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Russell looks at Snake Plissken differently from the character’s fans, seeing the grizzled, Clint Eastwood-like badass as a wounded, kind of pathetic figure. Russell sees Snake as an escape artist who can escape from New York (and Los Angeles in his 1996 sequel), but “he’s doomed to never be able to escape the one thing he wants to escape from, and that’s himself.” For Russell, Snake is a survivor, but also psychotic, two qualities, he says, that “go together.” There is no softness to Snake. Which makes for an exciting sci-fi hero, but not a complete human.
Russell recalls making “Escape from New York,” notably the opening scene that was deleted. In the theatrical cut, Snake is introduced already in police custody. In the original script, audiences were to see what he did to get arrested. The deleted opening heist sequence has been released to the public and can easily be seen online. The sequence made use of Panaglide camera rigs to achieve the long takes. Carpenter has said that he only shot the sequence to show off.
Russell noted why the sequence was cut, saying:
“We started out doing some stuff that ended up not being in the movie. It was a train station sequence sort of establishing the character of Snake. And he had a partner, and he got shot, and Snake actually ran back to help him. They caught them. It was a redeeming quality is what we were showing there. John Carpenter decided, correctly so, that Snake didn’t have any redeeming qualities … I only cared about pleasing John. And, hopefully, trying to capture something that was going to fit into his vision.”
Remove Snake’s humanity. Check. It was a wise choice that actually improved the character.
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