Demolition Man (1993)
Trivia
Fred Dekker did uncredited re-writes on the script. When he was brought on, the script began in the future and Spartan was introduced when he was brought out of suspended animation. Dekker suggested that this movie open with a prologue set in 1996 to showcase Spartan and Phoenix in their natural environment, saying that "If you don't show Kansas, Oz isn't all that special."
Wesley Snipes' kicks and punches sometimes look lurchy and awkward. Snipes is an accomplished black belt in real life, and his kicks and punches were so fast that they blurred on-camera. Hence the producers asked him to slow them down.
Wesley Snipes hated his blond dye job, and shaved his head as soon as filming was complete. After this movie's release, professional NBA player Dennis Rodman began dying his hair different colors, a look that was inspired by Simon Phoenix.
Sylvester Stallone described the cryogenic freezing scene as "probably the worst five hours I've ever had on movie sets... I was terrified."
(at around 1h 3 mins) Sandra Bullock's costume during the Taco Bell sequence was made of stones and gems weighing approximately forty pounds. After the fight scene outside the restaurant when her character gleefully jumps and replays the action, her dress actually started to rip, which is why she is holding her arms to her sides after Sylvester Stallone walks away.
Sylvester Stallone wanted Simon Phoenix to be played by Jackie Chan. Chan declined the offer, since Asian audiences give negative feedback on the idea of action stars from either Hong Kong or Hollywood who have always played heroes would all of a sudden become type-casted as villains.
(at around 1h 25 mins) In the underground garage where John (Sylvester Stallone) meets Edgar (Denis Leary), the word "Lofaszt" is seen scrawled on an overhead air duct. This is a Hungarian swear word meaning "horse penis," but with the T at the end of the word it actually means "fuck no." It was also famously spoken by Edward James Olmos in Blade Runner (1982) to Harrison Ford.
According to screenwriter Daniel Waters, the inspiration for the three shells came about when he was writing a scene where Spartan has to use a restroom. He was trying to come up with futuristic things you'd find in there. He was having trouble, so he called a buddy, another screenwriter across town, asked him if he had any ideas. Coincidentally enough, that person was in the bathroom when he answered the phone, looked around his bathroom and said, "I have a bag of seashells on the toilet as a decoration." Waters said "Ok, I'll make something out of that."
Sylvester Stallone is on record as being pleased with the movie, calling it "a good action film, ahead of its time."
Sandra Bullock replaced Lori Petty after a few days filming. Petty left due to creative differences.
Hungarian science fiction writer István Nemere says that most of Demolition Man is based on his novel Holtak Harca (Fight of the Dead), published in 1986. In the novel, a terrorist and a counter-terrorism soldier are cryogenically frozen, then awakened in the twenty-second century to find violence has been purged from society. Nemere claimed that a committee proved that seventy-five percent of this movie is identical to the book. He chose not to sue because it would have been too expensive for him to hire a lawyer and fight against major Hollywood forces in the United States. He also claimed that Hollywood plagiarized works of many Eastern European writers after the fall of the Iron Curtain, and that he knows the person allegedly responsible for illegally selling his idea to the filmmakers.
For some non-American releases, references to Taco Bell were changed to Pizza Hut, since the former was virtually unknown in many foreign countries at the time. This includes dubbing, plus changing the logos during post-production. Taco Bell remains in the closing credits. In both the Dutch and Swedish releases the subtitles still use Taco Bell while the sound and picture have been altered as above. Also, when using closed captioning on cable television, references to Taco Bell are changed to Pizza Hut.
During filming, Rob Schneider became friends with Sandra Bullock, but had reservations about her next project, "some bus movie" that he didn't think would take off. Speed (1994) was one of the next year's most critically and financially successful movies.
The title was taken from The Police's song of the same name. Hence, the use of Sting to remake the song for the movie.
Sylvester Stallone has stated in interviews that the idea behind the three seashells was that two were used like chopsticks or to clamp together to pull waste out of the body and the third was used to scrape what was left over. No explanation was made about how they were to be cleaned or sanitized between uses.
