Escape from LA (1996) | Sci-Fi Saturdays

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Well I just got into town about an hour ago. Took a look around, see which way the wind blow.

Escape from L.A. was the much awaited successor to John Carpenter’s 1981 cult-classic Escape from New York. Unfortunately, it does not deliver the goods, seeming more like a rehash of the earlier film without the same novelty, and only half the energy.

First Impressions

The trailer starts like many theater trailers, reminding audiences about the rules for watching a film. But then it gets weird, such as no red meat or no freedom of religion. The audience is reminded that any infractions of these rules will lead them to be imprisoned on the island of Los Angeles. The audience is reintroduced to Kurt Russell’s antihero Snake Plissken, who is in a showdown with four men with guns. He tosses a can in the air, letting them know they can draw when it hits the ground. He cheats and kills them before the can lands. There’s more mayhem and craziness in the sequel to Escape from New York.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

It is 2013, 16 years after Snake Plissken helped to rescue the President from New York. Since then, the United States Police Force was formed, an ultra-conservative President (Cliff Robertson) was elected–moving the White House to Lynchburg, VA and installing a new moral code in America. On August 22, 2000 a major earthquake rocked Los Angeles severing it from the mainland as its own island. The President was installed for a life term and set up Directive 17, which made Los Angeles a deportation center for morally corrupt citizens to be expelled from the new Moral American theocracy.

His daughter, Utopia (AJ Langer) has absconded with a Black Box, containing a remote control to launch the Sword of Damocles from orbiting satellites around the globe, and landed in Los Angeles to help Cuervo Jones (Georges Corraface) mount a third-world revolution against the United States. At the USPF headquarters outside Los Angeles, Commander Malloy (Stacy Keach) and Brazen (Michelle Forbes) “recruit” Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) to return the device and execute Utopia. His hand is forced after being injected by the Plutoxin 7 virus, which gives him only 10 hours to complete his mission. He is of course extremely unhappy with being coerced into service, again.

On the island, he spies Cuervo’s motorcade and attempts to steal the Black Box, but is rebuffed by his motorcycle riding goons. He uses the can trick as seen in the trailer, and sits down thinking of what to do next. He is met by Map to the Stars Eddie (Steve Buscemi) who offers him assistance, and warns him not to enter Beverly Hills without a map. Snake goes anyway. He is yelled at by Taslima (Valeria Golino) when he begins making too much noise moving through the streets. They are captured by the henchmen for the Surgeon General of Beverly Hills (Bruce Campbell), a plastic surgeon that uses body parts from strangers to continually enhance himself and others in his employ.

They manage to escape from Beverly Hills, with Taslima wanting to come along to help. Unfortunately she is shot by the Korean Dragons. Eddie rescues Snake, but then tranquilizes him, revealing he represents Cuervo. Snake is taken to the Los Angeles Coliseum, to take part in some gladiatorial games, where there is never a winner. Snake is able to complete the challenge and escapes before Cuervo can shoot him. He escapes into the sewers with the Black Box and Utopia follows, wanting to go home. Snake refuses to shoot her as ordered, and is himself wounded by Eddie.

Snake ends up in a canyon where he meets up with Pipeline (Peter Fonda), an aging surfer. They ride the waves down the canyon, as Snake figures out a way to get to the Happy Kingdom in Anaheim, the staging area for Cuervo’s invasion. Luckily, Eddie is driving by, so Snake jumps off the surfboard into the car, and has him take them to meet Hershe (Pam Grier), the only other person in town who hates Cuervo as much as Snake. The queenpin lives on the Queen Mary, which is now in downtown Los Angeles after the quake. Snake recognizes her as his old buddy Carjack Malone who apparently has had some minor corrective surgery.

Hershe, Snake, and Eddie take hang gliders to the Happy Kingdom and attack Cuervo and his forces. Snake is able to get the remote control to the Damocles satellites and takes off in a helicopter. Eddie switches the remote with his own remote device, but Snake is watching closely. When Cuervo’s rocket hits the copter, Eddie is thrown out, and the flaming copter, with Utopia inside makes it back safely. It is revealed to Snake that the virus is only a strong flu, and he is to be killed. Utopia is found with a remote in her pocket, but it turns out to be Eddie’s tour package. Snake reveals he has the real device, but cannot be killed as he’s using a hologram projector provided to him by Malloy. Snake enters the world code and uses Damocles to send an EMP pulse shutting down the entire world.

“To the American people! Now is the time to rise up and demand the surrender of the President and his corrupt theocracry of lies and terror!” – Utopia

History in the Making

Escape from L.A. is one of John Carpenter’s later films, and another in a long line of his work in science-fiction. It’s a long awaited sequel to his 1981 dystopian action film Escape from New York, and his seventh sci-fi film after Dark Star, Escape from New York, The Thing, Starman, They Live, and Memoirs of An Invisible Man. It was not his last genre effort. That belongs to Ghosts of Mars in 2001, which was his second to last film before he stopped directing with 2010s The Ward.

Unfortunately the combination of fan interest for another Snake Plissken adventure, clashed with the actual film release. While many moviegoers wanted to see Snake in another film, sticking it to the man, and being a bad-ass, what they got was basically a remake of the original film. When asked by creativescreenwriting.com about audience reaction and Escape from L.A. being a “good film” in 2015, nearly 10 years after the film’s release, Carpenter stated “Well, give it a few more years. Escape from L.A. is better than the first movie. Ten times better. It’s got more to it. It’s more mature. It’s got a lot more to it. I think people didn’t like it because they felt it was a remake, not a sequel.” That’s a bold statement by the writer/director which still doesn’t seem to stand up all that well even 26 years after the films’ release.

