Escape from New York

Escape from New York

Company type	Independent film
Industry	Film
Founded	1981 (1981)
Founder	John Carpenter
Products	Film

Escape from New York is a 1981 American independent sci-fi action film that was co-written, co-scored, and directed by John Carpenter. The cast features Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Pleasence, Isaac Hayes, Adrienne Barbeau, and Harry Dean Stanton.

The narrative is set in the year 1997, portraying a United States overwhelmed by crime, which has transformed Manhattan into a high-security penitentiary. After terrorists hijack Air Force One and it crashes inside the fortified borough, former Special Forces operative and federal inmate Snake Plissken (Russell) is assigned to retrieve the President within 24 hours in return for a full pardon.

Carpenter conceived the storyline during the mid-1970s, drawing inspiration from the Watergate scandal. Following the success of Halloween, he secured funding and primarily shot the film in St. Louis, Missouri with an estimated budget of $6 million. The production team included producers Debra Hill and Larry J. Franco, alongside co-writer Nick Castle, who is recognized for portraying Michael Myers in Halloween.

Premiering on July 10, 1981, in the United States, the film achieved both critical acclaim and box office success, grossing in excess of $50 million. It received four nominations at the Saturn Awards, including categories for Best Science Fiction Film and Best Direction. The movie has since attained cult status and was succeeded by the sequel Escape from L.A. (1996), which Carpenter also wrote and directed, featuring Russell reprising his role.

Plot

In 1988, amidst a conflict between the United States and a coalition of China and the Soviet Union, Manhattan is converted into a maximum security prison to address a dramatic 400% increase in crime. The island becomes isolated and subjected to intense surveillance.

By 1997, during a flight to a peace summit, terrorists seize control of Air Force One carrying President John Harker. The President is restrained with handcuffs linked to a briefcase and ejected into Manhattan via an escape pod as the aircraft crashes.

Police Commissioner Bob Hauk organizes a rescue operation but receives a warning from Romero, an associate of the Duke of New York—a dominant crime lord—that interference will result in the President’s death. Snake Plissken, a former Special Forces soldier serving time for robbing the Federal Reserve, agrees to Hauk’s offer: rescue the President within 22 hours or face detonation of micro-explosives implanted in his neck.

Using a stealth glider, Snake lands atop the World Trade Center and traces the President’s signal to an abandoned vaudeville theater but encounters only a homeless man holding the device. Assuming the President has perished, Snake is reminded by Hauk that failure means certain death. When ambushed by starving prisoners, he is saved by "Cabbie," a taxi driver.

Cabbie escorts Snake to Harold "Brain" Hellman, an engineer advising the Duke who operates a gasoline refinery supplying fuel for remaining vehicles. Brain reveals that the Duke intends to escape via the 69th Street Bridge using the President as leverage. Snake coerces Brain and his partner Maggie into guiding him to the Duke’s base at Grand Central Terminal. There, Snake locates and rescues the President but is wounded and captured.

Snake battles Duke’s enforcer Slag in a fatal duel; meanwhile, Brain and Maggie eliminate Romero and flee with the President. After defeating Slag, Snake attempts to escape with them using his glider, but inmates sabotage it. Forced to flee on foot, they are pursued by the Duke. Cabbie offers assistance and discloses that he possesses a cassette tape containing nuclear fusion data intended as a peace gesture. Although the President demands it, Snake keeps possession.

During their flight, mines kill Cabbie while Maggie sacrifices herself to delay the Duke. Snake and the President reach safety; following a confrontation where the President kills the Duke, Snake is rescued moments before his explosives are neutralized.

At the summit, while expressing gratitude toward Snake, the President shows little concern for others who died. Offered a deputy position by Hauk, Snake refuses. On live broadcast, the President plays Cabbie’s cassette—which contains only Cabbie’s favorite tune "Bandstand Boogie". Snake departs free after destroying the genuine cassette concealed in his pocket.

Development and writing

In 1976, Carpenter penned the script for Escape from New York amidst the widespread disillusionment following Richard Nixon's Watergate affair. Although the story's themes were particularly relevant at the time, studios initially dismissed the screenplay as excessively violent, frightening, and unusual. Drawing inspiration from the movie Death Wish, Carpenter sought to portray New York City as a dystopian wasteland through a science-fiction perspective.

Funding for the project was split, with International Film Investors covering half of the budget and Goldcrest Films contributing £720,000 as co-financiers. Goldcrest subsequently realized a profit of £672,000 from their total return of £1,392,000.

Casting

The film’s financier, AVCO Embassy Pictures, favored well-known actors such as Charles Bronson, Tommy Lee Jones, or Chuck Norris for the role of Snake Plissken. However, Carpenter insisted on casting Kurt Russell to maintain creative control and to counteract Russell's reputation as a "lightweight" Disney actor. Russell characterized Snake as "a mercenary," combining influences like Bruce Lee, The Exterminator, Darth Vader, and Clint Eastwood’s vocal style. He also proposed adding an eyepatch to amplify the character’s ruggedness.

To prepare for the role, Russell adopted a rigorous diet and fitness routine to achieve a lean and muscular build. He stayed in character during filming to distance himself from his previous comedic roles. Nevertheless, he removed the eyepatch between scenes due to its interference with his depth perception.

Pre-production

Following the completion of Dark Star, John Carpenter found directing opportunities scarce and concentrated on writing screenplays. After Halloween became successful, Avco-Embassy signed Carpenter and producer Debra Hill to a two-picture agreement beginning with The Fog. Although initially intended to finish this contract with The Philadelphia Experiment, Carpenter abandoned that project over script concerns and chose to work on this film instead. Believing the original script lacked his signature humor, Carpenter brought in Nick Castle—a USC film-school colleague who played "The Shape" in Halloween—to contribute. Castle developed the Cabbie character and crafted the film’s conclusion.

Recreating a convincingly deteriorated New York City on a tight budget presented significant obstacles. Production designer Joe Alves and Carpenter ruled out filming in New York due to challenges in depicting destruction realistically and also rejected backlot shooting for its artificial appearance. Location manager Barry Bernardi was assigned to identify an appropriate city and ultimately suggested East St. Louis, Illinois, known for its rundown structures resembling a decayed New York. The city had experienced severe urban fires in 1976, offering authentic burnt-out environments. Alves secured an old bridge to stand in for the "69th St. Bridge," acquiring the Chain of Rocks Bridge from government authorities for one dollar and returning it after filming to avoid liability issues.

Additional footage was captured across the river in St. Louis, utilizing landmarks such as Union Station and the Fox Theatre, both later restored, along with buildings that now house venues like the Schlafly Tap Room microbrewery.

Filming

Carpenter and his team obtained municipal authorization to intermittently cut power across ten-block sections during nighttime filming from August through November 1980. The grueling timetable had Carpenter wrapping up shoots near dawn and resting as daylight emerged, resulting in minimal exposure to sunlight for over two months. The intense gladiator-style battle between Snake and Slag (portrayed by wrestler Ox Baker) was shot in the Grand Hall of St. Louis Union Station; Russell described the day as physically demanding. In addition to St. Louis, production took place in Los Angeles, with interior sequences captured on sound stages and concluding scenes filmed at Sherman Oaks’ Sepulveda Dam. Locations in New York and Atlanta were also utilized, although Atlanta’s futuristic rapid-transit scenes were ultimately omitted from the final cut. Carpenter notably secured exceptional permission to conduct night filming on Liberty Island, marking a first for any film crew despite recent heightened security concerns.

Carpenter pursued two contrasting visual themes: a neon-lit, high-tech police dystopia featuring subterranean computer systems, juxtaposed against the shadowy prison scenes on Manhattan Island that evoked a feudal England atmosphere. Matte paintings were crafted by James Cameron, then working as a special effects artist at New World Pictures, who also contributed as one of the directors of photography. For the sequence depicting Snake’s glider approach, wireframe animations of the World Trade Center and its surroundings were displayed on control panel monitors. Due to the considerable expense of computer-generated imagery, the effects team opted to film miniature city models illuminated under black light with reflective tape outlining building contours, producing an effective three-dimensional wireframe illusion.

