Escape From New York (1981)

 

100 best Science Fiction films

Popular Mechanics list

#99. Escape From New York (1981)

 

If you are an SF Fan, and you’ve reached a certain degree of vintage in your chronological age, you get the pleasure of a secret smile with almost every passing year. You sit back and think of your favorite novels, TV shows, and films that were set in bold futures that, and when their anticipated years actually arrive, what didn’t come to pass amuses you. The real year of 1984 wasn’t much like George Orwell’s novel “1984” (first published in 1949). Or maybe you shed a tear, for exactly the same reason, like how the real year of 2001 wasn’t nearly as impressive as the one envisioned in Arthur C. Clarke & Stanley Kubrick’s novel and film “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968).

 

When I originally wrote this, humanity was trapped in-between the anticipated dates of two great, unrealized, SF Dystopias: “Blade Runner” (released in 1982, taking place in 2019) and “Soylent Green” (released in 1973, taking place in 2022) but somehow, we still don’t have space colonization, flying cars, androids in revolt, and we don’t eat each other for lunch (or maybe we do, if you believed those QAnon rumors about Journalist Anderson Cooper). Now we’re caught between the nuclear-war driven post-Apocalypse of “A Boy and His Dog” (1975, set in 2024) and global-pandemic driven post-apocalypse of “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” (2014, set in 2026).

 

Certain then-future years loomed larger in SF than others: 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2012 got the most attention, but 1999 & 2000 had both the Millennium and the Y2K Bug going for them, 2001 had a genre-redefining masterpiece novel and film (“2001: a Space Odessey” (1968)) and 2012 had a Mayan prophesy, but oddly 1997 also got a lot of SF. Why?

 

Restricting myself to cinema, we have “Battle Beyond the Sun” (1962), “Crimes of the Future” (1970), this film (1981), “The Terminator” series (first film 1984), and “Predator 2” (1990). Moving on to TV, there’s the series “Lost in Space” (1967) and TV miniseries “Amerika” (1987). These were all either Dystopian, Apocalyptic, or Post- Apocalyptic, but on a more positive note, according to the mostly 23^rd century set “Star Trek” (TV series first aired in 1966), 1997 is the year after the end of the horrific Eugenics Wars and the beginning of Mankind’s brighter and more Utopian Future.

 

So, what made a 1997 deadline for the future so exciting?

 

Probably something the above film and TV, all made in North America (though “Battle Beyond …” heavily employed footage from a Soviet film for its FX) ignored. Way back in 1898, the British Government secured a 99-year lease for the island of Hong Kong from the Chinese. Then, in 1949, the Communists definitively established their control of the mainland of China. For the next half-century, the anticipated hand-over of Hong Kong from Capitalism to Communism was a looming crisis, and 1997 became recognized as one of the biggest deadlines in history. Yet none of the 1997-set cinema or TV addressed the meaning of that deadline.

 

China and Hong Kong were the places you’d expect the deadline to be most directly addressed but, unfortunately, I’m mostly unfamiliar those countries SF literature and film. I do know there were inhibitors to taking the issue on. In China, SF always faced strong censorship, and that worsened starting in 1983. In Hong Kong, SF wasn’t all that popular until 1997 and after. Even so, there’s the terrific Hong Kong Action Film, “Hardboiled” (1992), which was very much about the anxieties of the coming reunification, but in that case there’s some confusion as to the year the film was actually set, co-Writer and Director John Woo insisted it was set in the year it was released (so the then-present), but some of the Producers insisted it was set in 1998 (so a then-future SF, one year after reunification).

 

Basically, 1997 became the symbolic year of “the center cannot hold,” so much so that it seemed to matter little what the reason for the coming collapse actually was.

 

“Escape from New York’s” Co-Writer (with Nick Castle) and Director John Carpenter penned the first version of script in 1976; he said it was inspired by the Watergate scandal (which had climaxed with President Richard Nixon’s resignation in1974) but it was clearly less-shaped by specific Historical Events than the cynicism they encouraged. “Escape from New York” is an exercise in Ecstatic Nihilism to a degree that would make Nietzsche blush; it viewed urban decay and an Amusement Park of Heroism and Sadism, where none of its characters had any Morals but a few, at least, had a certain degree of Honor. Carpenter, himself, was born in up-state New York, but lived most of his childhood in Kentucky and his adult life in Southern California, and it seems that New York City seems more a Fantasyland than a real place.

