30 Years Later, The Crow: City of Angels Is The Most Unfairly Hated Sequel in the Franchise

Look, let’s not beat around the bush here: The original Crow movie is in a league of its own, and no other sequel can touch it. However, if we’re looking at the best of the rest, there’s no doubt that The Crow: City of Angels deserves its black roses. (If you dare to say the 2024 Crow reboot is better, you will be blocked from the internet as punishment.)

Think about it: Everything was against this movie from the start. After all, it was two years removed from the debut of the original – plus, the real-life death of Brandon Lee added an aura and mystique to the 1994 film that remains intact to this day. The Crow: City of Angels could have been directed by Martin Scorsese and starred Daniel Day-Lewis, and people would have still found a reason to hate it. Now, 30 years later, it’s easier to look back and appreciate this film for what it was rather than what it could never be.

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Written by David S. Goyer and directed by Tim Pope, The Crow: City of Angels follows a brand-new protagonist in the form of Ashe Corven (played by Vincent Pérez). A Los Angeles mechanic, Ashe leads a happy life with his eight-year-old son, Danny (Eric Acosta). Their wonderful life takes a dark turn after they witness druglord Judah Earl’s (Richard Brooks) goons murder a dealer. Wanting no witnesses to the crime, Judah orders his crew to murder Ashe and Danny. The tragedy sees Ashe return from the land of the dead to seek revenge on Judah and his crew. However, he isn’t alone, as he connects with Sarah Mohr (Mia Kirshner) from the first Crow movie.

The Crow: City of Angels rehashes the revenge formula from the first movie. Then again, that’s what every film has done since, because this franchise is about second chances and righting the wrongs of the past. Yet the tweak here focuses on a different kind of love: the bond between son and father. This is something that separates the film from its predecessor; while it’s heartbreaking to see two lovers die, a father witnessing his child’s murder is brutal on another level. Is it sadder? Parents might say so.

Pérez doesn’t receive the credit he merits for his portrayal of Ashe. Of course, he would always be compared to Lee’s Eric Draven, but his character design looks fantastic in its own right. He doesn’t just look cool, though; Pérez makes you feel the pain and loss his character suffers. There’s a lingering sadness in his portrayal, never escaping from the actor’s eyes – and even when he gets his revenge on Judah and his crew, there’s a melancholy to the final act.

The Crow: City of Angels also concludes Sarah’s arc. It’s clear that she still mourns the losses of Eric and Shelly Webster, but she finds a greater purpose and sacrifices her own life to help Ashe. One could say that Sarah is actually the real hero of the story, and she’s guided by the spirits of Eric and Shelly to do the right thing here as well.

In terms of the bad guys… Yeah, maybe Judah isn’t quite as remarkable as Michael Wincott’s Top Dollar from the first film, but his gang features some serious heavy hitters who leave their mark on the movie. There’s Thomas Jane as the creepy Nemo, Iggy Pop as the serpentine Curve, Vincent Castellanos as the unpredictable Spider Monkey, and the late Thuy Trang (of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers fame) as the killer Kali… Point to another sequel that has such a stacked cast on the villainous side of things, please.

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Also, a Crow movie can’t be discussed without mentioning its soundtrack. We all know the original’s music is GOATed, but consider some of the names featured on The Crow: City of Angels for a minute: Hole, White Zombie, PJ Harvey, Bush, Deftones, Korn, and even Iggy Pop pulling double duty. Oh, and Deftones actually make a cameo in the movie, so there’s that too. At the risk of sounding like an old man here, let’s just admit that they don’t make music (and soundtracks) like they used to.

It’s interesting, because The Crow: City of Angels isn’t the story that Goyer pitched, and he isn’t exactly a fan of how it turned out either. “I said I’ll do it but only if the title character can be a female and not a male, because I don’t want to in any way try to sully Brandon Lee’s memory or compete with that. I don’t want to find a Brandon lookalike,” Goyer said at a Comic-Con@Home panel in 2020.

“So we agreed, and I wrote this treatment that involved Jack the Ripper and one of Jack the Ripper’s victims, who was pregnant at the time when she was killed and then she was reincarnated into modern times along with the bad guy. I think I wrote a 20-page treatment and that got approved, and then Miramax, who were distributing it – that supposedly didn’t have any kind of editorial oversight – immediately threw that out the window, and they said, ‘We want to do it with a guy who looks like Brandon Lee.’ What I should have done is just quit the project, but I didn’t, and it was a miserable experience.”

While Goyer’s original idea sounds good, and The Crow: City of Angels is far from a masterpiece, it’s also not the worst movie in the series. There’s a lot to like about it, and now 30 years later, it’s aged much better than anybody could have predicted.

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The Crow: City of Angels is available to rent or purchase digitally on Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video.