Escape from L.A.

The film was in development for over 10 years. At one point, a script was commissioned in 1987 and was written by screenwriter Coleman Luck, with Dino De Laurentiis's company producing. Carpenter later described the script as "too light, too campy".[4] In time, Carpenter and Kurt Russell got together to write with their long-time collaborator Debra Hill. Carpenter insists that Russell's persistence allowed the film to be made, since "Snake Plissken was a character he loved and wanted to play again."[5]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[6]

1. "Dawn" – Stabbing Westward
2. "Sweat" – Tool
3. "The One" – White Zombie
4. "Cut Me Out" – Toadies
5. "Pottery" – Butthole Surfers
6. "10 Seconds Down" – Sugar Ray
7. "Blame (L.A) Remix" – Gravity Kills
8. "Professional Widow" – Tori Amos
9. "Paisley" – Ministry
10. "Fire in the Hole" – Orange 9mm
11. "Escape from the Prison Planet" – Clutch
12. "Et Tu Brute?" – CIV
13. "Foot on the Gas" – Sexpod
14. "Can't Even Breathe" – Deftones

The film's score has been released twice, the first on both CD and cassette by Milan Records in 1996 and again as an expanded CD release by specialty label La-La Land Records in 2014 that featured pieces of music that were recorded for but ultimately cut from the film.[7]

The film was released on Blu-ray on May 4, 2010.[8]

Escape from L.A. grossed $25,477,365 from its $50 million budget, about as much as its predecessor but little more than half its significantly higher budget.[2]

The film received mixed reviews and has a 53% approval rating from Rotten Tomatoes based on 51 reviews, with an average score of 5.57/10. The site's consensus reads: "Escape from L.A. has its moments, although it certainly suffers in comparison to the cult classic that preceded it".[9] Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of a possible four and wrote that the movie felt it was an attempt to satirize the genre while exploiting it: "[Escape from L.A.] has such manic energy, such a weird, cockeyed vision, that it may work on some moviegoers as satire and on others as the real thing."[10]

Todd McCarthy of Variety wrote, "A cartoonish, cheesy, and surprisingly campy apocalyptic actioner, John Carpenter's Escape From L.A. is spiked with a number of funny and anarchic ideas, but doesn't begin to pull them together into a coherent whole."[11]

Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly rated it C+ and wrote, "Carpenter never was the filmmaker his cult claimed him to be, but in Escape From L.A., he at least has the instinct to keep his hero moving, like some leather-biker Candide."[12]

Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote that the film's in-jokes "go a long way toward keeping afloat a hopelessly choppy adventure spoof that doesn't even to try to match the ghoulish surrealism of its forerunner."[13]

Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "With much humor and high adventure, John Carpenter's Escape From L.A. brilliantly imagines a Dante-esque vision of the City of Angels."[14]

Peter Stack of The San Francisco Chronicle rated it 3/4 stars and called it "dark, percussive and perversely fun."[15] Esther Iverem of The Washington Post wrote that the film "tries but fails to be an action-hero flick or even a parody of one."[16]

Marc Savlov of The Austin Chronicle rated it 3/5 stars and wrote, "Loud, rollicking, alternately ultraviolent and hilarious, Escape from L.A. is Snake redux, and what more do you need, really?"[17] Nigel Floyd of Time Out London wrote, "After 15 years of computer-generated effects, apocalyptic sci-fi and Arnie movies with flippant kiss-off lines, the sequel feels hackneyed and pointless."[18] Kim Newman of Empire rated it 2/5 stars and wrote, "Apart from a few good characters, this is really not up to scratch in most departments especially the ludicrous plot."[19]

In a 2013 retrospective, Alan Zilberman of The Atlantic called Snake Plissken "a pro-nostalgia antihero, disgusted by the world around him." While contrasting the film's then-futuristic plot elements against modern-day reality, Zilberman writes that the film's ending is more profound today, as Plissken would be annoyed by our fascination with technology, citing the example of two friends who ignore each other while transfixed with their smart phones.[20]

John Carpenter later reflected:

Escape from L.A. is better than the first movie. Ten times better. It's got more to it. It's more mature. It's got a lot more to it. I think some people didn't like it because they felt it was a remake, not a sequel... I suppose it's the old question of whether you like Rio Bravo or El Dorado better? They're essentially the same movie. They both had their strengths and weaknesses. I don't know–you never know why a movie's going to make it or not. People didn't want to see Escape that time, but they really didn't want to see The Thing... You just wait. You've got to give me a little while. People will say, you know, what was wrong with me?[21]

He reiterate his statement in another interview: "It is a better movie. It didn’t do what the first one did for some reason. Maybe it was too dark, too nihilistic. I don’t know. They didn’t dig it as much as the first one. It did okay, but it just wasn’t a hit."[22]

Marvel Comics released the one-shot The Adventures of Snake Plissken in January 1997.[23] The story takes place sometime between Escape from New York and his famous Cleveland escape mentioned in Escape from L.A.. Snake has robbed Atlanta's Centers for Disease Control of some engineered metaviruses and is looking for buyers in Chicago. Finding himself in a deal that's really a set-up, he makes his getaway and exacts revenge on the buyer for ratting him out to the United States Police Force. In the meantime, a government lab has built a robot called ATACS (Autonomous Tracking And Combat System) that can catch criminals by imprinting their personalities upon its program in order to predict and anticipate a specific criminal's every move. The robot's first test subject is Snake. After a brief battle, ATACS copies Snake to the point of fully becoming his personality. Now recognizing the government as the enemy, ATACS sides with Snake. Snake punches the machine and destroys it, reasoning, "I don't need the competition."

An Escape from L.A. video game was announced for the Sega Saturn, Sony PlayStation, Panasonic M2, and PC in 1996[24], but was later cancelled.