Demolition Man: Action, Sci-Fi…and Also Comedy

I went on a trip to Maui over the winter break. Hawaiian Airlines offers you free in-flight entertainment. Of course, that includes movies. One movie that has been on my radar for ages, but I never got around to watching was Demolition Man. I had seen bits and pieces of it when it would air on live television and my dad would watch it, but I had never seen the full movie. It always seemed fascinating, especially for a Stallone movie. So guess what movie just happened to be available to watch on my plane?

The premise of this movie is nuts, but I guess that’s what 90s action films were like. Set in 2032 (which we’re closer to than when the movie actually released!), it sees police officer John Spartan (Sylvester Stallone) awoken from being cryogenically frozen & imprisoned in order to track down Simon Phoenix, a criminal mastermind and his arch nemesis, who was also awoken from the same cryogenic prison. They were put there in 1996; Spartan for the massive collateral damage he causes (hence the nickname “Demolition Man”) when apprehending suspects, and Phoenix for, well, terrorism.

How do you NOT consider this movie a comedy? The future Spartan and Phoenix wake up to is hilarious. People are fined for something as benign as swearing, police don’t have firearms, every restaurant is Taco Bell (apparently they won the Franchise Wars), it’s the ultimate sci-fi utopia that only filmmakers in the 1990s could dream of.

The detail that got me the most, though, is during a scene when Spartan is being driven by Huxley (the cop he’s paired up with in the future who is obsessed with the past, played by Sandra Bullock) and she tells him about the Schwarzenegger Presidential Library. Spartan, shocked to hear that he was president, asks her to explain more. Apparently, Schwarzenegger was so popular that the 61st Amendment was created, which is implied to allow people born outside of the United States to become president. This detail alone completely changed how I watched the movie. It led me to believe that there was absolutely no way this film was taking itself 100% seriously. As a result, I had a lot more fun watching the movie. It was not strictly an action/sci-fi. It was an action/sci-fi comedy, too.

That detail also made me respect Stallone a lot more. He was well aware that he and Schwarzenegger were the big action movie stars at the time, but it wasn’t like they were rivals or anything—they were just really good at playing those roles, so he didn’t mind poking fun at that fact. Schwarzenegger did, too, but with much less subtlety in a film he starred in, coincidentally released the same year: Last Action Hero, a film I will talk about more in a later blog entry.

Had I viewed the film in theaters when it came out, I would’ve said Demolition Man sucked. But I viewed it well after the fact, knowing that Hollywood was a much different place in the 1990s than it was now, and I think that improved my viewing experience greatly.

If you’re looking for a fun action movie, but also want some sci-fi mixed in, go watch Demolition Man…just take it with a grain of salt.