(at around 5 mins) The opening scene featured the actual demolition of one of the buildings of the no longer operative Belknap Hardware and Manufacturing Company in Louisville, Kentucky. MTV held a movie tie-in contest in which the Grand Prize winner got to press the button that triggered the explosion.
Adrienne Barbeau is the computer's voice. She also voiced the computer in The Thing (1982).
According to Denis Leary, Wesley Snipes insisted on doing his own action scenes. After Snipes finished his scenes, the crew would film scenes with the stunt people.
The novelization reveals that Associate Bob (Glenn Shadix) is a eunuch. Dr. Raymond Cocteau (Sir Nigel Hawthorne) had him castrated to prevent him from becoming too ambitious.
Denis Leary's part was re-written after he was casted as the eagerly and rebellious resistance-leader Edgar Friendly. The writers Daniel Waters, Robert Reneau, and Peter M. Lenkov all wanted to hear Leary rant.
The opening set was inspired by the Los Angeles riots that happened just six months before filming began.
(at around 45 mins) The magnetic accelerator (possibly similar to a rail or coil gun) used by Wesley Snipes in the Museum Armory sequence is based on the Heckler & Koch G11, a prototype weapon for the German Army that would have been the most advanced rifle in the world, firing caseless ammunition (bullets, not ferrous slugs).
Jack Black had an early role as one of the Wasteland Scraps.
(at around 1h 35 mins) Sandra Bullock's character Lenina Huxley is asked "Where did you learn to kick like that?" Her reply was from watching Jackie Chan movies. Chan is a good friend of Sylvester Stallone, and was briefly considered to play Simon Phoenix. In the Spanish dub, Huxley says it was from watching Bruce Lee movies. Jackie Chan started in movies as Bruce Lee's stunt double.
Sylvester Stallone had duplicates of the frozen John Spartan put on display at Planet Hollywood restaurants. He was one of the original investors in the restaurant chain.
Sandra Bullock talked about working with Sylvester Stallone in an interview with Rolling Stone: "We'd knock heads, but at some point, I became like his younger sister. He'd bang on the trailer with his golf clubs in the middle of the night: 'Come out and play.' You know, he'd want to swat golf balls in the middle of the night."
(at around 32 mins) The little girl who says "Fu-ck you lady!" resembles the female Wasteland Scrap who is seen standing next to Edgar Friendly at the end of the movie. It's implied that they're the same character. In a scene that was taken out of the movie, the female Wasteland Scrap is revealed as John Spartan's daughter Kate, and they reunite and in the theatrical cut, Spartan is seen protecting her during the wasteland battle.
San Angeles was going to be the name of the city in Blade Runner (1982).
During rehearsals, Wesley Snipes starting reciting his lines in Spanish, and they thought it was funny.
The two original choices for the roles were Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme. Van Damme was offered the role of the bad guy, but didn't want that role. He agreed to star in it if both the lead roles could be switched, so the producers tried to get Seagal to play the bad guy, but he declined. Seagal and Van Damme later played the bad guy: Seagal in Machete (2010), and Van Damme in The Expendables 2 (2012) opposite Sylvester Stallone, who replaced him as the hero in this movie.
Lenina Huxley's name is a combination of Lenina Crowne and Aldous Huxley. Crowne is a character in Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" (1932), a novel about a future society where everything is predetermined for you so as not to offend others (among other reasons) and where showing even moderate emotion is considered to be unusual and possibly even illegal. Crowne's first name Lenina itself was chosen by Aldous Huxley after the pseudonym of the first dictator of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov).
In Kuwait, the renamed Arabic title was actually "Rambo the Destroyer". Since both Conan the Destroyer (1984) and Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) were action-packed blockbusters from Hollywood since the mid-1980s, the distributor thought associating Sylvester Stallone to "Rambo" in the title would sell more tickets due to the popularity of both films in the United Arab Emirates nation, despite the movie having nothing to do with the Rambo and Conan franchises.
It was rumored there was going to be a sequel "Demolition Man 2", and it would take place after this movie, in which John Spartan and Lenina Huxley would have married and Jackie Chan would play the main antagonist, replacing Wesley Snipes, but the sequel did not happen. There was a prequel written long ago, and was thought to flop, so it was never made. The prequel was believed to start out with John Spartan starting to go after Simon Phoenix.
Due to Warner Brothers dislike of the first two plus hour long cut of the movie, as well as various behind-the-scenes problems, they hired editor Stuart Baird to do some re-editing. The same thing happened to another Sylvester Stallone movie, Tango & Cash (1989), which was also heavily re-edited by Baird and others. Originally, in this movie, there were some additional scenes including Spartan meeting his grown up daughter in the sewers amongst Edgar Friendly's people. While cut, we do see Spartan protecting a random girl during a shoot-out in sewers. This is his daughter. She is also seen again in the ending scene standing next to Friendly while he is talking with Spartan.
Some violent scenes with Simon Phoenix were also cut down or removed completely. For example, a scene where he rips out warden Smithers eye, a scene near the end where he kills several people inside of the cryo prison with a machine gun, and a scene where he kills the guy from whom he took the car after escaping from the cryo prison. Also during the final fight between him and Spartan, Spartan was shown taking some loose wire and shocking him.
Other deleted scenes include Phoenix killing Zachary Lamb after he escapes from the sewers, and Spartan and Huxley find Lamb and talk to him before he dies (note that Phoenix has his gun out when he enters the cop car, but he didn't in the previous shot) and before the car chase starts. Many extra lines of dialogue were cut out, but some can be heard in various trailers for the movie, and longer and additional action scenes were also deleted.
Both the sewer battle sequence and final showdown in the cryo prison were heavily cut down, which caused some continuity mistakes in the final movie because there are six different cryo cons working with Simon, but only two are shown being killed in the movie when Spartan and Huxley arrive at Cocteau's building and fight with them. Due to massive cuts made in these sequences, the death scenes of ones who got killed by Spartan and others in sewers, and ones killed by him in the cryo prison were also cut out. The original cryo prison action finale included a scene where Spartan fights with and kills several more prisoners who were thawed out by Simon and who also injected them with megadrenalin to wake them up faster and make them tougher to defeat, and this was also where the infamous deleted fight scene between Sylvester Stallone and Jesse Ventura took place.
In the deleted action scene during the battle in sewers, Spartan goes on the bridge from which Phoenix and his gang are shooting, and starts to fight with Phoenix, but then the bridge turns over. While both of them are hanging on it, Phoenix says to Spartan that bus passengers which he failed to save back in 1996 were already dead, meaning that Spartan was sent to the cryo prison for nothing. In the movie, Phoenix says this to Spartan during the car chase near the end of the movie, but Phoenix is not shown speaking on-screen, which probably means that the dialogue from the deleted scene was placed in this scene or was dubbed by the actor. Some other deleted and alternate scenes can be seen in trailers, promotional photos, and are also in the comic book adaptation and novelization of the movie.
Some violent scenes with Simon Phoenix were also cut down or removed completely. For example, a scene where he rips out warden Smithers eye, a scene near the end where he kills several people inside of the cryo prison with a machine gun, and a scene where he kills the guy from whom he took the car after escaping from the cryo prison. Also during the final fight between him and Spartan, Spartan was shown taking some loose wire and shocking him.
Other deleted scenes include Phoenix killing Zachary Lamb after he escapes from the sewers, and Spartan and Huxley find Lamb and talk to him before he dies (note that Phoenix has his gun out when he enters the cop car, but he didn't in the previous shot) and before the car chase starts. Many extra lines of dialogue were cut out, but some can be heard in various trailers for the movie, and longer and additional action scenes were also deleted.
Both the sewer battle sequence and final showdown in the cryo prison were heavily cut down, which caused some continuity mistakes in the final movie because there are six different cryo cons working with Simon, but only two are shown being killed in the movie when Spartan and Huxley arrive at Cocteau's building and fight with them. Due to massive cuts made in these sequences, the death scenes of ones who got killed by Spartan and others in sewers, and ones killed by him in the cryo prison were also cut out. The original cryo prison action finale included a scene where Spartan fights with and kills several more prisoners who were thawed out by Simon and who also injected them with megadrenalin to wake them up faster and make them tougher to defeat, and this was also where the infamous deleted fight scene between Sylvester Stallone and Jesse Ventura took place.
In the deleted action scene during the battle in sewers, Spartan goes on the bridge from which Phoenix and his gang are shooting, and starts to fight with Phoenix, but then the bridge turns over. While both of them are hanging on it, Phoenix says to Spartan that bus passengers which he failed to save back in 1996 were already dead, meaning that Spartan was sent to the cryo prison for nothing. In the movie, Phoenix says this to Spartan during the car chase near the end of the movie, but Phoenix is not shown speaking on-screen, which probably means that the dialogue from the deleted scene was placed in this scene or was dubbed by the actor. Some other deleted and alternate scenes can be seen in trailers, promotional photos, and are also in the comic book adaptation and novelization of the movie.
Sir Nigel Hawthorne, inexperienced in movies, took his role to prove that he had screen presence for the producers of The Madness of King George (1994). Hawthorne wanted to reprise the stage role for the movie version. As it transpired, this was unnecessary, as Hawthorne was the producers' automatic choice for the lead.
The fight scenes were all choreographed to be somewhat cartoonish. The violence was meant to be a little tongue-in-cheek.
The giant fireplace made the set about 105 to 110 degrees Fahrenheit (40.5 to 43.3 degrees Celsius).
The original draft of the movie was sold in 1988. It had a serious, darker tone and had Spartan ending up with his much older wife. The writer wanted Mickey Rourke to star.
(at around 1h 26 mins) Denis Leary, a stand-up comic known for his rants put himself into Edgar Friendly, particularly in one scene, where Edgar rants to Spartan about food, smoking cigars, and reading Playboy Magazines.
(at around 56 mins) Lenina Huxley tells John Spartan about the Arnold Schwarzenegger Presidential Library, explaining that, based on the sheer popularity of his movies, the 61st Constitutional amendment was passed, allowed Schwarzenegger to run for president. In 2003, Schwarzenegger was elected Governor of California. Shortly thereafter, three Senators separately proposed amendments to the U.S. Constitution to allow naturalized citizens to become President. Additionally, Sylvester Stallone, along with Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, and Demi Moore, backed the opening of the Planet Hollywood restaurant chain. Schwarzenegger was in fact President in The Simpsons Movie (2007).
Sandra Bullock considered Sylvester Stallone her big brother on-set.
(at around 1h 40 mins) Though the movie was released in 1993, Simon Phoenix and John Spartan were supposed to have been imprisoned in the cryo-prison in 1996. When Phoenix releases the other cryo-prisoners, he makes a reference to serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. Dahmer was killed in prison on November 28,1994, after the film's release but before the cryo-prison would have been built.
Peter M. Lenkov wrote the movie when he was a production assistant. His inspiration came as he would drive his salvaged car with a broken boom box chained to the backseat repetitively playing "Demolition Man" by The Police. The lyrics, "Don't mess around with the Demolition Man" would stand out. Also combined with his love for cop television shows, and his obsession in wondering if Walt Disney was frozen, would be his launching pad.
In Lenina Huxley's office there is a Lethal Weapon 3 (1992) poster. Steve Kahan, who played Captain Healy in 1996 Los Angeles, played Captain Ed Murphy in the Lethal Weapon film franchise.
The screenwriting process for this movie became incredibly convoluted as far as both the number of writers involved and the changes between drafts along with the wildly divergent ideas different producers had. At one point, Peter M. Lenkov, Jonathan Lemkin, and Craig Sheffer were all claiming credits and/or working on the movie at the same time. The situation only cleared itself when Joel Silver took on chief production values. He paid all of the writers substantial amounts of money to go away, then used the work of Lemkin along with body-and-fender work from writer Daniel Waters (with whom Silver had worked on The Adventures of Ford Fairlane (1990)).
