Transcript

Intro Clip

So you think you're taking me in, huh? Guess what? Not happening. You tell Cocteau he can kiss my ass. Yeah, that's right. You tell Kato it's gonna take an army of to get rid of me. Because I don't give a. I got nothing to lose. I don't want to rain on your parade, pal, but I don't know who. The hell you are, let alone want to take you anywhere. So stay here, be well and Cocteau's an. Let's take him and dump him up top. They're only down here to spy on us. Wait a minute. You're the guy outside Taco Bell. Yeah, what do you want? I guess you weren't part of the Cocteau plan. Greed, deception, abuse of power. That's no plan. That's why everybody's down here. You got that right. See, according to Cocteau's plan, I'm the enemy. Because I like to think, I like to read. I'm into freedom of speech and freedom of choice. I'm the kind of guy like to sit in a greasy spoon and wonder, gee, should I have the T bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecue ribs with a side order gravy fries. I want high cholesterol. I want to eat bacon and butter and buckets of cheese. Okay? I want to smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in a non smoking section. I want to run through the streets naked with green jello all over my body reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I suddenly might feel the need to. Okay pal, I've seen this. Would you know what it is? It's a 47 year old virgin sitting around in his beige pajamas drinking a banana broccoli shake, singing I'm an Oscar Mayer wiener. You live up top. You live cocktails way. What he wants, when he wants, how he wants. Your other choice, come down here, maybe starve to Death.

Steve

It's 2 Dads 1 Movie. It's the podcast where two middle aged dads sit around and shoot the shit about the movies of the 80s and 90s. Here are your hosts, Steve, Paulo and Nic Briana. Hello everybody. It's 2Dads1 Movie. I'm Steve.

Nic

And I'm Nic.

Steve

Thank you so much for joining us today we are going to talk about the 1993 Sylvester Stallone action classic Demolition Man. And I'm super excited. This was one of one of the movies I picked for us and yeah, I'm just so stoked to watch this. This is a movie I love. This is a movie I probably originally Saw not when it came out. This was 93. I was 13. Yeah. Didn't see it in the theater or anything, but, you know, by the end of high school I'd seen this one. And this was, for me was a standard rewatch through college. It is just a lot of fun. It's pretty ridiculous, but it's ridiculous in kind of a lot of fun ways, I think. What about you, Nic? What's. What's your history with Demolition Man?

Nic

Yeah, I think I saw it around the same time. This would have been maybe like eighth, ninth grade for us.

Steve

Right.

Nic

And I had a friend during that time who had a cable de scrambler, so he had the free pay per view movie. So whatever was running on pay per View, we would get. So this friend Todd, shout out to Todd. He. He would make VHS isn't like record some of our favorite movies. And we had a tape that was Demolition man and Ray Liotta's no Escape back to back. So we have always kind of considered them to be like a single movie. So he was disappointed when I told him we were separating it to do this episode, but that this movie, I mean, to hit in your teens, just had the action, had the pretty girl. There was just so much about it. Just a lot of fun. And just a fun imagined future world that's different than what we've seen in maybe other instances or kind of a collage of other things that we've seen elsewhere. But really interesting setup for it.

Steve

Yeah, I think, you know, let's. Let's caveat the word fun here. Right. I'm sorry. It's its own type of dystopia. Right.

Nic

And so fun to watch and enjoy.

Steve

It would be terrible to exist. And it's really interesting, you know, listeners, last week we. We gave you Terminator 2, which posited a very dark future for humanity. And there's so much about the future that Demolition man posits for us that, you know, looks less horrific. Obviously there are, you know, dead people littering the streets and machines killing everyone all the time. But also it's incredibly dark and dystopian and awful in its own way.

Nic

Oh, totally.

Steve

So we will obviously be getting into all of that and more. Let's talk about some facts about Demolition Man. Demolition man was released on October 8, 1993. It has an R rating, a running time of 115 minutes. It was directed by Marco Brambia. And Marco, as far as I could tell, only. Only directed one other feature film in his career, the film Excess Baggage. I think is what it's called the starred Benicia Del Toro and Alicia Silverstone. Other than that, he's done like shorts and music videos.

Nic

Yeah, it looks like he does art, video related art stuff, but not films.

Steve

Very interesting. Written by Peter M. Lenkoff, Robert Renault and Dan Waters. Starring Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes and Sandra Bullock. The scores for this one, Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 64% that's fresh, but obviously sort of just over the threshold on IMDb. A 6.7 is slightly higher than the Rotten Tomatoes score, but not by a ton. It won one award, as far as I could tell. It won an award from the ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards. Ascap of course, is the American Society of Composers, Artists and Producers. I believe these are publishers. I mean, it's basically like the songwriting organization. Okay. And they gave out a top box office Films Award to 11 movies that year, one of which was Demolition Man.

Nic

So I'm not really sure how participation trophy it sounds like. I know there's a star of this film who wouldn't like that.

Steve

I don't know how prestigious that award is, but it was listed on their IMDb page. Budget for this film, $57 million. Yeah, that sounds about right. With all the special effects and all the craziness that happens in the movie. And the box office take was a respectable 159 million. That's 2.8 times what it costs, which makes it a success, but not necessarily a box office smash. Not exactly a hit, but that's probably accurate. Yeah. Based on, you know, the movie itself and, and the drawing power of Stallone at the time. I think that alone was going to put $100 million in the, in the pocket just to have Stallone in the movie. So let's go ahead and start talking about what we initially see when Demolition man starts.

Nic

Yeah, yeah.

Steve

Because it does not start with credits, it does not start with the title card. Right. We are, we are dropping into the action. Yeah. This is a James Bond style cold open. And it posit, it gives us the view of a very near future Los.

Nic

Angeles, because three years after the movie was made.

Steve

Yeah. So the movies made in 93 came out in 93. This supposedly is set in 1996. So just three years later, we get a shot of Los Angeles from behind the Hollywood sign up on the hills there where the Hollywood sign is, is on fire. Yeah. Not sure why or for how long it's been burning. I think those, those. I don't think it would take long to burn down. You know, it Wouldn't burn very long. And pockets of Los Angeles are just literally on fire. We are immediately brought into helicopter that is flying along. There are two pilots of the helicopter and our hero, Sylvester Stallone, Mr. John Spartan is. Is standing behind them and they are approaching some kind of compound, some kind of facility, and are being shot at by the worst shots ever. The people. I'm not saying it's easy to shoot down a helicopter, but it does seem like the sheer amount of gunfire that they're under. Something struck them at some point, but no, nothing strikes them. They are going to go get Simon Phoenix. Basically. It's like he has tracked down this Lun who hijacked a city bus full of people. I think they had 30 or 40.

Nic

Right.

Steve

People. And his detective, by the way, Detective John Spartan. So he is in the LAPD as a detective, even though he dresses like Special Forces, he is. It's his job to go get Simon Phoenix. So what does he do? He does what any cop would do. Straps on his bungee cord and he jumps out of a helicopter.

Nic

Oh, yeah. It's official police procedure to do it that way.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

Amazing that he did that despite knowing that there's a very, very good chance he might lose his beret.

Steve

Oh, my gosh.

Nic

But he's still. He still took. He still made.

Steve

One of the helicopter pilots mentioned something about like, can you believe they used to let commercial airlines fly to this or land in this city? So I'm thinking again, this is three years after the movie comes out. People sitting in the movie theater, 1993, going, wow, three years from now, you can't even land at LAX. That's pretty crazy. It also, by the way, sounds like a Republican's wet dream. Like they are just salivating over describing Los Angeles this way.

Nic

Reactionary politics everywhere in this movie for sure.

Steve

But yeah. So it is so ridiculous to me in the best possible way how absolutely straight into the action this movie brings us. I mean, this type of scene would be a climax in almost any other movie, but it starts us off so. So John Spartan is shooting guys who are all shooting at him and missing him by miles, it seems with their. Their weapons are all firing blanks or something because nobody can hit him. So he's just firing, shooting, whatever, and he finds. He gets. And he finds Simon Phoenix. Wesley Snipes character, who looks amazing, in my opinion. He's got this crazy blonde hair. He's got these heterochromatic eyes that, you know, obviously Wesley Snipes has two brown eyes, but Simon Phoenix has A brown eye and a blue eye. He just looks cool. Crazy.

Nic

He's wearing Beetlejuice. His pants. Yeah, it's, like, striped, like, black and white pants. He's got some fits in this movie.

Steve

It's really crazy.

Nic

Yeah. So Simon Phoenix. And. And you can tell that these two are familiar with each other, that it's been years of pursuit. I mean, they could have done several prequels on the Spartan versus Phoenix saga.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And. And they're kind of quipping back and forth at each other.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And basically, Spartans. You know, I got to get these hostages. Where do you have them? Phoenix has done one of our favorite things. Used a knife to cut open several barrels of gasoline. A knife with a skull on the pommel. And. And he's ready to, you know, set the whole thing on fire.

Steve

Yeah. He's got, like, a blowtorch in his hand, and it is. Look, the blowtorch flame does not have to touch something to ignite it.

Nic

No.

Steve

As close as he gets, just the fumes from the gasoline would light. Like, everything should have blown up the moment that he lights that blowtorch. But of course, it's a movie, so he's able to sort of tease Spartan by holding the blowtorch close to the gasoline, but not, you know, actually lighting them both on fire.

Nic

This is the kind of movie that would make you think it's fine to smoke at a gas station.

Steve

Yes, exactly.

Nic

Because you're like, oh, well, you got to throw a cigarette into a gas tank to.

Steve

I'm not actually putting the cigarette out in the gasoline on ground. So we're good. Yeah. But that's sort of what he does, because he puts down the blowtorch, which gives Spartan the moment to go, I'm now I'm going to shoot you. And I don't know the line, he says, because Simon Phoenix has several great lines, but he flicks the cigarette right at John Spartan's feet.

Nic

Yeah. So. So these are the. The couple lines.

Steve

Okay.

Nic

So first of all, Spartan is trying to get Phoenix to tell him, like, where are the hostages? He's like, oh, I don't know.

Steve

He said, right, Right.

Nic

I swear I'd lose my head if it wasn't attached. And then Spartan says, I'll keep that in mind. And then looks directly at the camera for 15 seconds. Not that long.

Steve

Not that long. But yes.

Nic

And. And then the other thing that he says is, is it cold in here or is it just me?

Steve

Right.

Nic

So that's before he starts the fire. So he ignites the thing, the building Blows up. And it looks like it had been previously rigged to explode. It wasn't just this gas on the ground that blew up. This whole thing blew up. So this building is just absolutely destroyed.

Steve

Well, that's because in addition to the barrels of gasoline that he's cut open, whatever, there several barrels in that room just mark C4. Barrels full of C4. Right. So I, I don't. Again, I'm not a demolitions expert.

Nic

I don't come in 100 gallon drums.

Steve

Right. I don't. I mean, I. Whenever I've seen C4 in movies or TV shows, it's. It looks like, you know, it's like.

Nic

A clay heroin or something.

Steve

Like clay kind of. Right. And you put the little detonators in other. So this must have been thousands of pounds of C4. I can't imagine the destructive force of that much explosive. But that's what it looked like. So. Yes. So once the gasoline lights, all these barrels of C4 blow up and the whole building is just destroyed. The fact that either one of them. The fact that both of them walk out is crazy. But either one of them survives, this is just nuts.

Nic

Right? And Spartan is the one who saves Phoenix. So during the explosion, he throws him over his shoulder and runs out with him. And then because he wants to arrest him, he's victorious. I got my guy here he is with the cops. All right, Phoenix, you're going down. I'm the hero. And then the other cops, of course, giving him the John you didn't have to blow up. Oh, there goes the demolition man again, blowing up all this shit. But then they discover, hey, there's a bunch of bodies. So what John Spartan really did, in their mind, is caused the explosion of this building that had 30 hostages alive in it who are now dead.

Steve

Yeah, because he wasn't even supposed to be there. He wasn't supposed to go after Phoenix on his own. He shouldn't have been there to tempt Phoenix to do it. And then Phoenix even yells out, I told him the hostages were in there. He didn't care. He didn't care. And so he's really selling this idea. I still cannot believe for a second that the cops would be so anti their own right to, to sort of like, accuse him, charge him, whatever. Yeah, with 30 manslaughter charges, sure. These hostages, it doesn't make any sense.

Nic

Again, though, reactionary politics. A cop who actually can do his job isn't even allowed to do his job because all this red tape, right? So that's the, that's the thing. But such a great cold opening. This is before anything, right?

Steve

Right before credits or anything else. Yeah, yeah.

Nic

And then during the credits, kind of similar to the Fugitive, where we're kind of taken through the sentencing process of, okay, this is what happened. This is what you're charged with. And John Spartan is set to serve 70 years in a cryo prison where he's cryogenically frozen and then I guess rehabilitated through some kind of like neural link thing. And. And that's how they deal with the prisoners in there. So we're getting the credits as this is going through and they're reading to him what will happen. He gets lowered. First of all, naked. Sure. Yeah, that makes sense. I guess you don't want to come out like 70 years out of fashion. So it'd be an important thing they're worried about. As he rolls out and he's like, where'd you get that Mark Echo polo shirt from? But, but it's, it's crazy that. And my wife was yelling this while we were watching this. As they freeze him, they just basically fill this little, like, cylinder that he's in with some kind of a liquid as he's still like watching it fill up around him.

Steve

Very thick looking viscous fluid.

Nic

Yeah, yeah. She's like, there's no anesthesia. They couldn't like, put him down. And then we realized why. No, because the guys have to be frozen with the look on their face as they realize they were being frozen.

Steve

It was very Han Solo and Kryptonite. Whatever. But I wrote, I thought of this when I was watching. It's like, man, if I was being cryo frozen to go to jail for 70 years, I'd be throwing up both middle fingers the whole time. Just hold them up there. This is what it's coming like.

Nic

Yeah, it's the ultimate Splash Mountain camera. Right?

Steve

Exactly. For 70 years, you'd be frozen in that position. Man. Oh, God.

Nic

So. So now we're. We're going to the future here. So John. John Spartan is frozen and he has this kind of screaming, frozen face with a couple of bubbles. And now we're in 2030, right.

Steve

We skip ahead 36 years. Exactly 36 years in the future. It's 2032. Everything's pretty. Basically everything looks like a suburb now, right? Everything looks like a suburb. And we immediately get Sandra. We're getting introduced to Sandra Bullock, who's Lieutenant Huxley. That is a. Not at all. As a completely ham fisted, over the top reference, of course, to Brave New World.

Nic

Is it Better when they brave new world at some point in this. Or John Spartan. John Savage.

Steve

Yeah, exactly. So, so there's that. But I, I remember thinking in this watch through. Let me, let me rephrase. On previous watchers, I'd always thought to myself, gosh, the, the way language changed, right. In this movie where people really are speaking in a very sort of 1984 Brave New World kind of way. You know, those very specific terms are using and calling, you know, not saying. Every now nobody says yes. They say affirmative. Like, whatever. All this kind of stuff is crazy and ridiculous, Whatever. But this watch through, I thought to myself, yeah, but then you realize, like what Gen Alpha slang sounds like. And the things are like Riz and no cap and skibidi and toilets. And I'm like, okay, maybe it's not so crazy because, like, this is less than 36 years after we were the ones inventing slang. It's wildly different.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

Obviously the entire English language has not changed the way it does clearly in this movie. Although actually, you know, we do meet characters later on who speak like people speak in the 20th century. But, you know, the idea that these things can change quickly is not that crazy now that I think about it with our current modern examples.

Nic

Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. But it did seem very, very wildly different at the time.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And Huxley, the character, it seems like her issue is that I became a police officer for some action. It is so boring being a police officer. So they really drill that into our head. So in this future world, everything is so sanitized and being a cop is boring, as she's even on a video call with Smithers, the warden of the cryo prison who says things don't happen anymore. We took care of all that.

Steve

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And she, she obviously grew up on, you know, John Woo and, and, well, John Woo films and Lethal Weapon and stuff, and thought that's what being a cop, you know, would be. And, and why she would still think that. And growing up in this bizarro modern world for her, I don't know, but she did. And she's disappointed that it's not a wild adventure to be a police officer anymore.

Nic

Yeah. And she is just going through the motions and everything is just okay. Every day the same as the previous day. We get a quick scene of a kind of spray paint robot thing that pops up out of the ground and sprays graffiti on a wall and it says, life is hell. But then immediately the wall reacts with some kind of elect whatever it does anti graffiti Thing the graffiti disappears. We're briefly introduced now to Dennis Leary's character, Edgar Friendly, who is underground, looking through some kind of a periscope up around to see, you know, what's happening up here. And he comments, you know, people are hungry. So we know that there's this kind of subclass of people that live literally underground.

Steve

Yeah, yeah. And basically, you know, he's looking and, and saying like, hey, that's where the food is. Or he's able to see in his periscope like a food delivery truck. So they're basically tracking, you know, where these food trucks go, these van, so they can try to hit one and get their food later on. You know, we're later told this group of people is referred to as scraps by the rest of society, which is horrifically awful because they are human. But yeah, so then we see Simon Phoenix for some reason is up for parole.

Nic

Yep.

Steve

I mean, we later find out why, but it doesn't make any sense at this point why he's even up for parole. So he is being asked, you know, the basic parole questions, you know, are you rehabilitated? Like all the dumb stuff they ask him. There's obviously no intention by the warden to like let him go. He's going to go back. At which point Phoenix says the word teddy bear.

Nic

Yeah, well, first he's, repeat, he's playing the game, but in Spanish, which I think is really funny.

Steve

It's true.

Nic

You ever play that with your kids? It's one of the most fun things. Just repeat everything they say. And he's doing it in Spanish. Sounds like he's just making up some Spanish to be fun.

Steve

Didn't sound like 100% accurate Spanish, but he's, he's being silly, obviously, but he.

Nic

Knows the code like you said. So he says teddy bear and there goes his handcuffs.

Steve

Right. His hand and leg irons are sort of opened up. He's able to get off his chair and he basically destroys the. The warden and the two other sort of guards are with him. None of them are remotely prepared for an actual physical altercation. And he not only has always been a horrible sort of, you know, physically violent person, you know, we later find out. I'm going to jump out just a bit. But you know, he has actually been getting, instead of rehabbed, he's been getting trained apparently to learn all kinds of new horrible things and martial arts and terrorism and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So he is a one man wrecking ball at this point, really the true demolition man of this movie. Absolutely. But yeah, so he has killed these three people and is now escaping the cryo jail. So we are then taken back to San Andreas Police Department, which we should mention, of course. They explain that there is no more Los Angeles. It's called San Angeles. I said San Andreas San Angeles. And it is the Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, San Diego megalopolis, or whatever they call it. Right. Yeah. And it's like that does. Look the distance it takes four hours at least to drive from Santa Barbara to San Diego.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

Right.

Nic

Like it is a huge, huge chunk.

Steve

Like, why would that ever be considered a single municipality of any kind? Doesn't make any sense.

Nic

You want to scoop up the most prime real estate.

Steve

I guess it's all good. Good, good Oceanfront.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

But yeah. So. So we're back at the SAPD offices and they get this alarm that a 187 is a 187. 187. You know, we obviously in the 20th century, we remembered what that was called back then. People rapping about 187. We knew what that meant, but none of them know.

Nic

None of them know. Even Lenina Huxley, who is obsessed with 20th century and should know what fucking 187 is. Just from references even.

Steve

And I came his name right now, I think Lamb. I think the older black officer was the helicopter pilot at the beginning of the movie. Yeah. So has lived through all these changes and he even does not remember 187 or what a murder is. They have to look it up and it says murder, death, kill.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

Which is like super dumb. That's okay, though.

Nic

Very funny way, though, to make it just show how inept they are at dealing with the. This kind of.

Steve

And it mentions that the last instance or whatever, the last time this crime was committed was 20 years ago.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

So we've gone from 2012 to 2032 without a single murder. Yeah. I'm guessing anywhere in San Angeles. Not necessarily anywhere in the world, but within st.

Nic

Within the controlled bubble.

Steve

Yeah. You know. Yeah. Castle, that he's got. There have been no murders in 20 years. Which, like.

Nic

And. And also, I mean, as we're kind of learning the way things really work, I'm sure there's been a ton of murders, but no official murders among the citizens that they care about. I'm sure people are disappeared, people are killed in the underground and all that kind of stuff.

Steve

Absolutely.

Nic

But yeah. And so Phoenix escaping the jail. One thing that I always thought was really cool in this, it was showing the access to the different doors in the Cryo prison. And there was a retinal scan. So what Phoenix did is basically took a penknife or a pen and carved out the eyeball of the.

Steve

Of the warden.

Nic

The warden. So we get a scene where it just shows very close up on an eyeball, retinal scan complete, and then we see Phoenix holding it up on a pen.

Steve

Very cool.

Nic

Really, just good setup for his madness.

Steve

Yeah. There's all kinds of really great moments early on. Right. That obviously show us. Are showing us that John Spartan's a good guy. And he might be like, he is very, again, the sort of the cop that plays by his own rules sort of trope. And that's fine. But that Phoenix really is just a horrific person. Like, this is.

Nic

He gets joy out of all this.

Steve

Yes.

Nic

He's very sadistic, trying to get rich from. And he's like, I kind of like the killing along the way.

Steve

No, it does seem like the violence is absolutely the point. The cruelty is the point for him, which is great. Makes it easy to root against him. Because. Because the problem you have, I think this is something a lot of movies deal with or, you know, have to deal with, is when you have an incredibly charismatic, charismatic actor as really bad. You got to make sure that people aren't sitting there rooting for him just because he's so much fun to watch. Yeah. Is fun to watch in this movie. But we got to make sure we understand, though, he is really bad. He's a really bad dude. He's not a. Yeah. He's not a victim of his circumstance.

Nic

No.

Steve

You know, he's not fighting for his life in that sense. And that's why he's doing bad things. He just loves really hurting people as often as he can.

Nic

And. And Zachary Lim. So they're able to identify, you know, who it is because they see, okay, who was up for a parole, basically. Who could this be? Who could this be? Who has escaped.

Steve

Yes.

Nic

And there's a list of, like, 10 names. And Zachary Lamb, the kind of old timer who was a helicopter pilot, says. Says it's Phoenix, Simon Phoenix, and gives him a little breakdown.

Steve

Right.

Nic

Phoenix is a criminal. Likes which you never read about evil in a way you've never seen, you know, and, you know, talks about how notorious he was. And what they ask is, like, how did you.

Steve

How did you stop back then?

Nic

He's like, you know, we tried this and this and this. Like, all these extreme measures, in the end, took just one man, John Spartan. So absolutely, we immediately get a little bit of, you Know, a little bit of a preview of, you know, how they might deal with it. But Phoenix is hacking. What is he hacking? One of those atm, like information, Some.

Steve

Kind of information thing. Funny, real quick, even before that, they're watching him get the warden's car and drive off. And they keep referring to it as, oh, is the warden's conveyance still in the parking lot? Oh, whatever. But the AI voice talking back to them is like, now the warden's car is gone. So the AI says car several times.

Nic

The AI is more chill than the AI was robotic playing by John Connor Exactly. We don't say conveyance or some like that, we say car.

Steve

It's ridiculous because it's like all the people sound like chat GPT, but the AI is speaking like a human. Like, oh, yeah, the car is gone. Yeah, it's a car. Why do you have to call it a conveyance? Anyway, yeah, so he has. Simon has found himself a. Some kind of. Again, I don't know if it's like a bank terminal, it's some kind of an information terminal or it's. I don't know why this thing, but.

Nic

You can use it to basically hack anything that's computer operated if you know what you're doing.

Steve

It looks like maybe it's meant to be like some kind of a video phone that's therefore on the network because he's been, you know, implanted with all this information about how to operate in this day and age and hack things, whatever. He's able to access the city network this way. I'm guessing that's kind of the thing.

Nic

And it has these, you know, little kind of raised like half circular buttons that look like, you know, half M&Ms. And he does make a comment like, oh, shit. Like as he's typing, like he's surprised by what he's doing. He says, I wonder if I could play the accordion too. Which I think is a really funny joke, how that thing looks. And as he's doing this though, he's searching for Edgar Friendly is what he pulls up the Dennis Leary character and then kind of finds himself hearing this voice in his head where it's like his MK Ultra programming kicks in. And it's Cocteau's voice, basically.

Steve

But we haven't met yet, I don't think, in the movie. Right.

Nic

I think we've just heard his voice. He's the voice for the thing that fines you for swearing and all that kind of stuff.

Steve

All the. All the PA system is all his voice. Yeah, yeah.

Nic

So. So at the same time the cops are being sent there. And the cops back at the station, even though these people have just been m. Murdered, are so like, celebratory about like, ah, oh, we found it done.

Steve

And.

Nic

And here the cops we got to protect serve in progress once again. Cops don't even enforce the law anymore. They just protect and serve.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And. And Phoenix just beats them up so easily.

Steve

When the cops first arrive on scene and are sort of have seen Phoenix or whatever, one of them's got like some kind of a communications device, but is obviously also talking to an AI Again, this is like another chatgpt thing. It's talking to. And he goes, maniac is imminent. Advise.

Nic

Yes.

Steve

Approach Maniac. And I just love the way they keep referring to him as maniac in all these different ways. But it's like the cops can't even attempt an arrest without being helped by their, like, AI buddies. Which really, to me is a scarier potential future from where we sit in 2025 of people just offloading the majority of their thinking right. To a high.

Nic

Yeah. Let me ask Siri what I'm supposed to do here. Crazy.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And you know, as the cops are getting beaten up, the other ones are kind of watching on video from the station. And I think it's. It's Rob Schneider's character who makes the comment, we're police officers. We're not trained to handle this kind of violence.

Steve

Exactly. And I love. This is the first evidence or the first appearance in this movie of this kind of really cheesy 90s record scratch score. As Phoenix is beating up the cops. You get these like, kind of record scratch sounds. Yeah. And it seems to happen most of the time when Phoenix is fighting somebody. It happens kind of over and over again. But this is the first kind of version of it. It was something. It really stood out to me and felt. Felt more than a little cringy at the time. Yeah.

Nic

Well, the music in this movie overall is kind of weird. Right. Because we have this weird story score. And then the only songs that they're actually playing are commercial jingles and old ones.

Steve

Not even like from the 90s or the 2000s. We learned that. Right. The. An enormous earthquake destroyed a lot of this area in 2010, which is why Cocteau is over. Sort of able to like reshape society or whatever. But it's. So it's not even stuff from, like the 90s and 2000s. It's like from the 60s.

Nic

Right.

Steve

Right. It's like the commercials you would have seen watching like leave it the Beaver back in the day or something. Right.

Nic

Like stuff that people our age, the people who had money to go to the movie theater and stuff at that time would have resonated.

Steve

Exactly. Right, exactly.

Nic

And also we haven't brought this up, but a good feature throughout this movie is that when a character curses, there's these little kind of like hand dryer looking things on the wall that will generate a fine slip for you. So it'll say, you know, john Spartan, you have fined three credits for violating the verbal morality standard.

Steve

That's right.

Nic

And it's, it kicks in like no matter where they are. So it's funny that that keeps recurring. So Cocteau, we're kind of introduced to Cocteau, who is conducting one of the early Zoom meetings, it looks like, where he's talking to basically a bunch of spaces around a conference table that are occupied by different screens that would turn to face him and everything. And he's talking about Edgar Friendly as the biggest problem that we have. That's right, very leader of the Scraps. And they're all violent and they're all, you know, murderous and thieves and everything. And they need to be stopped. That that's the biggest threat to their society.

Steve

Yeah, yeah.

Nic

So he's the boss man. I mean, he's the effective, like whatever dear leader of the whole thing.

Steve

He's the, he's the cult leader. He's the. Yeah, he's the one who again, like for whatever reason and no, it's never explained to us exactly how or why this happened, he was allowed to sort of reshape society into this San Andreas, you know, supposed sort of of utopia where everything is sanitized, you know, nothing is sort of allowed to be, you know, out of the ordinary. There's no deviance, there's no nothing from the norms. And so, but, you know, again, not explained why, but this is the guy. So this is the guy that's in charge. Basically.

Nic

Yeah. But at the same time the police department is given the autonomy to do whatever is in their power.

Steve

Anything in your power.

Nic

Anything in your power. Which they decide is after watching some highlight videos. Maybe we should bring John Spartan back.

Steve

Yes, it's Lenina Huxley, Lieutenant Huxley's idea to like, well, if he caught Simon Phoenix the first time, maybe we should go unfreeze him and let him try again. Of course there's some resistance to this. You know, he's a savage. He also was sentenced to all this jail time. So like, how do we even know we could Trust him, all this stuff. But they do, they go and they defrost John Spartan and bring him back from cryo prison and start to kind of introduce him to the situation at hand. Yeah, right. Which about, you know, that Simon Phoenix is loose in this society. But of course he's more, you know, he's got a lot to learn just about what's going on around him. Yeah, right. The first time he says something, he sees this Ackland character and it's like kind of hugs him and he's like, oh, you still flying? He goes, oh, no, they grounded me. And, you know, you, me. And that's when like the, you know, John spot and you have been refined one credit, like the whole deal. And so that's his first experience with that. That. And I love that Huxley says something about like. Like he said something about wanting a cigarette. Oh, yeah, give me a Marlboro. Yeah, right. He's like, what's a Marlboro? Benjamin Bratt's character does one of the cops. What's a Marlboro? Oh, it's a cigarette. Any smoke, I don't care. Like, whatever. Oh, cigarettes are bad for you. So they're out. They've been. They're illegal. Yeah, everything bad for you has been illegal, along with a few other things and then. And anything spicy, anything which is like. Yeah, so culturally insensitive. Like, that's so shitty. Like, it's maybe the most egregious of the, of the insensitivities in the movie. But yeah, anything spicy has been outlawed.

Nic

Yeah, she said smoking, alcohol, caffeine, contact sports, meat, like all these things really, really funny. So. And then he's also asking, like, basically finds out he's unfrozen for an indetermined period of time, probably not that long. This was made before the Austin Powers piss became canon for cryogenic freezing. So we didn't get like a 10 minute whiz from him, but. But he finds out that his wife died in the earthquake in 2010. And then he's, you know, oh, I also had a daughter. And then she's about to answer and the other guy's like, ah, shut your mouth, you savage.

Steve

Like you're not here for this.

Nic

He says something about playing his Rip Van Winkle routine. Finish with all the Rip Van Winkle and get moving. Which I think is funny. But they really cut to it. They have no respect for him. He's a piece of shit to them. He's a seminal. Who's there to just serve a purpose. And then probably get, you know.

Steve

Oh, definitely put back away. Right. If he survives the.

Nic

They don't plan on integrating.

Steve

No, no, no. He'll be going right back into cryo jail. Yeah. Some of the, one of the things I love when they, when they are. They bring him into the police station and they're looking around. Was the first time I noticed, even though we've seen this police station a few times in the movie, this point, this first time I noticed that there's all this advanced technology. These cars look amazing. Everything self drives, you know, you've got all this like technology and all this stuff going on. That, that the little like zoom meeting thing is kind of cool. Like all that stuff. Right. But all the TVs are 4 by 3 crts. Every one of them is like, you know, not a flat screen, not a widescreen. This is a world in which HD never existed.

Nic

No.

Steve

Right. It's all this craz. They were, they were making it in 93 so they didn't even see, you know, seven, eight years down the line what's going to be technology really like in 2000. Yeah. And so it's, it's sort of like oddly dated, even though it's the future.

Nic

Totally. Yeah. It is a dated future. That's a good way to put it. And so John Spartan comments like you said, he, he cursed and saw little slips come out. And then he says, hey, I don't know how to tell you, but you're out of toilet paper. And they're like, what?

Steve

Like literally, what's toilet paper?

Nic

Like we don't know what toilet paper is.

Steve

20 years ago people were using toilet paper.

Nic

Whatever, they have napkins, they have others.

Steve

Ridiculous.

Nic

You know what, there's probably toilet paper ads on the commercial station that they all love. What do they think that's for? So he, so he said in place of the toilet paper, there's just three seashells. And they're kind of like, huh, he didn't know how to use the three seashells.

Steve

Yeah, I still don't either, by the way.

Nic

No, I don't either. I think it's a good.

Steve

Supposedly there's some kind of pinching and scraping that happens.

Nic

Marcellus Wallace's briefcase. We never need to know. We never need to know about it. But John Spartan deals with it in a very funny way which killed me when I was a kid. He said, okay, walks over to the machine and get an idea. Hey, listen you shit fucking dumb fucking butt ass. And he's swearing it and it keeps spitting out all these Slips for him, and then he holds him up. He goes, so much for your seashells. And then I do like that he got fully dressed before solving the problem of wiping his ass.

Steve

There is that I. I wrote down with. With the receipt thing, right? It's not receipts. It's these fines, right? It's easy, but it looks like receipt paper. It's got that shine to it. And whatever I wrote down in my notes, wiping your ass with receipt paper to own the libs. Like, that's what it felt like. It's like people are too. You're too woke. I'm gonna do this.

Nic

Oh, my God. Okay, well, maybe this is a good time to bring up a quick theory that I have.

Steve

Okay.

Nic

One of our favorite comedians who was probably good up until about this time was a great SNL star and everything, Rob Schneider. We know what he's like now. We know what his comedy is. My theory is that when he was filming this movie, he somehow was convinced that this is reality, that this is the future. Because if you listen to any of his standup now, he's like, oh, you can't swear. You can't say anything. And, you know, every restaurant's Taco Bell, and you can't even get toilet paper during the pandemic. We just had to get seashells. Like, it's so. It's like this world that Rob Schneider thinks exists now is so similar to this, like, weird future in Demolition Man. So I think maybe he got some kind of mental illness on the set.

Steve

Yeah, he definitely got a mental illness somewhere sometime, that's for sure.

Nic

Who's making the hot chick or the animal or Deuce Bigelow, too.

Steve

Oh, Deuce Bigelow was pretty bad. Yeah.

Nic

So anyway, that's my Rob theory. I think that he. In his mind, the Demolition man future is the world we're living in, and he needs to tell us all about it so he can stop it. He's wearing a fedora the whole time. There's no way you can take it off his head.

Steve

It would explain a lot. That's fair. It would explain a lot about Rob Schneider. Post. Post. Waterboy.

Nic

Okay, so we're back at Phoenix, trying to figure out what's Phoenix doing.

Steve

Right? Yeah. So Phoenix now has decided he needs to find a gun. Right? And there doesn't appear to be any guns in this society. When the cops came and attacked him, none of them had guns or they had these, like, stunts or something called glow rods. Is interesting choice because it's clearly a stun stick. Anyway, so he's like.

Nic

Yeah, like alliteration, right?

Steve

Yeah, exactly. So he realizes kind of at the same time that that Phoenix and. Or excuse me, that Spartan tells the cops, like, he's gonna go for a gun. Well, the only place you can find a gun is in a museum. Well, sure enough, Phoenix figured that out too. Probably because it's been implanted in his brain. Yeah, that. Yeah. There is a museum of human history, I think they call it, or something like that. And it has an entire wing, the history of violence, and an armory in there. And I noticed the. I had to look up the timing on this, but the. The typeface used in the signs for the Hist. For the. The hall of Violence.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

And the armory and all this stuff would. Would three years later, because this is 93 again, be used exclusively for the video game Diablo? I don't know if you've ever played that game. It was like a little action RPG game. But all of the font. That font I always associated with that video game name. And it turns out it was. This was used in this context first. But it's a very, very stylish and recognizable typeface that just happened to end up becoming associated with something else just a few years later.

Nic

I saw that before and the. The place I saw, and I'll have to look if it's the Same is the late 90s hip hop classic album Internal affairs by Farrell Monch. I think he used the same thing, the same font as well, I think.

Steve

I think he did. Possibly for his name on a couple different albums.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

Sort of a personal typeface for him. Yeah. But anyway, yeah, so he. So Phoenix is in the museum and just has to make random racist comments as some little Asian kids walk by. And I'm not going to say it, but he just says horrible. It's a horribly racist thing. And it's like, again, good, because we want to hate this guy. We need to know how bad he is, but also like, really need to do that. Like from the movie. Like, do we need that? No.

Nic

And it's like, dude, the base level of human in the future is so make fun of a bowl. Like, everyone has become such a ridiculous person. So for Simon Phoenix to still get a kick out of like, like seeing an Asian person and like making noises at the right. It's like, man, dude, what a 20th.

Steve

Century version of bigotry. Like, you know, like, you gotta modernize that. But yeah, so. So yeah, so he is there. So then the, the cops, the Spartan and. And Huxley. And I don't remember Garcia. I think of the Benjamin Brat characters. Yeah. So they are now heading off to. Wow. His name is Alfredo Garcia.

Nic

Is it Alfredo? Because we'll have to look it up. The Fletch thing.

Steve

Anyway, so they're heading to the museum to try to stop Phoenix. Been. They're in the car and I think they turn the radio on or music or something, right. And it's like jingles. Yeah. And Spartan's like, what is this? This is like what? It's like, oh yeah. This is the music of today. Like every. Everything on the top four. This is my favorite one. All this stuff. So it's like, okay. Do they have nostalgia for the old commercials or is this just what passes for popular music now? Because I watch YouTube videos full of commercials from the 80s and 90s. I'll do it when I need like just a little dopamine hit, you know, because it's fun. Because it reminds me of being 12 years old watching TV. Like, okay, but if you don't have like nostalgia for it, right. What would be the attraction to these piss and little chick.

Nic

It's like the only art that's like sanitized enough to like still make it into this future.

Steve

Because it was corporate approved at one time, so therefore it couldn't possibly be offensive, I guess. Yeah, I guess that kind of makes sense. Sense. Such a strange facet of reality in this future though, that this music, all the popular music is old commercial jingles. That's it.

Nic

Yeah, it is it. It gives a good like little darkness to it though.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

Because I don't know, I mean, people that are obsessed, you know, the super bowl commercials and that they just like love. I mean, I get watching the old commercials from when we were kids. I think that that's cool. But yeah, just an obsession with like commercials and brands and stuff is such like a dark thing, I feel like in a lot of ways. So like the fact that it came full circle here is. Is cool. Phoenix is. He's in the museum now. He throws a guy through the window basically to break the glass. And then I do like this realization that he has when he gets a gun. He's like, wait a second, we're in the future. Where are all the phaser guns and like that.

Steve

Exactly. Because he has an old like. He has an old like single barrel shotgun that you have to reload every time. It's like, that's not fun. Where's the fun stuff?

Nic

So he ends up. He ends up getting himself armed and. And he's all set and at the same time, we've got Spartan and the two other officers showing up to try to take him out, right? So. So Spartan and him end up getting in a. In a shootout right in the museum with.

Steve

With additional record scratch score, right?

Nic

Record scratch score.

Steve

And Phoenix, I don't know exactly where in the fight, but gives. Gives one of my favorite lines from his, which is, simon says bleed. Yes.

Nic

As I was watching this movie, I felt like they had a list of, like, a hundred catchphrases that they wanted to use, and they were supposed to narrow it down to 15, but then they were like, I just want to use all of them because there's, like, catchphrases and quips, like, so dense in this movie that it is very funny. But they're both, like, back and forth with their. It's almost like a. Like, sometimes people would criticize, like, some of Aaron Sorkin's work where it sounds like both. All the characters sound like they're, you know, that they're all written by him.

Steve

Oh, yeah.

Nic

They all have the same level of, like, wittiness and quippiness and stuff. And Phoenix and Spartan were kind of like. Like, zinging back and forth through this stuff while they're getting shot. Phoenix recognizes his voice, right? Spartans like, oh, gonna get you. And he's like, what's that voice?

Steve

That sounds familiar?

Nic

Who is that? And he's just, like, still shooting at him. Wesley Snipes is very funny, I think he. And like you said. But they do have to make him bad bad, because he's so likable. He's just, like, such a fun character.

Steve

If you take away the horrific acts he does, he's an incredibly fun character. Like, I give me a version of Simon Phoenix that is maybe like a Punisher style antihero, and I would love that movie, too. You know, that would be incredible. But, yeah, so they're fighting, and finally, you know, Phoenix does have this phaser gun, this sort of futuristic weapon, but it's like, it needs to charge for, like, two or three minutes, like, quite a while. So he does charge it. And so, you know, as he's fighting and as he's shooting and running out of bullets from the other weapons, the thing sort of alerts him, like, we're ready to shoot now. You know, sort of like the microwave is dinged, and so he tries to blow away Spartan, but Spartan's able to sort of just jump out of the way at the last minute, and Phoenix basically escapes. He's like, I don't want to fight anymore. I'm just going to leave now, I got shit to do.

Nic

And Spartan during that fight scene because they fall kind of into the subterranean cutout.

Steve

Oh, that's right.

Nic

A 1990s, like real street scene from LA. And there's just random shit laying around. So there's an old CRT TV that he picks up and starts swinging around like a mace by the plug. Which is not going to happen with a 200 pound TV, but delivers the most killer witty line of all time when he hits him with the tv, you're on TV so bad.

Steve

In much in the same way that Wesley Snipes is incredibly charismatic in this, Sylvester Stallone is, as he almost always is, not. No, no, not charismatic.

Nic

And then this is where Phoenix also says, it's a brave new world. Sorry, you gotta go.

Steve

Yeah, very on the nose.

Nic

Really good. Yeah. So he escapes. And where does Phoenix end up after his escape?

Steve

So Phoenix runs up, kind of gets out through this like skylight or something, the museum. He ends up outside, right. And there's Cocteau and his associate, associate Bob, and you know, so Phoenix fires off a couple rounds, kill these two and run off. And he misses. And he's like, I don't miss. That's so strange. So he runs right up to Cocteau and tries to shoot him, but he is unable to pull the trigger. Clearly part of the, you know, subconscious implantation of information that he received, something made it so that he physically, he physically could not kill Cocteau. Yeah, this was like a fail safe Cocteau built into the program. It's like, well, I'm going to let this maniac out and he's going to do all this stuff, but I got to make sure he doesn't turn on me. So I'm going to go ahead and you know, just making sure that he can't shoot me, he can't kill me. And sure enough, that happens. So, you know, Meanwhile, Spartan and Huxley and Garcia have left the museum and are running to where they believe, you know, Phoenix would be based on where he was kind of leaving from. And they see him talking to Cocteau, basically. And then Phoenix runs off and Spartan's not able to sort of catch up to him.

Nic

He does not. Phoenix like goes off over this little ridge and Spartan just stops. He doesn't even take a peek? No, on the other side, he's just.

Steve

Like, oh, lost him? Yeah. And so, but, but immediately Spartan is suspicious of the fact that Cocteau didn't get shot.

Nic

It's like Everyone who comes face to face with this guy dies.

Steve

Yeah. So what's the deal there? So Cocteau is very thankful, right? Oh, you saved my life. And Spartan's like, I don't do. I don't know what you're talking about. I would love for you and Lieutenant Huxley to join me for dinner at Taco Bell. And Huxley is over the moon. She is so excited. And, you know, Spartan's like, I could use a burrito. Yeah. And now let me tell you something. I fuck with Taco Bell. I love me some Taco Bell. Taco Bell smacks. I don't want anybody to talk shit about Taco Bell, but I also don't really want to get taken on, like, a fancy dinner. Thank you to Taco Bell. So I also would be like, this is not.

Nic

Well, early 90s especially. I feel like Taco Bell has had a recent kind of, like, renaissance and acceptance among, like, all people. You know, even have, like, a very famous celebrity be like, oh, Taco Bell. Or the bride goes to Taco Bell in her wedding dress after the wedding and shit. Back then it was, like, more frowned upon than that. So it was like a joke that hit even harder back then that, like, this is the fancy restaurant. But, yeah, I agree. I don't need to. First of all, Taco Bell, to me, is a very personal thing. Like, I don't want anyone to see me while I'm eating it. That's fair.

Steve

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is. That is either in the car, you take it all home, you hide away.

Nic

You throw the bag directly in the barrel outside so the wife doesn't see it in the. In the kitchen trash. But, yeah, so he gets invited to this dinner at Taco Bell, and then it's explained to him by Huxley that she. He's like, oh, I don't know. And she says, well, you know, after the Franchise War, like, they were the only ones to survive the Franchise wars, right? So now all restaurants are Taco Bell.

Steve

A ludicrous outcome that just simply could never happen. It doesn't matter what else Cocteau has done to society. That just doesn't make any sense. But fine, we're moving forward. So.

Nic

Oh, when they're at Taco Bell, okay, They're. They're all dressed up for fancy night at Taco Bell. There's a gentleman playing the piano and singing. Do you know who that is?

Steve

That was MTV's own Dan Cortez singing.

Nic

The Jolly Green Giant theme.

Steve

It was so funny when we panned past him I went up, I thought of myself, is that Dan Cortez? Because he is on screen for like two seconds real fast. Like, was that Dan Cortez? And I literally had to stop the movie. Pull up IMDb. It really was Dan Cortez and he's credited in the film as Taco Bell entertainer. Is the line in the cast before they get to Taco Bell though, they're driving in Huxley's car, they're dressed up. And she just makes some kind of reference to the. The Schwarzenegger Presidential Library. And it was like, well, like Schwarzenegger, what? Like, yeah, wasn't he an actor in your time? First of all, what a dumb question for her to ask because she's supposed to be this like aficionado of the 90s of the 20th century. She would know who Arnold Schwarzenegger was as an actor. But apparently he became president in like, I don't know, 2016 or something. They said whatever. And it was like, even though he wasn't born here, the 63rd Amendment allowed it, which is like, wow, there were a lot. Maybe that helps explain why society is so different if there were so many amendments.

Nic

Right, right.

Steve

We're at like 28 or 29, I feel like, is what's actually in the Constitution right now. So that's a lot of extra changes to. To the societal blueprint.

Nic

Yeah, totally. And pretty accurate prediction. I mean, I know Arnold has always had kind of political aspirations, but to be governor of California is basically the highest government position in the US you can get without being a natural born citizen. Because he doesn't qualify to be president.

Steve

Exactly.

Nic

To be governor of the biggest state. Basically the joke in Back to the Future, which is so great about Ronald Reagan being president and Doc Brown saying, Ronald Reagan what? The actor that was so perfect that it's almost like the Schwarzenegger line is fine, but you shouldn't. That subject is retired because they nailed it so hard with the time travel president thing.

Steve

That's fair. But it is interesting, I remember thinking, because the joke being made by Back to the Future, they knew Reagan would become president. Right. It was sort of a comment about that that they had happened. And this was not something obviously Schwarzenegger will never be president. We're never going to change that part of the Constitution. But you know, he was governor of California later. In fact, I remember, I remember being super jealous of my little brother because he and I graduated college here in California.

Nic

You got Gray Davis and he got the Schwarzenegger.

Steve

That's right, dude.

Nic

I pisses Me off every day I look at it.

Steve

He's got Arnold Schwarzenegger's signature on his, on his degree. And I have Gray Davis, which is just not as cool at all.

Nic

Gray Davis would not have been as good of a Terminator.

Steve

No, not remotely. Oh, my God.

Nic

So, so when they're at dinner, this is, it's kind of an interesting scene because they're sitting at Taco Bell and having dinner and kind of learning about, you know, the fuel. You got some hot sauce, you got some salt, whatever. Like all this stuff and it doesn't exist anymore. And Cocteau is kind of talking to Spartan just about, you know, like, you, you came from this time of chaos and, and crime and everything. Look at what I've built. Isn't it amazing? Isn't the cryo prison, like such a humane way to deal with it? And then Spartan is disclosing, he's like, oh, you think that was asleep?

Steve

Like, no.

Nic

How about, you know, nightmare? A 36 year old nightmare or 36 year nightmare? Your wife, like pounding on a piece of block of ice that used to be her husband and all this stuff, which I thought was really cool and like, I don't know, a good way to kind of reset the whole thing.

Steve

Between, between that element of like, oh man, these people are actually kind of conscious within this prison. And the fact that it like filled with the goo kind of before freezing him all felt very matrixy.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

Which wouldn't come out for several more years after this. But like the pink goo that the people get encapsulated in the Matrix, it was like. There was a lot of parallels there, I felt like, of this like suspending humanity in something and whatever. And yeah, he makes it clear that like, no, this is, that is not humane. It is, it is awful. It is a nightmarish existence. We're conscious and it sucks and you suck. And like. Yeah, so he's, I mean, you know.

Nic

And they don't, they're not used to being talk to like that. This is so disruptive to like the, you know, polite society.

Steve

Right.

Nic

And, and there's a woman's like, what would you say if I told you you were a brutish relic of like, you know, one of those, like those Princeton style insults. And then he's like, oh, I don't think you.

Steve

Thank you.

Nic

But there's some action outside because the official vehicle of crime, the dirt bike, has appeared out there and something's, something's going on. And he sees that, that Edgar Friendly and the scraps are are coming up to do something kind of a raid.

Steve

Yeah, something's happening. So he bolts outside of the Taco Bell and is confronted with, you know, these guys trying to. They come at him and they start fighting, you know, so he's. He's fighting people, they're fighting him. You know, they're obviously not used to cops that fight back. It's clear that they're used to being in a situation where they can get up there, hit somebody a couple times, and then they're just kind of allowed to do what they need and they can disappear again. That seems like the plan, right? While he's screwing that plan up. And so Edgar, even though they've gone to the van full of food, that's what they're there to do, is steal food. But he looks over and sees John Spartan fighting off a couple guys and tells his buddies, go, go get that guy. So what, like 10 or 15 dudes, like, run over, all wearing, you know, vaguely mad maxi sort of outfits, you know, run over to him, and he's able to, like, capture them under a tent or something. I'm not really sure what happened. Does.

Nic

Yeah, the same thing that. That Billy Tepper does in toy soldiers when he's running out of the army 10 towards the school and pulls the poles out and it collapses on him.

Steve

There you go.

Nic

Yeah, he basically collapses this canopy on them. I don't. They don't stay trapped, but it stops them.

Steve

It slows them down.

Nic

Yeah, yeah. And. And he's beating these guys up. But Spartan, at a certain point, I think, kind of sees what they're actually trying to do.

Steve

They're stealing food.

Nic

They're not attacking people. These are people stealing food.

Steve

Exactly.

Nic

And of course, the. The polite high society Taco Bell patrons are thrilled about this. This was such a delightful thing for them to see.

Steve

Such wonderful entertainment, like.

Nic

Yeah, exactly. See him do his work and get these disgusting people out of our. Out of our way.

Steve

They smell bad.

Nic

Oh, God. Phoenix is in Cocteau's office.

Steve

Right.

Nic

Cocteau returns, and Phoenix is now dressed kind of like Destro.

Steve

Yeah, that's a good call. I was trying to place it. You're right. Very destroyed.

Nic

Bizarre. And then underneath that is wearing some kind of like that old wrestling tag team. Men on a mission. Mo, Oscar and Mabel from the WWE. Like, early 2000s, like, overall, kind of funky, hip hop dancing, overall combo underneath his Destro jacket. But he's basically overridden, like some of the voice controls in Cocteau's office. So it's Showing that. I don't know, like, maybe I gave this guy a little more training than I'm comfortable with. Or like, he knows what's going on here. He knows how everything works.

Steve

The funny part is, is that everybody's language at this point is very stilted, very deliberate, very descriptive, without nuance. Right. That's how everybody talks. So the fact that normally you would walk into a room and say, lights. The lights would turn on. And what he changed it to is you walk in a room and you have to say illuminate. Yeah, that sounds way more like what they would have had in the first place. This is a conveyance call situation. Again. So he's changed the trigger word for turning lights on to illuminate.

Nic

If he changed it from illuminate to just, that would have been the.

Steve

That's it. They missed out on that. But, yeah, Cocteau in this scene is. Look, he obviously knows Phoenix cannot shoot him himself, but he seems really unconcerned with Phoenix at all. Like he's going to be able to. To control him forever. It's there. There is a confidence level that Cocteau has that seems pretty dangerous, pretty unearned. Like, he definitely doesn't know the of power that he's meddling with essentially to bring Phoenix into this world.

Nic

But he was face to face with him with a gun in his face, and Phoenix couldn't do it. And I don't know if it's. I think it's later, but Phoenix is basically just in conversation with him and keeps pulling the gun out.

Steve

Right. Oh, God damn it. Can't do it.

Nic

So. But yeah, Cocteau is. I mean, he's definitely sniffing his own farts.

Steve

Oh, my God.

Nic

He's. He thinks he's created the perfect world. There's no one smarter than.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

So. So Phoenix is there, and he's had this conversation with Cocteau who's trying to, you know, go kill Edgar Friendly. And Phoenix. Like, what the. Is John Spartan doing?

Steve

Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna need some worry. I'm gonna need some help. Right?

Nic

Yeah, yeah, I need. I need a crew now. We're with Spartan and Huxley.

Steve

Right.

Nic

Back at the apartment.

Steve

Well, because Spartan, you know, this is all one day, right? I mean, he literally has been just unfrozen for a single day because he's got nowhere to sleep. She. The. The department or whoever. Right. Has set up. Set him up in an apartment down the hall from Huxley's. But they go to Huxley's apartment first, which is covered. It Looks like a awful Chili's restaurant or something with just all over the walls.

Nic

Yes.

Steve

Like, oh, I. Hey, Captain, we can. Can we go to shenanigans? Like, you know, kind of. Kind of moment.

Nic

Like, all she was missing was a big mouth Billy Bass. Oh, my God, she really had. Yeah, she had the jukebox, like, the neon signs.

Steve

So crazy. And so, yeah, so he, you know, he sees her and she talks about just how excited she was by his actions today and like all this stuff and just very matter of factly, nonchalantly, and just kind of like, hey, would you like to have sex? And he's like, with you right now? Yeah. Like, you know, he's kind of like, all right, I've been frozen for 30 something years. Let's. Let's bump uglies. But what happens instead is among the most terrifying sex scenes of any movie ever, in my opinion.

Nic

Oh, yeah.

Steve

It's shockingly. I don't know.

Nic

Yeah, no, it's. It's crazy. I mean, so. So she comes out basically with this box with a couple of kind of headset things that they each put on and. And she expresses him like, oh, no, we don't do physical contact anymore. This is not a thing that we do. This is the way we have sex. So put this on and concentrate. And he kind of is flashing into these like, half fantasy, half nightmare visions of her. And it's just. It's so odd and off putting an unnatural to him.

Steve

Yes.

Nic

And it's also someone who's just like, had their brain fried for, like, 35 years with the programming or whatever. Like, that has to just be so.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

Oh, God. Yeah.

Steve

So he breaks off contact, whatever. Right. And it takes the helmet off and is talking like, we haven't even touched you. And that's, you know. Yeah. She explains sort of. Yeah, yeah. Like, touch. The. The voluntary swapping of fluids or whatever is outlawed. You know, this stuff. How do you have babies? Oh, we go to a lab. We do this. Like, okay. I mean, that makes sense, I guess. But, you know, he basically kind of corners her and tries to, like, kiss her or whatever. And much to her credit, it tells him, get the fuck out. Like, this is not what I want, you know, get out of my apartment. And so he does. He leaves, you know, which is like. That could have gotten dark. But yeah.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

She tells him to leave and he does. So that part's good, at least.

Nic

Yeah. And then Spartan is. He goes back to his place and he's got like a little box of. I don't know, goodies like his, his beret. Yeah, his. His Chuck E. Cheese style goody bag. Yeah. With all of his stuff in it. Right. He's got his beret and he's got his knitting needles and everything, which has a label on it from Cocteau, cryo prison or whatever. So as he's kind of watching the security video because he was very suspicious that Phoenix came face to face with Cocteau and didn't kill him. So we asked for the security footage first. He turns his little video screen on and it's this nude woman who's, I don't know, just calling a friend who she thinks is her boyfriend, but she's naked and getting out of the shower or something. Hey, I was wondering. And he's like, oh, haven't seen it. You know what's weird? I guess I'm not sure what to think here. So he's been under for 36 years, right. But theoretically, you wake up the day, you're unfrozen and it feels like the.

Steve

Next day you'd think, yeah, or you.

Nic

Wouldn'T notice that passage of time. But then he said he's been having these nightmares or whatever. So I don't know if he's like, oh, I haven't seen tits in 36 years, or if he's like, I haven't seen tits in four days. But either way, he was, he was pretty into that. And he watches this video and sees that Phoenix walks right up to Cocteau, right? For several seconds, is standing right there with the gun and they're saying something to each other. And then he takes off right? Then he's like, something's, something's wrong here.

Steve

Yeah, he doesn't get the audio. He can't hear what they're saying, but it's clear this is wrong. He later says something about, you know, 10 seconds with the Simon Phoenix and a gun is usually nine and a half more than you get kind of thing. And so, yeah, so he's super suspicious as well he should be of Cocteau. So I think at this point, then we're go to the next day and the, and Huxley and Garcia and Spartan go to Cocteau's office, right? They're gonna go talk to him. He's gonna confront him, basically. And Huxley's warning him like, you can't just like accuse Dr. Cocteau of, of this horrible thing, like, whatever. So they get to his office. We're back in that, that office sort of conference room with little. But now all the Little screens are Cocteau.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

I'm so sorry, Mr. Spot and I couldn't be there, you know, like whatever. But Associate Bob, who I love, is always. He was in Beetlejuice. Right? Like it was.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

Ortho or something or whatever his name was. I don't remember. Anyway, great, great, funny actor from that era. But he kind of glances to one side and Spartan catches his glance and figures there's probably a Wizard of Oz.

Nic

Man behind the curtain going on here.

Steve

I did notice though, the first time we see Spartan has reached Cocteau himself is we're looking at the little screen Cocter's talking on and a gun comes on. On the screen pointing at his head. It looks very much like it's a black gun. Maybe it's just the way the screen looks. But it doesn't look like the gun he uses when it cuts to him. It's like this bright silver, chrome looking thing. I thought that was odd. I even rewounded to kind of check again. So it might have been the lighting and the way that this really horrible standard definition 4x3 CRT, you know, doesn't show good colors because, you know, nobody's. Nobody created OLED at that point. But. Yeah. So it was just kind of strange. But now. But they found the real Cocteau and he's. He's basically accusing him of what he's done. Yeah. Which is deliberately letting Phoenix go.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

And come into society and to do this.

Nic

Yeah. And. And I forget how they find out, but they know that. That Phoenix is in the underground or strongly suspect that he's underground now.

Steve

Right. Well, no, they go down. They want to go. They find out that the point is.

Nic

Or they're trying to find Friendly. Okay.

Steve

So they want to kind of find him and figure out what's going on with this guy. And also I think Spartan wants to warn him, like, hey, Simon, Phoenix is coming after you. Like you don't know what you're dealing with.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

You know, kind of thing. And so they go to the underground. They go down to. They find these manhole covers, these crazy manhole covers.

Nic

I want to open one of those so bad. How fun does that look?

Steve

But Earl actually mentioned real quick earlier, like before the Taco Bell scene. I think Simon also went to one of these things and opened it up. And when he opened it up, he. He takes a big whiff and kind of goes, oh. And he goes, I love that smell. Reminds me of biscuits and gravy. Now the look, I love biscuits and gravy. It's one of my favorite breakfast foods. I don't know what in the sewer would possibly smell like biscuits and gravy.

Nic

Isn't that worse? Like, I would rather smell sewage than smell like a familiar but non sewage thing that definitely wouldn't be down there. Like, you don't want an exact smell of that.

Steve

Exactly.

Nic

But I think that it's kind of foreshadowing to what they. Spartan and the cops discover when they go down there.

Steve

Right. Which is a whole society. Yeah. That operates very much like sort of slums in the 20th century would have operated. It's obviously a very, you know, poor area. It's people who don't have much, but it is kind of a thriving society down there. There's a lot of people, there's kids running around, all kinds of stuff.

Nic

It reminds me a lot of the kind of red light district area of Mars in Total Recall.

Steve

Okay, yes.

Nic

That was a very similar kind of vibe.

Steve

Did feel like that.

Nic

Absolutely. Yeah.

Steve

So.

Nic

So there's. You could get a beer down there. They're making burgers, all these things that are illegal. But a lot of people who look incredibly scared, incredibly destitute, they're dirty, they're. They're afraid and everything. And the cops are kind of realizing like, oh, these aren't these violent psychopaths that we've been led to believe, like, nobody's attacking us. Nobody. Yeah, they're just people who seem kind of scared and kind of like, you know, worried about how they're gonna live.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

So. So he meets Edgar. Friendly Spartan, gets a burger.

Steve

That's right. So he smells a burger. So first of all, Garcia and Huxley smell the same thing he does, and they are both offended by the smell. But he notices it and goes, oh, what's that? So he goes, and he finds a woman. She's flipping patties on the grill. He sees that she's got beers. She speaks Spanish and she's speaking Spanish to him. He clearly understands Spanish and speaking some Spanish back to her. But, you know, Huxley says, don't ask her where the meat came from. He goes, oxy, what are you talking about? Do you see any cows around here? Like, what? What do you think this is? And so she tells him it's rat. And he's kind of like, it was a rat burger. It's not too bad. Like it's okay, you know, kind of whatever. He drinks his beer and all this stuff. But then she. This was a weird little moment. I didn't quite understand why she says gracias and instead of saying denara, he says prego, which is Italian for thank you. What the hell was that? Like, it didn't make any sense to me, but I'm like, suddenly he's saying in Italian, thank you. I didn't get it. This felt like a toy soldiers fuego fire moment. But like strange. Yeah.

Nic

His programming taught him, taught him some Italian.

Steve

It was also odd when they first got down there. They first come down into the underground. You can hear crickets. There's crickets. It's like the sound of like, like the bayou at night. Like it was a very strange. I don't know why, why would there be crickets down there anyway?

Nic

Yeah. Maybe they've been forced underground because they're too noisy.

Steve

So this is when Edgar Friendly sort of pops up. Yes. Gun to the head. Like he thinks these cops are here to do bad things.

Nic

And. And he's very surprised to find out that when. When Spartan says, he's like, like look, I don't know who you are. So off be well. And Cocteau's an. And they're very like shocked. Like nobody's ever spoken about Cocteau.

Steve

That's different.

Nic

This guy must be different. He just said the F word.

Steve

Exactly.

Nic

And then we get a good Dennis Leary thing. What are you doing down here? I'll tell you why I'm down here. Okay. When I go in to get a coffee, I don't need a latte mocha. And just goes on his.

Steve

Well, that was Dennis Miller. That's okay though.

Nic

I think we should just get all Dennis's there. We're gonna get Hopper Leary.

Steve

There you go. So yeah, they basically. I was talking before we got on. On to record today that basically if you were going to put Dennis Leary in a movie in this era, you had to let him basically do part of his stand up.

Nic

For sure.

Steve

Happens in a couple other movies and he certainly does that. But. And it makes sense from the fact that, okay, this is, I think at the time, you know, 38 year old Dennis Leary.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

Doing this. What doesn't make sense is if you do the math and you figure out that when the world changed, the big earthquake hit and the world changed, he was like maybe 12. So what? He's lived way more of his life in the post. All this stuff changing than in the pre. And.

Nic

Yeah. When was he getting bacon double cheeseburger.

Steve

Right. Exactly, exactly. And so it's. It doesn't really work. This is another thing where it's like this movie has all these things that happen that you, you think don't make sense. Really don't make sense because they happen too close to modern times. Right. We have not moved far enough into the future.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

For this makes sense. If this movie had taken place in 2132 instead of 2032, then there's no, there's no question. All these things could have been, oh, not 20 years ago the last murder happened. It's 120 years ago.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

Okay. Then, then, yeah. However that happened, it happened. And now that makes sense here. Now you couldn't have people pining for the old days if they didn't live through them. But they're already kind of skirting that line with these sort of middle aged people who would have been, you know, infants or small children at the beginning of the movie. And it just kind of doesn't work.

Nic

So he probably was not ever integrated into their good society at some point. So there's probably been like some underground element that has wanted coffee flavored coffee from day one the entire time.

Steve

Okay.

Nic

But yeah, I mean that, that is a good point. Is like he's nostalgic about something he was barely.

Steve

Couldn't really have lived through.

Nic

Yeah. He's like, sorry, that's what my comedy act is. You could have cast Seinfeld as this guy. What's the deal with these self driving cars?

Steve

Auto drive. Not a vehicle available. Oh my God. Also, this is the point where Simon Phoenix has defrosted all his buddies and they're now underground as well. Talking about how not only do they get. And I love it, he's immediately. He doesn't give a about Edgar Friendly. He's like, we got to kill this guy named Raymond. Yeah, that's, that's Cocteau. And then we get to kill John Spartan. And the guys are super stoked about that. We get to kill John Spartan. Yay. So they look and they notice, holy, there's John Spartan. Let's blow him up. So they start shooting and nobody can hit shit. Nobody in this movie can hit.

Nic

Terrible.

Steve

From the guys shooting at the helicopter at the beginning all the way up to this point, not a single person in this movie is a good shot. Yeah, it's really ridiculous.

Nic

Marksmanship was not programmed into them at all. I do like that of his group of unfrozen bad guys we got, my man Jesse Ventura is one of them. He doesn't have a lot of.

Steve

Is he really?

Nic

Yeah, he's one of the dudes. And this is probably not too far from when he started like running for Governor. Interesting. He might have been a mayor or something at this time. 93. But yeah, he doesn't have a lot of lines but he actually does get a couple shots of him so. So the bad guys can't get him. Also, the cops had noticed when they were walking underground among you know, all the filth and the, and the death and just everything so miserable, there is a mint condition muscle car.

Steve

Yes.

Nic

That Huxley immediately identifies as a 1970 Oldsmobile 442. The highlights of which. One of the highlights of which is that it has, has bucket seats. Just like look up one engine. Fact, just look up a thing about the exhaust and have her say that, please, bucket seats, get out of here. So. So that's like a little. Oh, I wonder if this is going to come into play right.

Steve

In the movie.

Nic

They. And it comes into play very quickly.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

Because it's in an. I don't even fucking know.

Steve

It's in some kind of an elevator underground like an elevator car of some kind that as it goes up breaks up through the floor of a car dealership. Yeah. Okay. And they're able to like drive out through the glass windows which, which leads me to believe then there is gasoline in the underground. Yeah. Not sure where that's coming from. Over the last 20 something years old.

Nic

Yeah. It's not going to be high performance gasoline. Right.

Steve

It's like eventually it's gonna be gasoline at all. They wouldn't use it all but, but anyway they're able to do. So they are now driving the street streets of San Angeles in a gas powered muscle car after Simon Phoenix trying to catch him.

Nic

Yeah. And, and they're going after Phoenix and there's a good fight where Spartan basically makes the leap from the muscle car to Phoenix's. He's in like this. In Huxley's self driving cop car.

Steve

Right.

Nic

That's what Phoenix had stolen.

Steve

That's right.

Nic

And they're in this fight and Phoenix is holding his head close to the ground and they're able to. They get Phoenix, he throws him out onto the ground, chucks him out of there. And then Spartan's car goes and crashes and we get this cool scene where the car is like filled with this kind of safety foam.

Steve

Oh my God, it's so neat.

Nic

And he gets out of there and he breaks his way up. So I have to bring this up because the first time I saw this movie, I don't know why I remember this so clearly. I was at my friend's house, we were having a sleepover and his dad and stepmom were also watching this movie with us. We rented it. So Spartan crashes, the car gets filled up. He gets his way out of there, and Huxley's like, oh, what happened? He's like, oh, I don't know. I just. Driving, and then all of a sudden, my car turned into a cannoli. My friend's dad, when we were watching that, he's like, my car turned into cannoli. And he's like. And then he turns to his wife and he goes, what's a cannoli? Like, what were you laughing at?

Steve

Oh, my God.

Nic

For whatever reason, that always cracks me up. I have never and will never forget that off air.

Steve

You'll have to tell me which friend that was. I'm sure I know them. No, but that's. That's hilarious. It's very much like when a little kid laughs at something and then, you know, it's gone over their head, but everybody else is laughing, so they laugh.

Nic

This is the time to laugh.

Steve

Yeah, exactly. Right. I thought this was actually. Of all the technology advancements in this movie, this is the one I actually think would be kind of amazing. Like, I get. I get that it, like, ruins the car in a lot of ways, but that probably would save lives.

Nic

The crash ruins the car.

Steve

So. Right. If the technology is right, that it's not going to hurt you itself. This foam filling up, that's a pretty cool way. You're just, like, suspended in the foam until the crash is over, man. That's kind of cool, you know?

Nic

Yeah, that's a good. Also, when Phoenix was driving the cop car and he got his tire shot out.

Steve

Oh, yeah.

Nic

And then he says, auto inflate.

Steve

Auto inflate. And it just.

Nic

It was auto inflate. Wouldn't it have just done it?

Steve

That's a good point. But I guess it's auto because he doesn't have to bring it to a gas station and inflate it himself.

Nic

Good car technology, though. So. So Phoenix has taken his crew basically to Cocktails office, right. And they're talking to him. And this is the conversation I'd referenced earlier, where he's talking to him and Phoenix is just pulling his gun.

Steve

He's right.

Nic

I want to kill this motherfucker, but I just can't do it. And then he realizes, like, I'm tired of this. Kill him. And this is. This Jesse Ventura is the one that actually kills Cocteau.

Steve

Right. Because Cocteau had not planned ahead for these other defrost. Right. So he was not able to implant them with, you know, the don't kill Cocteau secret sauce. Jumping back just real quick when, when the crash occurs, when Spartan crash, he actually crashes into the San Andreas police department sort of front lawn. Right? Isn't that like where he crashes? And all of Edgar Friendly's people have, have also come to the surface and are coming down and there's this bit of a confrontation between the police and, and the scraps and everything. And, you know, Spartan goes like, you know, give me a weapon, like, we're gonna go get this guy or whatever kind of thing. And so he hands him like a gun. And it looks like the Benjamin Brat character Garcia has like, joined them. He's now got his own little Mad Max outfit on and everything. And. And somebody says something about like, we don't even have weapons. Or do you use. What are you the weapons for? And I just loved it because Dennis Leary goes, we use these weapons to go grocery shopping. Dick. It's such a good line. One of Dennis Leary's better lines. Yeah.

Nic

Okay, so Phoenix. So Phoenix has killed Cocktail. And now Phoenix is like, dude, I'm going to unfreeze some other motherfuckers.

Steve

Right? Yeah, yeah.

Nic

So he's at the cryo prison, just basically unfreezing his entire army. Great Phoenix line. As he's going through the list of people. Jeffrey Dahmer, I love that guy would not have been in the jurisdiction of San Angeles to be cryo frozen there. His crimes were committed in Wisconsin.

Steve

Right.

Nic

So but, you know, wasn't he already.

Steve

In jail by 93 or. I don't remember exact time.

Nic

If there was a time where we knew about Jeffrey Dahmer and he wasn't in jail, that would be hard.

Steve

Good point, good point. Okay. I'll have to ask my wife. She's into all the true crime serial killer stuff. I'll check with her. But yes, that was a great line. And then, of course, you know, we get the. The number of times another Sylvester Stallone movie we will absolutely do at some point in this series. Hats are very important to Mr. Stallone. Yes. And in this movie, it's all about getting that beret back. And when he gets that beret back and puts it on, you know, this is going down.

Nic

Oh, yeah.

Steve

Not unlike a particularly buff arm wrestling truck driver who turns his cap around. We'll talk about that another time.

Nic

Like a machine.

Steve

But yeah, but he gets the beret. I'm like, oh, man, the beret is back. It is time to do this. And this was a moment too when he's now confronting Phoenix in the cryo prison and we're getting another gun battle going on, I really feel like Marco Brambia, like, really took cues from John Woo. You know, having Spartan jump with both pistols jumping to the air and shooting felt very.

Nic

Yeah, that was kind of neat.

Steve

Very Chow Young, Fat. Very, very John Woo. Very cool, kind of. Yeah, absolutely. For like an American produced film. Kind of an advanced, you know, thing to be having just happening all the time in Chinese cinema at that point, but was kind of new to us. So very cool moment. But really that's the only time. Every other thing in the movie, in the fight scene is just punching kick.

Nic

Pretty standard.

Steve

Pretty standard stuff.

Nic

But then, then Phoenix picks Spartan up with like one of those claw machine.

Steve

Right, the ones that. Yeah, they're supposed to grab the ice blocks of frozen prisoners or whatever. Yeah.

Nic

And kind of crushing it, dropped in it. But that thing is meant to grab a block of ice that's like eight feet in diameter. I don't think it would squeeze tight enough to grab the torso of, you know, this guy. But, you know, clearly you're wrong because it did. Yeah, it did. What can I say? It proved me wrong. And. And then so Spartan's solution is he's just kind of like getting toyed with by Phoenix and he's in this claw machine thing. He breaks open a hose, right. Which looks like it has some kind of a liquid nitrogen, some kind of freezing something that doesn't hurt his bare hand, but is freezing the metal enough that he could shatter it pretty easily.

Steve

Some kind of hydraulic. Piece of a hydraulic system. But yeah, for whatever reason, it is also filled with. Yeah. Like something like liquid nitrogen, which.

Nic

Why.

Steve

Yeah, I don't think that would be an effective pneumatic or hydraulic system at all. But it does. It allows him to kind of like press it against the. The claw machine, the metal, and it. And it, you know, freezes and he's able to break off and get free. At which point now there's this fluid. Is this. This liquid nitrogen? Basically, it's going everywhere. Right. It's going all over the place. It's. It's on them, it's on the floors. I mean, they would both be burned to alive. Right, right. Like the liquid nitrogen on your skin doesn't just sit there. It's not water. Right, right. But this is happening and it's covering it.

Nic

Maybe was supposed to water liquid nitrogen because it has to be activated by that little blue.

Steve

But how did it. If it's just water, it wouldn't have frozen the. The piece of the metal. I don't know. Like, regardless.

Nic

I'd have to change my rating.

Steve

Regardless. Phoenix is coming at Spartan like he's gonna. He's gonna do it now. He's gonna kill him. And that's when Spartan notices that, yeah, there's that little blue ball trapped in a very large piece of metal for some reason. And that's what actually activates the freezing stuff. This is basically. I guess they're standing in the stuff that gets filled into the. The. Into the little cells. Right. And so he's able to smash it at Phoenix's feet. So he immediately starts freezing.

Nic

And before he does that, real quick.

Steve

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Nic

Spartan says, is it cold in here or is it just me? And then Phoenix goes, good memory.

Steve

That's right.

Nic

And again, has it been three days or has it been 40 years?

Steve

Exactly. It's a good point, but, yeah, but he slams the thing down, it starts freezing Phoenix, and he's able to jump. Jump back to the moving claw thing and sort of stay off.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

This. As this frozen thing is spreading along through all the liquid, freezing everything in sight. He's able to avoid it for long enough until he can land on solid ice, basically, and not get frozen himself. So crazy.

Nic

And Phoenix is fully, fully frozen. 100 is a block of ice. Spartan is still hanging on this claw thing as it swings him back around. And then he says, heads up and kicks his head off.

Steve

Right.

Nic

Which hits, bounces once intact, and then shatters into a million pieces.

Steve

I don't know why he didn't just shatter the first time, hit the ground, whatever. So, yeah, so I would lose my head if it wasn't attached Right at the beginning of the movie.

Nic

Comes back.

Steve

There you go.

Nic

I also noticed a good bad guy death.

Steve

Absolutely. I did notice, though, in this final fight, no record scratch in the score. Oh, I'm not sure why. I don't know if it's because Spartan won the fight and this was only when Phoenix was winning fights that we get the record scratch. I'm not sure, but it was something I noticed. And there is no record scratch score on this final battle.

Nic

That makes sense. Yeah. And that's pretty much it. So they get out of there, and the cops are kind of like. Well, it seemed like the two pinnacles of their society, in the mind of a lot of them was A, Cocteau himself and B, the Cryopris, both of which don't exist anymore.

Steve

Right.

Nic

So now we're left with the scraps and the cops Standing there and John Spartan's like, maybe you get dirty and you get a lot clean. And I don't know, we'll figure it out.

Steve

Right?

Nic

So good.

Steve

Like.

Nic

Like taking no position on. On how to solve anything.

Steve

Yes. Uselessly libertarian, but it wrapped it up.

Nic

Wrapped it. Yeah, totally. It wrapped it up nicely. And. And then they had the end of the movie kiss with Huxley and Spartan.

Steve

Right.

Nic

And then that's it for the.

Steve

That's it. That's Demolition Man.

Nic

I do want to say this. And again, this kind of goes to your point of it would have been better if it was 100 years in the future instead of to 36 years in the future, because Spartan is mentioning his daughter, who they kind of gloss over the fact that, you know, we're not saying what happened with her. And at the same time, this sexual tension is building with Huxley and it's like. It's like a Chekhov's daughter situation. Like, is she gonna turn out, you know, like, that's in the back of our head because of our Star wars trauma, that maybe these romantic characters are related in some way. I hope not. If it was 100 years in the future, there's no concern about that. But it was just kind of like, is she your daughter? It's like they almost didn't know what to do with that relationship until the end or something.

Steve

The thing is, I've heard that theory before. I think, possibly. How did this get made? The podcast did this movie and kind of, I think, posited that as well. And I think my issues a few things with it. One, we're really not given indication in the movie itself, just in the movie that that's even possible. Possible.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

We're not told Huxley doesn't know who her dad was. We're not told, you know, whatever. Like, there's. There's not. Things don't line up. In fact, she goes to, like, search up who the daughter might be or where she might be or something, and. And he stops her. But it doesn't seem. It seems like. Like, I don't know. There's not an indication in my opinion there that, like, it might be her.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

Also if he's been frozen for 36 years, but he knew his daughter before he went away. Yeah. She's really that close to 40. She's too young.

Nic

Yeah. But no salt, no meat, no smoking. I mean, she's probably 55.

Steve

In this movie, Cocktail people don't crack. I guess.

Nic

But you could. You could have said son. I mean, you could have just changed daughter to son because it's irrelevant to the plot anyway.

Steve

And that's a good point.

Nic

That would have made me not be like, what's happening when he's about to kiss her?

Steve

Fair enough.

Nic

So. But anyway, Small Beef. Great movie. Great ending.

Steve

It's a really fun movie. Yes. Like I was saying earlier, like, I. I spent most of the movie with a just eating grin on my face watching it, but. But this was my pick. So I want to hear your opinion first. Final thoughts on Demolition Man.

Nic

Yeah, so I think that it was super fun. I remember liking this a lot. The characters are memorable. I think Wesley Snipes is kind of like a joker type bad guy character was really effective. He's just. It's almost like he should have been the main guy because they made. It's like they try to make Stallone more witty than he is, just generally right. It works with Schwarzenegger because it's always like a side comment or whatever. He's not like, quipping and.

Steve

Yeah, whatever.

Nic

So I kind of had a little beef with that. But this movie is so enjoyable. It's an interesting envisioning of the future.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

The only thing is we just watched Terminator 2.

Steve

That's right.

Nic

Watching it after this, I see definitely the deficiencies that this has. Marco Brembia as his, you know, one of two feature films is pretty goddamn good.

Steve

And this was his first. Yeah, he did this and then one more.

Nic

Really, really impressive. So I'm gonna give this one a four out of five. I had a lot of fun with this movie. I think about it a lot. There's a lot of elements of this that I think were unique and have kind of carried on exist in the culture a bit. And the bad guy, death, you can't go wrong.

Steve

It's good stuff. Yeah, I pretty much agree with everything you said. Like, it's certainly by no means a perfect movie. You know, it was actually funny when sitting down. I watched Terminator 2 and Demolition man close to each other, as you did as well. And I felt like I ended up liking Terminator 2 slightly less than I remembered. And I ended up liking this movie slightly more than I remembered. But, you know, Demolition man, if you'd asked me, was never kind of like, oh, that's a pinnacle type film. That's a. That's a huge thing. But I also am a 4 out of 5 on this. I think this is a ton of fun. This is a movie my wife has not seen. When I watch movies for a podcast, I do it by Myself, because I have to constantly pause it and, like, take notes and, like, so I don't. You know, it's hard for somebody else to watch with me.

Nic

Right.

Steve

So I watch them on my own. But I told her, I'll watch this again soon. You should watch this, you know, because she's never seen it. And I was watching it, going through, I go, yeah, this is so enjoyable. And just such a fun, goofy movie with a couple of, like, there's nothing about it is serious. Like, there are. There's commentary about society and about how, you know, being really clinical and sterile is, like, not, you know, the way to move society forward. So there is commentary about that, but it is not as serious as the actual Brave New World. It is not as serious as Logan's Run, even, like. Right. So. So it's. It's much funner and more goofy than that. So. Yeah. So I'm also a four out of five, which gives us eight out of ten on Demolition Man. Absolutely. A ton of fun. Super, super enjoyable to go back and rewatch this one. It had been probably five or 10 years since I'd seen this myself, and so lots of fun. Really enjoyed doing it. And so, yeah, eight out of 10. And Nic, why don't you tell us what we're gonna watch next week?

Nic

Yeah, so coming up next week, I. I know we've done a couple action films in a row, so we'll maybe dip a little to a different tone. Although a movie that I do feel is very exciting and enthralling. We're gonna visit the Bay Area and we're gonna go to 1992's film. You're giving me the look as if this is also your pick for the next movie.

Steve

It was amazing.

Nic

1992, we got a little Dan Aykroyd. We got a little Bob Redford. We got a little David straight there. And we got a little River Phoenix.

Steve

That's right.

Nic

And. And this is 1992's great film. Ben Kingsley sneakers.

Steve

Yes.

Nic

A lot of fun. You. I could tell by the look on your face you like this one as much as I do. A very unique movie. And I'll be interested to see how some of, like, the surveillance technology, the stuff that they talk about, holds up now that it's been, like, I don't know, 10 years since I've seen it.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

But good Bay Area stuff. Great cast. And, yeah, I'm excited to talk this.

Steve

One real quick about the cast because this is what I was going to mention when I was going to soft Tease this one at the end of the next episode. But now I'll have to come up with something else, which is fine. Eight members of this cast have Oscar pedigree. So. So Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, Ben Kingsley, all have won Oscars. The competitive Oscars. James Earl Jones, who is briefly in the movie, also has an honorary Oscar. And in addition, four other members of the cast were nominated for Oscars. Mary McDonnell, David Straythearn, Dan Aykroyd and River Phoenix all were nominated for Oscars for other films, obviously none of them for Sneakers.

Nic

Wow.

Steve

But eight members of the cast have Oscar pedigree, which is incredible.

Nic

It's like a Boogie Nights level.

Steve

It is the most stacked cast remotely for any movie. Like Sneakers. Yeah. Super excited to watch that and to talk about that one with you. Great choice. I will go back to the drawing board to figure out the next movie. For me, the total fine. I was. I'm just glad we're gonna watch Sneakers, man. That's all I care about. That's great.

Nic

Out of a list of hundreds, what are the chances?

Steve

I know, right? But that's great. So, yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, if you want to go to Apple podcasts, go to Spotify. Give us a five star review. It really helps people find the podcast and we hope you're enjoying it. If you want to send us an email, you can do that at the show@2dads1movie.com. That's the number two. And the number one. This has been Demolition Man. This has been 2Dads1 Movie. I'm Steve.

Nic

And I'm Nic.

Steve

And we'll be back next week with Sneakers. Thank you all so much.

Nic

Thanks.