Damn, Bill Skarsgård ate some gross stuff to make his Crow movie nobody likes

There’s an old Gene Siskel question, usually brought out to damn a film failing to live up to the potential of its excellent cast: Is watching this movie more interesting than watching these people just sit down to have dinner with each other instead? We are now proud to present what might be called the Bill Skarsgård corollary to that question: Would watching this movie be more interesting than watching Bill Skarsgård, all on his lonesome, housing plates of steak tartare and raw eggs, every single day, in preparation to make a Crow movie nobody seems to like?

This question brought to you by press materials for, yes, The Crow, which is currently in the process of flying into a bunch of power lines in its first weekend at the box office. (It’ll probably open at 8th place in the domestic rankings; most serious Hollywood pundits agree that, if your movie is opening behind the second week of a 15th anniversary run of an old kids’ movie, something may have gone wrong somewhere in the process.) But the press tour must roll, which now includes (per Variety) a tidbit from director Rupert Sanders that genuinely fascinated us: The reveal that Skarsgård apparently subsisted on naught but uncooked beef and eggs the entire time he was making the movie, apparently a holdover from the diet he adopted for previous action film Boy Kills World. (Or, some strange urge to eat an entire barnyard without the aid of fire; take your pick.)

It’s not like high-protein diets aren’t a major part of the endless and irritating Hollywood action star regimen—never forget that The Rock supposedly eats something like a literal half a ton of cod a year—but there’s just something about the mental image of Skarsgård slurping down red, wet beef and bright yellow raw eggs at every meal (so that his body can be in perfect working order for a Crow movie nobody likes) that’s darkly amusing to us. (We know, in our hearts, that he probably wasn’t in the Crow makeup and costume while sucking in his primary color slurry, but the mental image is inevitable.) For his own part, Skarsgård says he likes eating this stuff, and since it’s probably gauche to accuse a Swedish actor of developing Stockholm syndrome, we have no choice but to believe him; he said his one indulgence, once he finished filming the movie, was a single glass of beer. We do not invite the reader, as a mental exercise, to imagine what Bill Skarsgård’s Private Commode Times are like—on account of decorum—but if your brain already went there, that’s no business of ours.