Musings on a film that should never, ever be remade — except as a dozen Italian knockoffs or maybe a sci-fi space prison thing
Two Cents is an original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team will program films and contribute our best, most insightful, or most creative thoughts on each film using a maximum of 200 words each. Guest writers and fan comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future entries to the column. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion.
The Pick
If you look up ‘cult movie’ in the dictionary you know what you’ll find? A picture of Kurt Russell sneering at you from underneath an eyepatch.
Russell’s post-apocalypse antihero Snake Plissken appears fully formed as a new icon of cinema from the moment he stomps into frame in John Carpenter’s Escape from New York. Hugely influential on cyber-punk literature and going on forty years’ worth of movies, TV shows, comics, and video games (where Metal Gear Solid’s Solid Snake is an obvious, admitted direct descendant of Plissken), Escape from New York has left a massive cultural tail that dwarfs innumerable other films of its era that were bigger hits at the time.
Initially conceived in the mid-70s, Escape from New York finally became a reality on the back of Carpenter spinning low-budget box office gold from the likes of Halloween and The Fog. Having recently worked with Russell in the lead role on a TV miniseries about Elvis Presley (called… Elvis), Carpenter was convinced that the squeaky-clean star of cookie-cutter Disney family fare was the man to shoot, stab, punch, beat, and explode his way through a nightmarish future.
Set in the then-far off year of 1997, Escape from New York sets the table very quickly: Society collapsed and NYC has been walled off and turned into a maximum security prison. You go in, you never come out. But when the Air Force One crashes behind the wall, government forces (led by Lee goddamn Van Cleef) recruit/force former war hero, current convict Snake Plissken to go inside and rescue the President (Donald Pleasence).
With its sprawling cast of rowdy villains and antiheroes (there’s really nothing even approaching a traditional hero in this one) and its incredible mood and style, Escape from New York was warmly received in 1981 and has only grown in esteem ever since. The gang got back together for a sequel in the ’90s that has (some) defenders but is generally looked at as a pale imitation. Plissken’s exploits have been confined to comics and pipe dreams of a final installment, plus an endless development process of a threatened remake.
For some reason, who knows why, we’ve got quarantines and end-of-days on our mind, so we decided to go back behind the wall and remind ourselves of just how futuristic 1997 really was. — Brendan
Next Week’s Pick
The controversial, much-loved and much-hated finale to the mainline Star Wars saga ended the series with a noncommittal whiff rather than the Avengers: Endgame-style success of universal acclaim that its producers and creators were hoping for. On May 4, The Rise of Skywalker makes its way to Disney+, where countless viewers will give it another chance — or for some, the first. Join us as we assess and reassess the final film in the Skywalker Saga. — Austin
Would you like to be a guest in next week’s Two Cents column? Simply watch and send your under-200-word review to twocents(at)cinapse.co anytime before midnight on Thursday!
Our Guests
Austin Wilden:
Finally watching Escape from New York was a long overdue check on my “To Watch” list and got me thinking about how I see John Carpenter’s directorial style in general. There’s an element to a lot of Carpenter’s movies I’ll call “strategic minimalism,” for lack of a better word. From the visuals to the distinct style of his synth-tastic scores, there’s a sense that Carpenter at his best will pare down his movies to the absolute essentials and keep them from getting too convoluted. (A notable exception being Big Trouble in Little China, where the escalating convolution is part of the joke.)
Escape from New York might be the best example of this in his career besides Halloween. Few of the major players in this movie even have proper names and are instead referred to by titles like “Cabbie,” “the President,” “Brain,” and “the Duke.” Even what we’re allowed to know about Snake Plissken is strategically limited in the same manner. Small lines like his sigh of “A little human compassion” as Hauk barks order at him and the running gag of people saying “Heard you were dead” when they meet him say a lot without bogging the audience down in unnecessary details. I was having a conversation with Brendan Foley about this on Twitter that helped me put this notion into focus. Namely, him mentioning how Snake’s crime and arrest were shot but removed late in the game. A removal that was for the better since it allows the audience’s impression of Snake to be built through the actual meat of the story, his quest through the ruined prison of New York City.
It speaks to a level of focus that modern blockbusters could learn from. (@WC_Wit)
Brendan Agnew (The Norman Nerd):
Is it possible for a sci-fi prison break movie to be tight as a drum but also meditative and almost leisurely? Can you have a caricature of exploitation antiheroes who’s also a pitch-perfect straight man antihero for your movie? Is the eye patch really necessary?
If you’re John Carpenter and Kurt Russell, the answer is “absolutely.” Escape from New York begins with the easy confidence of someone who knows he’s gonna deliver the goods, letting you ease into the dystopian future setting of the far off year *checks notes* 1997. Carpenter is unhurried and deliberate in turning over his cards one by one. Snake Plissken isn’t introduced until 7 minutes in, and doesn’t get a name or utter a word until the better part of 20, but you like him because you want to know what’s going on, and people tell him what’s going on.
And also he’s Kurt Fucking Russell, so you like him.
