io9: escape from new york

In The Year 2727, Some Messed Up Shit Happened!

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:00:00 PDT

Perhaps my favorite kind of opening voiceover is the kind where the narrator starts out by intoning, "In the year 2027, we realized we had gone out of the house without any lower garments, and the Earth was reduced to rubble as a result. The survivors lived in caves, eating scraps of jerky. Until one day, a new hope appeared." Here are nine of the most awesome voiceovers that begin with a date and end with a sad recitation:

Enemy Mine

I love this movie, and the imagery in this opening sequence is great. It starts with a vague date, then walks us through a whole complicated history of our attempted conquest of space, and the creatures that stood in our way. Fantastic stuff.

Escape From New York:

In 1988, the crime rate in the United States rose 400 percent. No wonder Dukakis lost.

Transmorphers

This awesome Transformers ripoff starts with a nice touch: in 2007, we made contact with other life forms. And then they reached out and touched us. Too bad it was a bad touch.

Equilibrium

This Christian Bale classic tells of a world after World War III, where the cause of humans' inhumanity to humans is eradicated: emotions. Instead of text crawl, we just get key phrases popping up on the screen.

Doom

In the year 2026, we discover a portal to Mars. A curiously solemn opening for a crazy-ass Dwayne Johnson shoot em up.

Cyborg 2

Angelina Jolie's debut movie features a rousing opening monologue by someone who really enjoys talking about cyborg prostitutes. You gotta admire that.

Escape From L.A.:

The sequel to Escape From New York is even more over the top and awesome, with a huge, complicated chain of events getting boiled down to its essentials. Crazy religious guy, huge earthquake, L.A. cut off, theocracy, president for life, boom. L.A. is now officially the United States of America's sewer. And we're putting Kurt Russell there. Any questions?

Voyage To The Prehistoric Planet

The year: 2020. The destination: Venus!

Nautilus

This time-traveling submarine movie starts out strong, with a great explanation of how we screwed with the planet, and it screwed us back. Nice montage of stock footage, accompanied by dire voiceover.

First Spaceship On Venus

This one is more upbeat, somewhat. It's the futuristic year of 1985, and we're irrigating the Gobi Desert. Go us! And then we discover a weird rock, and that means it's time to go to Venus!

George W. Bush Escaping From New York?

Charlie Jane Anders — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 13:50:00 PDT

First he's playing the current president of the United States in Oliver Stone's new biopic, and next Josh Brolin could be sent to rescue the president of the U.S. from an alternate dystopia. A French site reports that Brolin is in talks to star in the remake of Escape From New York, which was originally set to star Gerard Butler. And a new rumored title for the film raises some interesting questions about its storyline this time around.

According to Spielberg News, the remake of John Carpenter's classic will be called New York 1997, not Escape From New York. As in the original, convicted criminal Snake Plissken gets sent into Manhattan, which is now a maximum-security prison, to rescue the U.S. president who's crashed there. The film is still looking for a director, now that Brett Ratner and Len Wiseman have bailed.

The 1981 original was set in 1997, which is now our past. You'd think the safe thing to do would be to set the remake in 2020 or thereabouts, but it sounds as though the producers want it to be an alternate past. Which I'm kind of excited about, actually. We've had tons of dystopian futures, but how many dystopian alternate pasts have we had? Especially if the 1997 president is a messed up alternate version of Bill Clinton — or Bob Dole, maybe. Of course, the French site could be on crack, or I could be mis-translating. [Spielberg News via MTV Movies]

Can The Children Of Men Escape From New York?

Charlie Jane Anders — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 20:00:00 PDT

Our hero ~~Snake Plissken~~Parsifal busts the world's last fertile woman out of a maximum security facility staffed by knights in armor armed with laser crossbows (pew! pew!) in this awesome sequence from Italian post-apocalyptic masterpiece 2019: After The Fall Of New York.

There's been a nuclear holocaust ("They baked the Big Apple," one character remarks) and now New York is full of punk-rock mutants, whom the ruling Eurasian bastards hunt on horseback. There hasn't been a child born in nearly 20 years, but this woman with the awesomely feathered hair has viable eggs, so the rebels want to spirit her away to Alpha Centauri with a whole host of virile men. (But via test tube, not the old-fashioned way.) This clip also includes the great sequence when the evil cyborg leader gets a new eyeball, with crushed ice on his face, because... well, just because, okay? Anyway, final proof the post-apocalyptic genre has gained a bit more dignity since 1983.

Which Scifi Franchise Cries Out For A Re-Imagining?

charliejane — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 10:53:23 PST

Everybody's re-imagining old science fiction franchises, from Battlestar and Bionic Woman to Star Trek and Terminator. (Can you remember when you had never heard the verb "re-imagine?" Now, it's the only verb I ever use.) But some of the greatest classics are still waiting for their extreme makeovers. It's time to give Hollywood a little push! Click through to vote for the best fixer-upper.