 Los Angeles, 1996. A maniac has hijacked a municipal bus with 30 passengers on board and police sergeant John Spartan has a real bad hunch who that maniac is. Yeah guys, today I'm talking about one of the greatest, most ridiculous, and yet also coolest and legitimately smartest movies of all time. Demolition Man. I'm totally serious. In a world full of sequels, reboots, soft reboots, and otherwise unoriginal garbage, Demolition Man stands out as an absolute gem from the early 1990s. It's campy and over the top, but still an exceptionally entertaining film. It's got an incredible cast featuring Sylvester Stallone, personal crush Sandra Bullock, Wesley Snipes, Dennis Leary, Bob Gunton, and uncredited scene stealer Rob Schneider. It was made by a first-time director who's done barely anything since, and yet it's a tightly paced, well-structured film with a cohesive setting that feels like a relatively realistic lived-in future. Part science fiction, part satire, and part social commentary, it balances humor and action seamlessly. And it all just works. But what's most important to me is that, as absurd as it is, it gets a ton right about how our society has evolved since the mid-90s, and it clearly shows the danger of two very different kinds of authoritarianism. This tension between dystopian visions, let's call it 1984 versus Brave New World, is embedded in the two different versions of Los Angeles that we see in the first act. Both are police states. The Los Angeles of 1996 is visibly nightmarish. Lawless, violent areas of the city are only reigned in by callous police officers willing to use all manner of brutality and excessive force to maintain order. It might as well be Judge Dredd. Future LA, set in the year 2032, is invisibly nightmarish. A utopian surface of perfection and progress made possible only through mental conditioning, constant surveillance, restriction of information, and social control. They're both awful, stagnant societies that reject individuality and freedom of choice. And yet, Demolition Man also shows us a better way. Stick around to the end and find out what that is while we talk about one of the most intelligent dumb movies ever made on this episode of Out of Frame. I'm 100% about to spoil most of the plot points for this 32 year old film, but if you haven't seen it, it's going to be worth your time to watch no matter what. Here's what you need to know. The film opens in the year 1996, just three years from when it was released. Criminal lunatic Simon Phoenix has taken over a large section of South Central Los Angeles and only one man can stop him. That man is LAPD Sergeant John Spartan, or as his captain likes to call him, the Demolition Man. Roll credits. When Spartan's relentless disregard for destruction appears to contribute to the deaths of 30 hostages, he's sentenced to 70 years in a new type of prison. You will be placed in cryostasis for the duration of your sentence, during which your behavior will be altered through synoptic suggestion. I'm sorry, Sergeant. Flash forward to the year 2032 and society has dramatically changed. People have been reconditioned to be docile, subservient, and largely devoid of personality. In fact, there's so little crime that police are essentially obsolete and incompetent. Greetings and salutations. Welcome to the emergency line of the San Angeles Police Department. If you prefer an automated response, press one now. Everyone seems pretty content with this arrangement except for Lenina Huxley. I find this lack of stimulus to be truly disappointing. Don't you think? I try not to. However you're young, think all you want. Things don't happen anymore. We've taken care of all that. She's a product of her culture, but she's obsessed with the 20th century and deep down, she knows that there's something wrong with the way things are. Don't you get bored code tracing perps who break curfew and tell dirty jokes? Actually, no, I find my job deeply fulfilling. What I wouldn't give for some action. Moments later, Lenina gets her wish. Simon Phoenix, who is serving a life sentence for his crimes in the 90s, breaks out of cryoprison murder, death, killing several people for the first time in decades. We're police officers. We're not trying to handle this kind of violence. Huxley recommends reinstating Sergeant Spartan in order to stop Simon Phoenix like he'd done once before. But Chief Earl isn't convinced that involving a man with Spartan's sheer level of testosterone is a good idea. This is your recommendation. A demolition man's an animal. But eventually, with Phoenix continuing to commit violent crimes all over town and pressure from city savior Raymond Cocktoe, Chief Earl agrees to let John Spartan off the chain. We have become a society of peace, loving, and understanding and we are quite frankly not equipped to deal with the situation. Sergeant Spartan reluctantly agrees in exchange for an early parole. Then he forgets about his long dead wife and adult daughter so quickly they probably should have been left out of the movie altogether and we jump right into the promise of multiple premises. As it enters its second act, demolition man becomes a man out of time dystopian future sci-fi buddy cop action comedy with strong themes and a clear message. The plot mainly revolves around an overzealous cop battling the 90s equivalent of a cartoon villain. But the movie is also shockingly prescient and predicted a ton of stuff about the modern world with startling accuracy, gull-wing doors on self-driving electric cars, people using computers to boost their self-esteem, dumb down language, zoom meetings, short attention spans, mini-tunes, nostalgia-driven content, and vertical video. There's also portable phones that can access the internet, voice-activated search, tablets, digital currency, pretentious food, and stupid food regulations. And of course you have language policing, germaphobic insanity, anti-smoking laws, gun bans, and Arnold Schwarzenegger becoming a politician. Of course it doesn't get everything right. So far there hasn't been a franchise war and Taco Bell probably wouldn't win if there were. Our cops aren't nearly as nice either and they're certainly not afraid to use deadly force. What is completely spot on, however, is the idea that laws have shifted away from the protection of individual rights and any same theory of justice towards controlling people's behavior for the greater good, as envisioned by this society's elites. Almost everything anyone does that might be fun or enjoyable or which might result in people questioning the sanctity of San Angeles's perfect society is no longer allowed. People don't even touch each other anymore. Demolition Man merges a