Hacker Cinema
Escape from New York
1981 · Film · 99 min
Directed by John Carpenter
In a world ravaged by crime, the entire island of Manhattan has been converted into a walled prison where brutal prisoners roam free. After the US president crash-lands inside, war hero Snake Plissken has 24 hours to bring him back.
7 positive16 neutralfrom 23 commenters
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25 comments on Hacker News
I think the visual differences broadly break into technical aspects (film grain, contrast) and aesthetic (composition, lighting, density, motion). A lot of modern viewers don't like film grain so any director not named Christopher Nolan, will get studio push back.
Personally, I'd prefer more grain texture in cinematic images but it's the era we live in, so I don't hate on BR 2049 for being an artifact of its era. It's nowhere near as bad as the visual sterile wipe that Wicked is. I do agree the compositional energy is a stylistic choice by Denis for this film. While Dune strikes a similar note visually, Sicario does get pretty kinetic at moments - so it's not his only note.
My main point was 2049 couldn't be the innovative, style-setting, visual sledghammer to that BR was - simply because there can only be one first and 2049 still had to be related to BR. Also, it's worth noting that the back story has much of Earth's population moving off-world in the 30 years since the original - as constant ads in BR were urging. So the urban overcrowding was reduced by 2049. In fact, it's one reason replicants are openly doing work-a-day jobs on Earth. Most of the humans have left.
Ultimately, I have so much reverence for the original as a visual tectonic impact still influencing films decades later, I went into 2049 with low expectations - which Villenueve managed to exceed. 2049 is nowhere near as great as the original, but I don't think there was any way it could have been - and very few films ever are. So it was enough that it didn't insult the original or stain its legacy. And to me, by simply being good, 2049 manages to be a success on its own terms.
- and thanks for the call back to Escape From New York, a film I saw on opening night at the Pantages in Hollywood.
I don’t really think it’s as simple as BR1982 influencing everything else. Other movies that came out before it also had more interesting visual styles than movies being made today. For example: Escape from New York.
The more recent movie looks more minimal because Villenueve makes minimal looking movies. Personally I find it devoid of visual interest compared to the 80s films, especially the original BR. Even the “inspired” scenes like the market/food stalls are so lifeless in comparison.
Here are two clips to compare. The more recent film is typical of movies today: too digital, too clean, not enough movement or energy.
Original Blade Runner: https://youtu.be/vbRRL7S2Tg0?si=gwMJvEr8fj11vUkU 2049:
2049: https://youtu.be/g6u33j_T5VQ?si=wvGDtUIH6LryvRKq
Let’s be real, the overwhelming majority of those 500 are straight up terrible. Netflix alone has produced well over 100 movies, and IMO at best some of them are worth finishing not that I can think of any off the top of my head.
Now I’m sure you’ve looked forward to many movies but off the top of your head list stuff you’ve either seen more than once and or actually recommend to someone that came our in the last 10 years vs…
(78) The Deer Hunter, Superman, National Lampoon's Animal House, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (79) Apocalypse Now, Alien, Life of Brian, Mad Max, Escape from Alcatraz (80) The Shining, Star Wars: Episode V, Airplane!, The Blues Brothers, Caddyshack, The Elephant Man (81) Raiders of the Lost Ark, Das Boot, The Evil Dead, Mad Max 2, Escape from New York, Time Bandits (82) Blade Runner, The Thing, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Poltergeist, Conan the Barbarian, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Tron (83) Scarface, WarGames, Star Wars: Episode VI, Trading Places, The Evil Dead
Obviously not all great movies but that’s ~30 classic movies in just 6 years and I’m sure I’ve missed a few as kids movies are largely missing from that list.
Great suggestions, thanks for this. I agree, Escape from New York (and many other 80s films) do have some awesome green line graphic design.
Hey some fellow green line enjoyers! I'm working on a small side project I'm calling a "Terminal-punk Fantasy Art Game" at spellkaster.app to scratch my cyber-itch.
Escape from New York has some amazing cyberpunk UI aesthetic, so does Jurassic Park and the 90's Lost in Space movie. Lost in Space in particular has some absolutely gorgeous scifi UI.
There is also a youtube channel called 'Datawave FM - midfi synthwave radio for retro computer funk' that has amazing music and visuals.
Escape From New York! Great movie.
Other films that sprung to mind while reading this: Columbus (2017), Aliens, Escape from New York, Brazil.