LaserDisc releases

Between 1983 and 1998, Escape from New York was issued on LaserDisc ten times. The 1994 Collector's Edition includes a commentary track featuring John Carpenter and Kurt Russell, which remains part of subsequent DVD editions.

DVD releases

In the United States, MGM released Escape from New York on DVD twice, while Momentum Pictures issued one release in the United Kingdom. One MGM edition offers minimal content beyond the theatrical trailer, whereas the two-disc Collector's Edition boasts a high-definition remastered transfer with 5.1 stereo sound, dual commentary tracks (Carpenter and Russell; producer Debra Hill alongside Joe Alves), a making-of documentary, the inaugural comic issue John Carpenter's Snake Plissken Chronicles, and a 10-minute deleted opening sequence involving a bank robbery in Colorado.

The special edition from MGM was postponed until 2003 due to the original negative being misplaced. A workprint containing deleted footage was eventually discovered in a salt mine film archive located in Hutchinson, Kansas. These removed scenes provide background on Snake Plissken through a bank heist narrative. Director John Carpenter included them solely as bonus material, emphasizing that the main film effectively starts when Plissken arrives in New York. Additionally, the film was made available on UMD format for Sony’s PlayStation Portable.

Blu-ray release

On August 3, 2010, MGM Home Entertainment released a barebones Blu-ray edition of Escape From New York. Later, Scream Factory, collaborating with Shout! Factory, issued a special edition Blu-ray on April 21, 2015.

Box office

Escape from New York premiered in New York and Los Angeles on July 10, 1981. During the summer of that year, it earned $26 million in U.S. theaters and accumulated over $50 million globally.

Critical response

Overall, the film was met with favorable reviews. Newsweek highlighted Carpenter's "deeply ingrained B-movie sensibility," recognizing it as both a strength and a limitation, while commending his collaboration with Russell. In Time, Richard Corliss regarded the film as a rare chance for viewers to immerse themselves in intense paranoia beyond typical entertainment. Vincent Canby of The New York Times described it as "one of the best escape (and escapist) movies of the season." Conversely, Dave Kehr from the Chicago Reader critiqued it for offering "too little of too much."

Christopher John, writing for Ares Magazine, praised the film as "solid summer entertainment of unusually high caliber," emphasizing its briskly paced drama free from pretension.

On Rotten Tomatoes, 86% of 72 critics gave favorable assessments, with an average score of 7.3/10. The critical consensus characterizes it as an engaging blend of thrilling action and quirky oddities set against a grimy futuristic cityscape. On Metacritic, it holds a rating of 76 out of 100. Audience polling by CinemaScore resulted in a "B+" grade.

Legacy

The film influenced Cyberpunk pioneer William Gibson, who credited it as an inspiration for his 1984 novel Neuromancer. He pointed to a subtle early scene as an example of effective science fiction storytelling. Renowned video game creator Hideo Kojima incorporated aspects of the movie into his Metal Gear franchise; notably, the character Solid Snake mirrors Snake Plissken and even adopts the name "Pliskin" in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Producer J. J. Abrams, known for Cloverfield, cited the film’s poster as motivation for a key scene. The character Snake Plissken was ranked number 29 in Empire magazine’s list of "The 100 Greatest Movie Characters."

Sequels

The follow-up film, Escape from L.A., debuted in 1996 with Carpenter returning as director and Russell reprising his role while also serving as producer and co-writer.

Plans for a remake began in 2007 after New Line Cinema secured rights following a bidding contest. Gerard Butler was attached to star, with Neal H. Moritz producing through Original Film, and Ken Nolan penning the script. Directors Len Wiseman and Brett Ratner were both linked to the project at various points but eventually departed. By 2010, Variety reported that Breck Eisner was under consideration to direct, alongside script rewrites by David Kajganich and Allan Loeb; however, New Line abandoned the remake in 2011.

