Martial Arts Illustrated – January 2018

PDUWLDODUWVLOOXVWUDWHG

_

25

I

t’s hard to believe
it will soon be 25
years since Alex Proyas’
live action adaptation
of James O’Barr’s dark
comic book The Crow hit the
screen, with the late Brandon Lee
giving what would have been his
breakout performance. Since then
we’ve had one decent sequel,
The Crow: City of Angels,
two further terrible sequels
and the ambitious Crow:
Stairway to Heaven

Diamond Dogs

This ain’t Rock N’ Roll this is Singapore!

Y

ou don’t immediately think of Singapore when a down and dirty brutal martial arts

¿ ght À ick comes to mind, but that looks set to change with the upcoming release of

Gavin Lim’s Diamond Dogs. The ¿ lm which will be making its debut at the Singapore

International Film Festival stars Headshot’s Sunny Pang, Roz Pho from Sent and

Birmingham born Japanese AV goddess Anri Okita.

Diagnosed with stage three cancer, deaf and mute Johnny (Sunny Pang) has little left to lose,

when he is lured into a deadly underground world where ¿ ghters are pitted against each other in a test of

aggression and adrenaline for the entertainment of the rich. Johnny ¿ ghts his way to the top in a series of

escalating battles, in the desire to exact revenge on those responsible. The ¿ rst trailer for the ¿ lm does give it

a very Danny the Dog/Unleashed vibe and its certainly not what you’d expect from Singapore...

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDdYu6HT1xk

Remake

¿ nally

to take

À ight

which saw Mark Dacascos take

over the role of Eric Draven in

a project that was really ¿ nding

its feet and establishing its own

mythos as the news came the series wasn’t being renewed.

Since then there have been various attempts to reboot The Crow in

various incarnations with directors including Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

and F.Javier Gutierrez and actors including Bradley Cooper, Mark

Wahlberg, Norman Reedus and Luke Evans

attached to the project as it battled to escape

from ‘development hell’. But now it would seem

that the project may ¿ nally take À ight again with

the working title of The Crow: Reborn, directed

by Corin Hary and with Aquaman himself Jason

Momoa set to star. Now the original Brandon Lee version

of The Crow is regarded universally as a classic, and its

inÀ uence hung heavily over the various sequels and the

TV series, although Dacascos was given the freedom to

develop the character somewhat in his own way as the

series progressed.

But O’Barr who created the franchise has commented about

the remake, “We’re not remaking the movie, we’re re-

adapting the book. My metaphor is that there is a Bela Lugosi

Dracula and there’s a Francis Ford Coppola Dracula; they use

the same material, but you still got two entirely diɣ erent ¿ lms.

This one’s going to be closer to Taxi Driver or a John Woo ¿ lm,

and I think there’s room for both of them – part of the appeal of The

Crow comics is that they can tell very diɣ erent stories after all.”

We’d love to see a new take on The Crow, and we hope Mamoa and co will ¿ nd

their own way instead of merely mimicking the original, and we look forward

to seeing it take À ight. Now one interesting version of The Crow that we never

got to see, was the original concept for it as a TV series, instead of rebooting

the movie, the original plan was an anthology which would have explored

various incarnations of The Crow, from diɣ erent times and places, as they

came back to put the wrong things right for their own reasons... that could

have been something very special!