Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 432: Escape from New York

Episode Date: January 31, 2022

At the dawn of the '80s, director John Carpenter released Escape from New York, an action thriller that went on to be a modest hit. Sometime after this, and halfway around the globe, a man named Hideo Kojima saw this movie, and it lit his brain on fire. What do these two seemingly unrelated facts have to do with each other? Well, if you even touched the Metal Gear video game series, you may have some idea. On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Henry Gilbert, and Chris Cabin from We Hate Movies as the crew examines this fantastic action flick and its massive influence on video games. Retronauts is a completely fan-funded operation. To support the show, and get two full-length exclusive episodes every month, as well as access to 100+ previous bonus episodes, please visit the official Retronauts Patreon at patreon.com/retronauts.

Retronauts is part of the HyperX Podcast Network. Find us in more great shows at podcast.hyperx.com. Hey, everybody. It's Bob Mackey up at the top with a little disclaimer. Just to let everyone know out there, our guest, Chris Cabin. His audio is a bit choppy for the first 20 minutes of the podcast. But after that, it clears up and he sounds fine, just in case you're wondering. We apologize for the tech issue, and we hope you enjoy the podcast.

This week on Retronauts, the president's egg is missing. Hello, everybody, welcome to another episode of Retronauts. I'm your host for this one, Bob Mackey, and today's episode is all about John Carpenter's 1981 film, Escape from New York. It's been a long time coming because this action thriller has had a huge impact on video games, one series in particular, but I think it kind of predicted what every video game would be maybe 20 years later. Before I continue any further, who is here with me today in the same room?

It's Henry Gilbert, and I'm rocking out to American Bandstand right now. It's the tune of 1997. We're all listening to it on our singles, I think. And who do we have on the line? Special guests, first-time guest, two retronauts. Chris Cabin, Duke, A. Number One. That's right. And Chris Cabin is from We Hate Movies. You might have heard him on that podcast or perhaps on Talking Simpsons, but I brought him on here for his movie expertise.

And in fact, you and your crew did a podcast about this movie, a We Love Movies back in April of 2021. I heartily recommend checking that out, too, if you like our discussion, because that's the great discussion by four guys who really love this movie. And that's why Chris is here today, obviously. Oh, yeah. And I'm glad that you remembered when it came out because it's just all been awash now. me. I just, it happens sometime in the past. I know that for sure. Yeah, we're heading. Yeah, it's a movie. I love a lot. We're heading into like year three of COVID and I think I've recorded a thousand podcasts since the beginning. So it is just a gray blur. But the, the information is out there if you're curious as to what happened on which days. But before I continue, I want to

ask everybody on the podcast, what is your experience with John Carpenter and this movie in particular? Chris, you're the newest guest to our show. Where did you find John Carpenter? And what is your experience with this movie and his work? Well, Carpenter came to me. I think I was late horror in general. I had seen bits of Starman on TV. That's how I knew about Jeff Bridges. But the horror stuff didn't kick until college, really.

I think I had seen a certain, like, I'd seen The Exorcist. Everybody tells me to see the actressist. But Carpenter came at like second year, and I suddenly was, I watched the thing. and I was overwhelmed, like, genuinely overwhelmed. That's my funny with that movie. Only of the movie I really feel that way about is Texas Chainsaw. Once you see his movies, you get a sense of a personality that's behind it. And it's very rare that the movies express and so succinctly.

That's true. And I think his movies really do succinctly expressed who he is. as a part of how he thinks politically how he thinks uh what he thinks about society romance uh mating all a wash of things uh culture especially um and that's something that comes from a tradition be movies that's what connected me to immediately was being of the having been dipped in sam fuller having been dipped in harvard hawks and all that stuff and he was a guy who made movies about workers usually uh criminal workers a lot of the time yeah the workers unless uh and uh it just immediately struck with me immediately i was like this is this is a guy and henry how about you uh you know

so i i got into him in the 90s as a video store nerd like i definitely did i think the first but this is a funny thing i think uh Halloween was definitely the first thing of his i saw probably because I had seen scream and scream talks about Halloween so much. I'm like, well, I got to just see Halloween to know what the deal is. And plus I then two years later comes out

H-2O Halloween water. So I'm like, oh, this made for me. But so, and then I also did get into the, in 96, it was an interesting time because escape from L.A. came out. And so I was watching E-News network all the time and it was advertising

it quite a lot. So I was like, all right, I'm up for this. And so then over time, I started watching his other stuff. Like, I think a big thing for me in the late 90s was seeing they live, but a cable edit of it, and which I still loved. And then when I rented the tape of it, I was like, oh, my God, this is the greatest movie. Just for the fight scene, I love the fight scene. And then as I got older, I could recognize, like, the themes, especially in they live, the themes.

And on top of that, I did. love that he hired like pro wrestlers sometimes like rowdy ronty piper to be in his movies there's one in this movie yeah and and on top of that like to find a muse in kurt russell and kurt russell is so great and when i see when i see kurt russell appear in like tarentino movies and he's great there i'm just thinking like well he's just you know being the carpenter guy he is like he's just such an interesting character like there's there's lots of good carpenter movies that don't have kurt russell in it but when it's the two of them together Like that is about as good as it gets

And yeah, same with Another of my all-time favorites Is Big Trouble in Little China I think it's like one of the funniest movies I've ever seen and Escape from New York, yeah As then a gamer Over time, I came to realize how

Oh, that snake guy in a video game There's some striking similarities. Legally distinct. Yes, maybe. But yeah, as for me, actually I didn't really encounter I didn't really get into John Carpenter until my late 20s, early 30s, so about a decade ago because when I was a teen and getting into movies,

he was only making bad movies. The 90s were a really rough decade for him. He barely lasted into 2000s. So I thought, like, why do I want to see what this guy made before? He seems pretty bad. And in the discussions of, like, oh, what are the cool 80s movies to see? Like, Terminator and Repo Man, this movie never came up, weirdly enough. So finally, like, in my late 20s, I was like, all right, I finally should get into Carpenter.

And I watched all of them, all the good ones, except for this one. And I saved it for this year because I thought my love of Metal Gear Solid would make this movie too distracting. I was like, I realize how much was borrowed from this. I'm just going to be thinking about that the whole time. And if you're thinking that, like I did, you're wrong because it stands on its own. but it's also very, very funny to see just how inspired Hideo Kojima was to make his own version of this movie and video game for him. But yeah, it took me a long time to come around to John Carpenter, but I love all of Zadie stuff. I'm sorry, you guys, I don't like Big Trouble in Little China.

I tried to like it, but I don't like it. But I think the thing is like one of the top ten movies of all time. It's so, so good. But yeah, I'm glad I finally came around to enjoying John Carpenter. And this movie especially, I don't know if it's underrated or properly rated, but it's still. doesn't come up as often as his other big 80s movies. I think this one, for me at least, is very properly

rated. It's a very, I think it's in my top 10, but it's not my top five for him. You know what's interesting about him in general is that he has this chip on his shoulder that I think a lot of directors tend to get at his age,

but he seems to be the only one who genuinely has earned it. Can you think of someone who has made, a movie as resoundingly beloved as the thing that the critics just absolutely did not get

like resoundingly did not understand when it was really like they painted that movie like it was one of the worst films ever made and and now it is by all means considered an American classic like and I think a lot of films have been it's been

last 10 years that Carpenter has really come up as this a distinctly American tour. Escape from New York is one of those movies where I think it's always discussed but because it hasn't been through the remake machine

it's that urgency the way that discussions about Halloween and discussion about the thing do because it's been through the bill already. Yeah, it's shocking to go back and read reviews of Carpenter movies. It's kind of like going back to read reviews of like season

four Simpsons episodes on news groups saying oh yeah mr plow the worst episode yet this episode is too crazy they lost the heart and you're thinking a pearls before swine you had no idea how good you had it with him and uh yeah you mentioned like this has not been through the the remake or reboot machine a lot of carpenters and stuff has this hasn't and there were so many like big plans for the snake pliskin verse that i think thankfully didn't pan out we'll talk more about that later once we talk about the movie itself yeah you know i think something that really uh changed for carpenter over time was you know in the 70s his genre stuff really wasn't appreciated much and into the 80s

not really appreciated much by critics and then the the generation that grew up with his films could then you know talk up how great he was and and what a you know atore like he he letting his films be called john carpenter's possessive s films like that was a big deal like it let him put his stamp on those movies and it all also let you know that when they remade something or did like the 17th version of Halloween, it's like, well, it's not really John Carpenter. Like, he took a paycheck, but this isn't his movie like that. By the way, I watch that movies that made us, a documentary thing on Netflix, which I have

an iffy relationship with, but it does do the research. The funniest one is the Halloween one, because it gets everybody but Carpenter. And so the executive producer is like, you know, actually, that was my idea. And I know, I was the one who said he should have do a thing set in Halloween. I was like, sure, sure, sure, yeah. I guess they weren't going to pay him to show up or at least feed him. I think Carpenter, I mean, he's like a pro worker, obviously, look at the stance of his movies. He wants to be paid for whatever he's doing.

Well, how many times has he been interviewed of like, so what was the making of Halloween? Like, he's like, he could probably just say, like, I've said this in five other movies. Yeah. Just get clips from that and use it there. And he also would say, you know, it sucked. I hated doing everything. Yeah, let's talk about John Carpenter in his career. Just, I mean, this is a 90-minute podcast.

