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.
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 Nick Brianna.
Hello everybody. It's 2Dads1 Movie. I'm Steve.
And I'm Nick. 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, Nick? What's.
What's your history with Demolition Man? Yeah, I think I saw it around the same
time. This would have been maybe like eighth,
ninth grade for us. Right. 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. 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.
And so fun to watch and enjoy. 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. Oh, totally. 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. Yeah, it looks like he does art, video related art stuff, but not
films. 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. 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. 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. Yeah, yeah. 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.
Angeles, because three years after the movie was made. 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. Right.
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. Oh, yeah.
It's official police procedure to do it that way.
Yeah. Amazing that he did that despite knowing that
there's a very, very good chance he might lose his beret. Oh, my gosh.
But he's still. He still took. He still made. 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. Reactionary politics everywhere in this movie for sure.
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. He's wearing Beetlejuice.
His pants. Yeah, it's, like, striped, like, black and white pants.
He's got some fits in this movie. It's really crazy.
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.
Yeah. And. And they're kind of quipping back and forth at each other.
Yeah. 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. 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. No. 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. This is the
kind of movie that would make you think it's fine to smoke at a gas
station. Yes, exactly. Because you're like, oh, well, you got to throw a cigarette into
a gas tank to. 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.
Yeah. So. So these are the. The couple lines. Okay. 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. He said, right, Right.
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. Not that long. But yes.
And. And then the other thing that he says is,
is it cold in here or is it just me? Right. 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. 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. I don't come in 100 gallon drums.
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. A clay heroin or something. 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. 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. 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. 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? Right before credits or anything else.
Yeah, yeah. 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.
Very thick looking viscous fluid. 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. 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. Yeah, it's the ultimate Splash Mountain camera. Right?
Exactly. For 70 years, you'd be frozen in that position. Man.
Oh, God. 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. 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. Is it Better when they brave new world at some point
in this. Or John Spartan. John Savage. 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. Yeah. 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. Yeah, yeah, that's a good point.
But it did seem very, very wildly different at the time.
Yeah. 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. 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. 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. 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.
Yep. 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.
Yeah, well, first he's, repeat, he's playing the game, but in
Spanish, which I think is really funny. It's true. 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.
Didn't sound like 100% accurate Spanish, but he's, he's being silly, obviously,
but he. Knows the code like you said. So he says teddy bear and there
goes his handcuffs. 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. Yeah. Right. Like it is a huge, huge chunk. Like,
why would that ever be considered a single municipality
of any kind? Doesn't make any sense. You want to scoop up the most prime
real estate. I guess it's all good. Good, good Oceanfront. Yeah. 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. None of them know. Even Lenina Huxley,
who is obsessed with 20th century and should know what fucking 187 is. Just from
references even. 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. Yeah. Which is like super dumb. That's okay,
though. Very funny way, though, to make it just show how inept they are at
dealing with the. This kind of. And it mentions that the last instance or whatever,
the last time this crime was committed was 20 years ago. Yeah. 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. Within the controlled bubble. Yeah.
You know. Yeah. Castle, that he's got. There have been no murders in
20 years. Which, like. 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. Absolutely.
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. Of the warden. 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. Very cool. Really, just good
setup for his madness. 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. He gets joy out of all this.
Yes. He's very sadistic, trying to get rich from. And he's like, I kind of
like the killing along the way. 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.
No. 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.
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. Yes. 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. Right. 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. How did
you stop back then? 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. 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. 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. 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.
You can use it to basically hack anything that's computer operated if you know what
you're doing. 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. 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. But we haven't met yet, I don't think, in the movie.
Right. 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. All the. All the PA
system is all his voice. Yeah, yeah. 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. And.
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. Yeah.
And. And Phoenix just beats
them up so easily. 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.
Yes. 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. Yeah. Let me
ask Siri what I'm supposed to do here. Crazy. Yeah.
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. 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. 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. 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. Right. Right. It's like the commercials you
would have seen watching like leave it the Beaver back in the day or something.
Right. 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.
Exactly. Right, exactly.
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. That's right. 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.
Yeah, yeah. So he's the boss man. I mean, he's the effective,
like whatever dear leader of the whole thing.
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. Yeah. But at the same time the police
department is given the autonomy to do whatever is
in their power. Anything in your power. Anything in your power. Which they decide
is after watching some highlight videos. Maybe we
should bring John Spartan back. 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. 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. Like you're not here for this.
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. Oh, definitely put back away. Right. If he survives
the. They don't plan on integrating. 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. No. 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. 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? Like literally, what's toilet paper? Like we
don't know what toilet paper is. 20 years ago people were using toilet paper.
Whatever, they have napkins, they have others.
Ridiculous. 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. Yeah, I still don't either, by the way. No, I don't either. I think
it's a good. Supposedly there's some kind of pinching and scraping that happens. 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. 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.
Oh, my God. Okay, well, maybe this is a good time to bring up a
quick theory that I have. Okay. 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. Yeah, he definitely got a mental illness somewhere sometime, that's for sure.
Who's making the hot chick or the animal or Deuce Bigelow, too. Oh, Deuce Bigelow
was pretty bad. Yeah. 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. It would explain a lot. That's fair. It would explain a lot
about Rob Schneider. Post. Post. Waterboy.
Okay, so we're back at Phoenix, trying to figure out what's
Phoenix doing. 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. Yeah, like alliteration, right? 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. Yeah. 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. 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. I think he did. Possibly for his name on a couple different albums.
Yeah. 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. 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. 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. Is it
Alfredo? Because we'll have to look it up. The Fletch thing.
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. It's like the only art that's like sanitized
enough to like still make it into this future. 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. Yeah, it is it. It gives a good like little darkness to it
though. Yeah. 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. 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?
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. With additional record scratch score, right? Record scratch score.
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.
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. Oh, yeah. 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? That sounds familiar? 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. 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. And Spartan during that fight scene
because they fall kind of into the subterranean cutout. Oh, that's right.
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. 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. And then this is where Phoenix also
says, it's a brave new world. Sorry, you gotta go.
Yeah, very on the nose. Really good. Yeah. So he escapes. And where
does Phoenix end up after his escape? 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. 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. Like, oh, lost him? Yeah. And so, but, but immediately Spartan
is suspicious of the fact that Cocteau didn't get shot. It's like Everyone who comes
face to face with this guy dies. 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. 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.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is. That is either in the car, you take it all
home, you hide away. 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. 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.
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? That was MTV's own
Dan Cortez singing. The Jolly Green Giant theme. 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. Right, right.
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.
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. Exactly. 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. 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. You got Gray Davis and he got the Schwarzenegger.
That's right, dude. I pisses Me off every day I look at it. 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. Gray Davis would not have been as good of
a Terminator. No, not remotely. Oh, my God.
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?
Like, no. 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. 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. Yeah. 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. 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. Right. 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. Thank you.
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.
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. 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.
There you go. Yeah, he basically collapses this canopy on them. I don't.
They don't stay trapped, but it stops them. It slows them down. 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. They're stealing
food. They're not attacking people. These are people stealing food. Exactly.
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. Such wonderful entertainment,
like. Yeah, exactly. See him do his work and get these disgusting people out
of our. Out of our way. They smell bad. Oh, God. Phoenix is
in Cocteau's office. Right. Cocteau returns, and Phoenix is now dressed kind
of like Destro. Yeah, that's a good call. I was trying to place it.
You're right. Very destroyed. 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. 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.
If he changed it from illuminate to just,
that would have been the. 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. 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. Right. Oh, God damn it. Can't do it.
So. But yeah, Cocteau is. I mean,
he's definitely sniffing his own farts. Oh, my God. He's. He thinks
he's created the perfect world. There's no one smarter than. Yeah. 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? Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna need some worry. I'm gonna need some
help. Right? Yeah, yeah, I need. I need a crew now. We're with Spartan
and Huxley. Right. Back at the apartment. 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. Yes. Like, oh, I.
Hey, Captain, we can. Can we go to shenanigans? Like, you know, kind of.
Kind of moment. 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.
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. Oh, yeah. It's shockingly.
I don't know. 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. Yes. 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. Yeah. Oh, God.
Yeah. 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. Yeah. She tells him to leave and he
does. So that part's good, at least. 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. Next day you'd think, yeah, or you. 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. 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. Yeah. 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. Yeah.
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. Man behind
the curtain going on here. 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.
Yeah. And come into society and to do this. 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. Right. Well,
no, they go down. They want to go. They find out that the point is.
Or they're trying to find Friendly. Okay. 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. Yeah. 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. I want to open one of those so bad.
How fun does that look? 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. 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. Exactly. But I
think that it's kind of foreshadowing to what they. Spartan and the cops
discover when they go down there. 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. It reminds me a lot of the kind of red
light district area of Mars in Total Recall. Okay, yes. That was a
very similar kind of vibe. Did feel like that. Absolutely. Yeah. So. 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.
Yeah. So. So he meets Edgar.
Friendly Spartan, gets a burger. 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. His programming taught him, taught him some Italian. 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? Yeah. Maybe they've been forced underground because
they're too noisy. 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.
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. That's different. This guy must be different. He just said the F word.
Exactly. 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. Well, that was Dennis Miller. That's okay though. I think
we should just get all Dennis's there. We're gonna get Hopper Leary. 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. For sure.
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. Yeah. 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. Yeah. When was he
getting bacon double cheeseburger. 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. Yeah. 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. Yeah. 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.
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. Okay. But yeah,
I mean that, that is a good point. Is like he's nostalgic about something he
was barely. Couldn't really have lived through. 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? 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. Terrible. 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. 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. Is he really? 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. Yes. 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. In the movie.
They. And it comes into play very quickly. Yeah.
Because it's in an. I don't even fucking know.
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. Yeah. It's not going to be high performance gasoline. Right.
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. 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. Right. That's what Phoenix had stolen. That's right. 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. Oh my God, it's so neat. 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? Oh, my God. For whatever
reason, that always cracks me up. I have never and will never forget that
off air. 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. This is the time to laugh. 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.
The crash ruins the car. 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? Yeah, that's a good. Also, when Phoenix
was driving the cop car and he got his tire shot out. Oh, yeah.
And then he says, auto inflate.
Auto inflate. And it just. It was auto inflate. Wouldn't it have just done it?
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. 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. He's right.
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. 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.
Okay, so Phoenix. So Phoenix has killed Cocktail. And now Phoenix is like,
dude, I'm going to unfreeze some other motherfuckers. Right? Yeah, yeah. 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. Right. So but, you know, wasn't he already. In jail
by 93 or. I don't remember exact time. If there was a time where we
knew about Jeffrey Dahmer and he wasn't in jail, that would be hard. 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. Oh, yeah.
Not unlike a particularly buff arm wrestling truck driver who
turns his cap around. We'll talk about that another time. Like a machine. 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. Yeah, that was
kind of neat. 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. Pretty standard. Pretty standard stuff. But then, then Phoenix picks
Spartan up with like one of those claw machine. Right, the ones that. Yeah,
they're supposed to grab the ice blocks of frozen prisoners or whatever. Yeah. 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. 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. Why. 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. Maybe was supposed to
water liquid nitrogen because it has to be activated by that little blue. 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. I'd have to change my rating.
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.
And before he does that, real quick. Oh, yeah, yeah. Spartan says, is it
cold in here or is it just me? And then Phoenix goes, good memory.
That's right. And again, has it been three days or
has it been 40 years? 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. Yeah. 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. 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. Right. Which hits, bounces once intact, and then shatters
into a million pieces. 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. Comes back. There you go. I also
noticed a good bad guy death. 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.
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. Right. 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. Right? So good. Like. Like taking no position on. On how
to solve anything. Yes. Uselessly libertarian, but it wrapped
it up. Wrapped it. Yeah, totally. It wrapped it up nicely. And. And then
they had the end of the movie kiss with Huxley and Spartan.
Right. And then that's it for the. That's it.
That's Demolition Man. 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.
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.
Yeah. 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. Yeah. 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. Yeah.
But no salt, no meat, no smoking. I mean, she's probably 55. In this movie,
Cocktail people don't crack. I guess. 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. And that's a good point. That would have made me not be like,
what's happening when he's about to kiss her? Fair enough. So.
But anyway, Small Beef. Great movie. Great ending.
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. 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. Yeah, whatever. So I kind
of had a little beef with that. But this movie is so enjoyable. It's an
interesting envisioning of the future. Yeah.
The only thing is we just watched Terminator 2. That's right.
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. And this was his first. Yeah, he did this and then
one more. 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. 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. Right. 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 Nick, why don't you tell us what
we're gonna watch next week? 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. It was amazing.
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.
That's right. And. And this is 1992's great film.
Ben Kingsley sneakers. Yes. 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. Yeah. But good Bay Area stuff. Great cast.
And, yeah, I'm excited to talk this. 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. Wow.
But eight members of the cast have Oscar pedigree, which is incredible.
It's like a Boogie Nights level. 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. Out of a list of hundreds, what are the chances?
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. And I'm Nick. And we'll be back next week with Sneakers. Thank you
all so much.