Escape From New York (1981) – Time for the shameful admission: I’d never seen it before.
Time for the second shameful admission: I didn’t think it was all that great.
I mean, yes, indie film, yes, audacious premise, Kurt Russell sure looks cool, yes, but… It’s just a little bland, you know? I mean, New York, once the center of western culture (if you ask New Yorkers), is now a Lord of the Flies superprison — shouldn’t that lead to a more over-the-top movie? And the pacing is just too leisurely. I was shouting at the screen, “Edit this scene! Tighten it up! Cut to the chase! More boom!” This is one of the few movies that I think should be remade, so that the Hollywood spectacle machine can generate enough action to make the premise worthwhile.
Now, the argument can (and has) been made that the deliberate pace is part of Carpenter’s attempt to replicate what made Sergio Leone’s “Man With No Name” trilogy such classics, with Snake Plissken as the ever-so-cool antihero. But there are two problems with this: One, the Eastwoodian hero’s charisma is fueled entirely by his quiet confidence, while Snake’s main attribute is belligerence — not nearly as charistmatic. Two, the classic spaghetti westerns excelled in visual tableau; by contrast, Escape From New York’s main visual motif was “don’t let you see enough to know that this isn’t really New York.”
The hate mail may now commence.
![photo_1_7039c9eeb35c3a8071709ce88fd2c7c9[1]](https://nathanshumate.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/photo_1_7039c9eeb35c3a8071709ce88fd2c7c91.jpg)
Oblivion (2013) – Way, waaaaay too much setup. Even after a lengthy voiceover prologue, fully half of the movie was preamble, and the rest of it revealed a different, Rube-Goldbergian backstory. Morgan Freeman was criminally underused. And there’s just something imbalanced about 51-year-old Tom Cruise being caught in a pseudo-love triangle between 34-year-old Olga Kurylenko and 32-year-old Andrea Riseborough. All in all, this one just felt like more time should have been spent thinking the story through before throwing $120 million at it.
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) – Yup, another genre classic that I’d never seen before. Although I really wasn’t missing much. Yes, it’s good, but everything good in it was done better in The Road Warrior. (Just compare the final escape-chase in each movie to see the obvious superiority of the earlier one — and that’s ignoring the fact that it was the natural conclusion to The Road Warrior‘s plot, while in Beyond Thunderdome it was essentially an attempt to throw in the scene from The Road Warrior that audiences had loved so much.) Beyond Thunderdome was essentially an attempt to redo The Road Warrior with a bigger budget for an American audience. And with Tina Turner. (Gotta mention Tina Turner.) Really, the biggest difference between them was that The Road Warrior inspired a bunch of cheap Italian knock-offs, whereas Beyond Thunderdome inspired a bunch of cheap American (usually Roger Corman-produced) knock-offs.
Escape from New York: Really sad to hear you didn’t love Escape from New York as much as I do. I could go on and on about all of the memorable scenes, dialogue, and set pieces. I’ve seen this movie easily 20+ times and it’s still great. In response to your criticisms, I think the main issue is that you may be judging the film based on today’s MTV-influenced over-stimulation cinema as opposed to 1981’s movie-going standards and in that context, yes, the film probably is a letdown but judged on its own merits (and especially it’s reactions to the political climate of the early 1980’s, it’s excellent social commentary with a lead who perfectly captures the sentiment of the time).
Oblivion: I didn’t dislike this as much as you did but I also saw many flaws that you had pointed out. I still thought it had enough new ideas to be interesting but I generally agree with you on this one.
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome: The worst of the Mad Max films. The first half is actually pretty awesome but second half with the children is what really kills it. That being said, Master Blaster is one of the best characters in the entire series so it has a few things going for it.
I think instead that John Carpenter directs very deliberately, and for some movies (Halloween, They Live, The Thing), it works very well… but not as much with an action movie with an over-the-top premise.
I loved Escape from New York when I saw it, which was some time in the 80’s on HBO. Don’t think I’ve seen it in at least a couple decades. I’m siding with Ben. While it certainly doesn’t have the intensity of other Carpenter works like Halloween, They Live!, or The Thing, I still think it works for the time period it was written in.
Never saw Oblivion because I can’t in good conscience contribute money to any Tom Cruise vehicle. However, it’s on (extended) basic cable now. Still, not sure I want to invest the time in it.
I agree with Nathan on Thunderdome. Haven’t seen the new Gibson-less Mad Max flick, but I heard it was good. Still, some of the previews made me think that Road Warrior climax chase was being done yet again.
Funny thing: I haven’t seen Escape From New York either; well, I’ll get to it one of these days. I do remember reading that one of the makers of Cloverfield was inspired by a picture on the VHS cover for Escape From New York showing the head of the Statue of Liberty lying in the streets, and how cheated he felt when he didn’t see that in the actual movie. Hence the brief shot in Cloverfield of the Statue of Liberty’s head lying in the middle of the street after the monster ripped it off; he finally showed those false advertisers how awesome the real thing would be.