In case you don't know who he is or where he came from, his career basically began in the mid-70s with two very different movies. So we have Darkstar, which is a sci-fi comedy, and we have Assault on Precinct 13, which is a thriller-slash-exploitation movie. Both of these are made for very little money. Carpenter is wearing a lot of hats. directing. He's writing the screenplay. He's writing the music. He did plenty of

collaboration later, but he's kind of like a one-man band for a lot of this stuff early in his career. And because of that, he's able to make movies for very cheap. And even a modest hit is a major hit. Assault on Precinct they're doing especially. I think that's kind of what put him on the map in terms of like critical appraisal and in terms of making a lot of money. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's one of those movies you see it and you can't forget it. I can't even imagine what I would have thought seeing that when an act was released. It's shocking. Some of the images in that movie

genuinely shocking to this day. And he goes from the thing about him is that he was surrounded by a bunch of guys like it was the dream team, right? It was like the same guys who worked on Star Wars or who were in this area and you just had this

nexus of creative energy going on. Right. Between these guys. Yeah, it wasn't. And Darkstar, I think it's the first bloom of that. right and the writer of alien wrote dark star with him like too right it's it's kind of like a proto alien as well yeah yeah and well i mean we'll talk more about it we'll talk about the making in the movie but uh i mean james cameron is working on escape from new york and so is uh dean kundi the legendary cinematographer like he is doing a lot on his own he's lucky to have access to just this incredible group of young talented filmmakers with him yeah and not to not to be an old man complaining about current cinema but i something i i i love to about even his earliest stuff with the Saldon Precinct 13 like you can tell so

much that John Carpenter grew up loving the cowboy movies of his youth but because Hollywood was different then he didn't just remake all of the cowboy movies he watched as a kid like in name and even with the same old actors it's like Rio Bravo the next generation

like he didn't do that he took that love and then re-contextualized it for a new story in a different genre Kurt Russell can you imitate Clint Eastwood? Sure. I mean, he's like, yeah, Jack Burton is John Wayne in Escape,

sorry, not Escape, the Big Trouble Little China. Yeah. So yeah, we have Dark Star 74, Assault on Pre6, 13, 76, then we have 1978's Halloween. You should know what Halloween is. It's been rebooted four times. There's a new trilogy out. But again, another mercenary production.

He was just having fun, but he just like transcended the horror genre. He sort of established the slasher genre. There were slasher exploitation movies like 15 to 20 years before this movie. But he sort of just like reestablished it. It was just this huge success made for no money

written in 10 days, I think filmed in maybe four weeks. And after this, his movies are now called John Carpenter's Blank. Yeah, it's, I mean, it kind of invents the slasher genre. I mean, you know, Texas chainsaw comes before it, but the, you know, this could happen on your block kind of thing. and the punishment for sex as well, like all of these, all of the rules that Jamie Kennedy so expertly explains

in the screen movies, they're set up in this. And I, yeah, also in that doc, a compliment I'll give it to is that they talk to Nick Castle, who's, you know, a friend of his and was Mike Myers in the first movie. And they talk a lot about Deborah Hill

as producing partner and partner in life, that who doesn't get as much credit in, in histories of Carpenter's work. So that was a cool thing. Yeah, I feel like the re-evaluation has also come with giving more credit to Debra Hill for her. Like this last round, I mean, it all came with like, I think the really did always get out being like such a humongous deal and horror finally coming back as like, this is an American genre that's still alive and still putting out original work. Yeah. Not as of 20 years ago.

Today it's still happening. I think it was the one time in the last decade where the Oscars deigned to nominate any horror movie for anything was Get Out Best Screenplay? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Best Screenplay, I think so. Oh, okay, yeah. Yeah.

I think it's... I mean, it's saying to have that work... Like, Deborah Hill's work on all this stuff, it should definitely have been... We should have been talking about her in the 90s. We should have been talking about her in the 80s. And she was working. It wasn't like she wasn't working.

But, like, that was all part of this. re-contextualization that was happening about credit what who was going to get credit from movies like a certain uh I don't know if you want to call it a uh taking but a kind of reevaluation of a tour and like what exactly who are you going to give the credit to and why and the thing with how it's just oh it proved that you make a lot of money on slash yeah yeah it was it was a phenomenon uh I guess you had to be there obviously we were all too young to have even been alive when the movie came out, but it was just a huge phenomenon. Like it was a must-see movie.

And yeah, Deborah Hill, that you brought up, Chris, I think she passed away in like 2004. But she started working with Carpenter on, I believe, Assault on Precinct 13, and was a big part of his early 80s movies. Just a big collaborator with him. So, yeah, we're up to Halloween in 78. And then we have The Fog, which is the first John Carpenter's blank. So John Carpenter's The Fog. and then he does before that a few more TV movies so he does someone's watching me

and that's where he meets Adrian Barbeau and they briefly are married and then he does Elvis which was I think at the time the highest rated TV movie of all time I have not seen it. Kurt Russell is playing Elvis that's where he meets Kurt Russell and so he's assembling like a cast

of players he'll be using at least throughout the 80s it's a funny thing to remember with Kurt Russell is that he was the Zendaya of his day and he was a Disney kid who then moved into real movies like it was he he was on that path just as much as any as Hillary Duff was before to like this the or Britney Spears like the Disney children who are trained and kind of manufactured at Disney then come into their own as actors and and that gives Kurt Russell like a Hollywood royalty kind of vibe while starring in gritty movies. Like, I think that adds extra punch to seeing him in movies go like, fuck you. Like, it's like, whoa, the computer who wore tennis shoes is saying, fuck you. It's like, it's like watching Zach Efron go from high school musical to doing like raunchy, bad, dirty grandpa comedies or whatever he does now. But yeah, yeah, Kurt Russell.

Yeah, he's a beach bump kind of stuff. Yeah, that too. Yeah, Kurt Russell, he was a Disney star. I think just like six years before that he was doing like the Dexter whatever trilogy, which is like the Computer War. tennis shoes and the last one was like the strongest man in the world or something. Just these silly-ass Disney movies and I remember being a kid

and these would come on TV. They would be the longest, drearyest things in the world. You'd see the Disney look like, oh boy, a cartoon is coming on. No. It's four hours of the happiest millionaire. That's what's next. Awful. It's real bad. I got to say, I got to say, I've never

watched any of his Disney stuff. I've never seen any of it. I call him right when he was doing the transition from being like the Disney kid he went through this beard phase of westerns where he was

the kidnapped son it was kind of like a weird take on searchers like he was kidnapped by Native Americans and like given a new name and like taken in by them and the family tries to find called the quest they made like two or three of these movies and then finally

he gets into this area where he tries use cars where he's just saying like it's like a filthy comedy if you've ever seen it's a mecca it's absolutely filthy and then he does this

and then there's one more that I'm completely for getting a big movie it's like oh god it's like a Joseph sergeant like do you know what America is like a farmer meets a model type drama it's unbelievable anyway but like he does

this is a moment where he chooses the next path he's going to go through. Like, used cars didn't work out for him. It was a disaster. And this does work. So all of a sudden he's like, well, this is it. This is the thing I'm going to do from now on. And it really does paint the next decade or two of his career. Yeah, it's fun to see how versatile is because when I was a kid in the late 80s, early 90s, what I found Kurt Russell was in movies like Overboard and Captain Ron, those movies. That was my Kurt Russell. And then he went back to action. And now he's like in a new Santa

Clause trilogy for Netflix. Yes. He's playing so like, he's, he's a true bad Santa. Yeah. No, I mean, he really did find a new thing with Tarantino. Like, I'm glad that they have a real kinship together because like he, he makes that death proof movie great. Like it, like he is, he's the core of that movie and makes it awesome.

And like his, him is the hardest ass, hard ass in the world in, uh, hateful eight. He's, he's so great in that too. but it's it I feel like it's Tarantino's hiring him to be the carpenter guy that he had like Tarantino obviously grew up loving John Carpenter's work so much so yes moving back to his career we did The Fog in 80

so then Escape from New York which we'll talk about in detail very soon both of these are modest hits bring up way more than their small budgets they're not like mega hits but they're made for such little money relatively that they keep him in business and keep him a filmmaker so we have some other movies We talked about the thing, that really underperforms.

Then we have Christine in 83. That's another modest hit. And then Star Man underperforms in the same way the thing did. But what really derailed his career, and it's interesting to see, like, he really just had 10 years at the top of his, like, respective mountain there. So in 86, Big Trouble in Little China, it's his biggest flop to date. It's his biggest budget to date. It makes no money. And it's funny.

Like, I remember seeing this on TV as a kid like a billion times. It's funny. These movies you thought were big movies. movies as a kid, weren't just because you just see them so much. Like, Labyrinth, I thought, like, everyone, I've seen Labyrinth. Everyone loves Labyrinth. No, everybody hated Labyrinth. They thought it was stupid.

And the same thing with this movie, too. The three amigos I saw eight million times. Bob, this is the first time you did, I'm finding out that people did like Labyrinth. Are you serious to them like Labyrinth? Yes, in fact, I mean, you can look at the, the budget and the box office on, on, you know, Wikipedia, but I read this, like, massive Jim Henson biography that came out in, like, 2013 and it was in the 80s he was trying to escape the Muppets and the dark crystal just a mega flop labyrinth comes next just a huge flop he's got to come crawling back to the Muppets because these

two movies just did nothing critically panned nobody loved them but then they you know they were embraced by i think millennials on VHS incredible now that's uh the labyrinth thing is so funny because it was like he then goes after dark crystal he's like george lucas help me try to i i want to make something a little more commercial than Dark Crystal and it ends up being about as commercial. Yeah, which is too, I love both those movies but yeah, it's sad.

So yes, Big Trouble in Little China that derails his career. So he's back to making much smaller movies which you know what? They're really good movies. Prince of Darkness I think is kind of polarizing. I really enjoyed it and they live. Of course, we talked about it. I think it's even more relevant now than it was then.

Just a great movie with fun action and just silly over-the-top antics and a wrestler doing a great job in a lead role. And then the 90s are the downfall. We're going to just skirt through this very quickly because he starts off the 90s with just like one of two mega Chebby Chase bombs of the early 90s. So one was nothing but trouble. A movie, I have to say, my mom loves that movie. It's another movie I thought was a huge movie because my mom would quote it all the time.

And he would, she would always talk about Dan Aykroyd's penis nose and how much he thought it was disgusting. But yeah, not a good movie, not a moneymaker, and then Carpenter directs memoirs of an invisible man. A movie with like really cool special effects, but a huge budget and nobody likes it. The invisible building in that is incredible. When the building has been like half invisibleized, it's like an office tower. And like just a part of some of the coolest things I've ever seen in a movie that I could not pay attention to. life. As a kid, I just remember it made me think about the idea of being

invisible, which I think the movie's about the hell of being invisible. It's just like, oh, when he eats like an apple, you can see like the apple being chewed up and then it goes like down into him, but you don't see his body. It's just like these apple parts floating in the air or something like that. Yeah. I, that those bits I've seen

separate, yeah, I have always seem neat to me because it was like answers questions a nerdy child has about like superpowers or whatever. But then yeah, I feel like I saw I turned on Comedy Central many times and saw bits of it and I was like

I just can't I just may I wonder if I would have paid more attention without commercials but I've never given it a shot you know you could tell everybody just hates being there it's one of those movies where Chevy Chase was still kind of a prima donna he didn't want to like you know do more than a few takes it just a bad

time for him and then you know the rest of the 90s not great there's some things like the Village of the Damned remake there's Ghost of Mars which was going to to be escape from Mars, but, you know, escape from L.A. was a major bomb, of course, Skip from L.A. Like a famously bad movie

that I think people enjoy on an ironic level now. I haven't seen that, and I feel like I need to put myself through that just because I enjoy this one so much. I got to see what the sequel's like. I know, do you guys have opinions on that movie? I think it's very enjoyable. I think, Henry, you were talking

about seeing it in the theater. I saw it in the I saw that in theater. It didn't click that it was a John Carpenter movie. And I just remember liking it, just being like, oh, that's cool. That's a lot of violence and stuff. That's all I was looking for as a teenager. But I go to it now, and it does feel like what, it does feel representative of his feeling of what it was like to work with Hollywood on something he didn't want to do. Yeah.

