The iconic performance as futuristic outlaw Snake Plissken in John Carpenter’s 1981 sci-fi thriller Escape from New York forever changed Kurt Russell’s career from Disney child star to one of the greatest action stars in Hollywood history. He was Carpenter’s ultimate anti-hero of principle who despised authority in a future where the American way of life was breaking down into lawlessness at the bottom and corruption at the top. But unlike Indiana Jones and Rambo, Snake struggled to get an enduring franchise off the ground.
The eventual sequel, Escape from L.A., came out 15 years after the original, with Russell having already been established as a high-paid A-list star thanks to the successes of Stargate and Backdraft. L.A. took a soft-reboot direction for audiences unfamiliar with Snake’s first mission while pushing the story into far darker territory to open up future possibilities for Russell’s signature role. Sadly, the box office underperformance of the sequel put a stop to Russell and Carpenter’s plans for a far more ambitious concept for Snake’s last adventure: Escape from Earth.
What Was Planned for ‘Escape From Earth’?
Escape from New York saw Snake, in an alternate 1997, infiltrate a prison-converted Big Apple to rescue the US President (Donald Pleasence) against the backdrop of global tensions between America and the alliance of China and the Soviet Union. L.A. would go further not only by having the city closed off due to an earthquake but also by having a televangelist-like American president (Cliff Robertson) outlaw every immoral act in the country. The sequel’s MacGuffin is the “Sword of Damocles” device, which the president needs to shut down the power of America’s enemies abroad and gets stolen by his rebellious daughter Utopia (A.J. Langer). After completing his mission to retrieve the Sword and Utopia, Snake, tired of countries fighting with each other, activates the device to take the planet back to the Dark Ages.
Without an immediate follow-up, Escape from L.A. goes into a route similar to Carpenter’s bleak finale for 1982’s The Thing to keep audiences guessing what happens next. Does Snake go back on the run? Does the world descend into chaos? These questions were likely to be answered had Escape from Earth been made. Carpenter confirmed the planned Escape threequel in an interview with Fandom, describing the story as “Snake Plissken in a space capsule, flying interstellar. So there’d be a lot of special effects in it.” Though Carpenter continued by revealing that the concept was something he “never cared about too much,” his motivations to tell further Snake Plissken tales were driven by Russell’s enduring love for the character.
Was ‘Ghost of Mars’ a Reworked Version of ‘Escape From Earth’?
Despite the critical and commercial failure of Escape from L.A., that didn’t stop Russell and Carpenter from trying out other mediums to expand Snake’s story. A planned video game by Namco featuring Russell’s voice and likeness never made it past the prototype stage. Additionally, there were the short-lived John Carpenter’s Snake Plissken Chronicles comics from CrossGen in 2003, with stories written by the director and star. But time simply was not on their side to make a third Escape a reality.
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“Snake! I thought you were dead!”
Though Russell’s love for Snake has been expressed over the years, he struggles to see himself in the role again due to his advanced age. Similarly, Carpenter lost interest in directing following the disappointment of 2001’s Ghost of Mars. For years, it was speculated that Mars was a reworked version of the Escape threequel with Ice Cube’s Desolation Williams as a race-reversed Snake until Carpenter denied the rumor in the same Fandom interview.
With Hollywood continuing to struggle in its never-ending quest to remake Escape from New York, the time could be right to revisit Escape from Earth, at least in another medium where Russell’s age is not a factor, like a video game similar to 2009’s Ghostbusters: The Video Game. Conceptually, the idea of the earth being on the verge of destruction fits with the polarizing climate of human society, with further erosion of trust in world governments like the ones Snake encountered. While it is highly doubtful that the Earth idea or Russell reprising Snake will ever happen, at least Carpenter created two cult classics that resonate more today than they did at the time of their releases.