YMMV / Escape 2000

• Awesome Music: The main theme from 1990: The Bronx Warriors, composed by Walter Rizzati, is a nice little instrumental rock number that serves as a perfect choice for a Warriors knock-off such as this. The rest of Rizzati's score isn't too bad, either, with "Learning to Die" in particular sounding almost like something Goblin would've come up with for Suspiria.
• Cliché Storm: Every cliche ripped from Escape from New York, The Warriors, and Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior is in these movies.
• Complete Monster:
  • 1990: The Bronx Warriors: Hammer the Exterminator is a mercenary hired by the Manhattan Corporation to capture, and later eliminate, Anne after she runs away to the Bronx. Coming into confrontation with the Riders gang, Anne's rescuers, he kills two of its members and begins paying off other members to turn on one another. In an attempt to cause a war between the Riders and the Ogres, Hammer kills a member of The Ogres and frames Trash for the murder. At the film's climax, Hammer, deciding to Leave No Survivors, attacks a festival full of people, having his men burn everyone in sight alive.
  • Escape 2000: Floyd Wengler is a mercenary tasked with removing the population of the Bronx so the General Construction Corporation can gentrify it. To do so, he institutes a policy of genocide, with the victims either being tricked into voluntarily coming via lies of reaccommodation in New Mexico or simply being gunned down in their own homes. After Trash escapes a building's demolition and becomes hero of the resistance, Wengler tries to lure him and his gang to their deaths via civilians with bombs attached to them. After the resistance kidnaps President Clark, Wengler has his goons track them to their hideout, knowingly getting them killed, to get his armies a pathway to the base. When he gets there, he leads a total massacre, executing Clark so the company Vice President Hoffman can take over and pay him more. The battle ends up going south for his side, so Wengler tries to escape, gunning down any friend or foe in his way. Despite working for a faction genuinely wishing to help New York City, Wengler never pretends to be anything but Only in It for the Money.
• Designated Hero:
  • Trash's motivations are never made particularly clear, but Strike is a vicious mercenary who uses his own son as an accomplice and Dablone wants to run crime in the Bronx (and thus opposes the directive to rebuild it with, you know, schools and hospitals).
  • Of course, considering the guys who want to build those schools and hospitals are perfectly happy to murder any and all opposition... somehow this trope still applies. Amazing what "vaguely evil vs. somewhat ambiguous" can do, ain't it?
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Who is the real star of this movie, eh? Not the Trash, or even the rat lady! It is only I, DABLONE!!! AH-HA-HA-HA-HA!
• Fan Nickname: Thanks to Mystery Science Theater 3000, Dablone's mondegreen nickname is Toblerone.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Trash, Junior, and Strike have something that should be Friendship Moment when they say good-bye at the end with Jack even acting cute and silly. While standing in the middle of dozens upon dozens of death mooks and bodies of their fallen comrades.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • This film wasn't the last sci-fi story to include an evil ruler named President Clark.
  • It's also not the only film set in the Bronx where bikers fight mobsters - and can't leave.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Perhaps only on this website, but have we ever given so much attention to a character other than DABLONE?! HIJO DE LA PUTA!
  • We have, actually. DABLONE (HA-HA!) is one of a trio with CIAPHAS CAIN, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM! and CAPTAIN GORDON, DEFENDER OF EARTH! If all three were put into the same room, the universe would collapse in on itself as a Big Bang of awesomeness took its place, and BRIAN BLESSED would be the first man they created for the new world.
  • Don't forget to LEAVE THE BRONX!
• Narm: Quite a few moments could be argued, but a standout one is when Jay and Moon are trying to sneak past Disinfestators and Jay says "If they see us, we've had it." Unfortunately the actor delivers the line in a strange singsongy sort of tone, completely undercutting whatever tension the scene might otherwise have had. It doesn't help that he dies a violent death by fireball a few minutes later.
  Mike: You've SEEN me and I've HAD IT!
• Padding: Trash's meeting with Ogre in the beginning of 1990: The Bronx Warriors goes on and on while a drum solo plays.
• Sequel Displacement: Thanks to the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode, most people were largely unaware that Escape 2000 was actually a sequel. The obscurity of 1990: The Bronx Warriors back in the day didn't help its case either. Today, the sequel is more widely known because of it. That's the reason this page is 90% about Escape 2000 despite being a page for both movies.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • In a scene near the beginning, some goons are in a helicopter flying over THE BRONX. In the flyover, we can see traffic moving through an obviously-not-ruined THE BRONX.
  • When Hoffman's car gets exploded by a grenade, it's painfully obvious that it's a just a plastic model blowing up.
  • The building demolition looks faker than most Japanese kaiju movies.
  • The awkwardly falling dummy that tumbles out of the exploding helicopter is a Funny Moment.
  • A van keeps changing models in-between shots. In certain scenes it's an American-made GMC Value Van, and in others it's a British-made Commer Walk-Thru. When the van is blown up, it's a German-made Opel Blitz.
• Strangled by the Red String: Trash barely interacts with Ann at all in The Bronx Warriors, yet their second scene together has Ann declaring that she wants to be with him forever.
• Strawman Has a Point:
  Rat Woman: [about Junior] You keep him buried down here?
  Strike: Why, is up there better?
  [Cut to Clark's limo driving past a public park in Manhattan.]
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The "heroes" of Escape 2000 are only such because the story says so; their goal is preserving the Bronx as a criminal's paradise so they can expand their own wealth and power, caring nothing at all for the suffering of the Bronx's impoverished citizens. The plot basically requires the villains to randomly torch innocent bystanders willy-nilly to build their bad-guy cred, because if not for that they'd easily be Hero Antagonists.

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