I think it does carry that mood with it. It's time to tap in with the HyperX QuadcastS microphone. The stunning HyperX QuadcastS. features dynamic, customizable RGB lighting, a convenient tap-to-mute sensor, and four selectable polar patterns. So we can broadcast crystal-clear audio,

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cash for a great setup. Then there's the eye-catching LED indicator and tap to mute sensor so you can tap in and tap out to stop broadcast accidents. It's time for you to tap in with the HyperX Quadcast and QuadcastS. No, I mean, it's so venomous towards Hollywood, which, like, this movie is about, like, oh, New York is a crime-ridden hellhole, whatever, and so, like, then the response, this movie is about how, like, Los Angeles is, like, the most vapid, empty place in the world, and it's where, like, humanity goes to die, all that stuff. But I think, I remember thinking it was way too corny and thinking, like, that escape from New York.

was so much better because it was really serious. I think it is too joky. Like he's having a little too much fun. And it does feel like a sketch movie, really, like how certainly events in this movie feel like, well, now he's at this like levels of the video game. Well, he finished that level. Now he's on to the next level.

But as Gave from L.A. felt even more segmented like a group of sketches. So, yeah, 2001 is Ghost of Mars. He kind of, I mean, he's doing creative stuff, but not filmmaking necessarily, some TV stuff here and there. 2010, he comes back with The Ward, which everybody hates as well. So since then, he's kind of just been like, yeah, I'll collect a check from a thing you want to remake with my name on it. I'll write music for the new Halloween trilogy. But, yeah, making movies is a lot of work, and I don't want to do it anymore. And I'm happy watching basketball and playing video games and tweeting about Halo.

And that's where he is now. Yeah, I mean, that seems to be his main thing. although I will say he has like taken me he has wanted to make more movies it's not like he's like the other game it's at he's asked for the budgets that would be what carpenter at this age and this level of skill would be asking for and they're like we don't want to do that like and it's not like franchise stuff he wants to do like his old scripts or the el diablo uh project he's always tried to make um and you know I think that's probably more of the thing is like it's not worth it for him to make a he doesn't really want to make now when he's only had so many days left in his life like i can see

you know there's only of elderly filmmakers you know only so many get to be you know martin scorsesey or clean eastwood or ridley scott's witty allen even i hate to say his name but he does he gets to make whatever movie he feels like it's hilarious because uh he's still making them yep yeah and uh clini's what it's like he's got like 20 years on john carpenter i mean yes yeah he's so No, I mean, I think that's why he makes a movie every year, because if he were to stop making movies, like, his body would, like, shut down. It'd be like, that's when time we catch up to the man with no name. Yeah, and so, yeah, he's a fun guy on Twitter. Please follow him.

I think it's called, like, The Horror Master on Twitter. He's easy to find on Twitter, but he's usually tweeting about basketball games or new, like, merch based on his movies or, you know, what he's playing, like, Assassin's Creed or Halo. He's a real gamer, that guy. He really is. That's what I love about him. he's at that at the website giant bomb for years they would get him to give like his top 10 games of the year list and it usually would be like you know like 60 words or something but that's uh i i just want to know what he's been it shows that he played at least 10 games in a year and i don't really know where his gaming uh you know interest started how you know how far back it started but people started noticing in the 2010s that he was a gamer so i don't know if he was when escape from new york was released i mean this when this movie came out games were very primitive.

I mean, this movie came out the same year as Donkey Kong, so games were not as sophisticated as they are now. Like, Donkey Kong is kind of the first game with a beginning to end story, almost. I imagine he got into gaming around the same time that his influence was starting to be felt. Like, the early aughts feels like when he started really entering the fray. And we'll talk about it, but there was a perspective escape from New York video game that he had some slight involvement in so maybe that is what got him into games

like I should try these games out that seemed pretty cool and maybe that's how he became a gamer all speculation of course but as he's making fewer films that gives him more time to game yeah I mean all games are like a thousand hours now

you can't be a filmmaker and play a video game them. Let's talk about Escape from New York. Just production details about this and, you know, how it came into being. So Carpenter, he wrote this movie before he wrote Halloween. And this movie is sort of his cynical reaction to watergates and the extremely bad politics on display. I assume it's also inspired by, you know, the wind down from Vietnam because in this movie, Snake is a veteran not treated very well.

We don't really like veterans in this country. You know, once we put them through the meat grinder, it's like, get out of here. Go to your hospital or whatever. Yeah. We don't want to hear about our failures. Please stop. Please stop. And you better not stop us from setting off fireworks because we love fireworks.

And also, so we've got Watergate, we've got the Vietnam War, you know what, this is a weird inspiration, but it makes sense. He's inspired by Death Wish, not for the politics, but for the idea of, like, New York is just an urban jungle where there's a murder around every corner. And, yeah, in fact, this is funny that he had Death Wish on the Mind, and the financiers behind this movie wanted Charles Bronson to play Snake, apparently. They wanted a more older season actor. That would have been a very different movie. yeah a bad movie i think i think it would have probably been a bad movie yeah the other one i know they they were thinking of was tommy lee jones might have worked that might have worked yeah yeah i think you know at least like uh there's there's something about like uh russell a snake like

he is such like he's a cool guy while still being like a believable military dude like it's still it works on on both levels and and again like carpenter and him i i remember uh on the dearly departed a v club they had like a list of like best commentaries to listen to on DVDs and they said like anything of the russell and carpenter one because it's just like two guys hanging out who just love each other's company and you're like probably stoned together just like enjoying a movie and and that's uh i i think like that camaraderie you can see on screen i just love it the energy just like is fed off them and like just to go back to like the casting like Kurt Russell's so like cool in this movie like there's no sense of the of any tension really below other than when he's like backed into a corner but like Tommy Lee Jones would have just been such a teapot all the time like you could just like you could just feel him sizzling all the time that's what his whole thing was at the time it'd be a totally different movie but I actually I think about that a lot and I kind of would have liked to see that movie yeah I was thinking like I was reading some interviews with Kurt Russell for this.

movie and he's explained his character of Snake where he's only thinking about the next 60 seconds like how do I survive the next 60 seconds and what I like about him upon watching this movie again just as attitude he's never celebrating any victories he doesn't like winning is just surviving and like when he survives the end

of the movie he's not like yes finally I'm out of New York hooray he just like I am pissed off at everyone who made me do this and I'm going to ruin your little peace summit I hate all of you so this movie Carpenter didn't want to film it on a back lot They didn't have the budget to actually film in New York City, and, you know, there's a lot of people in New York City, so it's very expensive to clear off streets and make it look abandoned.

So they chose the city that looked the most abandoned, which at the time, it's been very gentrified now from what I've heard. But East St. Louis, Missouri was a, like, just a blighted hellscape of, like, urban, you know, desolation. And apparently a fire had ripped through a huge portion of town just a few years earlier. So they had, like, free reign to just play in this abandoned city. and they got the city to shut off lights in certain areas so they could set up their own lights. So they lucked out by, you know, de-industrialization just ruining a city, basically.

Well, that's how they used, they used Detroit, like parts of like destroyed Detroit for, what was it? One of the Transformers movies for sure. They just destroyed huge buildings for it. But also Alex Cross, the shitty Tyler Perry, James Patterson adaptation, uses it like if there ever was a sign of cultural degeneration

fucking we used absolutely destroyed st louis to make escape from new york and we used detroit to make transformers and the fucking latest alex cross mystery yeah absolute horror there are certain cities there are certain projects you would sacrifice the city for and i would not count any of the alex cross uh projects as one of them even my own hometown that i hate don't don't kill it for alex cross just for tyler perry's attempt

did a franchise crossover thing to get, yeah. And I think like some stuff on location like there's some stuff in L.A. they film some soundstage stuff there. Mostly the stuff with Hauk. And the opening they threw away

that was filmed in Atlanta. We'll talk more about that later. But yeah, mostly taking place like all of being shot at night, just the worst time to shoot an entire movie on the streets of East St. Louis. And legendary people worked on this movie, people that would become legendary

like Dean Cundee legendary cinematographer of course he'd go on to work with Zemeckis and Spielberg he's a cinematographer on all the Back to the Future movies and Roger Rabbit and I believe I think

like Spielberg's early 90 stuff as well Jurassic Park Oh okay yeah I think that's right Yeah, Jurassic Park as well And very recently he just I think the second episode of the book of Boba Fett He shot

Right And I have a very seen i never i never thought to just look at what dean kundi looks like he looks like santa claus it's incredible like it's such a beloved man would just look like the most like gregar like he's amazing he looks like brendan gleason should play dean gondy uh dean kundi and something maybe like kurt russell he aged into being santa claus i i possible man the difference between that episode two and three of boba fed makes a lot more sense now and hey we hate movies There's a whole mini-series on the book of Boba Fed on your Patreon.

We do indeed. Yeah, I'm not enjoying it. But, you know, it was nice to see Dean on there. Yeah. It was very nice to see him working on something. I stand by quoting Lurr from Futurama, just like, why does Boba Fett not simply kill his enemy? I don't understand this. Oh, that's too easy.

Yeah. But, yeah, other people on the... It's nice here to give him all lollipop. Other people on the movie, of course, James Cameron, he's doing visual. I think he's doing a lot of the fake CG in the movie and some matte paintings as well. And some of the smartest stuff that movie. Until I saw like in the aught some behind the scenes on it, I was sure it was like, oh, this is like some of the earliest CG movies. It's like this in Trond.

