The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Anything But Doom - The Crow Remake

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

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Good morning, PBN family. I'm unveiling, just by executive order here at the prepper broadcasting network um abd anything but doom and i'm going to open this up to everybody all the hosts here at the prepper broadcasting network you know when we when we started doing prepper content we were sort of mining out the doom we were were sort of looking across the bow at the horizon to see what was coming. And it wasn't so in your face. It wasn't every single day of your life. The mainstream media hadn't figured out yet, oh, we can make a lot of money by putting scary articles up about the end of the world. Well, those days have long passed. And I find

myself from time to time thinking, I want to talk about anything but doom. I want to hear about anything but doom. You know, and we have serious personality and serious amounts of people here at the Prepper Broadcasting Network who coil themselves up in the name of preparedness in order to create a show that's built around this kind of stuff, but they have, you know, other interests also and other things to say that are worth saying that add nuance to the overall conversation. And God, do we ever need a focus on nuance? I mean, really, what we have going on with lack of nuance in the world is terrifying, really. Actually, I never thought a lack of nuance could lead to a terrifying time, but thus we are here.

I wanted to talk today on anything but doom about the lack of nuance and sort of the swing and miss in Hollywood, particularly around the Crow remake. Now, for fans of the Crow, you might really enjoy this. For those of you who are not, I'd probably still stick around and listen because this is a deep, deep thing. And depth is what we are so lacking in our society anymore. You know, a deep understanding, an understanding of nuance. Like, there's a level of audacity to duplicate a movie like The Crow. Not to create a sequel, but to duplicate the movie and to re-make it. That is, it's a breathtaking level of audacity and ignorance, you know? Now, I don't know the director.

I didn't do any research. I don't really care. The child in me wanted this. For those of you who don't know, they're remaking the 1993 classic The Crow. Featuring Bill Skarsgård and whoever FKA Twigs is. I don't know if she's a model. I don't know what she is. I've never heard of her.

In all honesty. I've never heard of her in all honesty so I mean I've heard of her but I like I've heard read her name in news headlines

I have no idea what she's famous for I never you know whatever irrelevant I mean all all of the things

about the new movie are pretty much irrelevant except for the fact that they've kind of gone so far against the grain with the... And I haven't seen the movie, so I can't... But this is such a situation. I wouldn't pick on a movie like this

without watching it, you know what I mean? If it wasn't this deep. But you have to understand how deep this is. The Crow was a social movement. Okay? It wasn't a movie. It was a movie, but it was such an incredible movement in movie making. There were so many incredible things about that movie. The soundtrack of The Crow, you know, one of the things that categorized the 1990s,

and I think the generation alive now is suffering so much because of it, was just amazing music. Amazing, diverse music, tribal music. You had a team with your music in the 90s. You were team grunge. You were team heavy metal. You were team gangster rap. You might have been West Coast, East Coast.

You had a team in music. Most people did. Not a lot of people were like, I just listen to everything. You know how people are nowadays. I listen to everything. Yeah, not really people were like, I just listen to everything. You know how people are nowadays? I listen to everything. Like, yeah, not really. You listen to what you listen to. All your friends listen to that.

You know what I mean? It was a cult. And it was because the music was so powerful and so all-encompassing that all these different types of music, new metal, grunge, all this stuff was coming out, and people were like, this is for me. And then, you know what I mean, but the 90s, um, 90s movies were also propelled, uh, by incredible, these incredible collaborative soundtracks, okay, like, like, uh, Clueless comes to mind, they had an amazing soundtrack.

There were some great movies that came out and had such amazing soundtracks. It was unbelievable. I mean, like these soundtracks themselves are iconic. And the first movie to ever really do that, to ever really capture a movie in the soundtrack form with the best artists of the time all working together was the Crow soundtrack. And the Crow soundtrack is, I mean, it is one of the great albums, in my opinion, because of that. Sort of like the titular song of the movie was written by The Cure, The Cure's Burn, and it was written song of the movie was written by the cure the cures burn and it was written

just for the movie like days before or something like that or or or maybe not days before but it took like two days or something very close to the time that it had to be turned in they sat down and wrote it and wrote just a i mean it's the it's the song you you know? So this cannot be reproduced today. Music is too broken, you know? So this fundamental, like, this is how iconic, you want to know how iconic? See, I saw The Crow when it came out in 1993, which was a big mistake.

My mother had just got out of the hospital. She had an atopic pregnancy and almost died. And one of the first things she wanted to do was get out with her son, you know. And I said, oh, and she'd been in the hospital bed for a week or something, weeks maybe. I was too little to remember, really. And she wanted to do something with her kid. And the media was representing the crow to be like dark and superhero like batman right and never forget like we're all in the heels of 1989 batman which was another massive change

in superhero action films like this dark weird gritty take on the superhero film was new. It was brand new sort of genre, and The Crow was going to take it on from the indie side, essentially. So, again, you've got this one-of-a-kind soundtrack. You've got this one-of-a-kind movie movement, right? And the soundtrack was so iconic that the Nine Inch Nails song was so beaten into my head from watching this movie that when I would run home from my friend Kyle's house, I would sing it out loud and run and jump over the cracks in the sidewalk like Eric Draven over the rooftops.