 

God knows, those of us who actually lived in NYC in the 1970s knew it was dying, but somehow, we were weirdly proud of it. I’d argue “Escape from …” may have been most inspired by Billy Joel’s joyfully Apocalyptic song, “Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)” (1976).

 

By the time Carpenter finally could make the film, Ed Koch was Mayor in NYC, and there were definite signs of improvement, but in retrospect most of the signs were misleading. Hollywood tourists saw cleaner streets because they never left Manhattan to visit the Outer Boroughs where services continued to degrade, they listened to the Law-and-Order rhetoric while ignoring that that the Homicide rate was still getting worse, and were blind to the fact that homelessness was completely out-of-control. Moreover, Koch’s nemesis, Real Estate Developer Donald Trump, was quickly becoming as much a symbol of the city’s recovery as Koch himself, and with that came the shameless elevation of the most craven forms of greed. Over the course of this movie (which was filmed almost entirely elsewhere), Carpenter repeatedly displayed his ignorance of my city (he kept getting the map wrong), but somehow, he managed to give a better picture of the on-going Soul-Pollution (that most NYers denied existed) than almost anyone else could at the time.

 

The set-up for this then-future was that the USA’s claims of being a Democracy had been rendered clownish because of Police-State oppression. The Federal Government seized the whole of Manhattan Island and turned it into the world’s biggest Penal Colony (when this film was written and released, NYC already featured the world’s biggest Penal Colony, it’s called Riker’s Island, and it sits on the border of the Boroughs of the Bronx and Queens). Manhattan Island was isolated by collapsing the tunnels, blowing most of the bridges, installing landmines and unscalable walls on the few that remain, having helicopter gunships patrolling the rivers, and converting the Statue of Liberty into a guard tower.

 

All inhabitants are under life-sentences, and after being dumped in the prison, are left unsupervised. Criminals must fend for themselves, either by making peace with, or dying at the hands of, the degenerates who’ve been trapped there longer. There are monthly food drops in Central Park, but that always run out before the next delivery, largely because of hoarding by Organized Crime. Those unwanted by even among the unwanted are forced into the sewers, frequently coming up in Cannibalistic rampages.

 

Those who lived above-ground mostly make due by appeasing the super-Crime Boss, the Duke of New York (Isaac Hayes). The Duke is nothing if not an opportunist, and opportunity lands on him when Air Force One was deliberately crash-landed on Manhattan by Terrorists, stranding the President of the USA, John Harker (Donald Pleasance), among all the same tired, poor, huddled masses, wretched refuse, homeless, tempest-tossed, and longing to be free, that President John has spent his political career Dehumanizing and Persecuting.

 

If that’s not bad enough, the Cold War is heating up again. (Oh, the Cold War was still on-going in 1997? How quaint. It’s amazing how few SF Writers could imagine it was ever going to end, right up to the eve of its real ending in 1991.) We are maybe weeks away from the Apocalyptic three-way-conflict of, not WWIII, but WWIV, between US, Russia, and China (kudos, this film at least mentions China). The only thing that can stop WWIV is an Unlimited Free-Energy Technology that President John wants to share with the world in exchange for Peace, but now he can’t because he’s being held a Hostage.

 

Clearly, the world needs a Hero, but who’s available? Well, maybe that War Hero turned hated Criminal, Snake Plissken (Kurt Russel). After attempting to rob the Federal Reserve, Snake was dumped in a Dungeon in some Government Black Site (a running joke in the movie is that when people encounter him, they say, “I thought you were dead”) but is now offered a Full Pardon if he rescues President John. But Snake is un-cooperative (“I don’t give a fuck about your war, or your president”), so Police Commissioner Bob Hauk (Lee Van Cleef) plants a bomb in Snake’s head, and if Snake doesn’t return with President John in 24-hours, it’ll explode.

