Based on the 1956 short story “The Racer” by Ib Melchior, Death Race 2000 drops us into a totalitarian United States, annually united in bloodlust by the Transcontinental Road Race. A rogue’s gallery of cartoon personas—most notably Machine Gun Joe (Sylvester Stallone), Calamity Jane (Mary Woronov), and the masked wild-card “Frankenstein” (David Carradine)—are set loose in an east-to-west race across America, boosting their score with every pedestrian they mow down along the way. Alternating between footage of the race itself, televised reportage by braying, obsequious newscasters, and the schemes of a resistance group who have a woman on the inside (Simone Griffeth), Bartel dutifully keeps things moving, even when the racers make pit stops and detours. 2000 is constantly expanding outward and forward across all-American terrains with roving wide-angle vistas courtesy of cinematographer Tak Fujimoto. The 2008 Death Race swaps out these colourful exteriors for a frequently hideous gunmetal palette, but more importantly, it also shrinks the country-spanning race into the fenced-in confines of Terminal Island, a high-security prison where the inmates are pitted against each other in a nationally broadcasted, no-holds-barred fight for their freedom (complete with subscription tiers).
"The dystopia of Death Race is one of work shortages, rising crime rates, and privatized prisons."
The dystopia of Death Race is one of work shortages, rising crime rates, and privatized prisons. Where 2000 is populated by the petty and selfish at the top of its social food chain, Anderson opts to ground things with a working class moral centre. Jensen Ames (Jason Statham) is a short-tempered family man with a heart of gold who’s framed for his wife’s murder, leaving their infant daughter parentless as he’s shipped off to Terminal Island to rot. Statham’s the kind of aloof, but fundamentally earnest, performer that brought many a far-out scenario back down to earth in the 2000s. Though it pays off in the sense of traditional stakes and clear-cut morals, a stable (and blandly likeable) point of empathy is contradictory to the original scenario’s larger-than-life efficacy. Death Race is, for better and for worse, the more “convincing” dystopia, and that’s not just because its characters are recognizably human.
A conspiracy emerges when Jensen is recruited by Terminal Island’s Warden Hennessey (Joan Allen) to play a little game of dress-up. In this version of the story, “Frankenstein” has died quietly on an operating table away from the public eye, and to keep ratings up, Hennessey needs another skilled driver to don the mask. Frankenstein was a 4-time-winner, and per the show’s rules, only needed one more to earn his release, so all Jensen has to do is win the race once—reluctant to lose her cash cow, Hennessey will do everything she can to make sure he loses.
Frankenstein as a replaceable, placating industry plant was central to 2000 as well; he removes his mask after hyped-up allusions to years of gruesome injuries and patchwork reconstructions, but Carradine’s face is fully intact (and handsome to boot). As he and the resistance spy Annie prepare to knock boots—revealing unmarred figures as they undress—he recalls an anonymous upbringing in a government training facility, where a reserve of Frankensteins await their chance to sub in. It’s a prophetic image that eerily compliments not only the character’s capacity to be endlessly replaced and repurposed, but the story’s as well.
The remake also carries over the days-spanning nature of the titular race, allowing for interstitial scheming and downtime; it’s broken down into three multi-lap races, each with more gruesome fatalities than the last. The racers’ built-in arsenals are buffed in creative ways, but the action is surprisingly frenetic and choppy for a director known for slick, geometric blocking. Anderson’s personality shines through in the sense that his sci-fi premises reliably exaggerate existing political tensions. In contrast to Bartel’s vague, sarcastic jabs at state-power and propaganda, skewering the bread-and-circuses that distract from fascist diplomacy, Death Race sets its sights on the carceral system and reality television, imagining an all-too believable world where criminals are personal property and their owners are given carte-blanche to monetize recordings of their spectacular deaths.
