Word came down the pike today that “The Warriors,” Walter Hill’s hallowed 1979 gang-war opus that I’ve written laboriously about here a few times before, is being adapted for a television series.
Predictably, I wasted no time in venting my spleen about it on Facebook, emphatically asserting that “The Warriors” in no way needs a re-imagining or a “re-booting,” let alone on television. Here’s an idea: How about coming up with something new?
In turn, folks weighed in, largely agreeing with my bug-eyed fervor, although rightfully goading me for getting so upset about it. I countered that the notion of setting the narrative of “The Warriors” in 2016 would be a pointless exercise and that all the points of conflict in the original film would be diffused by the norms, mores and social practices of the post-millennial New York City.
For a start, given the immediacy and ubiquity of social media, there wouldn’t have been that great a need to summon delegates from each and every gang in NYC to a remote playground in the Bronx (albeit actually filmed in Riverside Park on the Upper West Side). Cyrus’ vision of a gang-controlled dystopia could have been handily disseminated over Twitter or Facebook and reached an even greater number of similarly inclined “suckers.”
But, okay, failing that, let’s say for a second that all those “boppers” did congregate. Even in the ensuing chaos, surely someone would whip out their smartphone and capture Luther from the Rogues squeezing the trigger on poor Cyrus. This would, in turn, alert the evidently gullible Gramercy Riffs* of the genuine culprits, and concerned parties would not have to rely on the frankly sketchy, ambiguous and unreliable reports from that mysterious disc jockey with an inexplicable fondness for Joe Walsh records.
Further expounding on the original film’s plot points, the 2016 Warriors – who would doubtlessly be doing battle with “updated” cliques like the Dude-Bro’s, the Vegans, the Soul Cyclers, the Bushwick Gentrifiers, the Yolos, the Park Slope Strollers and the Artisanal Hipsters – would realistically be able to side-step their storied run-ins with the original gangs like the Orphans, the Lizzies and the endearingly ridiculous Baseball Furies by simply calling an Uber XL and riding back to Coney in more expedient (albeit expensive) style.
Ultimately, the entirety of the Warriors’ epic turf tumult would be reduced to a fleeting hashtag spat.
*To this day, I cannot abide by Hill's choice of placing the Riffs -- inarguably the fiercest organization in the movie -- in Gramercy. I mean, I know the city has changed a lot in the ensuing decades, but even in 1979, the Gramercy/Flatiron neighborhood was a leafy, placid enclave for the well-heeled, and hardly a `hood rife with gaggles of hockey-stick and nun-chuck-wielding roughians in stylish kung-fu gear.
But hey, it's only a movie, I suppose.
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