 

The cast choices are instructive, those in the above two paragraphs are all actors with a reputation in TV or B-movies more than A-releases, hard-working veterans who give solid performances no matter what the material is. Audience familiarity with them is a kind of short-hand, buttressing Characters that are one-dimensional but wonderfully colorful. Economics somewhat effected the casting choices, Carpenter probably couldn’t afford the likes of Charles Bronson (who the studio wanted as Snake but also still taking in near-to-or-more-than a million per film), but also important was that Carpenter, at the time, preferred to work the Actors he had seen most in his own favorite movies, and especially Actors he’d worked with before. Carpenter had worked with both Pleasance and Russell before and after, and behind the camera, the same was true regarding the fore-mentioned Castle, and the soon-to-be mentioned Larry Franco, Barry Bernardi, Debra Hill, and Dean Cundey.

 

This pattern extended to the rest of leads as well: Other legendary Character Actors included Ernest Borgnine was a hyper-talkative cab driver who tosses Molotov cocktails out the roof of is armored vehicle. Harry Dean Stanton was Harold 'Brain' Hellman, a Mad Scientist living in the NY Public Library, which he’s converted into an oil refinery. Adrienne Barbeau was Brain’s mistress Maggie, who had some skills with automatic weapons. Barbeau was also someone who worked with Carpenter both before and after, and was at-the-time, married to him.

 

Even smaller parts were equally colorful, notably Actress Season Hubley, another Carpenter vet and Actor Russell’s then-wife, in the tiny role of the Girl in Chock Full O'Nuts; she was on screen just long enough to provide Snake vital clues and then be eaten by the sewer Cannibals. (Note: Chock Full O'Nuts lunch-counters started shutting down en-mass in the 1970s, and I’m fairly sure that all had been purged from Manhattan by 1997; as of this writing, only one that remains in NYC, in the outer-Borough of Brooklyn.) Also, fun was Frank Doubleday as Romeo, one of the Duke’s Minions, wild-haired, androgynous, and snake-like in his motions. He was yet another Carpenter alumni and Actor Russell credited his tiny part as setting the tone for the whole movie.

 

 

Everybody is enormous fun, but Actors Pleasance and Russell were the best.

 

Pleasance plays President John as both cocky and simpering, reflecting Carpenter’s contempt for long-out-office Nixon. The President at the time was Ronald Reagan and Carpenter wouldn’t really start venting on him until “They Live” (1988). Pleasance often played repulsive Bureaucrats, and despite being English, this was not the first time he was appointed President of the USA; he also cruelly parodied Lyndon B. Johnson in “Mr. Freedom” (1968).

 

Russell, though 32-years younger than Pleasance, had an acting career that was only 13-years shorter, as he started at age 12 by kicking Elvis Presly’s shin in “It Happened at the World’s Fair” (1963), while Pleasance didn’t take to the stage until after being released from a WWII POW camp. As a Child-Actor and then a young-man, Russel developed his public image mostly in family-friendly TV and film, and became one of the greatest assets of Disney Productions during the era when they made most of their worst films. As the quality of the work he was expected to carry on his shoulders continued to degrade, he attempted a second career in Professional Baseball, but when an injury denied him that option, so back to lame movies he went.

 

This film was part of the very beginning of his true Stardom. Only a year before (1980) Russell changed his reputation with three films: In one he worked with Carpenter for the very first time, earning much praise as the title character in “Elvis” (with his then-wife, the above-mentioned Actress Hubley) and then almost as much praise for “Amber Waves” and “Used Cars.” “Escape from …” proved an even greater turning-point in Russell’s career; this was the first film to fully exploit his athleticism, making him an Action Hero, and that would continue to define his professional persona for the next four decades (in “The Christmas Chronicles: 2” (2020), at age 69, he played as an ass-kicking Santa Claus, battling, among other things, drug-crazed, Zombie-ish Elves).

 

Russell truly enjoyed this career-redefining role, "I like my character. He's a mean, arrogant son-of-a-bitch. He's not very endearing, but I think you sympathize with his situation because of his strong individualism. He's the epitome of the anti-hero.” As for the atmosphere on the set, "[T]he most enjoyable picture I've done, because it was a family affair. My wife plays a role, and John's wife, Adrienne Barbeau, is the female lead. My brother-in-law, Larry Franco, was co-producer with Debra Hill, who has worked on all of John's films, as have most of the crew." And in another interview, “We were just like pirates, out on the sea, having a good time. The characters that Isaac [Hayes] and I play, show the sort of disciplined irreverence ‘The Wild Ones’ [1953] mixed with some punk attitudes of today. Snake is a mercenary, and his style of fighting is a combination of Bruce Lee, the Terminator and Darth Vader, with [Clint] Eastwood’s vocal-ness; but there’s also a lot of new wave to him … his individuality makes him acceptable to the audience in a heroic way."