I was like, no, I'm stupid. I got tricked by the oldest style of special effects. I love that. Yeah, those shots that you see on the monitors of, you know, the first person view of going through New York, like the CGI wireframe. it's in fact models that they're making the corners glow and just moving a camera through those with like a black light it's so effective and they could have paid for early CGI they could have paid a lot of money but it still works

it's just this mercenary filmmaking it's thinking on a budget it's just so beautiful like I think about this all the time it's just like you didn't like all the like I understand part of it is to show off the money now like it's not so much even the quality of the thing it's just to show up that we can do something like this but like you think back

about this stuff you know it's like you could spend 10 bucks and get to an effect that's just as powerful as an image like just as an image that's impactful it really works and uh we're just talking about uh what were we talking about before the recording are star trek generations which again you've got you've done an episode about on your podcast Chris and I remember watching that

I watched it recently so I could listen to the podcast and there was like the last Star Trek thing I can remember I had models in it like when a ship explodes it's a model so as cheesy as they look I love seeing the map paintings in this movie and I love seeing the models even though the artifice is on display

I love the artifice and I kind of miss it this is an old man perspective you've heard it before but I must restate it I feel that's definitely the way you have to be because like I think of when you go into these movies it's a deal like you're making a deal with the movie you're like I'm going to believe in some of the more spectacular

or like inconsistent ideas in your world here and you know you're going to entertain me that's going to be the trade off here is I'm going to believe in some of your shit and you're going to entertain me is the idea and now like so like seeing a little model like

I don't be like oh that's so cheap who fuck I'm not convinced at all I'm like no okay you're telling me what you want me to believe I get it yeah you dropped a little you dropped a little plane off a model and it looks kind of cool yeah yeah you don't have to literalize it all in like fucking digital fucking information doesn't

It doesn't do anything. No, it's, yeah, these days the cheapness, when I see the cheap fix for something, usually the answer is just like, well, yeah, green screen. These three actors weren't there the same day, and so the green screen was used. Samuel L. Jackson's desk is fake. Yeah, that head is not Tom Holland's head. It's somebody else's head. It's just, yeah. It's lies.

It's what it is. And this movie, more behind the scenes stuff about it. You can watch us on YouTube, actually. So there was a cut opening. We see the bank robbery that presumably landed Snake in the super jail that we see him brought to at the beginning of the movie. It's fun to watch. It's well shot. I mean, a lot of it's just still on video because it was never, you know, finished.

But Carpenter said it's not necessary, so let's just get rid of it. And as it stands, the movie is a long time before you get to the snake train. Like, Snake does not give his first line of dialogue until I counted 18 minutes in. I think he says, call me Snake, and that's the first thing he says 18 minutes into the movie. movie. Yeah, ballsy. Pretty balzy.

And I mean, we see him... It's like the iPad to do all the work. Yeah. I mean, we see him kind of obscured being like marched through the prison, being taken off the bus,

but it's not until, you know, enough plot elements happen that we realize, like, oh, we need snake, so here he is. Yeah.

I mean, the failed robbery is like, it's fun, but not like so amazing that you're like, oh, you got to keep this in there. And it's,

it's nice background. And as far as like a DVD extra, like it's fun to watch now it's like oh that's how this could have started but especially for a film that is just like so tight like it was that extra like

eight minutes that the movie could have started with would have hurt that the excellent pacing the film has I think so and a big and the urgency of the movie really does hinge on the unknown the unknowability of almost anything like you don't know Snake

you don't know what New York has really you know it's a prison but you don't really know what's been going on in there really that the mystery of it is what makes it so alluring like just that scene of like the lady being pulled down through the

floor for no reason and you never explained exactly why that happened and you just somebody took her like stuff like that to explain it too much and like it dulls it like I've watched the extra scene and it just dulls the whole experience for me

yeah it hurts that you see the outside world I love the economy of the movie and I love the storytelling choices. They're both for the sake of budget, but for the sake of mystery. There are so many just drop lines in this movie where you're thinking, okay, what battle the snake fight in?

When they're trying to convince him to do the mission, they say, we're at war, Snake. We hear about this piece between Russia and China. We don't know what'll happen if it doesn't go through. Like, seemingly snake dooms

the United States at the end of this movie. We hear drop lines about, oh, these different gangs, the crazies, and the this is and the thats. We hear about, oh, the brain gets gas. for the Duke and he's got like an oil Derek in the library, like all these little details that imply big things that are not discussed

because they're just part of the world. Yeah, if I may make another old man can play here, but this is being mad at me and my generation, these type of lines in movies that were meant for world building that have just like, yes, they show you that this exists in a world and with a history to itself and these are just the hints at that.

and then me our generations like grew up saying but what about all of it explain it all to me please and so now that's why everything all the side stuff has to exist it's like see we answered all the questions they really did this with star wars but it's like i now going back to like unanswered questions are fine now you know what i don't need an answer to everything it's like i'm sure that snow piercer show is good but i like the movie and just the world to hit it at. I don't know if I need three seasons explaining, like, here's what's happening in this car. Yeah. Yeah, I like the, I like the experience of seeing it the way I saw it. Like, I mean, you're absolutely right about. I don't know. Like, I don't blame the, the fans asking those questions. As much as I blame them for thinking it was something that needed to be fixed. Like, I still think about that's one of my biggest problems with that latest Spider-Man is that that's all it. That's so much of that movie is just being like,

oh my god all these things that you complained about about the original two versions of the spider-man are now being answered or corrected in some way in this movie and i feel like that's somewhat what was happening with all culture at this point is like we have to correct everything so people like it even the people on red who don't like anything yeah it displays a real lack of confidence and this is a like a very confident movie i think uh it just trusts the audience and uh even though the story is very simple the world it implies is much bigger than just what's happening inside of this city prison. And the balls on them to just say, like, this is 1997.

We know this will date it. We know that someday it'll be after 1997. And you'll know it won't look like this. But we don't care. This is 1997. I feel like if they just fix the subtitle to be like 2017, I'd buy it more. It was like 97. It was great.

It was a party. 2017, I can see this happening. It was fine. Yeah. Well, it was fine. The worst thing was the president getting a blow. job it was it was happy days are here again honestly as compared to now and then so funny you know that originally they wanted they wanted it like they want they said it was going to be uh i think carpenter

wanted like six years in the future originally like 1987 that's even funny i think there was a compromise because the movie starts by saying okay 1988 crime rises very high and then 97 i think 88's when they when they cordoned off manhattan and then 97 just like Well, here we are now. So I think there was a bit of a compromise there. But, yeah. I mean, God, Reagan just got elected. So I don't know if Carpenter is not really reflecting on Reagan like he was and they live.

He's really reflecting on like Nixon and everything with this movie. But still very, very prescient because his future movies would really reflect upon what Reagan did to the country. Especially they live. I mean, it's like the thesis statements of that movie. Yep. Take a time machine back to before the time machine back to before the world went to hell around the year 2000. the 90s were so rad. The movies, the music, the TV, the games?

That's what I want to talk about. If you're cool enough. Join us and listen to less than 2000, because that's all we talk about. Adam and Chad live less than 2000. Now part of the Hyper X. Podcast Network. Previously on Chat of the Wild. Good to know.

I wanted to use this time to impart some words of wisdom from Eslo. Straighten up your hair once I'm gone. You got a style all over the ladies. La La La La La La La La are the words to his new hit single, Live Long, Love Long. And also, he woke up from a dream where he forgot to study for the test. Did he really say all those things? Yeah, yeah, these are all things that I discussed. That he discussed with me.

That's magical. Chat of the Wild, breaking down Zelda and Zelda-like games, one dungeon at a time. Wednesdays on the HyperX podcast network. Love Long, baby. Words of Wisdom. I want to go over casting really quick. So Henry, I know you have info on who played Slag. Henry is a big wrestling fan.

You probably know that if you've heard our podcast before. But Slag, when I saw the guy, I thought, you know, if you look like this in 81, you have to be a professional wrestler or some sort of just a military strong man. So who is he? That's Ox Baker is his name. He was a wrestler who got to start in the 60s. He was big in the Midwest territories with the AWA. He didn't have a big run in the WWF back in the 80s,

so that's why my generation of wrestling fans know him a lot less. They know I know him more for this movie, and he's also in the Jackie Chan movie, the big brawl or something, one of the ones that like, yeah, the big brawl. He's in that. But he's such like his giant eyebrows and go tea are so

memorable. He's more known for that than wrestling now. He lived until 2014 to 80, 80 years old, which is very old for wrestler. But the interesting story about it was that he was not Carpenter's first choice for a wrestler. There's an even crazier

looking wrestler whose name was Bruser Brody who was actually a really great wrestler. Ox Baker not good at wrestling, but a good looking face. And so I think the movie would been even better because I think Bruiser Brody could have done better

like acting of action but he turned it out he's like what I'm not Paul Newman I don't act and stuff I'm just going to go to Japan and wrestle him. None of this for me so Ox Baker got it because Bruiser Brody was like nah no thanks. He should have looked at the script

Slag has no lines I know yeah I wonder if he had any lines I wonder if they ended up on the cutting room floor but yeah it's like the look he has in the wrestling ring in the movie is exactly how he looked at like that hairy bod with giant goatee and huge eyebrows that's that's him that's the story of slag yeah do you think that like because ox baker if you have a name like that do you just have to become a strong man like you can't

just become a computer programmer right like you do that right you guys you i mean it would be a main amazing if i had an accountant named ox but i don't think that would ever happen like I feel like you have to, just you're pulled to that. He has the perfect like barrel body. Like he is barrel chested, just hairy. Like he looks like, he looks like he should be fighting Popeye. Like he is. Yeah, the Bluto Bod is not in fashion anymore.

He definitely had one. And his finisher, now everybody has amazing like wrestling moves. He was so simple that his finisher was just called the heart punch, which is just punch somebody in the chest, which literally anybody can do in the ring. and his his storyline was that he would go to town to town and they'd be like, you know, his heart punch killed a man in the last town. It's like, but I don't believe he actually ever killed anyone.

And that's where they got the idea for Cano. Yeah, yes, yes. Well, I mean, I do think if you see Oxbaker in this movie in Double Dragon, Carnov, like I feel like that guy, he inspired the look of a few video game enemies in the 80s for sure. But I do want to run down the cast list very quickly here. So we talked about Kurt Russell. We talked enough about him. When I watch this movie, I forget how old Kurt Russell is.