In January 2015, 20th Century Fox acquired remake rights with production handled by The Picture Company. In March 2017, Robert Rodriguez was announced as director and Carpenter as producer. By February 2019, Leigh Whannell had taken over scriptwriting duties following an earlier draft by Neil Cross. Wyatt Russell was considered for the role of Snake Plissken but declined due to concerns about his career trajectory.

In November 2022, it was confirmed that Radio Silence would direct, with Andrew Rona, Alex Heineman, and Radio Silence producing, while Carpenter serves as executive producer; efforts to find a writer are ongoing. The following month, it was announced that this new installment will serve as a sequel rather than a remake.

Novelization

In 1981, Bantam Books released a novelization tied to the film, authored by Mike McQuay, which mirrors the movie’s concise and witty tone. This book features key scenes omitted from the cinematic version, including the Federal Reserve Depository heist that results in Snake’s imprisonment. It delves deeper into the dynamic between Snake and Hauk, portraying them as disenchanted veterans of World War III—explaining Snake’s lost eye and Hauk’s position as a warden searching for his deranged son. The narrative also paints a darker vision of the future, depicting the West Coast as a desolate wasteland with a mentally shattered populace affected by nerve gas exposure. Crucially, it clarifies that the cassette tape is not an energy breakthrough but evidence of a thermonuclear weapon free from fallout, granting the United States dominance in global warfare.

Comic books

In January 1997, Marvel Comics issued a one-shot titled The Adventures of Snake Plissken, set chronologically between Escape from New York and Escape from L.A. The story follows Snake as he steals genetically engineered metaviruses from Atlanta’s Centers for Disease Control to sell in Chicago but is ultimately betrayed. A government robot named ATACS, programmed to hunt criminals by emulating their personalities, is tested on Snake. After fully replicating his persona and siding with him against authorities, ATACS is destroyed by Snake.

In 2003, CrossGen in collaboration with Hurricane Entertainment published John Carpenter's Snake Plissken Chronicles, a four-issue miniseries occurring shortly after Escape from New York. Following his presidential pardon and acquisition of a military Humvee, Snake carries out a heist involving John F. Kennedy’s assassination vehicle. After being double-crossed by his partner Marrs and left for dead, Snake escapes with assistance from a fisherman named Captain Ron. Amid high-speed gunfights and further betrayals, Snake delivers the car to a buyer aboard a yacht but loses it during an assault; he manages to flee with 30 million credits. The series was penned by William O'Neill with artwork by Tone Rodriguez.

BOOM! Studios introduced an Escape from New York comic series in 2014 written by Christopher Sebela, continuing immediately after the film’s ending. The premiere issue was published on December 3, 2014.

Additionally, BOOM! released a crossover miniseries in October 2016 titled Big Trouble in Little China/Escape from New York, merging the universes of Snake Plissken and Jack Burton.

Board games

The year 1981 saw the launch of an Escape from New York board game produced by TSR, Inc.. A separate board game project was successfully funded through crowdfunding in 2022.

Cancelled anime

In 2003, John Carpenter envisioned an anime adaptation of Escape from New York, with director Mitsuru Hongo, known for Outlaw Star, attached to the project.

Cancelled video game

A video game based on the film was under development during 2004–2005 but was ultimately abandoned.

Unauthorized remake

In 2015, the French Tribunal de Paris determined that the film Lockout (2012) unlawfully copied elements from both Escape from New York and its sequel Escape from L.A. Compensation awards included €20,000 to John Carpenter, €10,000 to co-writer Nick Castle, and €50,000 to rights holder StudioCanal. Writer and producer Luc Besson appealed this decision; however, in July 2016 the ruling was upheld with damages increased to €450,000.

Bibliography

• John Walsh (December 14, 2021). Escape from New York: The Official Story of the Film. Published by Titan Books.

External links

• Escape from New York featured on John Carpenter's official site