Enhance your calm: Demolition Man turns 30

Enlarge / Sylvester Stallone starred as LAPD Sergeant John Spartan in the 1993 action comedy Demolition Man. (credit: Warner Bros.)

Thirty years ago today, Demolition Man first hit theaters, pitting Sylvester Stallone against Wesley Snipes in a crime-free but killjoy future where even minor vices have been declared illegal. The passage of time hasn’t quite elevated this sci-fi action comedy to the legendary status of Die Hard or Lethal Weapon, but it’s still an under-appreciated gem of ’90s action movies, precisely because it unapologetically leans into the massive explosions and campy humor with wild abandon.

(Spoilers below, because it’s been 30 years.)

Demolition Man started out as a spec script by Peter Lenkov, then a recent college grad eager to break into Hollywood. (Lenkov went on to create his own shared fictional TV universe with the interconnected reboot series Hawaii 5-0, MacGuyver, and Magnum P.I.) Lenkov was a Lethal Weapon fan and envisioned an action movie about a cryogenically frozen “super cop” who wakes up decades in the future in a world largely free of crime, where he must battle his criminal arch-nemesis. As for the title, Lenkov had been listening to Sting’s “Demolition Man” constantly because the cassette player in his car was broken. Inspiration strikes in nonlinear ways.