Genre-fication

Why does Carpenter think that L.A. is a better movie? He claims it’s more mature and there may be something to that. Both he and Kurt Russell were definitely at a different place in their lives. When Escape From New York was released, it was still early in both their careers. They had only worked together once before (on the TV movie Elvis). And they may not have been as cynical about the world. Granted, New York is an extremely cynical film, but it does feature some good people. Escape From L.A. has one character that could possibly be considered “good” in Tasmila, but she is quickly killed off.

But let’s take a look at the film as a sequel versus a remake. By 1996 Hollywood’s franchise machine was in full gear. Anything that could possibly have a sequel made from it, did. Whether that was sci-fi (Aliens, Terminator 2, Back to the Future part II, Predator 2), action (Lethal Weapon 2, Rambo part II, Die Hard 2, Beverly Hills Cop 2) or comedy (Mannequin 2, The Naked Gun 2½, Look Who’s Talking 2). And churning out similar-enough versions of the popular (or passable) original film was not always about quality over quantity. Often enough, just getting the characters that audiences respond to back in another film was good enough. What makes Escape From L.A. disappointing is that John Carpenter seems like a director that would know better. Or at least have more control to say that his film is not working.

The film has a very similar look to the original, set mostly at night in a dystopian future where a major American city has been turned into a detention center. Both films involve the President at their core: with one having him trapped in the oppressive world, and the other with his daughter being the quarry. Snake Plissken is brought in as the only option for rescue (or in the sequels case, assassination), forced to do the job by coercion, given a number of high-tech tools for the job and left on his own to make it happen. Along the way he meets odd and scary characters who threaten or help him as he achieves his goal usually on his own terms. It’s clear that Escape From L.A. took the same beats and plot elements from Escape From New York, but twisted them just enough to be different. Los Angeles is an island after an earthquake versus New York as a penitentiary. The President’s daughter steals a weapon and hides in the world, instead of the President crashing into the hell hole. People telling Snake they thought he’d be taller, instead of saying they heard he was dead. While some sequels that rehash plot or story elements from their original films can come off as fresh and new, it is just not the case here.

Societal Commentary

Probably the biggest issue is that the characters are not more fleshed out. They all seem like two-dimensional stereotypes of a character instead of actual characters. Now, Escape From New York was not the epitome of character development either, but at least the supporting characters did some things with Snake. Brain, Maggie and Cabbie helped him navigate the world, while The Duke seemed to command his minions for obvious reasons. Here, characters only show up when needed and then are quickly discarded, being nothing more than cameos for actors. This is not a dark version of The Wizard of Oz anymore, it’s Snake bouncing from person to person towards an end goal that he never really seems in control of, revisiting moments from the first film over and over again.

Yet Carpenter says this is a more mature film. He definitely gets credit for his take on the political landscape of the future. His Los Angeles is part of an America where moralism and theocracy reign. Where an extremely conservative President managed to get appointed for life, move the center of government to Lynchburg, VA, and create a country where moral transgressions get you deported from the country. Deportees get the option of electrocution prior to being shipped off to Los Angeles (which is the place where the refuse of society are shoved, away from the God-fearing people of Moral America), allowing them to choose their fate. It’s a much more cynical world that Carpenter paints in this film. So much so that in the end–rather than giving the bird to the powers that be and striding off into the sunrise, Snake decides to collapse the entire world’s infrastructure. He uses the power of the Damocles EMPs to reset global civilization back hundreds of years. It may be a maturity, but also seems like a crotchety old man telling the kids to stay off his lawn.

The Science in The Fiction

The MacGuffin (the plot device that drives the characters and narrative forward) in this film is the black box which holds the remote control for the Sword of Damocles. Similar to the President’s “football” from the first film (the briefcase with nuclear launch codes), it’s a military creation that uses a series of satellites to direct targeted EMPs (electromagnetic pulses) onto parts of the world below. As the film describes, EMPs do no harm to organic material, but shut down and destroy computer chips and electronic devices. Well, they do no harm to organic material that is not in an airplane or some other technological device traveling dozens of miles an hour when it hits. People obviously will die in car crashes, plane crashes and the like. But you get the picture.

It’s an oft-fantasized plot where the world is ridden of its technology, allowing society to have a reset or breather from itself. A global “time-out” from the destruction being caused by too-much technology. The way that the film describes the device, it would probably not have the specificity of being able to shut down an individual location or device. And in a global scale assault, there would probably be places that were not affected. But since the device is more a warning for audiences, than a real consequence that would be followed up on, it’s close enough.

Snake also makes use of a portable holographic projector that has a range of up to “a half mile.” That may seem a little extreme. Why would the device provided by the USPF have something so large? It becomes apparent in the final moments, as it was all a plot device for Snake to, once again, put one over on the man. It’s unclear how the holographic projection might work with such specificity at that range. Even in Total Recall, the holographic image was reversed and had some glitches. Here, it’s crisp, clean and appears to be as real as if the person was standing next to you.

The Final Frontier

Carpenter and Russell did have plans for a third film, tentatively called Escape From Mars, but after the disappointment of Escape From L.A. at the box-office, those plans were changed. Supposedly the script was repurposed and altered to become Ghost of Mars, a hybrid sci-fi/horror film. But that wasn’t the end of Snake Plissken. Marvel Comics published The Adventures of Snake Plissken in 1997, a one-shot that occurred after the events of Escape From New York and before the Cleveland escape teased in this film. BOOM! Studios then published 16 issues called Escape From New York, which also followed the events of that film, but with the final arc telling the events of the infamous Cleveland story.

Whatever your opinion of Escape From L.A., it was created at a time where older ideas and newer technology were coming together. It serves as an interesting time capsule of mid-90s filmmaking–from its passable special effects, to its bevy of character actors and cameos. Just remember that should you ever meet Snake Plissken, it’s best to give him a wide berth and let him go on about his business.

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