I have a lot of The Crow trivia that is very powerful and must be deployed with all haste. Did you know that, for example, my wife Brenna was able to secure the Brandon Bruce Lee Scholarship at Whitman College? Huh? Didja? Now… did you know that The Crow: City Of Angels is the only movie I have ever walked out of? I was watching it with Mork. It was VERY BAD. I guess this is all technically Me trivia. But, as someone who was in my last year of High School when the first Crow came out - and thus almost cosmically situated to observe the phenomena - I don't have a problem with the new trailer.
If you had told me before I was typing all this that a golf metaphor would come in clutch, I would have been very surprised. But it is just a useful concept in general, rendered here in the words of my wizened cohort: you have to go past to go in. It's a putting thing. You have to hit the target with a little momentum to carry it. Understand that utilizing the metaphor does require some actual knowledge. It doesn't mean hit it as hard as you can; that would be stupid. Going WAY past it is worse than not going hard enough.
There is a particular aesthetic, one we refer to as "sweet," that attempts to provide an experience so extreme that it's almost self-conscious in its attempt - that is to say, it goes past to go in. Modern terms for this might float around "tryhard" or "cringe," or the way a lobby can be "sweaty." They're kinda "doing too much." They aren't complimentary terms. It's sort of a dangerous maneuver and very often ends poorly. Just while I have you here, let me paste an image I had in my clipboard.
Now, that's a little "sweet," right? So, here is the other part about sweet things. There is an entreaty there. That little bit you go past is like an extended hand, in a way. What it is saying is that, in the manner of Pinhead - also kinda sweet - they have such sights to show you. But you do have to cross a threshold. It's a compact. It says, "We're gonna go nuts. Wanna come with?" I can understand why people like The Crow. As previously established, I was a going concern when the original hit, and was familiar with where Indie comics were at.
The basic structure of The Crow defies Hollywood because it's a self-contained arc that doesn't result in a lever executives can simply pull down over and over again, stamping out films with the same ensemble. It's unbelievably well configured for an anthology, not that you'd be able to tell from The Crow: City of Angels (From David S. Goyer? Somehow?), The Crow: Salvation (Kirsten Dunst? Direct To Video?!), The Crow: Wicked Prayer (Edward Furlong & Danny Trejo?!), or The Crow fiVe: The Crowening. They weren't really building stable teams that could take the success of the first one - which, for various reasons, might not be reproducible at all. They didn't really try, though. When I see the new trailer, what I see is a movie made by a bunch of people on both sides of the camera who know what kind of movie they're making - it has to go past to go in. It's pretty sweet, honestly.
(CW)TB out.
