What seems to be your boggle, citizen? 30 years of Demolition Man

Sometimes, the best movies are the ones that you find by accident. Demolition Man was one of those.

I distinctly remember there was a mostly-playful rivalry between Demolition Man and Last Action Hero over the course of ’93. Both were the new “big movies” from Schwarzenegger and Stallone—the two biggest action stars of the time—and both were pivoting into the “action comedy” space of the early 90s. (As opposed to the absurdly straight-faced camp the two had been dealing with throughout the 80s.). This had some additional overtones with Arnold operating at a career peak thanks to T2, whereas it had been “a while” since Stalone had a hit.

Last Action Hero, of course, bombed. (To be clear, it’s a bad movie, but the whole middle third in the movie world is better than most people remember, and the joke with Arnold cleaning himself off after he climbs out of the tar pit with only a single paper towel deserves a better movie around it.)

My memory is that Demolition Man didn’t do that well either. The attitude I recall was “well, better than Last Action Hero, anyway”, but not terribly positive. If there was a winner between the two movies, Demolition Man was it, but more by default than anything? (Skimming old reviews, it clearly got some blowback for being “trying to be funny”, action and comedy still not being a common pairing, which considering how the next 30 years went is hilarious. In that respect, at least, the movie doesn’t feel three decades old.)

I didn’t see it in theatres, but it stuck in the back of my mind as “hey, maybe check that out sometime.”

Months later, it found itself, like so many other middlingly successful movies, on constant rotation on cable. (HBO, presumably, but I refuse to go look it up). For some reason, my sister and I found ourselves at home some evening on our own with nothing better to do, and stumbled across it just as it was starting. Sure, let’s give this a whirl for a bit, see if it’s better than the reviews made it sound.

And, of course, it turned out to be great.

It’s an almost perfect early-90s action movie—violent without being too violent, sweary without being too sweary, big explosions, fun action set pieces, jokes that are funny, and a cast that looks like they’re having a great time.

To briefly recap: Sylvester Stallone plays John Spartan, a police officer in the then-near-future of 1996 nicknamed “the demolition man” for the amount of property damage he causes while fighting crime. Westly Snipes is Simon Pheonix, crime lord of near-future LA. Phoenix frames Spartan for the deaths of a building full of civilians during a raid, and the pair of them are sentenced to CryoPrison, where they’re frozen in giant ice tanks to wait out their sentences. (In one of the movie’s many literary references, the CryoCells are frozen instantly something isn't named but is clearly supposed to be ice-nine from Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle.)

Thirty six years in the future, Phoenix escapes from a parole hearing, whereupon Spartan is thawed out to earn an early release by catching his old foe.

The future, meanwhile, is not what either expected, as they find themselves in “San Angeles”, a seemingly utopian combined LA, San Diego, and Santa Barbara, where there’s no real cime, the police don’t enforce anything, swearing is a ticket-able offense, the radio only plays vintage commercials, Otho from Beetlejuice is wearing a mumu, and all restaurants are Taco Bell since the end of the Francise Wars. Because, of course, we’re in one of those “friendly on the surface” dystopias of the THX-1138 / Brave New World mold, where everyone is either trapped in the authoritarian regine with a smile, or eking out a living in the sewers. (Actually, the closest other example I can think of is Doctor Who’s anti-Thatcher scream, “The Happiness Patrol.”)

Spartan is partnered up with a pre-Speed Sandra Bullock’s rookie cop Lenina Huxley (speaking of literary references,) and the two of them track down the mystery of how Phoenix was able to escape and who’s really behind it all.

The action is pretty standard early 90s stuff, mostly real guns with with vaguely science-fictional bits glued on the end, that kind of thing. The centerpiece of the movie is watching both Stalone and Snipes react to the future starting with morbid fascination and ending with open horror than anyone would live like this.

Stalone is always better when he gets to be a little funny, and he does some of his best work in years as John Spartan is constantly wrong-footed by the future while just tying to be an action hero. Sandra Bullock nails both “comic sidekick” and “rookie cop” while hitting the very specific tone of the movie’s jokes (“you can take this job and shovel it”). And Westly Snipes turns in one of the definitive comic book villain performances as Simon Phoenix. The rest of the cast seem to be having a great time, even Denis Leary shows up to be extremely early-90s Denis Leary.

The movies milks a lot of mileage out of Stalone as a fish out of water the “evil utopia” future. The “three seashells” in the bathroom has proven to be the joke with the most pop culture staying power, but for my money the better joke are the ticket printers constantly clattering in the background whenever someone swears. Which feels like a subtle comment on the style of movies at the time?

It’s one of the few movies to try and do future dialect in a convincing way; “enhance you calm,” “what seems to be your boggle?” and the like all elicit a surprised “what did you just say?” reaction while feeling like something that could evolve in the passive agressive dystopia of San Angeles.

Plus, all restaurants are Taco Bell!

It’s aged better than many of its contemporaries , but it’s hard to imagine a plot more wrapped up in the illusory anxieties of the early 90s than the twin pillars of “Gang violence has turned LA into a literal war zone,” and “the worst possible future is if the Politically Correct crowd oppresses the poor libertarians.”

Daniel Waters, who wrote the final script, claims he didn’t have a political angle, but considering we’re talking about the guy who wrote Heathers, you’ll forgive me if I’m skeptical that all that stuff ended up in there by accident.

But, while it still has Dennis Leary show up and deliver the Big Speech About Freedom, it’s a movie with a far more nuanced and ambiguous take on the subject than, say, John Carpenter’s Libertarian Manifesto disguised as Escape from LA. (Although even that movie gets way more interesting when you remember to pair it with They Live, the definitive anti-Reagan movie; but I digress.)

Westly Snipes’ Simon Pheonix has the future’s architect figured out when he calls him an “evil Mister Rogers”; this is a movie that knows that there are worse things out there than wearing mumus and having too many rules. The future’s villains are displaced with comical ease by Phoenix and his gang, and even more critically, the future libertarian resistance proves utterly useless against a real threat. Even the 90s machismo is quietly undercut by Stalone’s knitting.

Instead, the movie ends on a final note of “you dorks all need to relax,” which is probably a moral we could use more of.

But! That all value add; the joy of this movie is in its impish sense of humor as it works through the various action standards.

A favorite example: Towards the end of the movie, Stalone is standing with the now allied rebels and police, all on their way to stop Snipes from waking up the denizens of the CryoPrison.

“Loan me a gun,” he says to Denis Leary’s character, who immediately slaps a revolver in his hand faster than he expects. Without missing a beat, Stalone immediately follows up with “Loan me two guns.”

It didn’t do terribly well in the fall of ’93, but it seems to have been one of those movies that got a real second life on home video. Many, many people seemed to have the same experience I did—stumbling across it, going in with low expectations, and then being delighted to discover something brilliant.

I’m not sure where it lies in the greater Action Movie Canon these days, but I note that everyone I’ve ever talked to about it have fallen cleanly into two camps—folks who don’t remember it at all, and people who love it, a movie that quietly found its people over the years.

It’s a good one.

(And my sister and I still say “Illuminate” whenever we turn on the lights to a room.)