>Why are police allowed to work with psychics in their investigations?
Because psychics have their own underground gossip networks like no other.
Maybe a little bit like you would have in the movie "Escape from New York" where everybody knew more than the cops would ever know.
> first true Cyberpunk movie
Tron, Brazil, Videodrome, Metropolis, Terminus, Escape From New York, Blade Runner, etc etc etc
The problem with your wager is that on a long enough timeline, the doomsayers are always right.
So saying anything OR societal collapse is going to evaluate to true.
There are any number of disasters, both terrestrial and cosmic, that can radically change the landscape of the Earth.
I also don't really find discussions about what's going to happen beyond our lifetime that interesting for the most part. Often, they're just fantastic wishing attached to some loose thread of logic.
The Island
Escape from New York
The Running Man
Akira
Strange Days
A Scanner Darkly
Back to the Future II
Blade Runner
2001: A Space Odyssey
2010: The Year We Make Contact
Death Race 2000
1984
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Freejack
Westworld
Real Steel
Pacific Rim
12 Monkeys
The Abyss
Timecop
And a host of other films and books are set in futures that are now our past. And while some of these are fantasy designed to entertain, they all make assumptions about what would be possible by that time. And we have fallen woefully short of those predictions. So short, that "flying cars and meals in pill form" is a meme about such predictions.
> notably no one ever fought the confederates in pop culture...
That could be worth unpacking, that one. The confederacy get remarkably good treatment by comparison. I think there's maybe a couple of Westerns on the subject? By comparison there's a lot of films depicting them as misunderstood honorable victims of circumstances.
Having watched a lot of bad 80s films in lockdown, it's remarkable how many post-apocalyptic settings look like New York if it was never cleaned up. The peak of course is Escape from new York
That photo has "Escape from New York" [1] vibes. John Carpenter is a genius.
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082340/
"Some sources cite [James] Cameron as the brains behind the glider navigation sequence..."
https://wearethemutants.com/2017/02/14/the-glider-navigation-sequence-in-escape-from-new-york-1981/#:~:text=Escape%20from%20New%20York%20was%20John%20Carpenter’s%20most,with%20Ray%20Harryhausen%20on%20Clash%20of%20the%20
Clip from the film:
https://youtu.be/xxYmMRxnEic
"Escape from New York" from 1981 used a similar fluorescent paint + UV lights trick to simulate futuristic computer displays that appear in the movie.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_from_New_York#Filming
On a somewhat related note, here is an excellent short documentary on the making of the score for John Carpenter’s Escape From New York: https://youtu.be/NBw4OXM6ad4
It is particularly interesting to see how MIDI completely changed the game. Getting everything synced in the pre-MIDI age sounds like it was more involved.
I remember thinking in 1980s that year 2000 would be something unrecognizable. You can feel this optimism in movies like Back to the Future, Blade Runner, Terminator or Escape From New York. They would set entirely different worlds in relatively near future, largely due to expectations from then recent technological change rates.
In reality (aside from tremendous change of political landscape) the 80s and the 00s weren't particularly different to live in.
For Escape from New York (1981), it was cheaper to build a New York skyline set, paint it black and then paint all the edges white and film it, than create CGI wireframe graphics.
Escape from New York is a fun example. At the time the film was made (1981), the idea of New York turning into a lawless prison island by 1997 seemed almost vaguely possible, considering the out-of-control crime rates of the 70s and 80s and the derelict nature of many buildings in the city.
Today in 2019, the idea of turning Manhattan into a walled-off prison seems absurd, mostly because the buildings in the city are now worth millions (inflation-adjusted) more than they were in the 80s.
Being from the Detroit area, I find many of the comments here naive as one can't compare Detroit to an average urban city.
To understand what Detroit is like, watch a film like "Escape from New York" or a WW2 bombing documentary.
There are areas with no police or fire forces.
Also, the soil around mfg. plants (and downwind) have metal contamination. The air quality used to be worse than anything in China today, with choking curtains of black and red soot and oxides which precipitated into the soil.
So do your homework, get your firearm certifications and spend some time there before any relocation or investment.
It is a great location if you want cheap industrial space or your own truck marshalling yard (true story) and you don't need city services like elementary schools. Check out "Detroit Steel" to see more:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6403968/
You would see the shelter signs pretty frequently, along with their designed occupancy.