 

To fully convey this film’s cheeky Nihilism, I must clarify that in the last paragraph, Russell wasn’t actually referring to “The Terminator” (1984) but “The Exterminator” (1980), a well-acted, but exceptionally mean-spirted, rip-off of the Charles Bronson film “Deathwish” (1974). Critic Roger Ebert nicely summarized “The Exterminator” as a "sick example of the almost unbelievable descent" that American cinema had taken "into gruesome savagery." That’s equally true here, but in a good way. (Worth noting, for all its brutality, “Escape from …” wasn’t overly explicit, an aesthetic choice noted in all Carpenter’s early films.)

 

The film was ripe with Satirical elements, but none of them were to be taken very seriously; Carpenter’s goals were the joys of purest Escapism, and the Social and Political button-pushing was just to keep your attention, not to make any bold statements. Carpenter again, “There are no good guys in it, and yet it's totally entertaining." This brought the film some Criticism, Newsweek wrote, “Carpenter has a deeply ingrained B-movie sensibility - which is both his strength and limitation. He does clean work, but settles for too little.” One would have to wait until “They Live,” a savaging of Reaganomics, to see Carpenter’s Satirical Teeth really sharpened.

 

The use of music is also instructive. Carpenter is a skilled Composer, and music is always one of the distinctive elements of his films. Here, he collaborated with Alan Howarth, who would work with Carpenter again on later projects. They gave this film its signature, throbbing menace, but there’s only a few songs with lyrics and no visible musicians anywhere. The very little borrowed music was the Jazz cassettes the Cabbie plays while he drives (cassette tapes would prove essential to the plot, though by the time 1997 actually rolled around, they were obsolete). There was also a cheekily-Apocalyptic song that I haven’t been able find a credit for, it appeared early on when Snake stumbles into a decrepit, candle-lit, theater and on-stage are old Transvestites doing a low-camp parody of a Broadway show celebrating the end of Civilization.  Elsewhere, the look is Rock-and-Roll inspired, but there’s no Rock music, in fact no music at all playing in the palaces and cars of the Duke of New York, both of which are adorned with chandeliers.

 

This prison without music has substituted Criminals for beloved Artists, and has Criminal Groupies instead of Rock Groupies. In this world, either the Duke or Snake could be seen as substitutes for Keith Moon or Mick Jagger in the eyes of these downtrodden, as demonstrated by the Girl in Chock Full O'Nuts.

 

The film was also among Carpenter’s finest homages to his personal cinema hero, Howard Hawks. It’s shot with a similar compositional eye as Carpenter’s second film, “Assault on Precinct 13” (1976), a gritty Urban Crime Thriller which served as a sorta-remake of Hawks’ “Rio Bravo” (1959). Here Carpenter showed us the same enthusiastic embrace of wide-screen vistas, and longish scenes with fewer setups, capturing his Actors’ most spontaneous gestures emerging from rhythms of uninterrupted play.

 

Carpenter was also blessed by securing among the finest Production Designers in Hollywood’s history, Joe Alves. Carpenter was drawn to him because of the remarkable work under extreme budget-and-time limitations for the TV show “Night Gallery” (first aired 1970) and a string of acclaimed films with Director Steven Spielberg (“Sugarland Express” (1974), “Jaws” (1975), and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977)). In cinema, at least since “H.G. Wells’ Things to Come” (1936), it has often been difficult to draw clear lines between the work of the Director, and Production Designer, the Cinematographer, and the FX Supervisor, regarding the film’s visual style, because the disciplines so over-lap. Alves has been known to gripe that Critics often credited the Production Designer’s contribution to the other titles, especially the FX Supervisor, but here, the Critics recognized the master’s handiwork in even the earliest reviews. This time it was the FX Supervisor, Roy Arbogast, who was unfairly ignored, but Carpenter seemed to appreciate him, they would work together repeatedly in the future.

