Like a morbidly obese giant trapped in a warehouse full of French fries, Hollywood appears to be constitutionally unable to wean itself from its unvarying diet of more and more remakes.  The latest example of this constant gutting of its cinematic past is the announced attention of producer Joel Silver to remake John Carpenter’s 1981 classic Escape From New York.

 

This is a very bad idea on several fronts, the most obvious of which is that Carpenter’s film still holds up well and is unlikely to be improved by today’s increasingly ubiquitous computer effects.  Most importantly Kurt Russell’s character-defining portrayal of Snake Plissken is so iconic that we should be spared having to sit through some contemporary thespian’s attempt to duplicate it.

 

But what is even more indicative of the fact that the metastasizing cancer of remakes has finally reached Tinseltown’s brain is Silver’s announced attention to bloat the distended corpse of the tautly-made 99-minute Escape From New York into a, wait for it, TRILOGY.  That’s right three movies are so obviously three times better than a single film it’s a wonder that someone hadn’t thought of that before.  Let’s hope that this totally unnecessary project gets stuck in "turnaround" and that the studios will take some chances on some original scripts for a change.