I thought this was better than the first.

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I'm not saying it isn't justifiable and stuff, only it seemed less calculated than Eric Draven. In the first movie he got in some one liners and he seemed to retain who he was, whereas Ashe totally lost himself in his pursuit of revenge.

Kung fu movies are like porn. There's 1 on 1, then 2 on 1, then a group scene...

I'm not even going to count Salvation or Wicked Prayer because frankly I don't even think they're worthy of any sort of serious discussion. I also never saw more than a few episodes of the series so it'd be wrong to make generalizations based on my limited exposure.

The Crow was one of my favorite movies when I was a teenager and for nostalgic reasons probably always will be. I absolutely detested City of Angels when I first saw it but now having read the original script and seen the fan edit Second Coming I'm much less aggressive in my judgment.

All these years later, looking back on both these films with so much more objectivity I have to admit to myself that The Crow is an incredible concept that never really reached its full potential on film.

The premise is a flawless one. It's easy to put yourself into these character's shoes and the whole thing raises so many interesting spiritual and philosophical questions & moral dilemmas. And yet they barely ever touch on any of that. In their best moments the first two Crow movies hint at such issues. In their worst they relegate themselves to being pretty standard and formulaic revenge flicks.

I still think the first film holds up in a lot of ways. And I still think it packs a bigger emotional punch than the second. But its running time is all too brief. And most of it is spent on the action instead of any kind of character development. I know a big reason for this is that they were never able to complete a lot of the flashback scenes but we're not talking about the film that could have been. We're talking about the one that is. Brandon Lee absolutely did the very most any actor could have with that role. But it's still a deeply flawed film without a lot of meat on its bones. I still like the movie, don't get me wrong. I just wish they'd really sunk their teeth into the mythology they created instead of simply using it as a plot device.

Now the second film is trickier to form a firm opinion on. A lot of the original film was reshaped after Lee's death and to be honest, the movie was better for some of these changes. Cutting out the more supernatural elements and building a stronger bond between Eric & Sarah was a good decision. But then you have City of Angels. Like The Crow, the theatrical cut was not so close to the original script. A new film was created in the editing room. Unlike the original, every single one of these changes was a huge mistake.

All Crow fans can probably agree on that last statement. Where I differ from the majority is in my feeling that even with all the deleted material back in place, its still a triumph of style over substance and is guilty of stating its themes without ever really exploring them.

Reading interviews with Tim Pope from before the film was released, it sounds like he had a lot of the same complaints with the first movie as I did. He wanted to explore what it actually felt like to be dead and back in the world of the living. And there are indications in the deleted material that Ashe was morally torn over what he was doing. And it's obvious attempts were made to work these elements into the story. I can appreciate that. And one thing that COA does remarkably better than ANY of the other films is that it tries to do an evolution of the material and not just a continuation.

I think their intentions were wonderful. The execution is still subpar. The Ashe/Sarah romance is simply not fleshed out enough in any cut of the film. I just didn't buy it. It never felt genuine to me. The bad guys are remarkably paper thin even for a comic book movie. All this talk about ambiguity over good and evil just isn't there in the film. It's all pretty cut and dry.

The film looks great. And the acting is good for the most part. I still don't understand the animosity towards Perez who really is the standout for me. I think he was totally capable of showing just how tortured this character was. With a better script there'd be no debate or divide among fans. As an actor, that guy's got the goods.

Maybe others just don't care, but I'm really interested in what a person returning from the dead means to things like the idea of God's plan. Especially with a character like Ashe who may have been religious when alive. Or what the true definition of justice is. Especially if they'd thrown in a villain who was wrecked with guilt over the tragedy he inflicted and in the time since that crime had tried to atone for his sins and do some good in the world. So when The Crow's avatar comes for him, he's now robbing the world of all the good that person would continue to do. I'm starting to ramble (Haha, I know what you're thinking... starting???). All I'm saying is this premise was ripe with possibilities and in both films they barely skim the surface of it.

Does COA deserve all the hate? No way. But I'm equally confused by how forgiving some fans are as well.

I think some of the other comics & novels (in particular the collection of short stories) do a much better job of exploring the premise than the movies ever did.

But that's just me. And in the end something has to be said for the fact that here we are over a decade later still talking about it, right?