This is not to say that 2000’s satire is any less effective for being further removed from a recognizable reality—if anything, it’s even more so. Shortly after a racer is killed by a rebel booby trap, the newscasters scramble to divert the nation’s attention from the possibilities of sabotage; they bring in the widow of Machine Gun Joe’s first “score” for a live interview, her face still wet with tears. When the anchor asks if she can call her by her first name, however, she says emphatically “Oh please do!” The citizenry of Death Race 2000 are in the throes of some strange hypnosis, constantly tempting fate (a makeshift matador flag-waves a gung-ho Calamity Jane, a trio of buddies wait by a sewer drain to see if they can evade being splattered, a zealous woman meets Frankenstein face-to-face so that when he runs her down later it will “mean something”) and invariably boosting the drivers’ scores.
"It’s a prophetic image that eerily compliments not only the character’s capacity to be endlessly replaced and repurposed, but the story’s as well."
The film’s respective solutions to their central problems are revealing of approach and outlook. 2000 climaxes with the assassination of the president by Frankenstein and Annie, who become America’s new leaders in the closing minutes, while Death Race merely saves its central characters, giving Jensen a personal revenge rather than a political one. The remake lets the world burn offscreen as Jensen is reunited with his baby in Mexico, but the world of Death Race 2000 isn’t exactly saved either. Newlyweds Annie and Frankenstein abolish the Transcontinental Road Race to the horrified chagrin of one of the news anchors, who maintains that the American people won’t stand for this. “Sure it’s violent, but that’s the way we love it… and that’s why we love you,” he filibusters in the driveway. “Do we have to listen to this?” asks Annie, and they run him down as the car cruises off into the distance, leaving behind a crowd of applauding press.
Where the more blockbuster-y remake is optimistic enough to give its characters a literal and moral out, the original has them succumb to and perpetuate those quintessentially American principles they were rejecting in the first place: a bloodlust that seeks not just to remove the inconvenience of opposition, but to silence it altogether. At the end of the day, the two films share a fundamentally cynical vision of humanity’s future that even a Hollywood ending can’t quite pave over.
Based on the 1956 short story “The Racer” by Ib Melchior, Death Race 2000 drops us into a totalitarian United States, annually united in bloodlust by the Transcontinental Road Race. A rogue’s gallery of cartoon personas—most notably Machine Gun Joe (Sylvester Stallone), Calamity Jane (Mary Woronov), and the masked wild-card “Frankenstein” (David Carradine)—are set loose in an east-to-west race across America, boosting their score with every pedestrian they mow down along the way. Alternating between footage of the race itself, televised reportage by braying, obsequious newscasters, and the schemes of a resistance group who have a woman on the inside (Simone Griffeth), Bartel dutifully keeps things moving, even when the racers make pit stops and detours. 2000 is constantly expanding outward and forward across all-American terrains with roving wide-angle vistas courtesy of cinematographer Tak Fujimoto. The 2008 Death Race swaps out these colourful exteriors for a frequently hideous gunmetal palette, but more importantly, it also shrinks the country-spanning race into the fenced-in confines of Terminal Island, a high-security prison where the inmates are pitted against each other in a nationally broadcasted, no-holds-barred fight for their freedom (complete with subscription tiers).
"The dystopia of Death Race is one of work shortages, rising crime rates, and privatized prisons."
The dystopia of Death Race is one of work shortages, rising crime rates, and privatized prisons. Where 2000 is populated by the petty and selfish at the top of its social food chain, Anderson opts to ground things with a working class moral centre. Jensen Ames (Jason Statham) is a short-tempered family man with a heart of gold who’s framed for his wife’s murder, leaving their infant daughter parentless as he’s shipped off to Terminal Island to rot. Statham’s the kind of aloof, but fundamentally earnest, performer that brought many a far-out scenario back down to earth in the 2000s. Though it pays off in the sense of traditional stakes and clear-cut morals, a stable (and blandly likeable) point of empathy is contradictory to the original scenario’s larger-than-life efficacy. Death Race is, for better and for worse, the more “convincing” dystopia, and that’s not just because its characters are recognizably human.