I'm like, what is he 40 in this movie? No, he's a little baby. He's 30 years old. But he has just the character of just a grizzled man, like maybe 45. I'm surprised just how much he can carry this off. And a fun fact about him, the apocryphal fact is like, oh, Kurt Russell or the last words Disney ever spoke. It's actually one of the last things Walt Disney wrote down was the words Kurt Russell

on a piece of paper so I don't know if he was just you know going through whatever the DMT was being released and he just was frantically writing things down but that's a true fact you can find a young Kurt Russell on like a wonderful world of Disney

meeting Walt Disney like the two of them share the screen together in some old footage and then we I haven't been to Disney and I haven't been to Disney World in so long but I had no idea that footage existed

that's insane He was the future of the company. And then he went to make a filthy movie like this. And then we have Lee Van Kleefe as Haouk. So, I mean, he's a spaghetti western star. A huge in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly movie. I just saw for the first time in 2021. Please make fun of me.

I know I should have seen it a long time. It's a very long movie. It's intimidating. But it's worth watching. It's very big. And I really knew him through Mystery Science Theater because after doing this, he would do a TV series for NBC called The Master in which he played a white ninja

and those episodes were repackage into two movies Master Ninja 1 and 2 featured on Mystery Science Theater so I knew him as like the white ninja who would not do any of his own stunts he's the greatest like he's also in in for a few dollars more

the one right before it he is so awesome in it he is like this older marksman type dude and like the rival not the enemy for for Clint Eastwood but his rival in the movie and I mean once you see him especially in his silver fox era of this movie

this is Revolver Ocelot like entirely is Revolver Ocelot of Metal Gear Solid I wasn't thinking about that no you're right about that and I have to wonder also if the earring was his idea was he like I'm going to be a cool guy in his 50s it's 1981 or is it like John Carpenter thinking you've never seen this guy wearing an earring it's the future even it's a future

Yeah, even Lee Kling, even Lee Van Cleef will wear an earring and not be afraid of being called fruity or whatever. So that's Lee Van Cleve. Yeah, I mean, I would like any of those to be true. I mean, he's been around since John Ford. Like he did, one of his first movies with the man who shot Liberty Valance. And like, he's just had this face for forever. That's just like burned into my brain.

And like you, I did not know that about the repackaging, but I've watched those episodes of Mystery Science three, thousands of times. An early Demi Moore rule on those as well. So yeah, that's Lee Van Cleef. So next guy is a very small role.

Probably doesn't even need to be in the movie, but Tom Atkins is Rame or Remy. I forget. They say his name once, but it's spelled R-E-H-M-E. He was just in the fog, given a small role in this movie. He sort of just is there to butt heads with Hauk.

But, I mean, they're both like bad people and villains in a way. So you're not really rooting for either one of them. And they really lose contact with Snake pretty early on in the movie. So it's not necessary to cut back to them, but it does show you what's happening outside, which I guess is kind of useful. You get a little taste of the kernel on the codec between them,

but not a ton. Yeah, yeah. I always forget every time I watch the movie, I'm like, yeah, they're talking to each other a lot. And then the walkie-talkie break so soon. I was like, oh, I guess that's the end of him talking to leave inklee. I assumed it would be like Metal Gear Solid, constantly like crouching behind things,

What's going on? The president's missing. So that's Tom Atkins. Ernest Borgne. I was shocked to see him in this movie. I think 90s kids know him best, either from being on the Simpsons episode, Boy Scouts in the Hood,

or playing Mermaid Man on SpongeBob. When he died, I looked up stuff of like, oh, the memorial or like best scenes of him or whatever. Every video was just all about Mermaid Man. Like he was Mermaid Man to a generation of kids who were slightly younger than us. grew up on on sponge bob i mean i knew him from simpsons too or just him being in like you know

goofy things i'm just like oh look at that it's ernest borgne i like i mean and again uh a wester he's another of the best westerns ever the wild bunch like he rules it's just fun to see ernest borgnine in a post-apocalyptic movie and i feel like i would i would try to be a cabby figure in this world like he is embracing it he's having a good time everyone else is just miserable. He's like, I want to go see this show this bad part of town. And of course, I brought my Molotov cocktails and I've got this great music collection and I'm still, I run a

functioning business in the city prison. I still have a running taxi that hasn't been taken in this decade here. And yeah, like, there, he comes off as such like a dippy guy. He's like, gee, snake, you're such a cool guy. I love you. But when he's so casually just tossing Molotov

cocktails, it's like, oh, you're a stone. You didn't accidentally get a taxi. Yeah. You've killed a lot. You need the heat oil that cuts the vinegar. You need a little bit of that. I think Nick Castle really brought a lot of the humor

from what I've heard of the original Carpenter draft. It was way more grim, way more violent than this one, this ended up being. I think Borgine was a big character that Castle worked on. There's just enough. He's fantastic. Definitely. And there's just enough

Cabby in the movie where he's not annoying or really like cutting the attention or drama. Cabby knows when to leave and come back. in he's like you know what this is too serious i'm out of here like he leaves like uh and and i mean just hearing his bandstand song is so funny of an entrance music for him but it pays off with the end of the movie like cabby cabby is the soul of the film he's the he's the last joke of it all he's the carrier of the mcuffin and uh we also have donald pleasance as the president uh john harker i think they say his name in the movie but i love uh pleasants he is of the british school of

like i will do anything for money i I'm an actor. Put me in anything. Of course, he's in Halloween. Carpenter loves working with him. He'll be in like every Halloween movie until he dies in like 1995. But I love his turn from, you know, no nonsense president to carrying, you know, loser to Stone Cold Murderer to this like pompous prissy guy at the end. This journey this character takes where you realize like, oh, he sucks too. I hate him as well. Yeah, he's like the least presidential president in any movie. Like, even I think when they take him and he gets in the red egg, I, I, I, there's, there's this weakness in him from the beginning that I feels very carpenter, like, noteworthy of his attitude towards politics in general and government in general. And it's so when he gets on the wall at the end, it pays off so well. Yes.

You're number one. You're number one. And he's just this like little fat British guy who was like, how did you get elected? Like I got it. But then again, the people who take over his plane are just like they're reading off the riot act of all the stuff he's done. So I would assume there is some anti-democratic means by which he maintains his presidency in this future. Yeah. Oh, for sure.

I love that scene in the beginning of the hijacking where it's just like, what is happening in the world? They're calling it a fascist police state. You realize it sets up, oh, yeah, this president should not be rescued. In fact, the world might be better if he just goes down in the city and dies. Well, I think, too, it's like kind of a prism politically you can look through on it because I would bet in 81 if you're one of the people who unironically loves Death Wish and it's about how, yeah, you finally got to pick up a gun and really get those sickos in New York City yourself. If you're one of those types you see at the star of the movie, it says crime increased by 400%. You would think, of course it does. It's gone to hell in a handbasket.

but that opening with the people taking over the ship makes it clear of like maybe it was that crime got reclassified entirely by 88 and that anything is a crime and you get to everybody gets branded a criminal because of that like that's why it statistically goes up now that there's more of what we consider crime but that lots more things became crimes that get you sent to Manhattan and there's one little dark fact buried in the movie that I noticed this

second time I watched it it's people always saying to Snake I thought you were dead when they meet him and it implies to me that the government reports that you have died and then you're sent to that prison which is why when you walk through it they say if you want us to assassinate you here

and cremate you we will before you even end of the prison so it tells me like you've been reported dead so you you're just not a person anymore period oh yeah all that reaction is them just repeating back the propaganda they've been told by the media now that's yeah you're so right

Right. You are so right. Absolutely. So just to rush through the rest of these actors here, Harry Dean Stanton, his brain, he just passed away in 2017, I believe in his 90s when he was acting up until the end, like in the last season of Twin Peaks, the reboot season he was in that. And, you know, mostly known for his work with Lynch at the end of his career, but he was in cult films of the 80s like Paris, Texas and Repo Man and just to look at a legendary character actor. The best. The greatest. One of the best. And he was an old man for a very long time.

He's old in this. Yep. It's true. And so we have Adrian Barbow as Maggie. So she worked on, someone's watching me with John Carpenter. It's a TV movie he made. She's in the fog as well.

She was known for being just a very busty lady. And that is why she's in this movie. And there are interviews with her that say, yes, I realize this is why I was hired a lot. And when I would come down the stairs on all, the family people will be hooting and hollering like it was the Fox Network or something

so yes she she's a good actress too it's not just about her shapely figure but yes I mean costuming wise she has a very open chest in her costume in this yes and I guess story wise they're not coming here many turtlenecks

no no no in the story if you want to justify it it makes sense because she's like a gift she's like a woman given to a brain in this movie And I do, I like that she is quick to pull out a gun and kill somebody if she needs to because it shows like, how did any woman survive this long in this hellscape, especially someone is as beautiful as her. I think part of that is like she, she can defend herself when she needs to, like she, and she isn't like waiting around for brain to save her. Like she's the brawn in their group anyway.

Definitely. He's this the dork who goes like, well, you can't kill me. I know this. I know how to make gasoline. Yeah, there's an interesting bit of storybuilding in this movie where... He's Oticon. Oh. He's the door.

I can see that. Although Audicon is better than this guy. But in the movie, there's an interesting bit of storytelling and world building in that when Snake is looking for the president at first, he goes to that theater where the men are putting on a drag show. So you think, oh, there aren't women in this prison. That's why the men are putting on this drag show because there are no women to play the parts. When he goes to the basement, there's a woman being assaulted. and you're like, oh, there are women in the prison and it's not good for them at all.

So, yeah, that's a dark step. But then him, like, that also lets you have a cool scene of him, like, fighting back those dudes and just like, like, when he just was like, bam, bam. That's, though that, it also made me feel old of like, oh, 40 years ago, this was like the action scene of just like, he took out two guys like there, there we go, I'm establishes a badass.

Like, that's all you need for me in this movie. The camera. I patch and a couple punch punch. Yeah, the camera didn't need to move at all. Nope. And last on the list is Isaac Hayes is the Duke. Obviously, a musical legend of the time, he had done some acting before this. But this is just stunt casting for novelty value, but it works.

He's not given a lot to say, but his presence is enough to let you know, like, he's an important and kind of menacing figure in this world. And he's also very, very cool. Yeah, you could have really made this character over the top. Anybody else is in this role, they might overplay this role. And I think the fact that he is kind of just, I mean, the amount of screen time is pretty low. low but like also the fact that you don't have him saying much uh and you are just allowing that it does bring him down to the level of just a local kingpin a local crime kingpin rather than like some way overblown sadistic maniac like he's just a crime boss and that makes it feels

way more convincing and it helps me get into the world a lot more yeah and even though he is like king shit uh but he he's on turd mountain so even though he's like uh you know a crime boss here his life isn't great. He's trying to escape as well. His cool Cadillac is just like salvaged chandeliers and disco balls. He lives in like a slum with everyone else. Like he has some, you know, power, but still you can only rise so high in this prison. Your life can only be so good in the Manhattan City jail.