Taco Bell was not intended to be featured as product placement. Not only did screenwriter Daniel Waters conceive the idea of the Restaurant Wars, he chose Taco Bell as the lone survivor of chain restaurants because he perceived them as the nadir of the fast food industry due to their tacky advertising and low-quality food. Waters' prophecy of lavish sit-down Taco Bells came true when the chain began test-marketing similar upscale, "fast casual" locations in 2014, further expanding the initiative in 2016 and 2017, as a means of catering to millennials.
According to the commentary found on the Region 1 DVD, there were some scenes deleted from the movie including a subplot involving Spartan's daughter, and the murder of Zachary Lamb by Phoenix.
The scenes with Spartan's daughter were deleted after blowback came from audience test screenings about Spartan sleeping with a woman the same age as his daughter.
(at around 5 mins) In the building demolition scene of the Belknap Hardware and Manufacturing Company, Louisville, Kentucky, the buildings that were demolished first were for the public to see Wesley Snipes and Sylvester Stallone in person in a symbolic way. The building used in the movie was only three stories tall, and the demolition crew had to pour gasoline all over the building to set it on fire, so that it would glow for a few seconds before they imploded the entire structure. It was filmed at night for better effects, and you can hear director Marco Brambilla cheering after the building has fallen.
GM loaned $69 million worth of concept cars to the movie. One is a replica of GM's Ultralite one hundred-miles-per-gallon concept car.
(at around 45 mins) If the "ray gun" that Phoenix finds in the Museum was to work according to "mil-spec", it would have seven hundred shots before needing to recharge. The "spec sheet" reads: 700 rounds, 800 yard range.
Even though Jonathan Lemkin was the last writer working on the movie and drafted its shooting script, he lost the Writers Guild arbitration and his name does not appear in the credits. However, the movie's novelization lists him as one of the authors of the screenplay.
The Taco Bell scene was filmed at the inner courtyard of the Hughes Aircraft facility in El Segundo, CA. The courtyard was converted over a period of weeks while the filming only took place at night.
(at around 1h 30 mins) The cars in the auto dealer's showroom in 2032 are actually 1995 Oldsmobile Auroras.
(at around 57 mins) In the attempt to entirely replace the Taco Bell name with Pizza Hut for several international releases (the name was dubbed over and computer generated images of the logo were pasted over), the editors missed a spot. At the start of the battle outside the restaurant, when everyone is flocking to the window, all window panes still show the logo for Taco Bell (also when they first arrive) and the Taco Bell sign is visible in the first shot of the van (in the background when people are running) on the door. The logo can also be seen on the waiter's jackets as dinner is served.
It was originally planned to have Wesley Snipes and Sylvester Stallone meet face-to-face without a fight, but then it was decided that it would be much better if they tried to kill each other.
Wesley Snipes' shoulder pads are made out of tire treads and other car parts.
(at around 54 mins) The scene where Dr. Raymond Cocteau (Sir Nigel Hawthorne) invites John (Sylvester Stallone) and Lenina (Sandra Bullock) to Taco Bell, was actually filmed just across the I-405 freeway from the international headquarters of Taco Bell in Irvine, California.
- Lenina Huxley is 29 years old, and was born in 2003.
- Since that the movie set in 1996 in the prologue and 2032 for the rest, and assuming that Edgar Friendly's age was the same of Denis Leary, Friendly was 36 at the events of 2032, and he was born in 1996.
(at around 20 mins) In an early scene, set after the first MDK (Murder Death Kill), the name Scott Peterson is listed as one of the cryo-prisoners. The name appears listed before Simon Phoenix on a computer display, which the character Lenina Huxley (Sandra Bullock) has called to the screen. This is merely a coincidence, however, as Scott Peterson was not a public figure until he was tried for the murder of his wife during 2004-2005. The surname of the other inmate on the screen is "Quentin". Peterson is serving his time in San Quentin.