bunch of ideas from some of the classics of dystopian fiction, especially Brave New World, which we've already talked about in depth on this series. The not-too-distant future is depicted as one where a powerful authority figure, Gustave Amand in the book and Raymond Cocteau in this film has found a way to create a supposedly utopian society, not through violence and fear, but through genetic engineering, educational conditioning, and outright brainwashing. Lenina Huxley is a direct reference to Brave New World's author, Aldous Huxley, and one of its main characters, Lenina Crown. Heck, Simon Phoenix basically shouts the illusion at John Spartan when they first meet again in the future. Another key similarity is that while most of the population of San Angeles is compliant and oblivious to the flaws of their society, the only free people left are those living outside the system entirely, the savage lands in the book and the underground in the film. In both cases, free people are looked down on by the ruling class, and the only way they can survive in a world without legal trade is to participate in black markets or engage in theft. The scraps, as they're called in Demolition Man, are not just a nuisance to Dr. Cocteau. They represent the last remaining element of free choice in the benevolent dictatorship he spent decades trying to build. That's why his biggest concern isn't Simon Phoenix, but the leader of the scraps, Edgar Friendling. To his credit, John Spartan doesn't trust Cocteau and rejects his vision for society from the outset. Their ideologies clash at a fancy dinner at Taco Bell, but before that can go too far, their meal is interrupted by an attack. Spartan once again plays the hero, beating up several of the attackers, until he realizes that they're robbing a delivery truck to get food. Lenina is excited to finally get to experience some of the violence she's read about her whole life. But at the exact midpoint of the film, the story takes a turn, revealing John Spartan's underlying morality. John Spartan may be an agent of his own authoritarian world, but as an individual, his goal is to protect innocent people and stop dangerous criminals. Not to blindly uphold the unjust order imposed by people like Dr. Cocteau. The altercation with the scraps forces Spartan to rethink his mission. He still needs to stop Simon Phoenix from murdering more people, but now he also wants to expose Dr. Cocteau as a tyrant, and it turns out that these missions are one and the same. On a hunch, Spartan asks Huxley to pull up the files on Simon Phoenix's rehabilitation program, only to discover that instead of making him more docile and a better citizen, 39 years in cryo prison gave him new skills and knowledge that would only make him more lethal. Dr. Cocteau created a new and improved Simon Phoenix in order to assassinate his real enemy, Edgar Friendly. So in order to track down Phoenix and save the city, Spartan and Huxley go underground. Interestingly enough, in the original script for Demolition Man, Edgar Friendly had a different name. He was called Thomas Paine. This is another clear reference to philosophy, in this case classical liberalism. It's a beautiful homage to a thinker who helped inspire and inform the American Revolution, and a reminder that just below its action blockbuster exterior, Demolition Man is a very smart movie. Neither the world John Spartan is from nor the one Linnina Huxley grew up in are very good. Edgar Friendly's character introduces a new idea in honor of his original namesake, individual liberty. Friendly doesn't trust cops for good reason, but he also doesn't buy into the brainwashed risk-free world controlled by Dr. Cocteau. Instead, he wants to make his own choices and live his own life, and for everyone else to be allowed to do the same. But that's why he's a threat. When Spartan and Huxley finally meet him, Friendly gives one of the all-time greatest speeches in defensive freedom that's ever been put on screen. Freedom is messy, and it allows for people to make choices you don't necessarily agree with. It means that people can do things that are objectively unhealthy or which involve risks that you might not take yourself, and that's okay. Not everyone should do everything Edgar Friendly wants to do, but the beauty of a free society is that they don't have to. We all get to make up our own minds about which risks are worth the reward. And without freedom of choice, people are little more than automatons, blindly obeying the rules laid out by elites like Dr. Cocteau, who may have more power, but certainly don't have the moral authority to dictate how anyone else must live. In the end, Simon Phoenix, Edgar Friendly, John Spartan, and Lenina Huxley all agree on one thing. Cocteau has got to go. Even Phoenix gets how insane this is. With Cocteau gone, the only thing left for Spartan to do is put an end to Phoenix's violence, which he does with help from Edgar Friendly and the Scraps. Shaken by their recent experience with crime and the loss of their seemingly wonderful leader, the people of San Angeles are left to figure out a new path forward. For the first time in many of their lives, they're going to have to make decisions for themselves. What I love about the way this movie concludes is that it beautifully demonstrates how essential individual liberty is to a healthy society. But it also doesn't pretend that freedom is easy. Being free to make your own choices means accepting the responsibility for the consequences and respecting everyone else's right to do the same. When I look around the world today, it seems that, much like in Demolition Man, a lot of folks need to learn how to allow other people to live how they want to live. People like Dr. Cocteau and Chief Earl, who are obsessed with safety and stability, need to get comfortable with people like Lenina Huxley and Edgar Friendly, who are willing to take more risks. As long as neither group forces their vision on anyone else, everyone can live together in a state of genuine peace. Not the false utopia of a world where everyone is forced to obey one man's rules. And with its final scene, Demolition Man shows us the only way our society can truly thrive. Hey everybody, thanks for watching this episode of Out of Frame. What other classic movies would you like me to cover on this series? What do you think about some of the new YouTube shorts? Let's talk about all that in the comments. Also, please check out our weekly Behind the Scenes podcast. You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever else you listen. Leave us a like and a review on your preferred app if you want to help us grow. 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