Rewatching this for basically the first time since the 80s, which is the only possible reason I apparently never before noticed that the President of the United States has a British accent. Well, I guess the Constitution’s already been radically rewritten just to get to the film’s version of 1997, so what’s one more tweak to allow non-birthright citizens to run?
I seem to remember Carpenter (or maybe Donald Pleasence?) justifying it with some notion of Margaret Thatcher achieving some kind of dominance over world politics.
"May God save me, and watch over you all..." Gee, thanks man.
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I'm just gonna take this opportunity to say that I still greatly enjoy Escape From L.A. as well, despite the goofiness. It always amuses me though when people complain about the satirical nature of the sequel as though the original doesn't have it's tongue jammed in its cheek a lot of the time.
"May God save me, and watch over you all..." Gee, thanks man.
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I'm just gonna take this opportunity to say that I still greatly enjoy Escape From L.A. as well, despite the goofiness. It always amuses me though when people complain about the satirical nature of the sequel as though the original doesn't have it's tongue jammed in its cheek a lot of the time.
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I always thought that snake should have kept his original outfit for the whole movie. It still looked great. The new outfit was terrible.
"May God save me, and watch over you all..." Gee, thanks man.
Weird how none of them seem particularly worried.
I did have to quit Escape from L.A. after a while, but not because it’s satire — as you indicate, the original is pretty much entirely satire too (I’ve always felt that both Snake Plissken and Mad Max are essentially 2000AD characters/series) — but because it just seemed bad in comparison. I really wanted to like it, but it was not to be.
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It's certainly (demonstrably!) not for everyone.
So, none of this is cannon, it comes from the novelization.
The President's name is John Harker, former Senator from Upstate New York.
Nicknamed "Mousey" or "Straddler" by both his colleagues and opponents.
He helped create the United States Police Force, made up of ex-soldiers returning from the war overseas.
They replaced local and state police forces and act as judge, jury and executioner out in the field.
He has a convenient way of making his opponents "dissappear" if they oppose any of his legislation; the most recent being a Senator from Alabama, whereupon the state found all of its government funding cut off and water rights restricted, leaving the people to starve/die of thirst.
He was on his way to the Hartford Summit with a tape describing a new type of "clean" nuclear fusion bomb that will kill all the people and animals but leave the infrastructure intact and ready to be inhabited again within a matter of months, if not weeks.
He was going to deliver an ultimatum to the Soviet Union and China, surrender and end the war, or watch your capitols be destroyed and your countries become part of the United States.
The President's name is John Harker, former Senator from Upstate New York.
Nicknamed "Mousey" or "Straddler" by both his colleagues and opponents.
He helped create the United States Police Force, made up of ex-soldiers returning from the war overseas.
They replaced local and state police forces and act as judge, jury and executioner out in the field.
He has a convenient way of making his opponents "dissappear" if they oppose any of his legislation; the most recent being a Senator from Alabama, whereupon the state found all of its government funding cut off and water rights restricted, leaving the people to starve/die of thirst.
He was on his way to the Hartford Summit with a tape describing a new type of "clean" nuclear fusion bomb that will kill all the people and animals but leave the infrastructure intact and ready to be inhabited again within a matter of months, if not weeks.
He was going to deliver an ultimatum to the Soviet Union and China, surrender and end the war, or watch your capitols be destroyed and your countries become part of the United States.
to me in my opinion world politics now a days since 2020 kinda reminds me of both escape from new york and its sequel escape from la
And survivor of that unfortunate run-in with the Count from Transylvania.
(Both an actor and character name based joke.)
My problem with Escape From LA is that it's basically the same movie but with more money to play with. Thing is, the budget limits helped make Escape From New York a more streamlined narrative, while the extra money in LA just led to a bunch of unnecessary embellishments and indulgences.
If I recall correctly, when Snake is being told his assignment, he even comments that "this sounds familiar".
I recall him trying some sort of “American” accent. The one Brits try and fail at. Not Peri Brown bad, though
Watching it again, yeah, kind of. I never really had a problem with Nicola Bryant’s more nasal-American accent, since there are people who actually sound like that.
More money, but less free production value:
Bernardi suggested East St. Louis, Illinois, because it was filled with old buildings "that exist in New York now, and [that] have that seedy run-down quality" that the team was looking for. East St. Louis, sitting across the Mississippi River from the more prosperous St. Louis, Missouri, had entire neighborhoods burned out in 1976 during a massive urban fire. Hill said in an interview, "block after block was burnt-out rubble. In some places, there was absolutely nothing, so that you could see three and four blocks away." Also, Alves found an old bridge to serve as the "69th St. Bridge". The filmmaker purchased the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge for one dollar from the government and then gave it back to them, for the same amount, once production was completed, "so that they wouldn't have any liability," Hill remembers.
[...] In New York City, Carpenter persuaded federal officials to grant access to Liberty Island. "We were the first film company in history allowed to shoot on Liberty Island at the Statue of Liberty at night. They let us have the whole island to ourselves. We were lucky. It wasn't easy to get that initial permission. They'd had a bombing three months earlier and were worried about trouble".
Would you prefer Matthew Lillard,then?
If you find my sanctum sanctorum you may watch it gratis.
Setting aside the lousy cgi, esp for the surfing scene, I think the main issue was that NY was made during a darker time, high crime rates, a very right wing president and, most importantly the ongoing Cold War. So it was easier for people to buy into it's world.
LA was made during, what seemed to be at least, more hopeful times, most notably because the Cold War was over, so the world it postulated seemed more of a stretch, if it'd been made five or six years later I think it would have landed better. Hell think of it now with Trump in power and give Stacey Keach and Michelle Forbes ICE branding..
After all this is the film where a character says: "I was a Muslim in South Dakota, suddenly they made that a crime."
LA was made during, what seemed to be at least, more hopeful times, most notably because the Cold War was over, so the world it postulated seemed more of a stretch, if it'd been made five or six years later I think it would have landed better. Hell think of it now with Trump in power and give Stacey Keach and Michelle Forbes ICE branding..
After all this is the film where a character says: "I was a Muslim in South Dakota, suddenly they made that a crime."
I'll take your word for it.
That’s what he was going to offer in the interests of peace? Sounds familiar…
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