Yeah, but him getting to torture the president is just so great. Like it's just the excitement on his face. When he gets that gun to shoot, just keep shooting. in the president he's like man this fucking rule like he's just having a great time yeah but yeah i want to number one on the bucket list man you i i would be like okay yeah do whatever you want to me after this man snake could go take over yeah go ahead take him i i find take me now We went over the casting of the movie.

I want to go over a few just discussion points because we've been talking about different scenes and elements of the movie throughout, but there's a few more things I want to hit. Just what I really like about the movie, what really gets you on Snake's side about this movie, is just how cynical every character is. There's very little virtue. in these characters, but the people he's working for immediately are established as just terrible

people. Like, the first scene is people trying to escape a prison, they're murdered. Like, you are just murdered in cold blood for escaping. Snake reluctantly agrees to help, and they immediately say, well, we're going to put things in your neck. Well, they put things in his neck and say, well, now you're going to die in 22 hours. So you better hurry up. So he's immediately betrayed.

Yeah, totally betrayed. But they also tell him, like, we know you are going to betray us and just fly to Canada. So fuck you. like he's which they're probably right snake probably wasn't going to go like oh yes i'm definitely going to fly into new york city and then instantly like like straight straight into Montreal yeah the president the idea is that like everybody everybody is like terrible but like at least snake is honest about it like snake's not bullshit in you that's like the whole trick of it whereas the the the um the artifice of order and like stateliness at the place is just so eerie

Like when you do that intro through the prison, like the order of it all is what like makes you most fearful. And it's snake is, uh, I mean, uh, it, I don't think he's like overpowered or superpowered because it does get beaten up a lot in the movie. But what I like about him, his superpower is immediately being able to see through everyone's bullshit. He, he does not put up with it for a second. He's just like, I figured you out instantly. I know exactly what you're about. I don't have time for small talk. Just like get to the points, you know.

He can just, he's got the best bullshit detector in the entire. movie, I think. Absolutely. I think the only actually nice person in the movie is that doctor who's just like, all right, you got to tell him. Like, you're not going to just lie about this. That guy was fired or just murdered by Halk, I think, after the lab scene. There's that great look at Hout's face when he says, like, well, if you don't tell him, I will. And he's like, what? Hey. Like, he's like, that wasn't part of the deal. But that this guy actually, I guess, kind of respects the Hippocratic oath on some level.

He's like, look, I just killed a man. So you should at least admit to him that. and I just killed him by putting this in his stack. Which is it, and the Suicide Squad comics ripped that off for their suicide missions they were sent on with a thing put in their skull that then got put into a movie 30 years after that. So then it's, the movies are just a rip off of a rip off of this movie. It's wild that you bring that up because the first thing I thought when they do the first incursion of soldiers to go try to get the president,

before Snake goes in. That reminded me so much of the shitty suicide squad, David Ayer movie, when they come in and try to end the muck creatures. I don't even know what the fuck those things go after them. The shots are almost identical in certain scenes. It's really amazing. It's interesting that scene too because you have this presumably fascist government just throwing people in this jail saying they're dead.

but even with all of their powers they still can't do anything they still can't get one guy out of there so it's like we have to get another criminal in there and throw this guy in the meat grinder because we just can't do anything all we can do is lock people up which is you know

there's some similarities between our modern government sometimes also what a great metaphor that the key guard spot for Manhattan is on Liberty Island that's so great just like it says like Liberty Island Detention Center or something

this big sign at the start of the movie it's funny like I'm sitting on my on our meet call Google me call I'm sitting in front of the poster which has the the down statue of liberty did I miss that is that actually in the movie yeah you see it in one it's one of the computer shots where you see the outline of it as like the point okay that you never actually see it for sure because I mean there's not much New York iconography it's kind of the cab and the digital statute of liberty and that's it got it Yeah, the twin towers I can't stop looking at it at any time. It's kind of, I guess, darkly funny that in this movie, a plane crashes into a non-world Trade Center building, but the plane lands safely on the World Trade Center. So you're like, well, this is very different. Very different.

And Cloverfield ripped off the poster imagery of the head of the Statue of the Statue of Liberty in the street. Yeah. And more of what the movie does that I like. I really like just how much time It gives everything to breathe It's like an 88 minute movie or a 90 minute movie It's like about an hour and a half But there are just so many scenes of just like walking

Following Snake One of my favorite scenes in the movie is Snake he finds the president's tracker That he had is on his arm But it's actually on this unrelated bum And he's like He walks outside He just sits down in a chair

And they kind of sit with him for about half a minute Just he's just thinking Well what the fuck do I do now That is a great scene that I don't think would be even in a 90s action movie just a character sitting and thinking i am so screwed i have 18 hours left to live what is going to happen next well i mean would you think that any other i can't imagine any other movie allowing uh uh entrance like frank double days to happen like it's so unassuming so quiet and so like overwhelming once you see him

and see the way he talks and acts like it just takes time and it it it really does affect how the movie comes off like he is imposing this little like it looks like an anime character he looks like he's about to go super seon like it it's all the sudden you're just freaked out by this world in this moment and it's because of him and it's because you allowed him to come into the movie like this i love that he's able to pull rank on lee van cleef who's like such a heavy and he's like seriously no 18 seconds 17 like no and when you say am a character like absolutely I

I absolutely think the visual of this guy influenced animators in Japan in the 80s for like like I can think of specific dudes in cartoons from that came out five years after this are like oh you just drew that guy like you drew that guy

with his giant hair and his sunken cheeks and just this this freakish character and also the hobo he finds is like the guy who's always the hobo yeah he was the hobo in Back to the Future as well Right, yeah. Crazy drunk drivers, yeah.

I love him and they live. It's just like when he sells out, he's like, come on, man, everybody's selling out. Like, he's just so, uh, and, and yeah, just the disgust snake has when he sees, like, bleh. Yeah, it's like, I don't have time to even beat you up. I just, I hate you for not being what, who I want you to be. Uh, yeah, like, there are so many fun, uh, scenes in this movie that I think really show who Carpenter is as a person. We talked, you talked about that that Chris, like this, this movie is like, his personality is in this movie. One scene I really like that anyone could watch and think

Well that's a throwaway scene It's just when Snake He's being pursued by the crazies or whatever They're just kind of like almost zombie like people A horde is following him He ducks into this cafe And he meets this woman Who knows who Snake is

And by the way that's Kurt Russell's wife at the time Season Hubley I think her name was But the movie makes you think like Oh romantic interest for Snake Okay She is killed within like 90 seconds of meeting Snake So there is no rest for snake there is no romance for snake snake doesn't like eat or have sex in this

movie there's none of those uh none of those needs are fulfilled for him but just pure mission for him and i love that about his character and about like just carpenter's direction for this movie like we're not going to have time for romance maggie's not falling in love with snake in this movie no yeah no i mean i think star man's like his only one that's actually about like love I feel like all the actually has like a successful romance in it because like if they live they tease that he's like oh

this woman really likes Riding Piper's like no she's a sellout she shoots him in the back literally like she's she's awful oh it just no the way they're all pulled through the the way she's pulled through the ground and like she's not seen it that is spooky stuff yes yeah unsettling and like

that is it goes with what you were talking about about like the women in this Adrian Barbeau has made a decision that like that's also survival decision being with brain like it's not just about like i could take care of myself i if this lady who does come off as a survivor when we meet her is just easily taken out like that i mean it gives you the whole the world view right there you know the the thing i come back to with this movie is the the way it's lit the way like i just we we had to re-watch the Eternals recently

because we're doing an episode very soon and a lot of those and it's a common thing you hear now is like the all dark scenes are way too dark. You can't really see what's going on in them. And they go on for way longer than most dark scenes would in other

like even in the aughts would go on. Like that's true Star Wars movies. That's true and it's a thing for streaming. I've come to understand. Oh yeah. and like movie like this where I just can so clearly see the use of of light and shadow and like this old school understanding of like and I understand I'm arguing for like form in a time when we don't care about form anymore but like it's it is to me it is so distinct and it hits me so much harder than this like blending of darkness and lightness that is supposed to be like representative of us all coming together but actually just makes you. fucking impossible to see anything. Yeah, you're totally right.

Like, the way images can communicate information, even all these dark scenes in this movie, it takes me back to almost like film noir where when we see Snake walk into Hauk's office, the top half of them is just shrouded in darkness in a very unrealistic way, but you still can get a really cool reveal with him.

And at no point when watching this movie, you're like, what's happening? Where is everybody? Just like, they know where to put lights and they know where to guide your eye towards in order to convey this information. It's so masterfully done. And obviously, Dean Cundee is like ingenious

when it comes of this stuff. And one of the best of them all. One of the most striking shots in the movie to me is and that I think also did influence a lot of like video games especially in the days where you just had to like a person, a picture of their face is who's talking. Like him in the plane with the green and red on both sides of him as he's talking.

Like, it's such a striking visual. Like, I just love that shot every time I see it. Yeah. because I do want to move on to the gaming adaptations and how it influenced gaming. Just a brief discussion about that. But I love the movie. I've heard people say,

the end of the movie, rather. I heard people say, like, oh, it's kind of anticlimactic, but I do like how it shows just how harsh this world is, where the Duke has this plan, like, we're going to drive across this bridge with the president's strapped to the hood, you know, or as like a token and Snake

is going to be strapped to the hood. But even with the Duke's power, the brain, his associate, still has not figured out the minds on this bridge because everybody dies within the span of like five minutes in this movie and at a certain point it gets unrealistic but then you think no this is just how harsh this world is

like only snake and one other man can make it out it's so brutal sometimes I wonder if it was done for economical reasons of like well these actors can't be here the same day as Lee Van Cleef is let's just kill them all off or something I don't know but I mean as far as like brutality and let you know what a dark like broken world this is everybody dies every named character you've known up to this point other than snake

and the president die on that bridge and it's like just so so rough and it and it pays off because like that is why snake is so disgusting looking it in these like you don't even care the like two minutes ago all these people died for your ass like and donald pleasance is just like preening in a little tiny mirror and like getting shaved and and you know pampered and everything he's just like oh yes the sacrifice is appreciated or whatever he says oh they will uh go down uh in history yes uh you know i really got to go yeah yeah the time is very limited you know it's i mean it is it's like but i mean it also calls back to like a tradition of like at the wild bunch or even like seven samurai like a lot of the main characters that weren't the main two characters

dot right before the end because it's like about final sacrifice all that stuff i mean to me that's what's interesting about this movie is it's not really about sacrifice it's literally just escaping uh uh this this hellhole uh and with with some promise that you might be okay on the other end but probably not uh and yet the bluntness of this actual end like when he plays the tape and the tape is the fucking music yeah like it is just a blunt like fuck you like this is this is how we communicate now in the world is fuck you like that and then you leave that's like literally how it's been boiled down to it really shows how true the movie is a snake's character because the president says you know i'll give you anything snake

and he goes a moment of your time and he just wants to know like who who really are you like are you exactly what i think you are oh you are goodbye then i don't feel bad at all and i switched out the tapes like an hour or five minutes ago so yeah that's it's It's so just the little moment of like Cabby got the, like how they handle it that the, the, the one, the double day guy is just wearing the cabby hat and he's like, yeah, I traded a tape. Like it's seeming that that guy doesn't even know that tape matters or was important. He's just like, yeah, I traded it for Cabby's hat. And so it's just sitting in Cabby's car just right next to all his other tapes. Like so, so great.

