When I think of John Carpenter's best work, it basically boils down to the years of 1978's Halloween to 1988's They Live.
I suppose part of why I feel these were Carpenter's best years was that I was in my late pre-teens when Halloween came out and at the end of my teens when They Live was released. A lot of Carpenter's stuff during that decade seemed to resonate best with adolescent males, of which I was one. Thus, I just LOVED Escape From New York...in part, I suppose, because I was still young enough when that came out that movies had the ability to transport my imagination. I was still young enough back then that I hadn't yet became cynical and was totally able to buy into the premise of that movie without wondering about the ton of plot holes that seemed so obvious decades later.
Plot holes ably pointed out by the hosts of my favorite youtube movie-centered channel (really, the only youtube movie-centered channel I watch so I suppose it is by default my favorite) RedLetterMedia, such as 1) why would one of the most valuable pieces of real estate on the planet, Manhattan Island in NYC, be turned into a prison? And 2) why would the President of the United States be played by an English actor with an English accent? And on and on.
However, the guys at RedLetterMedia also pointed out that whatever else on could say about Escape From New York, the one thing that was true was the cast and the production treated the material seriously. Escape From New York was clearly a B-movie, but one where all the performances were acted seriously. Which I think is another part of why Escape From New York worked as well as it did.
Which brings us to Escape From L. A.
Even though I was in my late-20s when it came out, I was looking forward to Escape From L. A. I was hopeful it would be a neat blast backward to the Carpenter style I had enjoyed in my early teens. Kurt Russell looked like he had kept himself in reasonable physical condition. Carpenter, Russell and Debrah Hill all had written and produced the movie, with Carpenter back behind the camera directing. Surely if anybody could get a sequel to Escape From New York right it would be John Carpenter, Kurt Russell and Debrah Hill...
Well...
I think part of the problem as to why Snake Plissken's jaunt to the West Coast came up a bit short had to do with Escape From L. A. being a bit TOO much like Escape From New York in terms of the plot points or beats of the movie. Whereas Escape From New York felt like an original premise back in the early 1980's, Escape From L. A. circa 1996 in terms of general storyline structure came off a bit too much like an intentional copy of Escape From New York. As such, throughout the viewing of Escape From L. A. everything feels too familiar. Like Carpenter, Russell and Company were too afraid to deviate from the original New York formula. Comes across as playing it safe.
The other part of the problem is that unlike Escape From New York most of the cast in Escape From L. A. are either underplaying their parts or hamming it up and going over the top. Outside of Russell, nobody else in the L. A. cast feels like they're taking the material seriously. Thus, as a viewer, I found it impossible to suspend disbelief and take the movie seriously.
Finally, Escape From New York demonstrated an effective use of matte paintings, miniatures, animation and the like to create a believable movie world environment. Escape From L. A. had a much larger budget than Escape From New York did, yet somehow having more money seemed to work to the detriment of the sequel re: world building. A lot of the settings looked far more synthetic and professionally set dressed than those in New York. And there was a lot of very, very clunky CGI in the sequel which looked as bad in 1996 as it does in 2024. One might say CGI in 1996 was still in the early stages, yet the first film in 1981 managed to get the job done better without the aid of any CGI.
In the end, Escape From New York had an underlying sense of menace. Escape From L. A. was just a bit too cartoonish. Not the worst sequel I've ever seen but fell a bit short of the mark. Some good moments here and there...I dunno. Maybe the whole Snake Plissken premise was only bound to work well once the first time around.
