Crow: The Legend review: channelling subpar animated movies

Crow: The Legend is an animated 360 video about an exotic bird with majestic feathers and a stunning voice, who’s tasked with the job of saving his forest from its very first winter. I felt like saying: mate, be patient, the seasons will change and the sun will return. But that would be missing the folkloric crux of the narrative, which originated as a Native American legend. The titular character (voiced by John Legend) succumbs to peer pressure, spurred into action by comments such as “I thought you were more than just a voice with feathers!”

So up, up and away he goes, flying right off the face of the earth and past an anthropomorphised sun. His mission is to consult “the one who creates everything by thinking” so he can request that she “unthink the cold and make it warm for us once again.” This oracle-like character is a plump, purple, insect-like creature voiced by none other than Oprah Winfrey: not quite an oracle, but certainly a mover-and-shaker in the entrainment industry. The little, er, thinker rewards the crow with the gift of fire, which he brings back to the forest.

The protagonist then becomes a bit of a pyromaniac, burning down trees before torching entire forests, all the while cackling maniacally. I’m kidding: he saves the day and—once the colour in his feathers returns (because true beauty is found on the…outside?!)—everything is tickety-boo. It’s no surprise this child-oriented 20 minute production (which has a version that offers light interactivity, though the one I experienced wasn’t interactive) was helmed by Eric Darnell, the director of four Madagascar movies. It’s obviously going for Dreamworks Animation or Pixar-like vibes. The plot is light and innocuous, sprinkled with short semi-musical moments (involving the crow singing) and populated by insipid characters vaguely defined at best.

A Native American narrator delivers chunks of voice-over evoking legend-making sensibility. Take this narrator away however and the experience loses its obvious correlation to Indigenous culture. The production feels less informed by ancient storytelling than contemporary American animation—of the goopy, homogenized kind. This most obviously manifests in its bland, squidgy aesthetic, reminiscent of countless subpar kids movies: the ones that look like all the other ones.

The only parts of Crow: The Legend that have any visual oomph are its flight scenes, with the crowd flapping its way through outer space panoramas. In one scene he cruises past a massive, transparent, mythological bird, the size of a couple of death stars, lit up in effervescent light, dazzling the cosmos. But these are special effects coat hangers and transitional moments, triggering base “oh look, lights!” and “oooo, shiny!” responses.

It almost goes without saying that productions such as Crow: The Legend, constructed early in the current era of VR (this one premiering at the 2018 Venice Film Festival) played a significant role experimenting with the emerging medium’s storytelling potential. Five years later, at the time of publication, the process is far from finished; in fact it’ll never be finished. It’s part of a continuum of creative experimentation, every proverbial dab at the canvas in some small way altering the course of the medium’s evolution.

Hindsight is a beautiful thing. Even so, some creative decisions from earlier times seem strangely flat and uninspired. The most common visual configuration at the time of The Legend’s release was the placement of the virtual camera in a central position. Darnell not only follows this but gives the impression of clearing a space for us, creating areas on the ground that feel unnaturally empty. One such area is a circular grassy patch of the forest, rimmed by stones, with trees in the background, which is where the experience begins. When the characters arrive—including the crow and his friends, a skunk and a moth—they mostly remain on the peripheries, kept at arm’s reach.

The effect is even more distancing later on, when a larger space is etched out in the snow, again with the virtual camera in a central position and characters strategically placed around the edges of this sphere-like arena. We know we can’t explore the forest; we know we have to wait for them to come to us. Given how terribly rigid this feels, it’s no surprise the experience takes off, in more ways than one, during those flight scenes. But I don’t want to make too much of them; they’re brief and far from soul-stirring.