Classic Movie Review: 'Demolition Man'

Demolition Man (1993)

Directed by Marco Brambilla

Written by Daniel Waters

Starring Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, Sandra Bullock, Nigel Hawthorne, Benjamin Bratt, Denis Leary

Release Date October 9th 1993

Published October 11th, 2023

Demolition Man is a desperate, sad, and pathetic attempt by Sylvester Stallone to cast himself as the 'cool guy.' There was this character archetype of the 80s and 90s, one pioneered by Eddie Murphy, for the most part. It's a character who is the smartest, funniest, coolest guy in any room that he's in. I call these characters Bugs Bunny types. Bugs Bunny was always one step ahead of whoever he was on screen with. Bugs was never the subject of the joke, he was the one delivering the punchline. No one got over on Bugs Bunny, he always came out on top by being funnier, smarter, and more dynamic than anyone else on screen. Bugs Bunny was the 'cool guy.'

Whether Eddie Murphy was aware of it or not, his Beverly Hills Cop persona is an R-Rated version of a Bugs Bunny archetype. Axel Foley is Bugs Bunny. He's always three steps ahead of everyone in a scene. Axel is the funniest, smartest, and wittiest person in every moment. No one can keep up with Axel or Bugs Bunny and no one is allowed to get one over on Axel or Bugs Bunny. There is an element of the archetypal Simpson's character Poochie in Axel Foley as in the few moments that Axel is off screen, everyone has to be talking about Axel and wondering what he's doing at that moment.

I don't mean this to demean Eddie Murphy or his performance as Axel Foley, it's merely an observation. Being like Bugs Bunny is a solid compliment. There is also the matter of comic timing and instinct that make Eddie Murphy such a comic icon. His bravado, that swagger, it's unlike anyone we've seen in this kind of role. Eddie Murphy is cool just like Bugs Bunny is cool. Why am I lingering on Beverly Hills Cop, Bugs Bunny, and Eddie Murphy in a review of Demolition Man? Because Sylvester Stallone wants so badly to be as cool as Eddie Murphy.

It's very clear that the lead role in Demolition Man was written with someone of Murphy's comic timing and instinct in mind. It's clear that the movie would benefit from having a fleet footed comic voice at the heart of the story. It's also clear that having Sylvester Stallone and his sad, desperate, egotism at the heart of the movie, drags the whole thing down. Stallone is not an actor with strong comic instincts. He's lumbering, he speaks slowly, and he's not cool, no matter how much he might want you to believe he is. He's simply not believable as the smartest, funniest, most dynamic guy in any room that he's in.

Thus, what should be a fast paced action comedy, becomes a flat, lumbering, clumsy, testosterone heavy, bloated explosion-fest. In order to frame Stallone as the coolest guy in any room, the rest of the cast is forced to dial back their performances to match Stallone's slow, witless cadence. So, we have a character played by a young and lovable Sandra Bullock who is rendered almost unwatchable as she bravely battles her way through some of the worst dialogue in any movie ever. And you have a remaining supporting cast that is not allowed to have either screen time or presence that might compete with Stallone or make him look any less dynamic than he already appears.

Only Wesley Snipes is allowed to shine opposite Stallone and that is also why Snipes disappears for so much time in Demolition Man. Though Snipes' Simon Phoenix is the big bad of Demolition Man, his colorful villain is kept off screen for lengthy periods of time while the screenwriters desperately try to craft scenes to make Stallone look cool. The world building in Demolition Man might appear, on the surface, to be similar to any other sci-fi movie set in the future. But, look closer, if you do, you can see a series of innovations that are clearly inventions intended to make Stallone appear more relatable and especially cooler than anyone else in the movie.

One example that stands out as the kind of gag that is written for an Eddie Murphy type comic actor that falls flat as delivered by Stallone, involves bathroom habits of the future. I'd rather not linger on the famed 'three seashells' of Demolition Man, but the gag is one that Murphy would have thrived in riffing on. There would undoubtedly be a fast paced, curse word laden rant that Murphy would riff off the top of his head about the 'three seashells.' In the hands of Murphy, it's a masterpiece of raunchy humor. In the hands of Sylvester Stallone, the bit dies an unmourned death that raises far too many needless questions that distract from the story being told.