 

 

Alves proved a perfect choice given Carpenter’s wide-screen preferences and the heavy reliance on location-shooting to enrich the film. Alves explained, "Say you focus the camera on a huge wall; you can move, you can pan, you can do anything you want - the wall is real and big. Now, when you switch to the matte shots and the miniatures, the viewers say: 'That's got to be real because the wall was real.'

"I think my biggest help to John and Derba Hill in this department is to give them more scope. They've been very successful doing so much for so little, so I have to present something bigger and decide the best place to put the money visually."

 

The film’s whole feel is Noirish, but set in the Future, so that Noir needed to be up-dated. “I really wanted to do it because it has two distinctly different appearances: one is a very medieval, depressed look - it's like New York as bad as it could be, but even ten times worse; the other look is slick and futuristic. These are two dramatic extremes that present a real challenge." Though filming in NYC was mostly cost-prohibitive, Alves spent time in the then gritty-but-trendy neighborhood of SoHo to get an idea of the visual feel he needed to recreate, falling in love with the 19^th c. cast-iron buildings contrasting with the clothing of the era’s Nightclub-going youth.

 

(Here a nod must be given to Costume Designer Steve Loomis, who cut his teeth creating Elton John and Stevie Wonder’s wonderfully OTT on-stage looks. Loomis created quite a menagerie here. Especially successful was Snake’s now iconic visage, man almost all in black, leather-jacket, muscle-shirt, eye-patch, plus winter-camo-print cargo-pants and a naughtily-suggestive tattoo).

 

Alves also benefited much from the work of Location Manager and Associate Producer Barry Bernardi, who had gone "on a sort of all-expense-paid trip across the country looking for the worst city in America." Almost everything not filmed in a studio was done on location in East St. Louis, Illinois, and to a lesser extent Atlanta, Georgia, because they were filled with the same kind of old buildings "that exist in New York now, and [that] have that seedy run-down quality."

 

At the time, real-world East St. Louis was suffering under its own truly Apocalyptic Urban Blight. It had economically peaked around 1950, but soon suffered as Industries re-structured and abandoned it, with new freeways bypassing it and encouraging White-flight (much like the damage Robert Moses did to NYC during the same period). Next came corrupt Patronage Politics of Mayor William E. Mason (who was likely the beneficiary of a rigged election) who lorded over the accelerating decay from 1975 to 1979, with all the misery climaxing in a devastating fire in 1976, the debris of which was not cleaned-out and rebuilt even by the time of this movies 1981 filming. Carpenter’s most common behind-the-camera collaborator, Producer and Screenwriter Debra Hill, described it as "block after block was burnt-out rubble. In some places, there was absolutely nothing, so that you could see three and four blocks away."

 

 

Alves again, “[T]he city officials bent over backwards to help us in every way." The shooting schedule was grueling, calling for three weeks of night lensing, 9 pm to 6 am, in high-crime ghettos. The mayhem the film crew executed included car chases, flaming airplanes, and Commandos running amok. "The combination of look and convenience was great.” It had been the first major film made in the city in more than fifteen years, and among the impossible-seeming gifts the city granted Carpenter was deliberate blackouts, ten-blocks-square at a time.

 

Carpenter, “[T]he Manhattan Island prison sequences, which had few lights, mainly torch lights, like feudal England. After a while, the night shoot really began grinding us down. But basically, it was more fun to do than it was tough. Listen, I love making movies."

 

Cinematographer Dean Cundey must be singled out for high paise, he was a veteran of low-budget Horror, often with Carpenter, but also with others who were not merely low-budget, but Poverty-Row Grindhouse. He developed gifts for low-light shooting superior to many others who were better paid, and this eventually make him a favorite of Director Spielberg.

 

The very little filming that was actually done in NYC was on Liberty Island. Of that Carpenter said, "The city officials not only gave permission but were very helpful. 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 [they] were worried about trouble. But we were good tenants. We were extremely careful, and cleaned up our messes afterward."

