, who was T-Bird's right-hand man.

The scene where Draven finds Sarah sleeping in the graveyard and wakes her to say goodbye is also taken from the book. Only in the comic this scene occurs in Sherri's home.

Draven gives Sarah/Sherri Shelly's ring, which he places around her neck on a chain. In the comic he gives her the ring when they first meet outside Funboy's apartment.

The film's climactic end sequence is not based on any scene from the comic, but rather seems to have been influenced by the 1989 Batman film. In both movies the villain seriously injures the hero – Joker shoots down the Batwing, Top Dollar shoots Draven after taking away his invincibility – then kidnaps a female character close to the hero and drags her up a rickety wooden staircase inside a church. Both films pay homage to Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) during this sequence, and both showdowns climax with the hero and villain fighting on top of the church while the kidnapped female hangs on for her life; in both instances evoking the end of Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927). Both showdowns end with the villain falling to his death.

By contrast, the final showdown in the comic sees Eric facing off against T-Bird and his henchmen in a street. Eric massacres the henchmen and T-Bird flees the scene in his car. Eric gets in a vehicle and pursues T-Bird, eventually causing him to crash on the same spot where Eric and Shelly encountered their fateful breakdown. Eric then completes his quest for vengeance by killing T-Bird. As I mentioned earlier, this sequence in the comic more closely resembles the movie scene where Draven hijacks T-Bird's car and forces him to outrun the police.

One last thing to mention about the finale is a deleted scene in which Draven encounters the so-called 'Skull Cowboy' as he is about to enter the church. This character briefly appears in the comic as a spiritual guide and was meant to play a similar role in the film. Ultimately he was omitted from the final cut.

Despite the differences in the final act, both the comic and the movie end in the same way – with Eric returning to his grave to join his beloved. The film adds a nice touch of having Shelly's spirit come to guide him to the afterlife.

And that just about covers it. There are many other scenes in the comic which don't appear in the film, and there are many subplots in the movie which don't originate in the comic. But hopefully the similarities I've outlined here demonstrate sufficient overlap between the two for the movie to qualify as a successful adaptation of the book.

It's no secret that both the comic and the movie were tainted by real life tragedy. James O'Barr was originally inspired to write and illustrate the comic following the death of his fiancé at the hands of a drunk driver. His pain and anger are evident on every page. Sadly the film was also released in the shadow of grief, owing to the untimely and tragic death of lead actor Brandon Lee, who was killed during an accident on set. I find it difficult to separate these events from the finished works, and in both instances they add an extra layer of poignancy to the story.

Compared to the film, the book is structurally almost formless. It reads like a bereavement diary full of lyrical excursions into song and poetry, interspersed with nonlinear detours into retrospection and grief. It lacks the narrative drive of the film, instead prioritising the exploration of theme and character over coherency of plot. In that sense, the experience of reading it is rather like being inside the mind of someone who has recently lost everything they love; with fragmented thoughts flitting back and forth between the reassurance of the past and the agony of the present.

By contrast, the film is far more conventionally structured and paced. It expands on the motives of the villains to create a wider problem in need of rectification. It also fleshes out many of the supporting characters, including Sarah/Sherri, her mother and Albrecht/Hook, so that they feel more like fully rounded people. But most importantly, the film also manages to address the same themes as the book: pain, death, grief, loneliness, revenge and love. As a matter of preference, I like the film better than the comic. But the book is still worth reading, if for no other reason than it offers a fascinating insight into a creative mind racked by grief.

Just don't read it when you're feeling depressed.