For those that aren't familiar with Demolition Man, the story goes that Sylvester Stallone is John Spartan, a cop in 1996 Los Angeles. Spartan is a good cop who plays his own rules, a classic cliche of 80s and 90s action movies. John Spartan has been given the awkward moniker, Demolition Man, because his style of being a cop involves a remarkable level of property damage and death. In pursuing the violent criminal gang leader, Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes), Spartan is accused of getting a group of hostages killed and Spartan himself is convicted and placed in a cryo-prison.

Frozen inside a giant ice cube, John Spartan is sleeping his life away until 2036 when his old nemesis Simon Phoenix escapes from the same cryo-prison under strange circumstances. In 2036, there is no crime, no music, no salt, no sugar, and society is a pristine, plasticized bore. The Police still exist but they don't have much to do. Thus, when Simon Phoenix commits the first murders in more than 30 years, no one in the Police Department is prepared to deal with his level of violence. A young cop named Lenina Huxley (Sandra Bullock) offers an unusual solution, thaw out legendary cop John Spartan, reinstate him to the Police and have him track down Simon Phoenix.

That's the plot of Demolition Man and there are the building blocks of a good idea in there. It's a classic fish out of water scenario in which a man from a different time suffers comical culture shock in a future he doesn't understand. It's a premise rife with easy culture clash gags that might be elevated by a comic mind like Eddie Murphy. Sadly, with Sylvester Stallone in the lead, the jokes basically devolve to dimwitted observations about how boring the future is without cool stuff we had in the past.

There is a strong element of old man yells at cloud in the screenplay of Demolition Man. The three screenwriters who brought this idea to the big screen envision a future where men are no longer manly and that's a bad thing because men like red meat and muscle cars. I guess. Without big burly manly men to do violence, the future becomes a supposedly feminized place where toughness has been replaced by a dictatorship of foppish fascists enforcing arbitrary rules of propriety.

The heroes of the future live underground, smoke cigarettes, eat meat, and have maintained a legendary muscle car for reasons. Denis Leary plays the leader of the underground resistance. He appears to remember rock n'roll music and steaks and is upset that the world no longer revolves around this worldview. The role is merely an excuse to have Leary perform his stand up for an entire scene, a volley of verbal fire aimed at a too polite society that lacks in meat and cigarettes. And freedom, don't forget that it lacks good old American freedom.

It's a lot of performative masculinity. It's a series of clichés about brutish men who think they are cool when they most assuredly are not. That's not to say that the modern society of Demolition Man is better than the masculine clichés that pass as cool in Demolition Man. Rather, the future society of Demolition Man is a straw man satire, a deeply unrealistic future created solely to form a scenario where these masculine clichés appear defiant and cool. Guns, meat, muscle cars, these things apparently need a straw man to look cool by comparison.

As for Stallone, I was reminded of the historic musical rivalry between Little Richard and Pat Boone. Where Little Richard was the personification of defiant cool, Pat Boone took what Little Richard did and sanitized it for a mainstream, white audience. Both were successful but only one was cool. Eddie Murphy in this scenario is Little Richard and Sylvester Stallone is very much the Pat Boone. Where Eddie's foulmouthed, motor mouthed action hero is the epitome of Bugs Bunny style cool comedy, Stallone's idea of action comedy has all of the appeal of Pat Boone trying to sing Good Golly Miss Molly.

Demolition Man is the subject of our next episode of the I Hate Critics 1993 Podcast, a spinoff of the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast. On I Hate Critics 1993, myself and my co-hosts Gen Z'er M.J and Gen-X'er Amy, look back at movies released 30 years earlier that same weekend. The idea is to examine the movies of the past and talk about how movies and culture have changed our perspective on these movies over that three decade time span. It's a fun ride and we've had a blast bringing the past into the present. You can hear the I Hate Critics 1993 Podcast on the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast feed, wherever you listen to podcasts.