What year was this set in?
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Streets of Fire
parkpunk — 18 years ago(April 17, 2007 11:50 AM)
I remember watching this on HBO as a kid. I always thought it had a futuristic feel to it, but the clothing and cars are definitely 50's. Does anyone know?
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mrmike73 — 18 years ago(May 13, 2007 01:30 PM)
When the movie came out originally, the magazine Heavy Metal was really popular and it alway had futuristic storylines with images from all kinds of eras. So naturally I just accepted it at the time that it was a thing like that, and never tried to pin it down to an era from our reality. Like the movie posters said at the time " A rock and roll fable".
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DaytonaBob — 18 years ago(May 13, 2007 01:33 PM)
I remember when I first saw it, irrespective of the "Another Place, Another Time" as it reminded me of the episodes (although not as cheesy) of the the original Star Trek series where they ran into worlds that had set up shop with time period they only had knowledge of. Like the Gangsters era. The American Indians. Etc.
BUT
Another Place, Another Time works for me.
Why hasn't this become a Broadway Musical. I mean it is just perfect for it.
They who give up liberty to
obtain a temporary safety deserve
neither liberty or safety -
laeyisoracle — 18 years ago(May 21, 2007 02:11 PM)
Exactly like the Batman cartoons(or even some of the movies). The world they take pace in IS the modern world, in the sense it's happening circa now, but the themes and styles of years past remain. I actually love this type of thing. Streets of Fire was obviously part 50s, part 60s and part 80s, mixed together(and slight dystopian futurism).
When I thought of "Another time, another place", it reminded me of Star Wars, for some strange reason. Actually, Streets of Fire's world seems like something that you'd see in an episode of Sliders. -
misbegotten — 18 years ago(July 23, 2007 08:06 AM)
I recently saw Streets of Fire for the first time, and immediately thought that it could be placed in the same continuity as John Carpenter's Escape from New York and Escape from LA.
A opening caption in Streets of Fire states that it's set in 'Another Time, Another Place'. At first glance, judging by most of the clothes, cars and hairstyles on display, the story takes place in the Fifties. But the music being played and the outfits worn by key characters (Ellen Aim, Baby Doll, and Raven Shaddock) are clearly from the Eighties. There's also a scene in a bar with a large wall-mounted TV screen on which a modern pop video is playing.
The city is which the film is located is never named, but judging by the elevated train-tracks everywhere, it's probably Chicago. Crime is out of control, and a rundown industrial district called The Battery is a no-go area for the local police.
It's also established in the dialogue that both of Streets of Fire's heroes, Tom Cody and McCoy, are ex-soldiers and war veterans. McCoy even mutters that she left the army because they "ran out of wars".
Escape from New York is set in an alternative 1997, where crime is running rampant, and America has been fighting a war against Russia and China for several years that has so far avoided going nuclear - but time is running out. The war is apparently being fought over declining energy resources, as an experimental cold fusion theory that American scientists have developed is the last hope for peace. The movie concludes with Snake Plisken destroying a tape containing the cold fusion formula, apparently condemning the world to nuclear annihilation.
The sequel Escape from LA takes place in 2013, with a nuclear conflict having clearly been prevented (Presumably saner minds prevailed and pulled all three countries back from the brink. The cold fusion theory was eventually shared and a truce signed). Following the election of a right-wing, Christian fundamentalist President in 2000, the para-military United States Police Force was formed, and by 2103 America has become a police state.
Here's my sad and extremely geeky attempt to link Streets of Fire with the Escape movies: if we imagine that Streets takes place in the alternative 1999, then the retro fashions and hairstyles on display make sense. The look and sound of previous eras always influences the present, but with America living under constant threat of nuclear annihilation for several years, and the population believing the world could end at anytime and that there was no future, they embraced the past (a more innocent, safer time) as never before.
It also ties in with Cody and McCoy's time spent in the army. Assuming that the truce with Russia and China was signed in 1999 and peace declared immediately thereafter, then the two of them were probably amongst the first wave of American soldiers to be discharged and sent home.
After the election of the fundamentalist President in 2000, the soldiers that followed them were probably re-employed in the newly-formed United States Police Force, swiftly swelling it's numbers. This resulted in a massive crackdown in crime and eventually the police state seen in Escape from LA.