A conspiracy emerges when Jensen is recruited by Terminal Island’s Warden Hennessey (Joan Allen) to play a little game of dress-up. In this version of the story, “Frankenstein” has died quietly on an operating table away from the public eye, and to keep ratings up, Hennessey needs another skilled driver to don the mask. Frankenstein was a 4-time-winner, and per the show’s rules, only needed one more to earn his release, so all Jensen has to do is win the race once—reluctant to lose her cash cow, Hennessey will do everything she can to make sure he loses.
Frankenstein as a replaceable, placating industry plant was central to 2000 as well; he removes his mask after hyped-up allusions to years of gruesome injuries and patchwork reconstructions, but Carradine’s face is fully intact (and handsome to boot). As he and the resistance spy Annie prepare to knock boots—revealing unmarred figures as they undress—he recalls an anonymous upbringing in a government training facility, where a reserve of Frankensteins await their chance to sub in. It’s a prophetic image that eerily compliments not only the character’s capacity to be endlessly replaced and repurposed, but the story’s as well.
The remake also carries over the days-spanning nature of the titular race, allowing for interstitial scheming and downtime; it’s broken down into three multi-lap races, each with more gruesome fatalities than the last. The racers’ built-in arsenals are buffed in creative ways, but the action is surprisingly frenetic and choppy for a director known for slick, geometric blocking. Anderson’s personality shines through in the sense that his sci-fi premises reliably exaggerate existing political tensions. In contrast to Bartel’s vague, sarcastic jabs at state-power and propaganda, skewering the bread-and-circuses that distract from fascist diplomacy, Death Race sets its sights on the carceral system and reality television, imagining an all-too believable world where criminals are personal property and their owners are given carte-blanche to monetize recordings of their spectacular deaths.
This is not to say that 2000’s satire is any less effective for being further removed from a recognizable reality—if anything, it’s even more so. Shortly after a racer is killed by a rebel booby trap, the newscasters scramble to divert the nation’s attention from the possibilities of sabotage; they bring in the widow of Machine Gun Joe’s first “score” for a live interview, her face still wet with tears. When the anchor asks if she can call her by her first name, however, she says emphatically “Oh please do!” The citizenry of Death Race 2000 are in the throes of some strange hypnosis, constantly tempting fate (a makeshift matador flag-waves a gung-ho Calamity Jane, a trio of buddies wait by a sewer drain to see if they can evade being splattered, a zealous woman meets Frankenstein face-to-face so that when he runs her down later it will “mean something”) and invariably boosting the drivers’ scores.
"It’s a prophetic image that eerily compliments not only the character’s capacity to be endlessly replaced and repurposed, but the story’s as well."
The film’s respective solutions to their central problems are revealing of approach and outlook. 2000 climaxes with the assassination of the president by Frankenstein and Annie, who become America’s new leaders in the closing minutes, while Death Race merely saves its central characters, giving Jensen a personal revenge rather than a political one. The remake lets the world burn offscreen as Jensen is reunited with his baby in Mexico, but the world of Death Race 2000 isn’t exactly saved either. Newlyweds Annie and Frankenstein abolish the Transcontinental Road Race to the horrified chagrin of one of the news anchors, who maintains that the American people won’t stand for this. “Sure it’s violent, but that’s the way we love it… and that’s why we love you,” he filibusters in the driveway. “Do we have to listen to this?” asks Annie, and they run him down as the car cruises off into the distance, leaving behind a crowd of applauding press.
Where the more blockbuster-y remake is optimistic enough to give its characters a literal and moral out, the original has them succumb to and perpetuate those quintessentially American principles they were rejecting in the first place: a bloodlust that seeks not just to remove the inconvenience of opposition, but to silence it altogether. At the end of the day, the two films share a fundamentally cynical vision of humanity’s future that even a Hollywood ending can’t quite pave over.