 

The bombing he referred to happened on June 3, 1980. It happened after-hours and resulted in no injuries, but damaged a first edition copy of Emma Lazarus's legendary poem, “Give me your tired, your poor, /Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, /The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. /Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, /I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

 

At least five separate Terrorist groups took responsibility, but, within days, the bombing was pinned on Croatian Freedom Fighters, who were, at the time, engaged in an on-going, multi-State Terror Campaign. These acts of Terror are forgotten now, largely ignored even then, and resulted in no arrests. When the Twin Towers (a vital landmark in this film) were destroyed on September 11^th, 2001 (9/11), that was a Terror attack that changed the course of US history. The Croatians initially (but only shortly) distracted the FBI by claiming responsibility for that crime that was well-beyond their capacity.

 

Though $7 million was Carpenter’s best-budget-to-date (seven times more that of his previously largest budget, “The Fog” (1980)) it was still ludicrously low considering the film’s ambition. The same year as “Escape from …” saw “The Incredible Shrinking Woman,” had a budget that ballooned to $13 million even though the story was little more ambitious than a TV sitcom.

 

One of the challenges was the computer graphics, an important part of the film’s first 30 minutes. A mere two years prior, 75 seconds of now-primitive computer graphics in “The Black Hole” (1979) cost $50,000. The same year “Escape from …” was released, we saw the first application of sophisticated CGI in a Hollywood film, “Looker,” whose total (so not just the CGI) budget may have been as high as $12 million.

 

Carpenter simply couldn’t afford that, so most of the computer graphics were actually hand-drawn, and the most impressive bit, the in-flight computer of Snake’s glider, was the creation of Carpenter’s model-maker Brian Chin. Chin had made a model of lower Manhattan for other shots, spray-painted it black, outlined the building edges in reflective green tape, and then it was filmed in black-light (one un-named Critic referred to this as “five bucks and a trip to the hardware store”). In other words, this computer-dominated Dystopia had no actual computers.

 

 

“Escape …” was one of the triumphs of Carpenter’s finest era, extending from his first feature, “Dark Star” (1974) and climaxing with his first major studio film, “The Thing” (1982). Afterwards, he would continue to make fine films, but they became increasingly hit-and-miss. All these films, except “The Thing,” were low-to-lowish-budget indie films.  “Escape from …” also emerged during that short window when everything he did was profitable -- Carpenter’s first two films lost money, but “Halloween” (1978) through “Escape from…” were box-office winners, but after that, things got dicey again.

 

“Escape from …” was clearly influenced by “Mad Max” (1979), and the two films’ popularity led to a specific kind of post-Apocalyptic movie that flourished for most of the coming decade, wherein even lower-budget productions combined elements of “Mad Max” and “Escape from …” These generally came out of Italy, but clearly being pitched to the American market. There a too many of these to list, but the most explicit rip-offs were “1990: The Bronx Warriors” (1982) and “2019, After the Fall of New York” (1983). Carpenter and his studio seemed tolerant of these bargain-basement, poorly-distributed outings, but got mad when a truly great SF Director, Luc Besson, co-Wrote the most shamelessly rip-off of them all, “Lockout” (2021). Carpenter and associates sued on grounds of plagiarism. Carpenter won, Besson appealed, but eventually Besson not only lost the appeal, but he also had to pay even more money and received even worse press, than he would’ve had he kept his mouth shut after losing the first round.

 

Another important thing “Escape from …” influenced was the emergence of the literary SF sub-Genre Cyberpunk. Though the film’s Computers disappear after the first half-hour and even though Cyberpunk is overwhelming interested in the consequences of Computer Networks on our lives, this film’s gritty Future-Noir is a perfect expression of the sub-Genre’s style. The term “Cyberpunk” was coined in a title of a Bruce Bethke story two years after this film’s release (1982) and became broadly know after the success of William Gibson’s novel “Neromancer” (1984).

 

Part of Gibson’s much-imitated writing style was to find a way to convey the Macro-Economic and Political situations that were crushing his Protagonists without huge Expository dumps; he chose to employ evocative, but seemingly throw-away, phrases, like a future version of how we say “post-9/11” and even a stranger knows what we’re talking about. By his own admission, Gibson latched on to one sentence in this film: When a Character, Police Commissioner Bob, says to Snake, "You flew the wing-five over Leningrad, didn't you?"

 

That sentence is pregnant with a World History that is mutually understood by Characters, but not explained to the Audience. Never-the-less, from it we know that the World-mess isn’t a very recent development, all the intervening years between 1981 and 1997 were pretty rotten.

 

Carpenter eventually Directed a sequel, something he generally didn’t do even though a number of his films became franchises. “Escape from LA” (1996) should’ve been superior to the original for no other reason than Carpenter knew Los Angeles better that NYC; but despite some fun scenes and performances, it felt more like one of the Italian rip-offs than its own film. Russell was back looking as if he hadn’t aged a day in the interceding decade-and-a-half. The loathsome President was now played by Actor Cliff Robertson and was Carpenter’s second swipe at Reagan. By then, in the Real World, Reagan was out-of-office almost a decade and crippled with Dementia, so that might have been a bit mean-spirited. The film also featured Actress A. J. Langer as an even crueler parody of Reagan’s daughter Patti.

 

There were also three comic-book series, a board-game, talk of a spin-off series from Japan that fizzled out, and the great Director Roberto Rodriguez keeps talking about a remake that, I must admit, I don’t look forward to.

 

When the real year 1997 finally did roll around, things were not as the film suggested. The then-President, Bill Clinton, was on the road to Impeachment just as Nixon before him, but this time for lying about a blowjob, not subverting the whole of Democracy. The Economy was good, and Crime was down, but I do have to point out that some Police State tactics, like mass-incarceration, were becoming more popular even as Crime diminished (this film’s President John was responding brutally to catastrophically rising Crime, real-world Clinton had somewhat less excuse). NYC specifically was going through a wonderful period under Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who looked so much more impressive back then than he does now. One prediction that seemed to come weirdly true was how Rock-Groupies were becoming Crime-Groupies as more-and more Pop-Stars were becoming better known for their Criminal records than their musical out-put, some even faked Criminal records for greater recognition, and an escalating feud between Rap-music labels on the East and West Coast of the USA started reaping Assassinations of a few Artists. Tech giant AOL dropped its prices and the profoundly corrupt WorldCom was created, opening the doors to the Internet dominating everyone’s lives and feeding the Dot Com bubble, that no one was ready to admit was a bubble, but really hurt NYC’s economy starting in 2000, a crisis which was exacerbated by the Terrorist attack of 9/11. Terrorism was another thing we were ignoring, even though both Foreign and Domestic attacks were getting more frequent, bigger and deadlier, and our refusal to see that set left us vulnerable to 9/11. There was also the public announcement of a cloned sheep named Dolly. The transfer of Hong Kong was shockingly peaceful, because the Chinese Government’s subversion of Hong Kong’s uncertain, but ferociously protected, Democratic institutions was delayed for several years (that issue is more contentious as I write this then when the actual transfer happened more than 20-years-ago).

 

SF was exploding in 1997. Novelist Dung Kai-cheung published “Mingzi de Meigui” ("The Rose of the Name," considered Hong Kong’s greatest SF novel to-date (and no, I haven’t read it). SF writers in the English-speaking world were enjoying advances on their novels the likes of which they had never seen before but would soon evaporate as the emerging Internet would ruin all print media. Cyberpunk seemed to be fading in 1997, but was soon revitalized, maybe because when its predictions started to come true which caused a lot of the business of SF literature got ruined, and the Authors reacted. 1997 proved to be one of the most important years ever in SF cinema, was an insane explosion of diversity, creativity, and quality: “Contact,” “Cube,” “Event Horizon,” “Face/Off”  (the above mentioned Director John Woo’s first unambiguously SF film and his best work in the USA after leaving Hong Kong; not long after he’d return to Chinese-controlled Hong Kong because, get this, he found more creative freedom under half-Communism than in Capitalist Hollywood), “The Fifth Element” (Directed by the above-mentioned Luc Besson), “Gattaca,” “The Lost World: Jurassic Park,” “Men in Black,” and “Starship Troopers.” Carpenter didn’t release a film in 1997; for years, his overall output was slipping in quality, and even his really good movies were losing money (he released only one profitable feature during this entire decade) and would soon semi-retire.

 

Trailer:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10OoccK7dIw