Demolition Man (1993)
Demolition Man’s cryogenic motif served as a metaphor for its treatment of issues of time, progress, crime, and punishment.
![Sylvester Stallone in cryosleep in Demolition Man Sylvester Stallone in cryosleep in Demolition Man](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F90a61557-108f-486b-bc76-fe991ea17201_1280x720.jpeg)
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This post is part of the ‘Rewound’ series of analyses of objects or episodes from cultural and political history. It is available in full only to paid subscribers.
Content warnings: Violence; Murder; Death.
Spoiler alert: This analysis of the film Demolition Man and its themes reveals plot details for the purpose of enhancing that analysis.
This month marks the thirtieth anniversary of the release of sci-fi action film Demolition Man. It starred Sylvester Stallone as its protagonist John Spartan, a disgraced Los Angeles police officer placed in cryonic suspension following a bungled rescue operation, only to be unfrozen out in very different circumstances decades later in a seemingly utopian future to capture his old nemesis, Simon Phoenix, played by Wesley Snipes – in a delightfully over-the-top performance – who has also been unfrozen and is rampaging through a society fundamentally incapable of dealing with his brand of ultraviolence. Demolition Man was a box office success in the US and worldwide, and while critical response was more mixed, it remains an enjoyable watch today as an example of genre filmmaking, albeit one whose machoistic, libertarian-populist politics very much date it as a product of the early-to-mid 1990s.
In the first instance, Demolition Man’s treatment of the theme of urban crime and lawlessness (and police violence as a response) tapped into wider media and political concern with this theme. The film was released the year after the 1992 LA Riots, in the same year as the Waco siege ended in a lethal fire, and the year before the passing of the draconian Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. It also embodied another dominant theme in 1990s culture: a fear of loss of purpose post-Cold War, and accompanying tendency towards conformism and emasculation. These themes were explored by Jamelle Bouie and John Ganz in an episode on the film for their Unclear and Present Danger podcast on 1990s political and action thrillers, which is well worth a listen. What I want to focus in on in this post, however, is the film’s treatment of the issue of cryonic suspension and where that fits in with its understanding of the relationship between present and future, utopia and dystopia, and violence and social order.
Synopsis
In its opening prologue, set in 1996, Spartan seeks to rescue a busload of passengers Phoenix has taken hostage. During their confrontation, Phoenix sets his own headquarters on fire; Spartan escapes with a captive Phoenix, but the hostages are found dead inside the building. Spartan is found guilty of their involuntary manslaughter; his sentence entails his being cryogenically suspended for 70 years, while being subjected to reformatory subliminal messaging. The film then skips forward to 2032, and the sedate world of ‘San Angeles’, which is disrupted when a thawed-out Phoenix violently escapes. At the urging of veteran officer Zachary Lamb (Bill Cobbs) and the much younger twentieth-century buff Lenina Huxley (Sandra Bullock), police chief George Earle (Bob Gunton) reluctantly agrees to also thaw out Spartan, so he can help once again catch Phoenix.
Spartan finds it hard to readjust in San Angeles, where practices deemed harmful such as eating meat, physical sex, and even swearing are prohibited. He, Huxley, and the more strait-laced young officer Alfredo Garcia (Benjamin Bratt) are unable to prevent Phoenix from stealing a consignment of guns from a museum, but they do seemingly succeed in disturbing him before he can kill Dr Raymond Cocteau (Nigel Hawthorne) – San Angeles’ leader and architect of its pacified social order. However, Spartan remains suspicious, and soon discovers that Cocteau had had Phoenix subliminally trained in new combat and computing skills while in stasis and programmed to kill Edgar Friendly (Denis Leary), the leader of the ‘Scraps’: a tribe of sewer-dwelling outcasts who refuse to abide by San Angeles’ repressive rules. Meanwhile, Phoenix, whose programming also renders him incapable of killing Cocteau, persuades him to release a band of his frozen former criminal associates to help in his mission.
Together with Huxley – with whom he shares a growing mutual romantic attraction – and Garcia, Spartan foils Phoenix and his gang’s efforts to kill Friendly. Phoenix then has a member of his gang murder Cocteau, before Phoenix himself travels to the cryo-prison to defreeze and release all its worst criminals. Spartan tracks him down there, and in their final, destructive confrontation, breaks a cryogenic fluid vial, freezing Phoenix, before decapitating him and escaping from the prison as it explodes. Following Cocteau’s demise, he urges the officers and the Scraps to form a new society that better balances order with freedom, before he and Huxley kiss.
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