Back to the Bronx: Escaping New York, again

Cinematical’s Christopher Campbell laments the fact that John Carpenter’s cult classic ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK is being remade. No director is set, but the script is being hashed out by BLACK HAWK DOWN’s Ken Nolan, and Gerard Butler (300, PHANTOM OF THE OPERA) is negotiating to take over the eyepatch worn by Kurt Russell in the original.

I can’t say I’m as upset as Campbell. I don’t think it’s a great idea to remake ESCAPE, but it doesn’t particularly irritate me either. The Carpenter film was uber-cool, but it didn’t really capture a genuine feeling of being in New York, not even a completely trashed, post-apocalyptic version of New York. (Ironically, the flaccid sequel ESCAPE FROM L.A. actually did a much better job of capturing a sense of its location.)

So I guess I’m saying there is at least one small way in which a remake could easily improve on the original. Is that enough to justify another go at the material? Probably not. But I’m much more interested in this than in another version of THE FOG or HALLOWEEN.