Archive Photos/Moviepix/Getty ImagesAt some point in his career, John Carpenter lost the ability to give a single f*ck about anything. It’s his superpower, in that it frees him creatively to do — well, whatever he wants to do. That being said, sometimes Carpenter’s creative gambits can take a turn for the ludicrous, as with the director’s late-period sequel Escape from L.A. Escape from L.A. was actually Carpenter’s third movie with star Kurt Russell: They met when Russell played Elvis in Carpenter’s underrated TV biopic of the rock ‘n’ roll king, then reunited for the ‘80s cult classic Escape from New York (1981). But his experience with the Halloween sequels — he famously hated Halloween II, and called it an “abomination” — made Carpenter skittish about doing another Escape movie. But Russell loved playing eyepatch-wearing badass Snake Plissken, and he and Debra Hill leaned on the director until he agreed to revisit Snake in a new movie. All three of them arecredited as screenwriters, while Russell and Hill produced the movie. It was a real “why not” sort of situation. And that loose, improvisational vibe is evident in the final film, which famously features Snake Plissken surfing on a tsunami, playing a high-stakes game of basketball, and paragliding into a Disneyland avatar called “Happy Kingdom.” Carpenter’s hatred for the city’s shallowness and absurdity is palpable in the more satirical scenes, and the story pits a diverse band of outcasts against a hyper-capitalist totalitarian theocratic state. It sounds like a lot of fun — and it is. It’s one of Carpenter’s favorites from his filmography, and it can be yours as well with a new physical-media release tied to its 30th anniversary. How Was Escape from L.A. Received Upon Its Release? Thirty years ago, Escape from L.A. was a flop, failing to make back its budget and effectively canceling plans for a third film in the series called Escape from Earth. Similarly, many critics seemed baffled by the movie, which has a totally different tone from the post-apocalyptic grit of Escape from New York. It’s still post-apocalyptic, but it’s broader and more colorful and takes itself a lot less seriously, leading Variety to call it “a cartoonish, cheesy, and surprisingly campy apocalyptic actioner.” (This was not meant as a compliment.)But the movie did have its defenders, including famed critic Roger Ebert, who gave it three and a half out of four stars and called it “a go-for-broke action extravaganza that satirizes the genre at the same time it’s exploiting.” He added that the film “reaches heights so absurd that there’s a giddy delight in the outrage,” and that Carpenter “generates heedlessness and joy ... it’s as if he gave himself license to dream up anything–to play without a net.”Why Is It Important to See Escape from L.A. Now?Released in 1996, Escape from L.A. is set in the then-far-off year of 2013, which is a reason to see it in itself. It’s always fun to see what movies from the past got right (and wrong) about the future, and while Carpenter and co.’s timeline was a bit accelerated, it wasn’t wrong, exactly. We in 2026 remember 2013 as the hopeful and slightly cringe early years of the second Obama administration, but the citizens of Carpenter’s sci-fi dystopia have bigger things to worry about than stomp-clap music and the rise of Buzzfeed. In the movie, Los Angeles is now a prison colony not unlike Manhattan Island in the original movie, having been separated from the rest of the West Coast by a massive 9.6 earthquake in the year 2000. One key difference is that the residents of this near-future dystopia are not necessarily hardened criminals: Many of them were deported to L.A. as punishment for violating a new series of morality laws enacted by President Adam (Cliff Robertson), a former televangelist turned right-wing politician. Again, Carpenter, Hill, and Russell got the vibe shift right by predicting a TV star backed by religious fanatics taking over the White House, if not necessarily the details: These Christian conservatives have banned the eating of red meat. What Special Features Does Paramount’s New 4K UHD SteelBook Have? Viewers who like extensive special features are best off going back to Shout! Factory’s 2020 Blu-ray of the movie, which includes multiple behind-the-scenes interviews and documentaries. But collectors looking for something to commemorate the film’s 30th anniversary also have the option of a new 4K UHD SteelBook edition of the movie from its parent studio, Paramount. The draw with this edition is the 4K upgrade, which will undoubtedly make the movie’s already-dated VFX look even cruder and sillier than they already do. But is that such a bad thing? Escape from L.A. is out now on 4K UHD SteelBook from Paramount Home Media Distribution. Escape From LA 4K SteelBookAmazon -