He clearly adores playing Snake and is out to make sure audiences who love the character as well get what they want. Kurt Russell can now do a perfect visual as well as aural Clint Eastwood parody. The character isn’t as well-written, but Russell is better suited to the part because the extra fifteen years look great on Snake Plissken - it’s his vintage. Russell is unquestionably the VIP of the movie. Maybe it’s a bit weightless, but having Kurt Russell come back to play his signature role makes the trip worth the time. And the end results are often fun, like hearing a weird new cover of an old favorite song. All the beats are the same, each running joke has an equivalent, each character reappears in a Los Angelified variant. Howard Hawks remade Rio Bravo (Carpenter’s favorite film) as Rio Lobo and El Dorado, and Carpenter wanted to try the same trick. It’s exactly what John Carpenter wanted to achieve. is basically Escape From New York version 2.0, but this isn’t an actual complaint. Plissken takes a secret sub to Los Angeles, where he encounters Steve Buscemi, Pam Grier, Peter Fonda, Valeria Golino, and Bruce Effing Campbell. The president gives Snake less than ten hours to accomplish the mission before a toxin in his blood kills him. The only person who can go in and retrieve the Doomsday Thingy is Snake Plissken, once again under arrest and scheduled for permanent exile. She bails from Air Force One carrying a McGuffin Doomsday Doodad so she can join Cuervo in Los Angeles. gang leader, Cuervo Jones (George Corraface). Langer), falls under the sway of the top L.A. In 2013, the president’s daughter, Utopia (A. Same deal: once you go in, you do not come out. The island is walled off and guarded by … look, you saw the first movie. The City of Our Lady, Queen of the Angels, is transformed into a deportation facility to remove all undesirables from the new, “moral” United States under the control of a theocratic president-for-life (Cliff Robertson). A massive quake hits Southern California in the year 2000 and turns Los Angeles into an island. We’re a bit farther into the future-past now. So, have you heard of this little flick called Escape From New York? Well, this is the same thing, except in Los Angeles. And thus, another financial disappointment for Carpenter. That’s not good considering fifteen years of ticket price inflation and a budget almost ten times as large. not only imitated the story of the original, it imitated its box office gross as well. The cult status of Escape From New York had grown, it was a reunion for Carpenter and Russell, and Carpenter had never directed a sequel to any of his movies before. Carpenter rejoined with producer Debra Hill, whom he hadn’t worked with since Escape From New York, and somehow managed to convince Paramount Pictures to give him $50 million - the heftiest budget of his career - so Kurt Russell could slip on the eyepatch, zipper vest, and simmering surliness for another go at dystopian action satire.Īnticipation for the film ran high in the summer of 1996. The new adventures of a now bi-coastal Snake Plissken was in development for a decade, but might never have happened if not for Kurt Russell’s love for the character. But he also had another project brewing: a sequel to his 1981 hit Escape From New York. John Carpenter was planning to remake The Creature From the Black Lagoon after his contractual obligation with another remake, Village of the Damned. Lookee here, I’m a few months ahead! With only three movies left, I may finish this project in just under two years. In the Starman review last year, I estimated my John Carpenter career retrospective was on pace to reach Escape From L.A.
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