So why not just kill them? “Because then the world will know they are dead,” one of the characters explains. Some of the people in the prison have secrets that the wardens want, but some don’t. The prison is extra-legal, its very existence a secret. Indeed, at one point, characters openly ruminate on the absurdity of the situation in which they have found themselves forced to participate in almost daily gladiatorial combat and getting assaulted by handsy robotic prison staff. It is more a collection of science-fiction and action movie tropes than anything that could plausibly exist. Except for the staff who work in the kitchen, for some other reason. Inmates are randomly forced to battle one another, with the winner receiving “sanctuary time.” The inmates are housed in “spokes.” The guards and staff of the prison are primarily robots, for some reason. It is a combination of a variety of dystopian science-fiction tropes, evoking the sorts of prisons featured in movies like Face/Off or Captain America: Civil War.Īt one point, the warden of the prison unironically boasts of his institution, “All the drama of the human condition is represented right here, in my zoo.” There is a sense that the script believes this to be the case. So Escape Plan 2 invests hard in making its central prison, “Hades”, the most absurd prison imaginable. Indeed, Escape Plan 2 repeatedly assumes that the appeal of these films is in watching characters escape from increasingly absurd penal institutions. As such, the script assumes a level of unearned emotional investment in trappings like the three rule of a successful breakout, the fact that the prison featured in the sequel is from “the people behind the Tomb”, and even an extended conversation referencing to Abigail, Amy Ryan’s character from the original film.Įscape Plan 2 is anchored in the idea that Escape Plan was beloved for its mythology and its premise, more than the above the line talent. The only other returning character from the original Escape Plan is Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, which invites the audience to wonder what the point of this exercise is.Īt the same time, despite losing the overwhelming majority of the cast from Escape Plan, the sequel seems to believe that the audience is invested in the world of the original film of an end of itself. In Escape Plan 2, when Stallone’s character refers to a “friend of ” who is a “big guy”, he is referring to the character played by franchise newcomer David Bautista. Schwarzenegger’s character is never even mentioned in the script, as if to completely erase him from the franchise. The problems with Escape Plan 2 run deeper than the loss of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
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