It’s Stallone versus Snipes in 1993’s Demolition Man, which aims for satirical sci-fi – but, as Matt Glasby discovers in the year 2024, is an uneasy mix: entertaining but irretrievably of its time.
Demolition Man
In the early 1990s, the action heroes of the previous decade found themselves in serious trouble.
In two short years, Arnie had pivoted from T2, one of the greatest blockbusters of all time, to Last Action Hero, a much-mocked mega bomb.
Sylvester Stallone, meanwhile, was trying to soften his image with the likes of Oscar and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. But after years of punching bad guys—and, arguably, audiences—in the face, his comic chops were MIA presumed dead.
Released in 1993, Demolition Man is pitched about halfway between T2 and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, offering the kind of wham-bam action role Sly could do in his sleep—and, arguably, sometimes did—while also attempting to satirise the genre.
It’s an uneasy mix: entertaining but irretrievably of its time; one of those sci-fi flicks that tells us more about the present than the future.
The pitch is a simple one. In 1996, maverick cop John Spartan (Stallone) takes on psychopath Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes), with explosive results. I guess that’s the risk you take when you send an officer nicknamed “The Demolition Man”.
Both Spartan and Phoenix are sentenced to be cryogenically frozen in the California Cryo-Penitentiary, but Phoenix escapes. I guess that’s the risk you take when your villain is named after a mythical regenerating bird. No idea where the Simon came from.
When Phoenix rampages across the bland, law-abiding San Angeles of 2036, the cops—including 20th-century stan Lieutenant Lenina Huxley (Sandra Bullock)—decide to unfreeze Spartan too. “Send a maniac to catch a maniac” is the idea, but “has-been” might be closer to the mark. Soon it’s Spartan vs Phoenix, with political correctness the first of many casualties.
Demolition Man was the directorial debut of Italian-born Canadian artist Marco Brambilla, who’s yet to make another film. Based on a spec script by Peter Lenkov, its comedic elements came courtesy of Daniel Waters (Heathers), before a final uncredited rewrite by Fred Dekker (The Monster Squad), who added the 1996 sequence.
Originally, it was meant to be Steven Seagal facing off against an evil Jean-Claude Van Damme. Once cast, Stallone wanted Jackie Chan as Phoenix, but Chan didn’t want to play a villain.
Point Break’s Lori Petty was originally set to be Huxley (named after Aldous Huxley, the sci-fi author) but was fired after two days due to creative differences—presumably code for “Stallone didn’t like her”.
The rest of the—pretty weird—cast includes Bob Gunton (Warden Norton from The Shawshank Redemption), a fresh-faced Rob Schneider, plus comedian Denis Leary as Edgar Friendly, the leader of an underground resistance that literally lives underground.
Some of the satire works. The film was shot in the wake of the 1992 Los Angeles Riots, which began in response to the beating of Rodney King, an unarmed African-American, by the LAPD. So when a 2036 cop says, “We’re police officers! We’re not trained to handle this kind of violence!” it must have caused some shocked laughter.
In the 1993 film, Huxley tells Spartan that, “Abortion is also illegal, but then again so is pregnancy if you don’t have a licence.” This might have seemed like sci-fi madness, but the overturning of Roe vs Wade makes it feel chillingly prophetic.
On a lighter note, there are also some good gags, most of them related to Huxley’s attempts at 20th-century slang. “You really licked his ass,” she says at one point. Then, “Let’s go blow this guy!”
Other elements are less coherent. Phoenix dresses like a children’s TV presenter, laughs manically at absolutely everything and quotes Scarface’s, “Say hello to my little friend!”, like a drunk film student.
Spartan, meanwhile, has a still-living daughter he mentions twice then completely forgets about (this subplot was cut from the film), has trouble getting to grips with futuristic toilet etiquette, and calls sex, “boning, the wild mambo, the hunka chunka”, which made me want to be sick in my mouth.
There’s not even very much action, and what there is seems to have been copied from T2. Phoenix says “Exact-amundo” as if his dialogue was written by John Connor, and there’s a pivotal liquid nitrogen sequence.
What it most resembles is a very good Simpsons parody of a not-very-good sci-fi action flick. An example of its self-reflexiveness is a gag about Arnie being president. What works—in 1993—as a self-deprecating joke from Stallone, presupposes that—in 2036—anyone will still give the tiniest fuck about either of them.
With a little help from Cliffhanger, Demolition Man did bolster Stallone’s career, until terrible choices (Get Carter?) sent him back into the arms of Rocky and Rambo.
Over the years there have been rumours of a sequel, but it’s very hard to see it happening now. Our prediction? A terrible streaming series that runs for one season then gets cancelled. Welcome to the future, baby.
Demolition Man is available on limited-edition 4K UHD and limited-edition Blu-ray from Arrow Films from 16 December
