‘The Crow’ Star Bill Skarsgard Says Stepping Into The Role Of Eric Draven Was “Daunting” But The Film Is “So Different” From Brandon Lee’s: “We Were Not Remaking That Movie”
The Crow, a remake of the 1994 film, is finally ready for theaters after a decade of limbo between the living and the dead, much like the main character Eric Draven. Bill Skarsgard plays him this time and is the third person to step into the long coat and mime make-up after the late Brandon Lee and The Crying Freeman himself, Mark Dacascos.
“So I’m not the first one to fill those shoes,” Skarsgard reminded People, referring to both Dacascos in the TV series Crow: Stairway To Heaven and the prior sequels – City of Angels, Salvation, and Wicked Prayer. All of those were received rather poorly, but the version everyone remembers starred Lee in his last performance.
“An iconic performance, a tragic thing that happened with Brandon,” Skarsgard said. “And for me, I approached this like I do any other job like, ‘What’s this story? How can I do this story justice?'”
Doing justice to the part meant leaving Lee’s portrayal alone and going in as different a direction as possible, meaning no copying the original, according to Skarsgard, which muddles the idea that this Crow is a remake.
“We were not remaking that movie, and that was never the intention,” he said. “I feel like that movie and his performance is iconic and shouldn’t be tampered with at all. So I’m glad that we tried to do something very different with it.”
However, based on an official synopsis and the trailers, the new film stays true to the formula. “Given the chance to save his true love by sacrificing himself, Eric sets out to seek merciless revenge on their killers, traversing the worlds of the living and the dead to put the wrong things right,” reads a description provided by People.
Furthermore, Skarsgard might not have tried to channel Lee, but the fatally wounded actor was on everyone’s mind, says director Rupert Sanders. Talking to Vanity Fair, Sanders said Lee’s “soul is very much alive in this film,” and his “terrible tragedy” was “definitely something that we’ve always had in mind through the making of the film.”
“There’s a real fragility and beauty to his version of The Crow, and I think Bill feels like he is a successor to that,” Sanders added. “Brandon was an original voice and I think he will always be synonymous with The Crow, and I hope he’s proud of what we’ve done and how we’ve brought the story back again.”
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