The building used for exterior shots of the S.A.P.D. building was the California Headquarters of GTE in Thousand Oaks.
One car is a 1989 Cadillac Solitaire concept car. Instead of rearview mirrors, it has video cameras.
Director Marco Brambilla used the movie Brainstorm (1983) as a reference for the virtual sex montage.
General Motors provided the production team with eighteen concept vehicles, including the Ultralite concept vehicle. More than twenty fiberglass replicas of the Ultralite were produced to portray civilian and S.A.P.D. patrol vehicles in the movie. After filming had completed, the remaining Ultralites were returned to Michigan as part of GM's concept vehicle fleet.
The police department's central computer was given the name L7. "L7" is another way of saying the slang word "square". This is, presumably, an inside joke on the society that the movie takes place.
Director Marco Brambilla wanted the film's overall look to resemble as being inside a Neiman-Marcus store. For that reason, the bulk of film except for the 1996 prologue and the San Angeles underground sequences were deliberately shot with a slower film stock and softened with a soft filter. For exterior scenes, smoke was placed at strategic places in order to achieve what Brambilla called a liquid lighting look.
The music used in the trailer is the cue "Vampire Hunters" by Wojciech Kilar. It was originally written for Dracula (1992).
Glenn Shadix (Associate Bob) uses the phrase "greetings and salutations". This was Christian Slater's catchphrase in Heathers (1988). Shadix co-starred in that movie, and it was written by Daniel Waters, who co-wrote this movie.
Some scenes were shot on the Imperial Highway in El Segundo. It hadn't yet opened to the public. The same then-closed highway was used in Speed (1994) which also starred Sandra Bullock.
[0:24] According Edgar Friendly's profile watched by Simon Phoenix in the street computer, Friendly's accusations include graffiti liable, incitement to riot, slander speech, food thieving, disorderly conduct and moral disquietude.
Many of the cars in the movie were prototypes of future models, supplied by General Motors. Only two modern-day GM vehicles were seen in this movie, a 1970 Oldsmobile 442 (from the golden age of the muscle car era) and a 1982 Buick Skylark (based on the 1980-85 GM X platform which was GM's first mass market front wheel drive automobiles (replacing the 1962-79 rear wheel drive X platform) which sold poorly when the company's J platform outsold it (alongside the redesigned midsize A platform which went to front wheel drive in 1982 where a variant (W platform) has remained in production until the 2016 model year), the front wheel drive X platform was replaced with the subsequent N and L platforms (which were consolidated into the GMX130 in 1997, now replaced with the Epsilon platform since 2005).
(at around 47 mins) When Simon Phoenix is confined in the museum, he is confined in Section 8. Section 8 is the informal name of a psychiatric discharge from the U.S. Armed Forces.
In 2017, Sylvester Stallone's loan-out company filed a lawsuit against Warner Brothers over the disbursement of profits from this movie.
(at around 46 mins) In the museum scene when Simon Phoenix looks for different weapons, he finds a doll with a big gun and refers to the doll as "Rambo". Rambo is one of Sylvester Stallone's most famous characters.
The movie was influenced by the novel "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley.
Taco Bell happens to be the only restaurant company in the future world. Years after this movie, Sandra Bullock (Lenina Huxley) starred in "The blind side", where she was the wife of one of Taco Bell's owner.
Excluding the opening sequence in 1996 , the main plot of this movie is set in 2032 . The San Angeles scenes cover a time frame of just two days (August 3 and 4, 2032).
(at around 1h 30 mins) A futuristic Oldsmobile dealership appears in this movie. General Motors announced in December 2000 that they were shutting down the Oldsmobile division a few days after the company released the refreshed GMT 360-based Bravada where the 2004 model year ended one hundred seven years of continuous production. The shutdown of Oldsmobile preceded the shutdown of subsequent GM divisions (Pontiac, Hummer, and Saturn divisions were discontinued in late 2010).
