The Warriors Coney Island Festival

"The Warriors" is, simultaneously, a Greek epic and a live-action comic book, a combination of grit and color that survived early critical pans to become a favorite of midnight movie showings everywhere. Depicting a fever dream version of gang warfare in 1970s New York, the film tells the story of a crew trying to make its way back to Coney Island, seemingly having to battle every other posse in the city along the way.

But, in the way that Darth Vader is to many a more memorable character than Luke Skywalker and Jack Nicholson's Joker stole a lot of the thunder from Michael Keaton's Batman in the 1989 version of the film, the titular gang at the center of "The Warriors" may be less memorable than the antagonists. It's much more likely to see people dressed up as members of the Baseball Furies (the face-painted, bat-wielding crew) at Halloween. And the two most oft-quoted lines come from the citywide leader Cyrus ("Can you dig it?") and the central bad guy, Luther ("Warriors! Come out and play!").

So, if "The Warriors" went back into production today, what would those bad guys look like? Who would play the modern obstacles to the return to Coney Island? With The Warriors Coney Island Festival this weekend, we present a few ideas: