‘Escape from L.A.’: John Carpenter’s underrated camp masterpiece
It’s impossible for any director to go into production on a movie with designs on securing cult classic status. While the initial reception to Escape from L.A. was lukewarm at best, John Carpenter has always maintained that it was superior to its predecessor.
The original emerged during one of the hottest streaks any filmmaker has ever embarked upon, with Carpenter repeatedly knocking it out of the park to deliver Halloween, The Fog, Escape from New York, The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China, and They Live. All of this happened within a ten-year span of greatness between 1978 and 1988, but he only ever directed one sequel in his entire career.
Given his iconic status, it was fitting that Kurt Russell’s Snake Plissken took the honour of headlining it, but it would be a decade and a half before Escape from L.A. made its way into cinemas. When it did, nobody seemed sure how to react. It was achingly similar to the first instalment on a narrative level, but that was kind of the point, with the follow-up being a sly, tongue-in-cheek subversion of its own forebear.
Set in the darkest recesses of 2013, Cliff Robertson’s president decides to wield his powers to near-tyrannical levels, exiling those who dare to go against the grain of his politics to the barren wasteland of Los Angeles. When his daughter steals the detonator to a nuclear weapon and heads off to the city to be with the man she loves, Plissken gets the call to embark on his latest death-defying adventure to save her.
The thing is, Carpenter was completely aware he was telling a very similar story, which is why he had so much fun telling it. Escape from L.A. is bigger, brasher, bolder, campier, surreal, humorous, and arguably entertaining on a base level than New York, with the director revelling in the bold creative call to take everything that worked about the first film and openly mock it. It doesn’t always come off from a tonal perspective, but it’s an absolute blast nonetheless.
Carpenter has even gone on record saying, “Escape from L.A. is better than the first movie,” and that gonzo approach to the solitary sequel in his filmography extends right through to a rug-pulling finale that caps off the entire story in a suitably anarchic fashion.
Yes, the surfing scene is still an eyesore to look at and a gross miscalculation on how far CGI technology had advanced to be even remotely convincing for a second. Still, having the hero technically save the day by plunging the entire planet back into the dark ages by destroying the Sword of Damocles system carried on Escape from L.A.‘s repeated intention to both do exactly what was expected of it but in the complete opposite way.
The chiselled hero saves the day and prevents untold disaster, sure. However, Carpenter positively thrives in giving his audience exactly what they wanted in the broadest of strokes, but having no small measure of a laugh at their expense in the process of doing it through means that came completely out of left field.