The 442 car model is considered one of the sportiest Oldsmobiles in history. The other car considered for the movie was the Pontiac GTO.
According to Denis Leary, Sylvester Stallone had his own driving range and golf pro on-set. Stallone approached him in full costume and invited him to shoot some holes. Leary declined the offer, but was shown playing golf in The Simpsons: Lost Verizon (2008).
John Spartan and Simon Phoenix are 83 and 70 years old after 36 years in cryostasis. Their ages are not revealed, but by applying what would be the actor's actual age within the movie's time frame , Stallone would be 47 in 1996 and Snipes 34.
Behavior control of criminals was also in A Clockwork Orange (1971), a favorite movie of director Marco Brambilla.
(at around 54 mins) Spacely Sprockets was where George Jetson worked on The Jetsons (1962).
When Warden William Smither dies, the computer states that he was born on February 14, 1967. This means Warden William Smithers was 29 when both Spartan and Phoenix were frozen and 65 when he died.
There is a Red Hot Chili Peppers poster in Huxley's office; vocalist Anthony Kiedis starred alongside Sylvester Stallone in F.I.S.T. (1978) years earlier. There is also a Lethal Weapon 3 (1992) poster; Mel Gibson would later star alongside Stallone in the The Expendables 3 (2014).
It doesn't occur to both Spartan and Captain Healy at the beginning of the movie that Simon Phoenix had killed the hostages.
In a retrospective on his filmography, Denis Leary called this movie a "giant piece of shit".
Before going into the museum John Spartan says "Use the force Luke Skywalker". Sylvester Stallone was considered for the role of Han Solo in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977), but declined.
In Sylvester Stallone's The Expendables (2010), Barney Ross (Stallone) wears a black beret, like John Spartan (Stallone) in this movie.
The morality statute slips have the Debian Linux logo on them, The Debian Project was started in 1993.
Carlton Wilborn made appearances as Carl the Wasteland Scrap, seen with Edgar Friendly at the beginning of the movie. When Edgar Friendly shoots down the bridge Simon Phoenix and his accomplices are on, there's a shot in the background with Carl appearing to be fighting most of Simon Phoenix's gang, including the character played by Jesse Ventura.
The cast includes one Oscar winner: Sandra Bullock; and two Oscar nominees: Sylvester Stallone and Sir Nigel Hawthorne.
Simon Phoenix reviving other twentieth century criminals is somewhat reminiscent of Khan Noonien Singh reviving his crew from twentieth century suspended animation in Star Trek: Space Seed (1967).
(at around 32 mins) When the cops are talking about bringing Spartan back in Huxley's office, you can see a big sword in the background. Beneath that is a miniature bus like the one from Speed, also starring Sandra Bullock.
(at around 8 mins) John Spartan is given a seventy year sentence in suspended animation, and he wouldn't have been revived until 2066.
One critic called this movie "The most action packed thriller since The Terminator (1984).
(at around 1h 3 mins) Huxley states that Spartan is the He-Man type. Sylvester Stallone starred opposite Dolph Lundgren, who played He-Man in Masters of the Universe (1987), in Rocky IV (1985), in which Lundgren played antagonist Ivan Drago, and worked again with Stallone as Gunnar Hansen in the "Expendables" film franchise. Lundgren reprised his role as Ivan Drago, appearing opposite Sylvester Stallone, in Creed II (2018).
Sir Nigel Hawthorne appeared in a Vauxhall car advertisement during the ITV premiere of Total Recall (1990) in the United Kingdom on November 9, 1993. An advertisement of this movie was also shown during the ITV premiere of Total Recall (1990). Sir Nigel Hawthorne starred in this movie as Dr. Raymond Cocteau.
(at around 51 mins) When Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes) meets Dr. Raymond Cocteau (Sir Nigel Hawthorne) in the aftermath of the museum battle, Raymond Cocteau is seen wearing a white hat almost identical to the hat worn by William Hartnell in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who (1963).
