President Adam is the President of the United States in 2013 and he is a character in Escape from LA. If he is John Harker's direct successor or not is unknown. He is elected to a lifetime term and slowly transforms the police state from the previous film into a theocracy.
Biography[]
Career[]
Sometime after 2000 in the beginning of the 21st-century, the Constitution was amended to allow him to begin a lifelong appointment after correctly predicting an earthquake would destroy the city of Los Angeles in divine retribution for its' high crime rates during his time as a presidential candidate.
As President, he moves the nation's capital to Lynchburg, Virginia. When Los Angeles is separated from the mainland, he implements Directive 17, making Los Angeles the deportation point for those who have been stripped of their U.S citizenship for committing various newly designated amoral and immoral crimes that are not aligned with the new Neo Crusade Christian-branch founded by President Adam, the following 15 examples are felonies:
- Paganism
- Heathenism
- Atheism
- Heresy
- Blasphemy
- Profanity
- Exposure
- Free-love
- Prostitutes (buying, selling or using)
- Narcotics (buying, selling or using)
- Alcohol (buying, selling or using)
- Tobacco (buying, selling or using)
- Smoking (buying, selling or using)
- Weapons (buying, selling or using)
- Red-meat (buying, selling or using)
While the United States was already relatively dystopian in the first film in 1988, as seen in the establishment of the USPF and their presence at his inauguration, the election and subsequent policies of this president slowly morphed it from an already despotic police state into a much more strict and authoritarian theocratic police state.
His projects include the development of the Sword of Damocles, a satellite-based weapon capable of disabling electronic devices anywhere in the world. Sometime in 2013, his daughter Utopia steals a prototype of the Sword and hijacks Air Force Three, delivering it to Cuervo Jones. Considering his daughter a traitor for this act, he forces S.D. "Snake" Plissken to retrieve the black box and kill his daughter.
Family[]
The President had at least two daughters, Utopia and another said to have committed suicide.
Behind the Scenes[]
Donald Pleasence didn't reprise his role as President John Harker due to his declining health. He died in February the 2nd, 1995, in his home in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France, from complications of heart failure following heart valvereplacement surgery. His body was cremated.
When filming began on December the 11th, 1995. Cliff Robertson replaced Pleasence as a new and original President, Robertson's character was Kurt Russell's idea, he based him on the Republican-Baptist minister and broadcaster Pat Robertson because of him attributing calamities to God's wrath against all heathens, homosexuals, and corrupt socialists.
Notes[]
Trivia[]
- Although perhaps far-fetched, it seems unlikely that the president could've correctly predicted the earthquake that destroyed Los Angeles through sheer instinct alone, and it is possible that he used some other method to correctly predict it and assume power. An even less likely, but interesting possibility, is that the earthquake was artificially created, as advanced technology and an operational superweapon are demonstrated in the second film. It could be speculated that the president, colluding with higher figures in the government or military to establish his theocracy, made use directly or indirectly of an existing superweapon to create the earthquake that led to his correct prediction and subsequent election to a lifetime term.