To Donald Trump, the American City Will Always Be A Dystopic, ‘Eighties Movies’ New York

Now that Trump is president, could the Old Future New York of film be upon us?

John Carpenter's seedy dystopian action flick, Escape From New York, was released in 1981. Its premise was simple: By the end of the decade, crime would get so bad that the island of Manhattan would be walled off and turned into a penal colony. America's worst convicts would be given a choice: euthanasia and cremation, or permanent exile in New York City. “There are no guards inside the prison,” read the intertitles near the beginning of the film, “only the prisoners and the worlds they have made.”

The future New York of Escape is a chaotic, bombed-out wasteland roamed by unhinged weirdos and ruled by brutal psychos. An eye-patched Kurt Russell, playing cynical, mercenary antihero Snake Plissken, makes his way through the derelict city on a do-or-die mission: find the president of the United States, whose plane has been brought down over the city, and get him out. ...