It's not, it's not all in your face for the sleight of hand, but when it pays off, you're not feeling like you got cheated or like. Like, when do you have time to do? The cinema scene. Exactly. Yeah, and Snake plays about eight seconds of the tape in Cabby's car just to make sure it's the real thing. And you hear just this brief snippet about chemical weapons. And you're thinking, again, like, what is happening on the outside world? And then the implications for how much Snake fucked over the country at the end are pretty great.

Like, are we about to be nuked by Russia and China in tandem because Snake just wanted to have revenge that he obviously deserves to give on these people? Oh, yeah. I mean, whatever happened, at least trade has absolutely broken down for good. I don't know what it is, but he's definitely fucked us for good. And good on him is what I think. Yeah, we had it coming. And Escape from L.A. tops that in an ending of pure cynicism, like even better.

Yeah, that's like my favorite, other than the basketball death match in Escape from L.A., that's my favorite bit of that movie is the end. I will eventually have to watch it. Probably with all pregame before I watch that movie. I think I'll need to. Yeah, yeah. And speaking of gaming, I do want to talk about the influences had on games and game adaptations. So this movie came out in 81.

At the time, it was still kind of rare for properties like this to get video game adaptations. There is a board game. A fan-made game came out for Commodore 64 and 85 with some weird mini games in it. It's not official, but you land snakes playing on the World Trade Center. You run from left to right ball jumping over the hands of the crazies trying to pull you in. and you're running down the bridge in another scene. It's just a little bunch of low-tech fun video game adaptations of these scenes in the movie. But there was a canceled video game in the works.

So in the mid-aughts, Namco was working on something called Snake Pliskin's First Escape, and then it was known as Snake Pliskin's Escape. And there is a video of this online, just like a trailer they made, and it looks like a mix of Devil May Cry, Metal Gear Solid, and Max Payne. a lot of games that were popular in the early to mid-aughts and it was being made by the Dead to Rights team who that was a very short-lived series

that was kind of like you know brutal crime adventure kind of game but these these types of things were in the air at the time like there was a video game sequel to the thing in 2002 and a few other things like there were some evil dead game so they were doing this in the early to mid-auts yeah what yeah I mean

ash will live forever in video games like he's got there's an evil dead game coming out this year oh boy like yeah but hey really oh yeah yeah you know hey it looks like it's all right but uh i i'll give a shot i'll give a shot i believe it's made by the friday the 13th game of makers and that was a good game but but yeah the i i played those dead to rights games they are uh so funny because they are like a japanese developer at the time in a very uh of the style of the time trying to make a Western-style action game. Like, what are you guys like?

You like cops who give head shots in slow motion, right? We can make that. Take a level set in strip clubs, sure. We'll do it. Yeah, I'll head. So, I mean, if Namco was going to get any team on it, on Escape from New York, that's a team that makes sense. But, yeah, also their games are much bigger action.

They aren't sneaking games, like how a metal gear is. It sounds like his first escape was a lot louder and involved a lot more gun violence. because yeah that didn't come out people speculated you know Deborah Hill passed away in development she was involved it was speculated

and I think reported that Carpenter would be writing music for the game and Kurt Russell would be doing the voice of snake but that never happened but in looking into this project I realized like there was this giant universe plan for the escape franchise like there was

he always wanted to make more there's an escape from L.A., of course, and then Ghosts of Mars is going to be escape from Mars, and then he wanted to make escape from Earth as well. There was so much plan for this. There was a potential anime series that never got off the ground

in 2003. And then a TV series was greenlit in the year 2000, but then it was put on the back burner because of 9-11. Darn it. Yeah. And 9-11 ruined everything. It always does. It's got a history of doing that.

Unrealized fucking carpenter projects are just like the saddest thing to me he had a haunted house movie that was taking place in a nuclear plant that sounded incredible

and it just some producer bought up the rights and just never gave it back and that's it but that's incredible I had no it so there were like because there were like

two thing video games they tried to put out one i know i remember playing uh but like do you know if they ever had like board like uh like even d and d type games for uh or open world like uh type uh games for like escape from new york or because it seems like it's that it would lend itself to the kinds of worlds there is a board game and it actually looks pretty cool uh you can read about it on board game geek uh it explains how it's played it has like pictures of the board and all the cards and stuff it seems pretty neat but uh that's the only like official license game that came out based on this property. But, man, I'm sad to know that we almost had an animatrix starring Snake Pliskin. Like that, again, that would work so well. Like, he, just have him in little six-minute adventures and animated by the best anime production companies of the early aughts, just like Animatrix, you know?

And I should need to tell anyone listening to this, but the elephant in the room, we'd be talking about it a few times during the podcast, but Metal Gear, hugely influenced by game creator Hideo Kojima. He was born in 63, so when he was in his early 20s to early 30s, he was living all of these 80s action movies and just being hugely influenced by them. Movies like Blade Runner, Aliens, What else, Terminator, just so many, a lethal weapon even. He incorporated all of these ideas into his games, Robocop 2. And also the Great Escape, like he loves that movie.

And Running Man. Hideo Kajima has, you know, he has film guy brain. Like he is like the arch film guy of Japan. Like he, his Twitter account is mostly him just going like, hey, I just got the Blu-ray of El Topo. What a cool. Which also, if you see El-topo, that's like, oh, that's a boss rush run of like Metal Gear bosses.

Like that movie is. It really is. His Twitter account is really the best of times and the worst of times because, yeah, he's like, oh, yeah, I just got the steel book of El-topo, where I got the new Fellini collection and then he'll also say like, I love the Eternals. What a fantastic movie. He likes every movie equally

I think. He loves movies. He just loves it. He's Greg Turkington. Yes. My wife played Death Stranding. And the one thing I will say about is like you what you say about him having like a movie mind. He has that similar

like throw the baby in the ocean type thing of like just go into this world. I'm not going to, I'll give you explanations along the way but most of this is you just experiencing this world i built and like you you will find out something towards the end of it but literally you're just spending the whole time and that's a carpenter thing like literally just like giving you bits of information that you build this skeleton ghost world around this person uh and i i try playing that game and i i'm got to say it tested my patience it does kick your ass i know people who really like it uh and uh it's

certainly looks great. Yeah, his... It makes sense with him. His games are all about, like, huge twists, misleading the player. Metal Gear Solid is basically escaped from New York with boss fights from the running man. So there aren't enough boss fights and skate from New York to just one. So he takes the idea of these, like, big interesting set pieces and then these interesting

boss fights. And then mystery and intrigue, of course, you know, Snake in the video game, it's all about sneaking and infiltration. He's smoking a lot of cigarettes, of course. And big boss has an eye patch. Exactly, but on a legally distinct eye, it's on the other eye, not on the Kurt Russell eye. So the one thing he didn't do in the first game is like, oh, Solid Snake doesn't have an eyepatch. But when you play as Solid Snake's predecessor, he does have an eye patch.

And there are more games starring him now. And let's not also forget that in Metal Gear Solid 2, what's his code name when he returns? Oh, Iroquois Pliskin. Yes. Yeah, yeah, I're going. And what really hammers at home is, like, I don't know what the Japanese dub of Escape from New York is like. I couldn't find any clips. but in the English dub of Metal Gear Solid,

the voice of Solid Snake for most of the games is David Hader and he is doing the the Kurt Russell. You know, the Clint East would take off that Kurt Russell is doing. So, like, the dub actor knows what the game is really stealing liberally from. So, like, it's different in Japanese, but David Hader knows he's doing the Kurt Russell impression of Clint Eastwood. Yeah. I mean, it's what Kojima wants.

Like he, like, and it's a tribute. It's not just him being. you know, a rip-off artist. I take it, I, I think there's a lot of video games that just full-on just steal a movie and make it a game, and that's cheap. But I do give the pass to Metal Gear Solid because it does turn it into more of a story, especially for 1998. Yeah.