When Simon Phoenix, Wesley Snipes, falls through the glass floor in the museum fight, he lands on the hood of a 1982 Buick Skylark. One of the sister cars of the Skylark is the Pontiac "Phoenix".
Despite it is explained in separated pieces and brief quotes throughout the movie, it's possible to compile it as a complete backstory: in 2010 Los Angeles suffered the Big One, the feared great earthquake that ruined all the city and caused a mass chaos, drifting in violent riots where the scared civil population decided to close themselves in their homes looking for survive to the out-of-control crime wave. After the merge in 2010 of Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and San Diego in San Angeles, of somewhat way Dr. Raymond Cocteau did get to build a new civilization over the ashes of the previous, creating a peaceful state of mind for imposing several penalties, censoring any behavior that he considered unacceptable (i.e. rude language and sexual relations) and changing real money by digital money with a microchip grafted inside the back of the hand. However, not all the population accepted this new government, running away to underground to avoid be captured and altered with Cocteau's technology using synaptic reprogramming and DNA's manipulation to be citizens quiet and servants, living in the sewers as outsiders. Taken as harmless exiled, the arrival of Edgar Friendly (in an undetermined point previous to Simon Phoenix's escape) and his natural leadership to turn these exiled in commandos made that Cocteau changed Phoenix's synaptic reprogramming to turn him in a specialized terrorist, in addition implanting him a safe code to make him unable to kill Cocteau, with the mission to introduce Phoenix in the sewers to locate and exterminate Friendly, leaving free way to Cocteau to create a totalitarian state with security cameras in every room, stricter alarm systems against misbehavior, anonymous hotlines to their neighbor's infractions and an enzyme injection for all citizen that be insure everyone have the same I.Q., the same weight, and the same desire to think only happy thoughts, expanding it with time to another cities.
In the beginning scene of the movie, when Sparten catches up to Phoenix in his liar, you see Phoenix lifting his head off the table to address Sparten. It's easily dismissed because its just half a second, but Phoenix does cocaine right before that. The glass plate and white powder lines are again briefly but clearly visible in the following fight scenes. The first time right when Phoenix got up and the second time when Sparten pushes him down onto the table.
In the film, California Cryo-Penitentiary Warden William Smithers is played by the actor Andre Gregory. In the 1973 film Papillon (1973), real life actor William Smithers plays French Penal colony Warden Barrot.
(at around 15 mins) Chief Earle talks to Huxley about her conversation with the warden. Bob Gunton played a prison warden in The Shawshank Redemption (1994).
Since that the movie set in 1996 in the prologue and 2032 for the rest, and assuming that Edgar Friendly's age was the same of Denis Leary, Friendly was 36 at the events of 2032, and he was born in 1996.
The film's cast includes 1 oscar winner: Sandra Bullock and 2 oscar nominees: Sylvester Stallone and Nigel Hawthorne.
Sandra Bullock 's character Lenina Huxley is asked "Where did you learn to kick like that?" Her reply was from watching Jackie Chan movies. Jackie Chan is a good friend of Sylvester Stallone
Simon Phoenix wants to release Jeffrey Dahmer, the movie starts in 1996 but was released 1 year before Dahmer's death in 1994 2 years before where the movie is set so in reality this would not have happened anyways.
Cameo
Craig Sheffer: at around 26 minutes, in an uncredited role, played the first S.A.P.D. officer to approach and attempt to apprehend Simon Phoenix. Sheffer was also an executive producer on this movie.
Dan Cortese: first, he is seen playing the piano and singing at Taco Bell. Later, he can be seen briefly as one of the cryo-prison guards helping Simon Phoenix thaw out criminals with Associate Bob before the final fight.
Spoilers
(at around 5 mins) At the beginning of the movie, Simon Phoenix boasts that he would lose his head if it wasn't attached to his shoulders, to which John Spartan replies he'll keep that in mind. Fittingly enough, this alludes to the final showdown between them in the cryo-prison, when Spartan finishes Phoenix off by freezing and then decapitating him.
