Demolition Man Revisited: Stallone’s Biggest Cult Classic?

1993 was an important year for Sylvester Stallone. After a long string of flops, Renny Harlin’s mountaineering epic Cliffhanger was the much-needed international hit Sly needed, with the film helping to reaffirm his position as one of the biggest action stars in Hollywood. But, before that movie had ever come out, Sly was shooting his second film of the year, once which, in the end, would make less money than Cliffhanger but would go on to achieve legendary cult status. Almost thirty years later, it remains Stallone’s most famous film featuring a character that isn’t named Rocky or Rambo. The movie, of course, is Demolition Man.

Flashback to twelve-year-old me walking into a movie theater in October of 1993 here in Montreal. Demolition Man would be my first Sly epic on the big screen. I vividly remember munching on my popcorn as the WB logo hit the screen while Elliot Goldenthal’s excellent score started to kick in as a camera pulled back to show the iconic Hollywood sign on fire, with an on-screen title reading “Los Angeles, 1996”. While that aspect may make people laugh now, adding to the film’s camp value, let’s remember that in the nineties, L.A was marked by chaos, with the riots following the Rodney King verdict obviously having a big influence on this film’s pessimistic vision of the near future.

In this movie, Sylvester Stallone plays John Spartan, aka – the Demolition Man – so-called because he’s constantly blowing sh*t up. As the movie starts, he’s trying to capture his arch-enemy, gang leader Simon Phoenix, played by a bleach-blonde Wesley Snipes. Phoenix has kidnapped a busload of hostages, and in the process of defeating Phoenix, the building they’re in explodes, taking all the hostages with them. While Phoenix set off the bomb, both men are sentenced to long spells in L.A.’s new cyro-prison. Fast forward forty years, and Phoenix is up for parole. He’s been programmed with knowledge that helps him escape custody and wreak havoc on this new city, San Angeles, but there’s a big problem. This newly pacifist, utopian society isn’t equipped to deal with a maniac like Phoenix, leading to one of the brightest cops, Sandra Bullock’s Lenina Huxley, herself a fangirl of the 20th century, suggesting that they thaw out John Spartan and reinstate him as a cop.

Now, Demolition Man could have just been a high-concept shoot-em-up. Indeed, it was written as a hardcore action movie, but things changed once Batman Returns and Heathers screenwriter Daniel Waters was brought in. He pitched it to WB as an action movie version of Woody Allen’s Sleeper, giving it a major comedic overhaul. To studio execs who saw the returns on Stop or My Mom Will Shoot and Oscar, this might have been nerve-wracking, but the thing is, Waters’ comic vibe meshed perfectly with Stallone. However, at one point, a much lower-budget version of the movie was considered in which Steven Seagal would play John Spartan, and Jean Claude Van Damme would play Simon Phoenix. While this may seem ludicrous now, Seagal was WB’s biggest action star at the time, with Under Siege his biggest hit ever.

Luckily for us, it didn’t work out, and Stallone ended up signing to do the film, with mega-producer Joel Silver and visual artist Marco Brambilla at the helm. This would be his first film, but he had tremendous success as a visual stylist with his iconic video for C+C Music Factory’s Just a Touch of Love. The question, at this point, was who would play the villain? Stallone was hoping Jackie Chan, who he’d always been a fan of, would take the role, but Chan was weary of making another American movie and playing a villain. Nevertheless, he gets a shout-out during one of the action scenes where Huxley says she learned her moves from old Jackie Chan movies after demolishing some baddies in hand-to-hand combat.

In the end, Wesley Snipes would play Phoenix in what became an iconic piece of casting. Snipes, at the time, was a massive action star in his own right, having made Passenger 57. Phoenix would be a call-back to his breakout role from New Jack City, albeit heightened to comic book dimensions. Notably, the character would be programmed with martial arts skills that would allow Snipes to show off some of his signature moves, with the rumour being that his kicks were so fast that he had to slow them down for the camera to pick them up.

While the action is intense, the film is better remembered for its comedy. In San Angeles, swearing is illegal, with an automatic fine alarm going off anytime anyone swears, which leads to one of the movie’s best recurring gags, as Stallone’s Spartan can’t help but constantly swear. Notably, in this future world, people don’t like actual songs, preferring old-time commercial jingles, and, thanks to something called “the franchise wars,” every restaurant is now called Taco Bell. And then there are also the three seashells, which have replaced toilet paper. How do you use them? Stallone said he thinks two shells should be used like chopsticks while you scrape what’s left with the third. Bullock, for her part, has said it depends on what you’re doing, number 1 or 2, with different uses for each.

It’s also worth noting that Demolition Man was an important early film for a few big names, including Benjamin Bratt, Rob Schneider and Denis Leary. Still, of everyone, the one to emerge the biggest star, with her status as an iconic rivalling Stallone’s, is Sandra Bullock. She was actually a late replacement for Lori Petty, and Bullock’s charm in this movie led to her star-making role in Speed, and the rest is history. She and Sly stayed close over the years, with her being one of the original choices to play a villain in The Expendables, but it never happened. Of course, Wesley Snipes would eventually join the team in The Expendables 3, his comeback role after a long spell in prison for tax evasion. Notably, when they break him out of jail at the beginning of the film, he gives “taxes” the reason why he was locked up.

Given how iconic the film is, you’d think it was a significant hit, but curiously it was only a moderate success. It opened at number one at the box office on October 8th (coincidently – my birthday), but the $58 million gross was considered soft, although it did better overseas. Still, considering how huge it became on video and cable, Stallone filed a suit against WB, saying that the studio claimed it was $67 million in deficit – which didn’t make much sense. Eventually, they settled with him, and Stallone has always said he’d consider doing a sequel to the film, and indeed it would be cool to see him re-team with Sandra Bullock, who, you might have heard, is doing ok these days.

In the end, Demolition Man is Sly’s best-loved movie outside the Rocky series, and to many, it even tops the Rambo films. In the end I give it a 10/10 and proclaim it one of Sly’s best ever movies!