Like, yeah, I, because I mean, the character Snake, even when you see him on the original video game for the 80s, like, yeah, you can see it there. But when you start up Metal Gear Solid and you hear a story about how a person, people of great importance have been kidnapped on an island by a group of people and this one guy named Snake has to be sent to it and

it's a colonel explaining it to him and they even like when they show the island in Alaska I think they even do the grid around the island visual that is in this movie and he goes there with a pack of cigarettes also in the middle

of the game, just like in the middle of the movie, he is taken captive and stripped to the waste. That's another video game trope, unfortunately, it stuck around, is that when you're captured and all your things are taken away, that happens in every video game. It does. Yeah, every, and by extension, every video

game took, like, inspiration from this, too. It was a chest. Others took it, and they didn't, other people also just ripped off Metal Gear, which was ripping off Escape from New York, but there were other games that were just like, oh, I want to do an escape from New York, too, because also like snake is such a pro snake pliskin is such a proto typical video game main character like he has a history to him he can appear in a million things he has tons of accessories he's good at

every weapon which means you can play him in a video game really easily in a fun way yeah when when they first tell snake about the mission in escape from new york there's like a big table with all of his gear they're just scanning across definitely very video gamey and in metal gear solid so in escape from new York from the very beginning snake knows this is a suicide mission I either do this or I die and Metal Gear Solid spoilers of course for this 24 year old game now you don't know but you've been given

a virus that you're spreading to all the different bosses you meet in the game and that virus will eventually kill you so throughout the entire series the kind of point is the people you work for are awful and they're misleading you and you're just a tool to be used in these endless conflicts and that's sort of what's

going on in Carpenter's view I think the the view is just a cynical in the metal Gear series as it is in the Escape for New York movie. Can I ask you, have you, either of you seen Zach Snyder's Army of the Dead? I, I've watched a lengthy review of it in clips,

but now, I haven't seen it. All I know is about the Dead Pixel in that movie. Oh, yes, that was pretty funny. So, the influences of Carpenter on video games, I think folds in on itself when it comes to something like Army of the Dead,

which to me both feels like it's heavily influenced by Carpenter, but also is clearly trying to do a borderlands, Metal Gear Solid mashup type thing in this, like, absolutely destroyed Las Vegas. And it's been interesting the last, like, what, 10, 15 years have been so, like, movies have been so influenced by video games that, like, if the video games themselves were influenced by movies, it all kind of collapses in on itself. Absolutely. So, like, I found myself, I found myself watching Army of the Dead and being like, am I remembering a carpenter shot or is that just

from a game that had taken it from a carpenter movie? I was like, that movie really fucked up because Snyder is clearly also a big gamer and a insane carpet band and stuff

like that. I see it more more now and the structure of this movie itself before like video games even took on this kind of structure or maybe they didn't. I just don't know about it. but like the like no you have to go here oh no it's not here the thing you're looking for you have to go here oh this place is going to collapse and there's too many bad guys here you have to go here yeah rise of uh that is how it's strategized rise of Skywalker felt like that to me too like it was the the structure of it was it like a bad

video game yeah like we need to get the radar to get the other radar to find the thing and then yeah it was like a bunch of levels well i mean also how many video video games have you played in your life that end with hey you you know countdown clock you got to get out of here or else you're going to die race through it everything exploding around you race to it like that's the and no i i'm totally with you chris with the the folding in on itself thing of just like the or the snake eating its own tail because like carpenter was referencing the stuff he grew up with then video games are made that reference this and then filmmakers like zach Snyder grew up with like playing the video games and watching

some of the movies too. And so he's like, oh, I'll just put all that together into this. And I was thinking about that watching the trailer for the Uncharted movie. Because Uncharted was the Uncharted games, which I had a lot of fun playing the Uncharted games, but they're movie

Loafes. They're like, they're a tube. You've called them story tubes a long time. And so, and they were just like, hey, the games were let's do Indiana Jones. Let's just rip that off and have it star just like who like a completely forgettable guy and then now they're making a movie that's like a rip off of a rip off of a rip off like it's just like so much uh it's just cascading in on

itself it just feels very empty yeah i'm really glad chris with that up because i was getting furious in a movie theater where like you're right henry uncharted especially the second game onward it's like you're playing a movie and then seeing a trailer for the movie that depicts a level in the game like remember when he was falling out of the plane had to climb up Well, now you can watch it. It's like, well, I was playing it before and that was echoing a movie, I don't know, 12 years ago, 13 years ago. It just, it just seems so tedious and redundance. And it's less fun watching Tom Holland do it than me playing it as me the most important character.

Yeah. It's just, it's infuriating because nobody seems to really comment on that phenomenon really. I haven't seen that many movies. I think the movie gamer, which is not very good, but is at least trying to talk about that. Yeah. I would argue Scott Pilgrim versus the world is trying to play with that a little bit in the way that it works with video game imagery. But, like, for the most part, it's literally just like, no, we just want to have that kinetic, that feeling that the viewer is driving the experience rather than whoever made the movie and like to have that kinetic style. And it just like leads to less and less interesting movies, to me at least.

Yeah. But hey, maybe we're just. Yeah, I think I think that's a part of it. We know too much. We've seen too much. Just to wrap up here, I mean, I feel like this movie just lit the brains on fire of everyone who made a video game in the past, I don't know, 20 years, because the rules of this world feel so video gaming to me in which it's like it's a confined area. You're there alone. You have to find things as you're going through this environment.

Everybody you meet is hostile. Like, everybody is an enemy. You have to kill everybody. Yes. Without question, everyone will kill you on site. So, like, it justifies killing everyone you meet. There are safe zones where you can save your game and meet NPCs like Brain and Maggie.

Yeah. Have branching dialogue. Yeah. There are these set pieces involving minds. Like there's a big set piece of Metal Gear Solid where you're looking for mines and, you know, avoiding minds in this minefield. Like just these set piece ideas. There's a boss fight.

Just all of these things I think would eventually form the structure of what would be a modern video game. I think it's hard to say it's coincidental when there are so many smoking guns in this movie that just so many people have drawn so much from this movie. yeah the connection is like one to one in so many ways and yeah and and kujima is just like the best at copying it and and then integrating it into a bigger story and not just copying it like there's how many arcade machines litter the world of just like a guy with a gun and an eyepatch on it he's just like there that's our main character gun and an eyepatch and camouflage that's it like

you can take all the surface level stuff of snake but snake pliskin but solid snake has the deeper stuff below the level below the immediate vision you have of cool guy who kills people but no one borrowed those cool shoulder zippers he has those soldiers yeah got to let your shoulders breathe from time to time and and what about there is that great quote of like carpenter about kojima and how he's he respects him for that. Yeah, like I'll end on this. The last thing I looked up for this podcast was thinking, well, actionably he could sue over so many things that were taken from him. Why doesn't he sue? I think it's because he respects other creators as a big part of it.

But on the record, he said, oh, yeah, Kojima is a nice guy. At least he was always nice to me. So I think they've been in contact with each other because Kojima, I love the guy. He's a big star fucker. He loves hanging out. with Guillermo Rotoro and all the celebrities he likes, all the creatives he likes, he loves collaborating, and I'm sure there's been

some translated, like, Skype calls with them or something going on there. Because I think the distributor for the movie wanted Carpenter to sue both Konami and, you know, Kojima to an extent, because of just the plagiarism, but he was like, no, no, this guy's cool, and I like what he does. So,

you know what, Carpenter, I'm, you know, thumbs up to you for not being litigious about this stuff. Yeah, I don't know what happened. what was the thing with him in lockout there was some uh i know there was a lawsuit but that's like the only time i've ever heard him actually go to uh bad about it was there was some lockout uh the the guy pierce uh oh right right what's his name uh fifth element guy uh luke basan yeah i'm like luke basan there was some there that was the one time i've ever

heard john carpenter be like no i actually have to sue in this case you went too far literally just you're a rip-off. Maybe this was after he became a gamer. He found out about this. It's just like, well, you know what? These games are fun. I'll play them all. Well, and Kojima is very respectful of all the direct every time.

I've seen him take so many people, even before he just started making them actual actors in his video games, like with Kiermo del Toro. I think. And, yeah, what he always wanted to make was movies. Like, that's why his video games got more and more movies, cutscenes every single. single time and I feel like he should just you know his next game should just be a movie like forget making a game for it then then again we all you know I didn't even love playing death stranding all that much but the joke was on us when he made that story about the brave delivery man who's walked through a hellscape of America split into pieces I think that game came out in November of

2019 so it's like get ready four months from now guys you'll be going to be living death stranding it's going to be a lot of fun so Chris we're at the end of our time here any final thoughts in the movie. And then please let us know where to find you online and all about We Hate Movies. I'm a huge fan, Henry is too. And you've done a podcast about this movie as well as you've set up front. Yeah, yeah. It's, I mean, it's, like I said, Carpenter is a director. I come back to a lot. This is one of those that, like,

it just, it's so immediately was exactly what I was expecting it to be, I think, from what I had heard it was. That like, at first I didn't even see how great it was. and then I think since coming back to it so many times the craft of it and the the leanness of it and the refusal to give the audience too much or to oversaturate with information it's just it shows so much wisdom that movies of like

you know that are celebrated by fucking critics groups and awards don't have half of it and he had it and he just happened to he's dedicated to genre he loves it and something like this really makes an argument i think for people to just make great genre movies uh and not think of as so much of a cage to play with it to have fun with it uh and yeah we uh being the guys did talk about this in length uh on our patreon patreon patreon dot com slash we hate movies uh it's you know it's a it's a movie i never get tired of talking about carpenter i could literally talk about him all day i think he's one

the few directors that seems like he is what he presents himself to be there doesn't seem to be much of a separation and i hope i'm not proven wrong on that you know 10 years from now or whatever but uh you know for now it's been very comforting to uh watch his movies and even the bad like you know village is damned is not good but even to see what he plays with in those movies been a treat It's still a treat to me. And this podcast is coming out at the end of January. I know you're wrapping up your worst of 2021 and we have movies. Can you hint at what's coming up next in February of 2022?

Oh, God. We're going to be doing some 90s, I'm going to say. We've been trying to go back to the 90s more and more. And the Valentine's Day episode will be very special, I'll say. Excellent. That is kind of a hint, but not really. Looking forward to it. That's awesome.

Thanks again for listening to another episode. Retronauts. You can find us on Twitter as At Retronauts. In case you didn't know, this podcast is completely fan-supported on Patreon. So if you go to patreon.com slash Retronauts, you can sign up for three bucks a month. We get all these episodes one week at a time and add free.

Sign up for five bucks a month. That is a good tier to be at, folks, because if you do, you get two full-length bonus episodes every month and we've been doing this since the beginning of 2020. So now there's over 100 full-length bonus episode that you have not heard if you're not on the $5 tier at Patreon.com slash Retronauts.

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we have a lot of fun with that we're just about reaching the end of our re-exploration of season two as well as season 12 that means season 3 and season 13 coming your way real soon and we've had lots of great guests on it me and bob including chris cabin this week's guest and all the guys from we hay movies as well as tons of other great people and at patreon dot com slash talking simpsons you get tons of exclusives for five bucks a month you get to hear a monthly episode of us covering futurama and king of the hill both in the same style that we do this. Plus, we have our What a Cartoon and What a Cartoon Movie Podcasts where we cover just about any type of animated series or feature film. Coming very soon is one about Sonic the Hedgehog that I bet you retronaut listeners would have a really good time listening to. So check it all out at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons or Talking Simpsons wherever you get your podcasts.

And you can, of course, follow me on Twitter at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. And I've been your host for this one, You can find me on Twitter as at Bob Servo, and that's it for us this week. We'll see you again very soon for another episode of Retronauts. Thanks for listening. You know, I'm going to be able to be.