Demolition Man

365 Films

Entry #23

Demolition Man (1993)

Directed by: Marco Brambilla

I will attempt to unpack the cultural force that is Demolition Man with a personal anecdote.  I’m visiting my sister in the winter of 2009.  I arrive at Penn Station and hop on the subway to get to her apartment in Brooklyn.  I’m on the train, minding my own business and keeping to myself as per usual.  I’m traveling with my backpack and travel bag.  Flashback about three years prior to the set of Nathaniel Carota’s A Slow Dissolve in Ketchum, Idaho where I’m busting my ass while the assistant cameraman (for privacy’s sake let’s call him Gabe F. No, that’s too obvious…G. Fonseca) sits around doing absolutely nothing (as was his habit).  In our spare time G. Fonseca and I had come up with a hypothetical sequel to Demolition Man titled Demolition Man 2: Phoenix Rising.  Mr. Fonseca then attempted to write that particular title on a piece of camera tape and attach it to the slate of the film we were currently shooting.  We all had a good laugh even though I didn’t quite understand it.  But I stuck that piece of tape to my backpack as inspiration to get off my ass and make the Demolition Man we’d spent at least 10 minutes dreaming about.  Back to winter of ’09 on the NYC subway, when an unkempt youngster approaches me on the platform as we are both heading for the stairs.  “Hey, that thing on your backpack, is that real?” I reply, “No it was just a joke between my friend and I.” With a hopeful look on his face, the guy says “Oh. That’s too bad because I got really excited for a second when I thought they were actually making that movie.”  Did I mention that this was one of several random conversations I’ve had with complete strangers about our shared desire for a Demolition Man 2?  I rest my case.  Demolition Man is here and it’s here to stay.  If you thought this was a long forgotten, destined to reign as king of the dustbin in the bottom shelf of the TBS library title, then you thought WRONG my friend.  Demolition Man boasts endless re-watch value, so much so that it somehow manages to be both better and worse than you had previously thought with each subsequent viewing.  That is no small feat.  It features what is perhaps the greatest Wesley Snipes performance in the history of cinema (also no small feat).  And a vision of the future and Los Angeles that is both prescient, yet bathed in the nostalgia for the time in which it was made.  Demolition Man, in a lot of ways, is the ultimate 90’s movie.  It’s a movie in which a violent dinosaur like Stallone (who was on his way out career-wise back then…or so we thought), validates his existence and proves the need for the Joel Silver/Jerry Bruckheimer mega productions of the late 80’s early 90’s.  In its gently insidious way, Demolition Man reinforces the idea that not only do you need to watch this movie for entertainment value but that you need to watch it for the future of the human race.  If you don’t, than all we have to look forward to is Rob Schneider’s constant mockery at your inability to use the three sea shells.  If that isn’t a grim prognostication, I don’t know what is.  I will also take this time to admonish you all to read the Demolition Man novelization by Robert Tine.  I read it before I saw the movie because I could not find a suitable chaperone to accompany me when it was in theaters.  If any of you have seen The Simpsons episode where Bart is forbidden from seeing the Itchy and Scratchy movie, so he instead reads the entirety of the Norman Mailer novelization: that’s exactly what it was like.