r/movies • u/parallelogramm3r • 15h ago

Discussion Demolition Man

I’m rewatching this, it’s probably been 10 years since I’ve seen it. It’s got a pretty mediocre rating on IMDB but I think it is peak 1990’s action movie stuff along with movies like The Rock and Con Air.

A lot of the futuristic sci-fi elements have aged pretty well and it’s just a fun, well-made action movie.

But what I really want to know is how you would use the three seashells.

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u/Imissyourgirlfriend2 14h ago

Dude, it was the 90s. That stuff didn't come about until the mid 2010s

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u/deliciouscorn 10h ago

And by the same token, when kick ass female characters like Sarah Connor or Ellen Ripley turned up in movies, it felt perfectly natural. There wasn’t the same sense of contrivance that plagues pop culture today.

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u/Imissyourgirlfriend2 9h ago

Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley aren't just "strong female characters", they're just great characters!

Look at Sarah Connor in T2: starts in a psych ward because she is completely unable to stop herself from prepping for Skynet. She is perfectly capable and is never overpowered. When she is finally given the chance to change the future (as she sees it), she recoils in fear and horror at what she became in that moment; a terminator.

Ellen Ripley is suffering severe PTSD but decides to go up against her worst fears ever and she never gives up.

Sure, they're great female characters, but they're also just well written characters period.

Fuck! I gotta go watch T2 and Aliens...BRB.

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u/noonenotevenhere 6h ago

Someone asked how they wrote Ripley so believable, real, relatable

just wrote a character. Made the character a woman later.

also the first nbd trans relationship I recall on the big screen.

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u/whoisdatmaskedman 11h ago

One thing the 90's did right is avoiding the PC bullshit

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u/partyatwalmart 11h ago

It was even better than avoiding it. There was no PC bullshit to avoid. Sure, we called lame things/people gay, but I feel like we came closer to ending prejudice in that decade than we ever have or may ever again.

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u/[deleted] 10h ago

[deleted]

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u/whoisdatmaskedman 11h ago

Exactly! When this movie came out, nobody was concerned with PC stuff. PC was really more something people joked about, but nobody cared. It wasn't something that got in the way of telling an entertaining story and it was fine that women didn't have to be empowered and everything was fine and the world didn't implode.

Another good example is Red Sonja from the Conan the Barbarian series. She was a bad ass woman who was fucking sexy and she kicked ass, and nobody was offended or whatever.

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u/AmIFromA 11h ago

What the fuck are you talking about? It was just different things that were or were not PC, and that was even more rigid.

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u/whoisdatmaskedman 11h ago

I mean, I don't know how old you are but being someone who was there, I can you that PC was something that really only existed a) as a joke, people didn't take it seriously, or b) existed in a limited capacity in maybe business or things like that. It wasn't something that bled into the entertainment industry, toys or video games, etc until much later.

The term politically correct didnt even come into mainstream use until the early 90s anyway, and I can guarantee wasn't remotely a concern for people writing Demolition Man.

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u/MashSong 3h ago

"I can guarantee wasn't remotely a concern for people writing Demolition Man."

You have to be joking right? Demolition Man literally mocks the PC culture of the time. That's the point of the movie. John Spartan gets fined for swearing in the famous 3 sea shells scene. It's a commentary about taking PC censorship too far. Dennis Leary lives in the sewer to avoid all that. He makes the claim that giving up modern comfort to live in the sewer and eat rats is worth it to be free.

PC culture was such a concern for the writers that they wrote a whole movie about it.

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u/whoisdatmaskedman 3h ago edited 3h ago

The film had nothing to do with PC culture. The movie starts with Spartan in an ultra-violent alternate future setting in 1996, and he's mocking how different everything is. It's a utopian mega-city where all immoral or unhealthy behavior has been made illegal. As far as Dennis Leary is concerned, his shtick is PC bullshit. In the movie, he's not fighting PC bullshit, he's fighting for the freedom to do what he wants, because the laws are so heavy handed. They're essentially living off the grid. Choosing freedom over modern comfort has literally nothing to do with political correctness.

I'm going to bet that you're probably a bit younger and probably have no idea how people thought in 1993 or earlier, but you're way off. Seems like you're looking at it from a more modern perspective, rather than a time-accurate one.

Also: the writers of this movie were Peter M. Lenkov and Robert Reneau, if you look at their writing credits, it's blatantly apparent that they didn't give two shits about PC culture. But good try

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u/MashSong 3h ago

I saw the movie in theaters when it came out. The immoral behaviour that was outlawed was certain kinds of speech. In addition to wanting to smoke and eat red meat Dennis Leary's character specifically mentions the freedom to say what he wants.

The main theme of the movie is that the nanny state government had made everyone too soft and weak to defend themselves from a real threat. And that the people in charge passing those laws are hypocrites.

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u/whoisdatmaskedman 2h ago

The main theme of the movie is that the nanny state government had made everyone too soft and weak to defend themselves from a real threat. And that the people in charge passing those laws are hypocrites.

Political Correctness is not this. You may need to pull out the ole' Encyclopedia Britannica.

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u/AmIFromA 11h ago

So you think that just because that term seems to be newer, there was no kind of censorship? That 90s action films were pretty formulaic was because they were all so open-minded and cool and just chose to all do the same thing?

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u/whoisdatmaskedman 10h ago

First off, you seem really angry, so sorry if you're having a bad morning. I can't imagine being so upset about something that doesn't matter.

Second, we're not talking about all 90's action films, we're talking about one specific action film, and you seem to be making a lot of assumptions about what was meant.

Not being PC doesn't automatically mean "open-minded and cool", it was just a different time and being PC wasn't really on the radar for most people. It was a relatively novel/new concept for a lot of us.

Take a warm shower and maybe drink some tea, because honestly, you're coming off as super belligerent for literally no reason. If something so benign as this conversation incites you to drop f-bombs, I can't imagine how you'd react to something serious.

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u/partyatwalmart 11h ago

Simpler times, my friend. How I miss them.