Welcome to Oliver Harper’s Retrospectives & Reviews. Like us all at FTN, Oliver LOVES cinema, and like us, he has passions that not everyone shares, but he feels obligated to put the word out. This week Oliver looks at Escape From LA… we’ll let him tell you the aims of these videos himself. Over to you, Oliver…
Every week FTN will be hosting videos looking back at classic films from the 80s and early 90s…
The videos will be a retrospective look back at a particular film covering all sides of the production and discussing how the film turned out. Many people on the net generally like to discuss films with a negative attitude and take joy in bashing films for comedic effect which does work but often many of the reviews aren’t researched well or films are taken out of context for the purpose of making a joke and I feel websites such as youtube have become over-saturated with these types of videos, I wanted to do something different.
“Often you come across films with no extras available on the DVD and you want to know more about it, so with some of the upcoming videos I will be discussing films that don’t get the respect they deserve or the ones that aren’t as bad as people think…”
Escape From LA
Is it wise to release a sequel to a 15-year-old film? Well, yes and no. Escape from New York came out in 1981 and the followup didn’t turn up till 1996. John Carpenter had attempted to follow up Escape from New York during the late 80s, but the script that was written wasn’t to Carpenter’s liking and he left the idea on the side and continued with other projects. Come the mid-90s and, with news reports of riots in LA and the earthquake that hit the city in 94, Carpenter was inspired to do a sequel.
Kurt Russell has said many times that Snake was his favourite character and he got involved in writing the script. Escape From LA is essentially a remake of the original and this is problem people have with it. There are not many new ideas thrown into the sequel, it feels all t0o familiar. For many newcomers who hadn’t seen the original film they loved the ideas Escape From LA introduced and the satire thrown in by Carpenter. This film is like Marmite… Some love it and some hate it.
Oliver’s review:
Original trailer:
Irwin Fletcher
I'm an LA journalist who really lives for his profession. I have also published work as Jane Doe in various mags and newspapers across the globe. I normally write articles that can cause trouble but now I write for FTN because Nerds are never angry, so I feel safe.
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