There's a final link: character actor Peter Jason has small roles in several early films by Walter Hill, and appears in many of Carpenter's later movies. In Streets of Fire, he plays a beat cop (identified as 'Harry' in the credits) manning a roadblock. In Escape from LA, he turns up as an unnamed duty sergeant who welcomes Snake Plisken when the later arrives at the LA Holding and Transfer Facility. It's possible to see these two roles by Jason as being the same person - between 1999 and 2103, 'Harry' was promoted and transfered to LA. Even the real-time difference between the release of the two films (Streets of Fire in 1984, twelve years later there was Escape from LA in 1996) practically ties in with the aging of Jason's character.
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andrewwjohnson — 14 years ago(February 29, 2012 01:06 PM)
During the late thirties threw much of the forties some jukeboxes were made with rear projection systems that played "soundies" : short films of singers or bands of the era. World War Two material restriction ended the the production of the machines and the last soundie was released in 1946. It would be highly unlikely to find such a machine in a late fifties bar and totally incredible for it to be playing rock music.
Color TV sets were more likely. They were first produced in the mid fifties and there high cost made them more suitable for public places like bars. However they didn't have large screens so that is definitely an anachronism at least for the fifties.
You don't need a flux capacitor handy to realize the music is for more eighties rock then anything Haley and the Comets or Elvis ever did in the fifties.
TAG LINE: True genius is a beautiful thing, but ignorance is ugly to the bone. -
skizzie72-1 — 18 years ago(July 27, 2007 10:19 AM)
set in 1984 but as hill's films all are, its an alternate reality which makes him able to incorporate things from different decades. i just watched it last night again and the video jukebox and the neons gave it away as being set in the current year but almost like certain things didnt happen in time so it stayed as it was in the late 40' or early 50's. almost as if there was no world war II and things more or less stayed the same, I.E. the abound racism when the cops call the sorells "spades", all the metal cars driving around so there was no metal shortage for the war. if it could only still be that simple today
IM RUNNIN THIS MONKEY FARM NOW,FRANKENSTEIN! AND I WANNA KNO WHAT THE F&$K YOU'RE DOIN WITH MY TIME -
chicago85 — 16 years ago(June 08, 2009 05:55 AM)
Its a comic book. It reminds me of Dark City with Keifer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly, Rufus Sewell and William Hurt. The telephones, clothes etc looked like 1940's.
I don't want to spoil things but Rufus Sewell discovers he isn't having hallucinations. Its worse than that. -
scotbpens — 16 years ago(June 28, 2009 06:49 PM)
It's made clear from the beginning that
Streets of Fire
is set in a dystopian alternate reality where styles, fashions, and the state of technology are chronologically all over the map, much like Terry Gilliam's
Brazil
. Only if I had to choose between living in the
Brazil
universe and the
Streets of Fire
universe, I'd pick
Streets of Fire
for sure. That world may be dangerous, but at least it looks like fun!
All the universe . . . or nothingness. Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be? -
ozymandias312 — 16 years ago(September 24, 2009 08:05 PM)
I'm pretty sure it's supposed to take place in some kind of alternate reality, probably with an alternate timeline and history, sort of like in some Alan Moore graphic novels, or like in that Ray Bradbury story, "A Sound of Thunder." Maybe World War II never happened there, or, if it did, it was fought by different countries for different reasons, or somebody else won. Maybe there have been several other wars in the meantime that never happened in our reality. There might have even been a limited nuclear war at some point.
Ozy
And I stood where I did be; for there was no more use to run; And again I lookt with my hope gone. -
Apollyon_Crash — 16 years ago(October 16, 2009 01:52 PM)
I always pictured the film as being set more or less in the 1980s, but in an alternate universe where the Cold War actually escalated into full-on combat (around 1959 or 1960), and after 20 years or so of war with Russia (perhaps the war has just ended or is just ending), society is crumbling. Crime is rampant, no new cars have been built for over 2 decades (presumably the assembly lines are/were converted for the war effort), and the world is very sharply divided between the "haves" and the "have nots."
In this sense, I think, the film actually seems downright believable.