The approach to this in Manhattan in NYC was beyond farcical. Yes there were shelter signs at various buildings. Presumably their basements would be able to hold a few hundred people each. But consider:
1) what would an H-bomb or two do to Manhattan?
2) if alive, how do several million people survive in Manhattan if there is no water supply?
3) even if there is water, for how long will a few cases of moldy food feed them?
4) what about waste and hygiene? That many people will produce a lot of poop. Does it all stay in the basements if the sewage system isn't functional?
5) etc. As I said, the situation couldn't have been more absurd if it was deliberately written to be a farce. Manhattan wasn't the place to be hunkered down during a nuclear war. The movie Escape From New York depicted a Utopia when compared to what reality would have been.
Thankfully we never had to use any of those shelters during a real war.
Mœbius (Jean Giraud) was the artist who was responsible for the look of many of our favorite films (Escape from New York, Blade Runner, the Fifth Element, etc.) and he published his sci-fi works in Métal Hurlant. His impact was far reaching and he's not as well-known as he should be.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Giraud
I played in a group for years in middle and high school. The town I grew up in was sort of backward and religious. Let's just say there was considerable pressure to abandon the game.
We didn't have book burning though. (saw that down thread, and I can only imagine what younger me would have thought of that!)
I think these games are just great! Many of us took turns being the DM, and that's where a lot of learning happens! Theater of the mind becomes something tangible. You need to make it real enough for the others to get their own creative juices running, and when you do it right, the whole thing is immersive. We soon learned to replace things like, "you enter a dark room and encounter two trolls looking to fight!" with, "you enter a musky, dark room..." Players then ask what do they see, or cast light, or listen, and the whole exchange takes a bit longer. However, the interaction quality goes way up. So does the fun.
A good friend, who died early (sadly), had the seriously great idea to take a movie, "Escape From New York", and turn it into a campaign playable by 4 people. Several of us worked on it, maps, translating rules and setting up the damage tables, etc... so that it would work reasonably with "modern" type weapons, no magic, and so forth.
That campaign ran a few times and we really enjoyed it. Sometimes I feel that's a potential branch of fantasy gaming that got missed, or just seriously under exploited. The D&D idea, rules, dynamics, works for a lot of things. We found that out more or less accidentally. The realizations falling out of that were something our group thought about for a long time afterword.
Sometimes, it was necessary to play the game in secret. A gathering would be arranged under some other pretense. Fear of evil, the devil, and other inane things was enough to make it very highly controversial. Nobody I know was impacted in any way, other than positive ways.
This also made it difficult for both genders to play at times. Our group had one girl in it early on. She really wanted to play the game, and just kept at us, until she was in. Once she was, that was it! We all bonded and it was just something we enjoyed doing. Years later, she talked about that experience at a reunion, and it mattered far more to her than it did us. Being accepted and being able to play on par with the others in the group was liberating and empowering to her. Interesting how these things play out.
I purged my set of stuff during that last year of High School. Sometimes wish I hadn't, as some of it is totally collectible now. And it would be fun to read through and remember... I took a mechanical drafting class once, just for access to the tools to make big, great maps!
Someone should make an audio / text type adventure / campaign. Let the computer be the DM, it can present information in various ways, offer up maps on the screen, and provide audio clues. Maybe it's a stretch, but it could also query the players and take voice commands. The idea here would be to use a display to present and manage all the tedium, but use audio and voice input to actually communicate the players actions and game state in a way that would closely simulate the experience.
> Some time later, The Carpenter ran into Bob Plissken at a local technology meet-up. “John! What happened at Thing?” Bob wanted to know, “I asked them what they thought of you, and all they would say was, Writes unreadable code. I thought it was a lock! I thought you’d finally make your escape from New York.” > The Carpenter smiled. “I forgot about them, it’s been a while. So, do They Live?”"
The character's name is "John, The Carpenter".
bob plissken - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_Plissken the thing - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084787/ escape from new york - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082340/ they live - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096256/
FWIW, I don't get the connection to javascript interviews either.
I guess it depends to what extent you think TV drives culture versus reflects it.
It is kind of amusing to look at certain old movies and see how much less-believable they've become, particularly the ones that implied urban crime was going to get much worse before getting better (if ever.)
Ex: Robocop, Judge Dredd, Escape from New York, the introductory portion of Demolition Man...
Tron was mentioned, in addition to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy television series and Escape from New York.