His films often revolve around everyday people forced to confront a new reality. Snake is a certified badass, and everyone – including the inmates in Manhattan and Hauk (Lee Van Cleef) who chose Snake for the mission – is already fully aware of that.Ĭarpenter rarely has characters like Snake Plissken. Escape from New York is the rare beast in Carpenter’s filmography where the protagonist rarely feels like his life is in danger because there’s almost always a way out and his experience on both sides of the law keeps him conscious of the potential risks.
Even with their training, there’s nowhere to run during the siege on a police station that comes out of nowhere from trying to help an innocent civilian in Assault on Precinct 13. He’s not forced to face an unknown threat like the characters in The Thing, nor is he a defenseless babysitter being stalked by a killer like Laurie Strode in Halloween. Where Carpenter’s heroes are often unprepared or taken aback by the task at hand, Snake is the opposite: he’s conscious of the danger, doesn’t have much to live for, and has the experience to handle whatever obstacles he encounters.
#SNAKE ESCAPE NEW YOIRK FULL#
Offered a chance for a full pardon if he can bring the President back in 24 hours, Snake accepts the mission and now has to navigate the criminal cesspool of Manhattan. So when Air Force One crashes into the prison, and the President of the United States (Donald Pleasance) is captured by The Duke and held hostage, it’s up to the military to get someone into Manhattan and get the President out before a meeting of world superpowers takes place without his presence.Įnter Snake Plissken, a decorated war hero who found himself on the opposite side of the law when he robbed the Federal Reserve. Set in the near future of 1997, Manhattan has been completely boxed in by the United States government and turned into a maximum-security prison with no way out. However, in 1981, John Carpenter and Nick Castle wrote Escape From New York: an action film about a mission into hostile territory by a reluctant hero.Įscape From New York has since become a classic for so many reasons – it’s iconic Snake Plissken (played by Kurt Russell, and famously paid homage to with Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid protagonist, Solid Snake) a variety of quirky, memorable characters including Ernest Borgnine’s Cabbie, Frank Doubleday’s Romero, Harry Dean Stanton’s Brain, and of course, Isaac Hayes as The Duke and a setting that allows for unrelenting carnage to take place without any repercussion. Carpenter also reminisces about the 1987 cult hit They Live, its epic six-minute fight scene, and the film's star, Roddy Piper, who died in July.Up until 1981, and even after that, director John Carpenter tended to depict a similar situation that he could transplant into multiple settings and genres: what if evil invaded an unaware and perceived-to-be safe space? In 1976’s Assault on Precinct 13, a street gang suddenly launches an all-out war on a police station while in 1978’s Halloween, a suburban town is terrorized by a masked killer in 1980s, The Fog, a peaceful, coastal town, is terrorized by an ancient curse and even afterward 1982’s The Thing has a remote science outpost forced to fight a mysterious, infectious alien. See THR's interview for more from Carpenter, who directed the 1978 slasher classic Halloween. The last Metal Gear Solid, The Phantom Pain, launched on Sept. Kojima, of course, is done with Konami after nearly 30 years with the publisher, though Konami insists he's technically on vacation. Carpenter and CanalPlus reeived only a modest settlement.
The question came up as THR asked about Carpenter's copyright infringement lawsuit against Luc Besson over 2012's Lockout, which Carpenter and fellow rightsholder CanalPlus considered a more direct ripoff of Escape From New York.
Why? "I know the director of those games, and he's a nice guy," Carpenter told THR. Creator Hideo Kojima has been forthright about the film's influence on his work, and that almost landed him and Konami in court.Ĭarpenter, speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, said one of the rights holders to his 1981 film "wanted to also go after the video game Metal Gear Solid, which is kind of a rip-off of Escape From New York, too," Carpenter said. Solid Snake is, quite openly, an homage to Snake Plissken, the protagonist of John Carpenter's Escape From New York.
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