Carpenter opts for tension with staccato breaks for action rather than a nonstop action buffet, and what could have been a breathless chase instead makes the viewer feel like they’re being hunted alongside Snake. Nearly everyone he meets wants to kill him or has screwed him over, and they’re all vividly realized enough that the film always seems to have a new wrinkle just around the corner that can take Snake’s legs out from under him. Combined with the oppressive opening and fascist “allies” he’s got to work with, every small victory he claws his way to feels like a big win.
Even if it’s just switching a tape.(@BLCAgnew)
The Team
John Carpenter may be my favorite director, though Idon’t love either of the films that most revere as his best. Halloween does little to nothing for me and I like The Thing just fine — but it’s my least favorite in its “trilogy”. Nonetheless, I find his catalog amazing and I like almost all of his films that I’ve seen (sorry, Ghosts of Mars, not you).
Escape is certainly one of the films I enjoy a great deal. It’s somewhere around #4–6 in my fave Carpenter films depending on the day, but it’s easily #1 as far as his soundtracks go. With fantastic action sequences one after another and Kurt Russell oozing cool from everyone pore, it’s such a fun watch.
Highly quotable and worth watching at least yearly, it’s hard to ever be disappointed with this gem. (@thepaintedman)
I enjoy Escape from New York, but it’s never been one of my favorites from Carpenter’s legendary run. Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken is an all-time great creation of badass cinema, and he sets a tone of swaggering cool that the rest of the movie follows.
But for me, there’s not much to the film besides that aura of cool, and Carpenter’s best work usually has more going on underneath his always-impressive atmospherics. Escape from New York is overflowing with style, but it doesn’t have much of either a soul or a pulse. The movie was initially developed in the wake of Watergate, and that fuels the aimless cynicism that serves as the de facto attitude of the entire picture. Future Carpenter movies would either dial in on that nihilism and raise it to a place of ecstatic, beautiful terror (The Thing, Prince of Darkness) or narrow the focus to a specific source of anger (They Live).
Escape from New York to me feels like a rough draft for future greatness, a terrific vibe that never comes together into an across-the-board great movie. But I’m clearly, happily, in the minority on that one. (@TheTrueBrendanF)
Escape From New York is my favorite Carpenter film (edging out Assault on Precinct 13), and probably the one I’ve seen the most, though Halloween is also a contender. Incidentally it’s also the one that initially put John Carpenter on my radar, as its incredible trailer emphasized the director’s name several times. I didn’t know then who John Carpenter was, but one watch of that trailer was all it took for it to be etched in my brain forever while watching an eyepatched Kurt Russell shooting up crazed attackers in a pitch-black NYC-set nightmare.
There’s certainly plenty you could say about the film: the moody atmosphere is incredible, it’s one of the most influential and brazenly copied movies of all time, and certain elements of it were eerily echoed by 9–11. But my favorite element is that Carpenter used his Halloween clout to surround young star Kurt Russell with a ton of genre-favorite old-timers as such memorable supporting characters — Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Harry Dean Stanton, and Donald Pleasence — plus Isaac Hayes as the big bad. Also HUGE shout-out to Adrienne Barbeau in perhaps her own most iconic role (in some alternate dimension, she and Russell are perfectly cast as April and Casey in a 1980s-set TMNT movie).
Even though we were lucky enough to get a sequel, it’s kind of a bummer to me that we don’t have a whole series of these with Kurt Russell angrily trekking though (and presumably escaping from) various intricately-designed cities across the post-apocalyptic hellscape. John and Kurt, have you got just one more in you? (@VforVashaw)
I’ve spent countless hours of my life both enjoying and investing in Escape from New York. I don’t remember when I first discovered it; I’m not even sure I knew it was a “John Carpenter film” or what that really meant when I first took it in. I’ve owned it on Special Edition DVD, bare bones Blu-ray, and now Collector’s Edition Blu-ray. When Cinapse had its 2 year anniversary and we decided to host a 35mm double feature screening, one of the films was Escape From New York. So when I say I’ve invested in the movie, I mean that quite literally. I put in dollars, sweat, and tears in order to show the film on 35mm here in Austin, and I loved every minute of that privileged experience. Everyone who saw the film at that screening seemed to love every minute as well. And that is because not only is Escape from New York a personal all-time favorite film of mine, but I don’t know almost anyone who doesn’t like the movie. As far as cult cinema goes, it is an uncontested all-time great.
There’s a reason for that. Escape from New York fires on every cylinder. It has a killer concept, iconic characters, legendary art design and musical score, is above the feeling of being “dated” even though it takes place in a “future” 1997 due to its eternally rebellious spirit, and the writing and direction are so tight you’re on the edge of your seat every time, even if you know how it is all going to turn out. John Carpenter is my favorite director of all time, and with Escape From New York he may have created the very best film of his formidable career. On top of directing, he also co-wrote it with Nick Castle and scored the film along with Alan Howarth. When you really step back to think about it, Carpenter’s fingerprints are all over this film in a way that only a handful of directors ever accomplish. And the wearing of many hats didn’t seem to spread Carpenter thin so much as allow him to thrive, delivering an iconic and oft-homaged musical score that is eminently hummable, and drafting an endlessly inventive, humorous, exciting, and rebellious screenplay as well. (@Ed_Travis)
Read Ed’s full review of the film HERE.
Further reading:
Next week’s pick:
