Midweek Mention... Demolition Man

Demolition Man

Dan: Shit. Yeah. Motherfuckers. Yeah. Let's go. Ho, ho.

Sidey: Demolition Man.

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: Rambo,

Sidey: I think we've talked about Demolition Man over a couple of top fives. It crops up from time to time.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: I saw this at the cinema. Did you? Yeah.

Reegs: What year was this? Okay.

Dan: Did you go on your own?

Sidey: No. Oh, shit.

Dan: Like, like, without parents?

Sidey: Yes.

Mates. Mates? Yeah.

And I remember enjoying it very much in 1993.

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: Well, this was telling you the future of

2032.

Reegs: Yeah, and it seemed so far away when I saw this. It wouldn't have been in 1993, but it would have been a couple of years after that probably when it started, you know, coming. I didn't see it at the cinema or on home video. But it was one of those that had a bit of a, like, lasting impact, didn't

Dan: Well, it's

it's one of those future is gonna be like this films and, It's showing you different kind of cars, haircuts, clothes, handshake, all this kind of stuff we'll get into.

But that's why it was memorable for me. And then looking back at it this time, wow, didn't they get so much right?

Reegs: Mmm.

Dan: really.

Reegs: I don't think it's that kind of thing, but maybe we'll get into it.

It starts with a shot of the Hollywood sign burning, which seemed a little bit in bad taste when I was watching it, given what was happening and still happening there.

Sidey: so, yeah, it's just not in the news at the

moment.

Reegs: cycle as much, and everything's been devastated, but yeah.

Dan: I don't think the Hollywood sign has burned, is it? No.

Reegs: No, but L. A. obviously has been devastated, hasn't it? So yeah, and it's in 1996, Detective John

Sidey: great names in this

Reegs: Yeah,

Dan: Very clean.

Reegs: He's a sort of typical mumbly, everyman type character that Stallone portrays.

Sidey: Yeah

Reegs: and he's laid it started a raid with from a helicopter on a bunch of hostages that have been taken by Simon Phoenix, who is played by Wesley Snipes, looking like a sort of negative blade here.

He's got like the hair, but it's white. And instead of in black, he's in like Dayglo MC hammer clothes, pretty much the entire

Dan: It's hard to believe.

Or you know think back to how big a star he was Wesley Snipes. Back in these days as well because he was he was pretty big. I mean Stallone was huge jet black hair Looks young good. Look good Good looking

Sidey: Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: isn't he? He's in pretty good Nick. Very good. Let's be honest.

Reegs: And

he makes a quip, he's hovering above them in like a helicopter, isn't it? And he says something like, send a maniac to catch a maniac or something. And then he jumps out and there's this big action scene. Um,

Dan: Into it. Yeah.

Reegs: there's one like Phoenix sets off this, like, Explosions, explosions everywhere, doesn't he?

And

Dan: he? But Spartan does end up carrying Phoenix

Reegs: Fairly even. Each of the fights they

have, they're fairly

Dan: the whole place.

Sidey: contractual.

Dan: Yeah, that's why I was kind of thinking the cynical me. I was thinking none of them are going to be beaten up by the other one. So it was just dirty tricks and kind of one up on each other. But he does, he, he kind of has Phoenix on his shoulders and he's running out and I'm thinking why at this stage?

Why wouldn't you just leave him there because he's obviously risking his whole life His own life to bring him out

And when he does get him out, he's stitched up because he had 30 people in a bus that it hijacked Phoenix and they find out those 30 people are dead and they blame Spartan because he has brought the whole building down.

He's literally demolished the whole

Reegs: Yeah, well it's part of their ongoing feud. It's earned Spartan the nickname demolition man because of the collateral damage that's been involved in his chase of Phoenix.

Dan: And that's right, yeah, he's he's then accused, tried, and found guilty along with Phoenix, and they both get into the cryo chamber which means they're frozen for 30 odd years.

Reegs: yeah, and all the

Sidey: is the rationale for freezing them?

Dan: He did, like, he,

Sidey: But as in like, you're not gonna be, you're not aware that you're frozen. So you're just a long sleep, isn't it? And you're not getting rehabilitated.

Reegs: they do rehabilitate you because it that Spartan ends up having a proclivity for knitting or something, doesn't he? But,

Sidey: oh, like, like the Matrix where they can

Reegs: with like loads of destructive powers, Phoenix does Yeah. Yeah, that seemed like a

Dan: Something

goes wrong, but, yeah, it was a little bit strange looking back on it now, how the, how the cop who was sent to catch this real badass gets the same sentence. In fact, even longer, I think, than than the badass. But that's what happens. And eventually Phoenix is up for parole before Sly as well. And he's able to work out the

Because he's in like a chair with padlocks on and he says teddy bear Which is a secret code word

Sidey: the safe word,

Yeah

Dan: to to release the handcuffs And he doesn't know how he knows all this stuff. He's just kind of in his mind. He's got a lot of information He doesn't know how and

he's able to fight his way out

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: And we've also, at this point, met Sandra Bullock, I think.

Reegs: Yeah, well, she's a part of the police force here. In the future, in the futuristic world of 2032, it's a sort of PC liberal utopia in some ways.

Sidey: what woke culture will have us

Reegs: Yeah, this is where we're heading with a completely sort of demilitarized, sanitized, yeah, heavily sanitized population and system of government. So

Dan: swearing gets you a credit fine.

Reegs: The morality meter. Yeah, and

Sidey: it's constantly listening

Reegs: your big brother, listening into you and issuing you fines all the time used to comical effect. So we get to explore this world through Yeah,

Dan: they've no idea. They've no idea of how to deal with violence. They

just, their instructions.

Reegs: just

Dan: handle this. Yeah, Yeah. That's

right. He's in it as well, isn't he? And as there's quite a few faces and names in this

that

Sidey: Jack Black appears as a as an extra doesn't

he?

Reegs: he? I miss that

Dan: missed that as well.

But yeah, it wouldn't surprise me because there was, let's say Rob Schneider was in it. And there was two or three other people I kind of recognized from different films. But yeah, their approach to keeping the law doesn't involve any violence or

Sidey: no need.

Dan: they're just asking, would you mind? And

Sidey: people comply?

Dan: he's just

Reegs: laughing.

Yeah. What if you have Tourette's?

Sidey: they've probably got a drug for that.

Reegs: Yeah.

but what about the verbal morality thing?

Sidey: Maybe you get a pass, maybe

Yeah. Yeah.

You'll be able to check your records.

Reegs: if you're faking it?

Sidey: Yeah, they'll

Dan: Yeah, they'll find out. They seem pretty on the ball here. Sandra

Bullock we know

Sidey: is Hot, really hot, yeah.

Was this her actual debut, debut?

Dan: debut? No, surely.

Sidey: it was Really? Certainly the first time I had seen her.

Dan: Well, she's looking for a little more action. She finds she's got a kind of burning desire to get her hands a little dirtier than she's allowed to. But everything's so tiki dee boo here. There is no reason for her to do that. do anything but just have a nice quiet life and benjamin bratt who is also he was a big star for a few years wasn't he benjamin

Reegs: Who was that?

Dan: he was the other police officer

Reegs: Oh, right. Yeah.

Dan: And he's happy with his quiet life and can't understand why anybody would want any different

so she is when Eventually some trouble.

There's, what is it? A murder death kill.

Reegs: there's a murder death kill and the police chief is told to do everything in his power to apprehend Simon Phoenix by the only other, the only person who's got an English, voice in the whole movie that we've heard whispering to Simon Phoenix in his brain, like telling him what to do.

It's the sort of grand high architect of all of this stuff. I can't remember

Dan: what Cockatoo

Reegs: Cock, yeah.

Was that his name

Dan: is Cock a Cockatoo. I think so.

Reegs: Cocktoe? Cocktoe? Cocktoe. Cocktoe was his name, yeah.

Dan: what's he been in? He's been in other

Reegs: Yeah, he was in things, yeah.

Dan: a, he's a classic villain.

Sidey: Nigel Hawthorne

Reegs: Nigel Hawthorne,

Dan: yeah Yeah

Sidey: Been in things,

Dan: of stuff. Yeah, So

Reegs: So they, they wake up John Spartan get, you know, get a maniac to, to catch a maniac. That's, that's the whole idea. And we come back. So we get some fish out of water stuff as we explore this world. The stuff I think that's infamous. It's some good, like little lols in retrospect, like they talk about the president Schwarzenegger library not even that far removed from the truth.

And there's also infamously the three seashells toilet.

scene of him, you know, not knowing how to use the toilet in the future and everybody laughing at him when you go and see it's just these three spray painted like seashells on the side.

Dan: Yeah. That kind of.

It must be like child's play to them. They know how to use the toilet. He doesn't, he just swears into the machine, which serves him a load of tickets. And then he uses that as a toilet roll.

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: We, you do get to see a bit of sly ass as he comes out the quiet cryo chamber as well, if you're into that kind of thing.

And I know we all are. So you get to see him in, in full. Buffery yeah, coming

Reegs: out of the smoke rising up out of the floor, doesn't he?

Dan: yeah, the ice

Reegs: the ice. Yeah

Dan: The cold ice. It's all going swimmingly. For Simon Phoenix, he's wrecking havoc

Reegs: Well, he's gone off to the museum, the history of whatever it is to get, there are no firearms in this world. And obviously it's the first thing that Phoenix as a person from 1996, he's an American. He knows he doesn't have to do 15 days of checks or anything.

So you'll just go and steal one from the hall of violence at the

Sidey: Yeah, that's it.

Dan: Which has a full load of ammos. They're massively underprepared for anybody like him coming in.

They

Reegs: racially abuses some Asian tourists. Do you remember that? As they walk past, he just goes like, ching ching ching, or whatever.

Sidey: Like, but

Reegs: Honestly, he does, for

Dan: no reason, yeah, he does. Yeah, yeah. For no reason. Just like, a massive slur.

Sidey: Racism.

Dan: yeah, that's

Reegs: But he steals all the weapons and stuff, he roughs up a load of locals, he takes this gun that's, we're gonna see later, it's got some futuristic charging

Dan: gun that takes three minutes to warm up. Yeah. And then doesn't really do much more than an old gun.

Reegs: But Spartan does quite well and she's starting to get really impressed. I really like this scene because she's got a few malapropisms. She says she's been watching movies from the past to try and like, you know, connect with him in some way. And she says at the end of him, Oh, you finally matched his meat.

You really licked his ass. She's not quite got the expressions right. There's a few like

that

Dan: few like they do have a big fight when he goes into the museum. Predictably even though they've both got weapons and staring straight at each other they miss and roll under cars and roll under other Buildings that are being destroyed and everything each one of them, getting away because we're only 25 minutes into the film then so we've we've got to find out what it's all about and it seems that cockatoo is actually the evil architect that is making Wesley snipes Yeah, and so he when wesley snipes goes to pull a You A gun on him.

He just can't do it. He can't pull the trigger. You see his, he closes it up on his finger to prove that he's, he's shaking, isn't he? His hand.

Reegs: It's like Robocop, the Prime Directive.

He can't do it.

Dan: And and so he says, look, you just need to kill this guy called Friendly, who is a a John Connor type figure in the underworld in the sewers.

Reegs: Dennis Leary. And yeah, they're sort of like a Mad Max style underground population.

they're

really big on free speech and stuff. They'd have loved Twitter now.

They'd have really loved Twitter now because his rant is mostly about he doesn't like the nanny state really. He doesn't like the fact that they've cleaned up and sanitized society and made the way it is. He wants to be able to smoke, he wants to be able to eat red meat, he wants to be able to

Sidey: to be able to drink. It

Reegs: like a not as good Bill

Hicks.

Sidey: Yeah, it

Reegs: Yeah, it was like looking at Bill Hicks and describing stuff that might have looked a bit cool, but forgetting what he was talking about.

Dan: But he is trying to steal food from the kind of peaceful society up, up top.

Reegs: Know. So is it a utopia or isn't it?

Dan: yeah, well, when, when Spartan Sly, he, he kind of apprehends him at one stage And he does get away and he realizes he's just stealing food.

And so he, he questions whether he's doing the right job here. And everybody else is just blindly following cockatoo into his. Like utopia. And he wants to make it even worse. He wants to own more of the city and have more control. And that is why he's brought in this guy and controlled Phoenix to, to make things bad for everybody else.

So he gets to put tighter rules on everybody. That's basically it, isn't it? Yeah, it's very similar. Very similar. Yeah. I mean, who knows what, because we are recording this on on the day

Sidey: It's getting inaugurated.

Dan: Trump is being inaugurated. So this film is, is really topical.

Reegs: yeah.

So where are we?

Sidey: Well, we're going to get to a kind of burgeoning relationship between Spartan and Sandra Bullock.

Reegs: Yeah, they, they just quickly because they, the movie only talks about it very quickly, but they go, Oh, his wife used to come like every day and he was semi conscious and was aware of her like banging on the glass or whatever.

And then she

died

Dan: the big one. Since September 2010, nobody's ever, Had a murder death kill and I think soon after that there was the big one the earthquake that killed just about everyone We believe that John that Spartan still has a daughter somewhere But you get a mention of it and then he's not really bothered about her for the entire

Reegs: No, he doesn't give a shit about her, never mentions her again. Oh, she's alive, is she? Well, fuck her.

Sidey: I

Dan: can look her up. No,

Reegs: Don't bother.

Dan: with

no reason as to why that

Sidey: I'm gonna have weird VR sex with Sandra Bullock instead.

Reegs: Yeah,

Dan: Well that's what happens, isn't it? In, in the, in the scene after she, he has kind of a, a punch up and she doesn't,

Reegs: Oh well, first he gets taken for a celebrity dinner at well it's Pizza Hut, isn't it, in our version, but in the US it was Taco Bell.

There you go.

Dan: They get a

Reegs: but they go for a slap up meal. For that, it was one of my details that I liked. Also, the fact that the radio stations played non stop adverts was quite good.

Sidey: Oof.

Reegs: Yeah, you into that?

Sidey: No.

Dan: Well, it's pretty much like that, You just go online.

It's it's like that, but yeah, it's all coming to

Sidey: can we talk about the sex a bit more?

Dan: Yeah. Well,

Sidey: They don't you're not allowed to or they don't pass bodily fluids do

Dan: Yeah.

Reegs: transfer. Yeah.

Dan: She was pretty turned on and she, she asked him, didn't she? She goes, I was, I was really kind of excited by what you did out there. And can we have sex? And he's like, yeah. And she says, right, wait there, get ready.

And she brings out these kind of mad headsets like a VR thing. And he's just getting

Sidey: like, mother the fuck

Dan: plugged on her head and through his mind as he's plugged in. And it's clearly not as fulfilling as the, the passing of fluids.

Reegs: It was weird, wasn't it? Yeah. It's like some sort of like strange day set up where they like, or possess her or something when they go into each other's consciousnesses.

Dan: so just as, as she's going to enjoy the, the full VR headset experience. He pulls out, doesn't he? Yeah. And he won't Yeah. He, he doesn't let it finish.

Reegs: Yeah,

Dan: And disappoints her. Yeah.

Reegs: Yeah. And he wants to do it the old fashioned way, but she's

Dan: She's disgusted at the very

Sidey: it's appalling, isn't it? Yeah.

Dan: To have kids, you go to a lab and they screen everything. And that's how they do that. Because do you know that after AIDS, there is UHT

and then there is blood. And then there was all

Reegs: diseases,

Dan: kinds of diseases. VHS. There was MTV. There was

Sidey: all kind of

Dan: Um, and so he's pretty annoyed at all that. But it does result after a bit of more fanfare for him going underground to go and find Spartan who's also gone underground.

Reegs: He has a rat burger and a beer first. And

Dan: Is that, who's that, that's serving a rat burrito and beer, was it Salma Hayek?

Reegs: Was it

Alright.

Sidey: I don't think so.

Dan: was somebody that I'd recognised.

Reegs: Okay.

Dan: And it, she had like a bit of make up on and everything. But Dennis Leary's down there, he's leading a ragtag army of people who also don't

Reegs: Yeah. Well, cockatoo has had some of Phoenix's minions thawed out in a scene where he is like allowed to look through the list and Jeffrey Dharma. Is in the list of people that he could have picked.

Yeah. He looks through it. Even though he died two years before the

Sidey: fight. Call it bullshit.

Reegs: yeah, exactly. So he does unveil a bunch of minions. One of whom was, did you see?

Sidey: Who?

Reegs: Blink and you'll miss it. Jesse Ventura. Yeah, he's the guy who actually shoots cockatoo. When cockatoo suddenly realizes he's like, Oh, you can't kill me.

But he's like, why don't you do it? And he just bang kills him.

Dan: I like that

Reegs: that plan. He hadn't thought that plan through very much. You, you sort of stumbled through what his motive was. And you're right. Cause it wasn't especially clear is in service of. The expanding the utopia and doing something else, wasn't it?

But it wasn't really clear while Phoenix was here in any way. Now he's the final bad guy, the final boss, and they'll have a showdown at the cryo lab, weren't they?

Dan: lab, won't they? truncheon that is the only weapon of the future police. He tries it, he tries it on some random, doesn't he? When he's going into the museum, first of all, well, how does this work?

He just gets,

Sidey: asian? Is it more asian racial stuff?

Dan: yeah, it was just some, just some random bloke and he just fell to the floor, like on the head as well, like electrocuted him on the head. Stunned, I guess. But when he has the big fight, And they're swinging around. Of course, he's caught. He manages to break out just with sheer guns and muscle and he electrocutes the floor and cryo freezes everything including Phoenix and then kicks his head off, which smashes to the floor into a million

Sidey: Wow.

Dan: Yeah, it was and then does he, he run out because the whole building is going to blow up as well. He demolished, well demolition

Reegs: mans the building. And then he has a bit,

No, because he's a hero. He gets a big kiss from Sandra Bullock and she's like, will you fuck

Sidey: will

Dan: Yeah. She

Sidey: Yeah, she

Reegs: properly this time with a real

Dan: that what exchanging fluids feels like?

Sidey: And she does say,

Dan: say, oh, I'm gonna blow him at one

point as

Reegs: Something like that. Yeah, she

Dan: he's going, yeah, good enough. He's given up now on all those little innuendos. And pretty much that's it.

He saved the day. He never asked about his daughter again. He's in the future, actually. I had

Reegs: future.

I had a CD

player.

Dan: CD player,

Reegs: a mini disc player.

Sidey: had a mini disc player.

Dan: laserdisc,

Reegs: technology that was like valid for about three

Sidey: It was a Betamax or something like that, and like all those technologies, it was really fucking good.

Reegs: Yeah, it was good.

Sidey: I've actually still got some of these, I found them in a box somewhere in the attic.

Nothing to play it on.

Dan: I've seen the occasional Laserdisc come out at a secondhand shop or something.

And, It just seems so fragile though, you know, I mean, they're like just super, super fragile. You, you get one little scratch and you're, you're goosed. You can't use it. So the fact that we're still using them in 2032 in this world was a little bit crazy, but it made me chuckle actually, or just smile at the, the fact how much of that style they got wrong.

Because I. I always enjoy these future sci fi films just to see

how

many ideas are actually even close, or, but it looks like they've just extended the, the best technology of the day and kind of haven't explored any further than that. Maybe made it a little bit smaller or, or made it more usual. Oh, the Laserdisc at one point they say, don't they?

Oh,

Sidey: It's more the the sanitized sort of cleaned up version of the world I think yeah, it's just

Reegs: For me it just, it like, it's like, it's supposed to be a satire, but it doesn't really feel like a satire of anything that ever feels like it would ever really happen or reflects anything that's really going on in the world.

Sidey: I don't know what they're satirize

Reegs: Well, some sort of weird left, like liberal PC thing, but the guy's like, Oh, we should have more. Who's arguing for the police to have more guns like that? Like the movie is here and all that sort of stuff and arguing to like, smoke in public and stuff. Who's who's arguing for those things like, so yeah, this movie, I like it and it's, it's a good movie because it's structure is really weird because you have to like.

explain the world and explain a lot of plot and all sorts of stuff going on but yeah, it just is a satire. It doesn't quite work for me because it's not really clear what's, it's really a satire of.

Dan: yeah, it It was a little you know, it had some action had Straight into it from the from the first minute. It's got fights. Really,

like silly just because they can't shoot straight at one point He's he literally right above Sly's knee.

He's got there. He's got our two for one. Perfect He's got the guys meant to kill friendly John friendly and he's got Spartan They're right below him and he manages to miss like two of them and you just think

wow,

Reegs: why he's the demolition

Dan: Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. It should be called something else like not demolition man But that wouldn't have worked, would it?

It didn't really work for me this late in the game, to be honest. I had to watch this in three parts.

Reegs: Yeah,

Dan: I think there's better films from the early 90s to tap into. But I did like Sly's hair. It's jet black. He just looked good. He looked really good. And Sandra Bullock.

Reegs: I

suspect he was using a bit of just for men.

Sidey: Yeah, I think so too. I didn't see it this time because I wasn't very well this week so I didn't have time. But I've seen it many many times and I've always enjoyed it. Yeah as a set up this doesn't really work but as a big dumb action movie it's great. I really like it. Strong recommend.

Dan: Well there you heard

Reegs: it. Strong recommend.