![]() ![]() leans harder on its sci-fi setting and generally has less respect for its titular city, making it almost as much a comedy as it is an action film. But while the first film, ridiculous as it was, was grounded in the then-topical evocation of crime-ridden, 70s NYC, Escape from L.A. The plot - hard-ass protagonist Snake Plissken must infiltrate a city-sized prison in order to recover a hostage and avert a World War - is more or less identical and virtually every scene and character in the second film is analogous to a scene or character from the first. is most definitely a sequel to Escape from New York, it’s also very much a remake. While Escape from New York will always remain one of Carpenter’s most iconic films - second only to Halloween - Escape from L.A. Simultaneously, he pushed his initial vision of American dystopia into something approaching parody. co-written with producer Debra Hill and star Kurt Russell - Carpenter tapped into several strains of political and cultural vitriol that had yet to become headlines. Violent crime in America had begun to drop - and would continue to drop until the present - and the Cold War - a looming threat in the background of Escape from New York - had ended, ushering in a period of growth and globalization some scholars went so far as to call “the end of history”. ![]() ![]() As the actual 1997 approached, things seemed to be looking up. Luckily, the bleak vision of Carpenter and co-writer Nick Castle didn’t come to pass. Crime would continue to rise in NYC - and the country at large - for the rest of the decade following the film’s release, with murders in New York City peaking in 1990 at an average of six murders per day. Anyone who’s seen films shot in New York during the 1970s and 1980s knows that, while the film was a fanciful extrapolation, it was rooted in real fears and pessimism. Set in the grim future of 1997, it depicts a world where urban crime has become so unmanageable that the United States government has walled off the island of Manhattan and turned it into a maximum security prison servicing the entire nation. When writer/director John Carpenter and star Kurt Russell released Escape from New York in 1981 - their first of four collaborations, assuming you don’t count the 1979 made-for-TV movie Elvis - it must have seemed terrifyingly prescient. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |