To COA, or not to COA

The reason COA initially failed to capture the imagination and emotion captured by the first film is two-fold. The first, and main reason, is that it had to compete against real life tragedy. The death of Brandon Lee imposed a major burden on COA to capture that same emotion. The first movie, though strong emotionally, was aided immeasurably by Brandon’s death. Death has a peculiar way of enhancing the perception of how people and events are seen. Many fans expected that COA would duplicate the emotions evoked by the first movie. This was an unrealistic expectation. There is nothing more powerful than real life feelings. As influential as movies can be in our lives, real life tragedy can not be duplicated. This brings us to the second reason COA initially failed to capture the emotions of the first. This one can be attributed to the creative forces that worked together to bring COA to life. Tim Pope started out taking us down a different road. However, the final story too closely resembled the first movie. This caused many people to compare the two movies rather than viewing COA as a separate story. They missed an opportunity to separate COA from the original Crow movie by not exploring more, in depth, the Ashe/Sarah love story. We are only given a hint of the turmoil Ashe is experiencing. This is a major premise in COA. We should have been given more screen images and dialogue showing Ashe fighting the love for Sarah. To coincide with this, the flashback sequences were not used effectively to establish Ashe’s relationship with Danny. We are mostly given flashbacks of the night they were murdered. We were given nothing to show us key moments in their relationship. Alex Proyas established the relationship of Eric and Shelly by letting us see the night Eric proposed to Shelly, Sarah and Shelly looking through wedding books and a light moment between Eric and Shelly when she burned dinner. These flashbacks, though short, helped to establish the love bond between Eric and Shelly. We never see this with COA. Since the majority of the audience for the Crow movies tend to be in their teens and early twenties, most do not have children of their own and could not identify with the pain Ashe felt. The filmmakers relied heavily on the viewers already having a sense of the pain one feels when they have lost a child. Further development of the Ashe/Sarah and Ashe/Danny relationships, would not only have given us a more complete movie, it would have helped COA prevail on its own merit, not as a follow-up to the Brandon tragedy. COA has, in time, gained more acceptance from Crow fans that were, initially, turned off by it. More effort in keeping it distanced from the first movie may have helped in the beginning, but still would not have prevented the comparison. What we have, though flawed, is a movie which has with time, garnered the insight and understanding that initially was not there.

Take care

LLcruize