I mean, it was just, you know, it was that kind of a thing. Like, these weren't just backwards. It wasn't background noise. You know what I mean? These were epic songs. Some of them were covers by peep bands who loved the bands they were covering. And so my mother took me to see this movie, 1993, and she basically, like, gripped onto her seat.

I kind of commend her for not taking me out of there, to be honest, because it really became a huge part of my life growing up. I really loved it. But I was only 86 to 93. What's that, three, six, no, four, seven, seven, eight, something like that, way too young to be watching The Crow, but man, you know, all of that aside, right, so you're dealing with this incredible soundtrack, this iconic beginning of a trend

of massive bands gathering together to create a soundtrack to become a part of the movie that just, you know, it was a game changer. You were dealing with these cultures and these subcultures on the back end who are looking to this character, Eric Draven, as their hero. Oh my god, we have a hero. Like, I'm not a billionaire. I'm not an alien. I'm not super strong. We've got this skinny, pale guitar player in Eric Draven who

is kicking ass and taking names, right? And he's sort of like this heavy metal gothy hero that no one ever had before, right? So with all that music was this sort of idolatry of this dude. And don't forget, like, it wasn't just some dude, you know? Like, the guy playing him was Bruce Lee's son. Do you know what I mean? Like it wasn't just some run-of-the-mill actor. This was Bruce Lee's son.

This was the greatest, the most revolutionary martial artist in all history. His son is playing this character. It wasn't Michael Keaton. You know what I mean? It wasn't Christopher Reeve. This was a legitimate martial artist. And it was just one of the, you know, this is pre-UFC or, you know, before UFC really took off.

So you were still in like this mind frame of like, oh, Kung Fu wins fights. Like, yeah. And, you know, that played to the validity of what you're watching. You're watching this guy take on guys with knives and guns. And, yeah, he has the ability to heal. But you're also thinking to yourself like, well, he's also got the moves. So I'm backloading all this so that you can understand how you can't take...

The guy wrote a great comic book. You know what I mean? He wrote a great comic book, a dark and terrifying situation, and a revenge story. And that was the crow to begin. But the movie became enormous because of all these things. You know, the movie became enormous because of all these things. I always tell you about the importance of villains. This was a movie built on villains. It was built around the henchmen

and their crazy acts, right? It was built around sort of this hierarchy of bad guys that Eric Draven has to work his way through up until the main bad guy. And what's his name? Cash something. I should know these things. But it was built. The point is, it was built around these villains that really created. I don't know what what a hero movie needs. You know what I mean? So many superhero movies have come out as of late with crap villains or no villains, and they do horribly. And they do horribly because you need to have a big bad villain who's capable of taking on, and the audience has to know why he's capable of it.

You know? They have to know why. They can't just say like, oh, this is a character from the comic book world, and he's very strong, so he can beat Iron Man. Or you're like, why? Explain to me why he's so strong. You know, like, the Avengers did that really well by introducing Thanos in devastating fashion, right? Thanos hops on his ship and beats the Hulk up. Like, oh, okay. Thanos is a bad dude.

I get it. Cool, you know? You know, on the back of the movie, like before the movie came out, Brandon Lee gets shot and killed in the filming of it. Right? And this was such an incredible event. This was such a mind-boggling event that the soundtrack was...

The big empty by the Stone Temple Pilots was not even supposed to be on the soundtrack. But after Eric Draven died, they swapped it out. You know? They swapped. They literally were like, okay, this is a serious turn of events so now you have a film that is you know built into the subculture this incredible story

this heart-wrenching and you know probably one of the most terrifying and terrible things that could happen to a couple in love um which which to me it looks like and i don't know this to be true but it looks like that part of the rape and the murder of shelly webster looks to be removed from the new movie altogether and i know it's weird to say out to say this but it you you have to have that. This guy climbs out of the grave for vengeance. Do you understand what I mean? So this is an aspect of the story too. But then you have the whole memorial of Brandon Lee. The movie now becomes Brandon Lee's last movie. It becomes his last piece of work, his last contribution to the world at large. The son of Bruce Lee is dead now too.

Died at a young age, just like Dad. And all this stuff starts swirling around. You wind up with a movie that, even before it hits the theaters, is so much larger than life. It's incomparable, you know? And then it comes out and everybody sees it and everybody's like, oh, this is, you know. It becomes a thing that moves an entire generation. Hollywood has somehow decided to try and replicate that by making a shoot-em-up, beat-em-up film with a guy who looks nothing like the main character, acts nothing like the main character. The Crow, like so many remakes, but this one in particular, most importantly, is not a formula. Do you know what I mean? It's not a formula. It was never a formula. It was an intersection of culture and timing and crazy events that happened in our world

that can never be replicated. You know what I mean? It can never be replicated you know what i mean it can never be replicated the timing of that movie the way you know right after 1989 batman that big transformation the soundtrack the the the lead actor being this prince of martial arts dying on set the subculture surrounding and swirling around this dark hero who looked like them, to try to photocopy that and spit it out in the movie theaters is, I don't know, it's just so blind. You know what I mean?

It's so weird. It's so deaf to the impact and what The Crow was. I can't imagine sitting down, myself personally, I can't imagine sitting down and saying to myself, I'm going to remake The Crow, and then coming away with this storyline that they're selling us now and going, I feel really good about this. selling us now and going, I feel really good about this. So this has been anything but doom.

I hope you enjoyed my whatever that was because I enjoyed it. I'll talk to you guys soon.