31 years later, this villain who took on Stallone is still one of the hottest names in action cinema!

Demolition Man arrived in French cinemas on February 2, 1994 and attracted 1.7 million viewers. If the account is fairly accurate for France, the feature film starring Sylvester Stallone was a big flop at the worldwide box office. It raised only a modest $58 million for a budget of $57 million.

After the 80s and the hegemony of big guns like Schwarz and Sly, the 90s saw the emergence of other action characters with less spectacular and more conventional physiques, such as Bruce Willis (Die Hard) or Keanu Reeves (Point Break, Matrix).

Like Demolition Man, Last Action Hero was a resounding fiasco a year earlier, already sounding the death knell for muscle-bound and invincible action blockbusters.

In 1994, Demolition Man became the swan song for this type of production, and Stallone also began to attract crowds. However, Marco Brambilla’s work became iconic over time, especially thanks to his relatively visionary script, some of whose predictions almost became reality 30 years later.

However, if Demolition Man is so iconic these days, it’s also partly due to its absolutely memorable villain, played by the hilarious Wesley Snipes! His name: Simon Phoenix. This last name alone sets the tone for the character! When we discover the film, we are at a loss for words at the random brutality of this bad boy, who reminds us of some kind of Joker on amphetamines.

Simon Phoenix, a character reborn from his ashes

Even if we love John the Spartan, the hero played by Stallone, we can only bow to Simon Phoenix, a name so classy that you almost forget that this character is one of the most terrifying villains in cinema! At that time, the rivalry between superstar Stallone and rising star Wesley Snipes was fascinating and promised a good dose of adrenaline.

If Stallone has just returned to the box office with a cliffhanger, his aura is still wavering; As for Wesley Snipes, he’s in his mid-thirties and has just made a name for himself with White People Can’t Jump and Passenger 57. He’ll be transforming Essay with Blade 4 years later.

From the opening scene of Demolition Man, the tone is set! We find ourselves in 1996 in Los Angeles full of fire and blood. John Spartan, the world’s toughest cop, faces off against a top-notch psychopath with peroxide blonde hair, overalls and orange clothing, Simon Phoenix!

Too excited to stop the bad guy’s criminal activities, the Spartan unfortunately leaves behind 30 innocent victims. Therefore, he is condemned to be cryogenically frozen in a prison with ultra-modern technology. This also applies to Phoenix! purpose? Allow rehabilitation for possible reintegration. Funny idea indeed!

The story jumps in time to 2032. Simon Phoenix manages to escape and the authorities are forced to awaken John Spartan to stop the dangerous criminal. Indeed, at that time violence was eliminated and Los Angeles was a true haven of peace. Moreover, woe to you if you utter even the slightest insult! The little robot will immediately penalize you, which has a way of annoying the Spartan.

A villain like no other

In this watery world of Care Bears, the police don’t know how to deal with the violence of a sociopath like Simon Phoenix, who enjoys committing the worst abuses! So he hires henchmen to resume his slaughter and set the city on fire!

With sharp strokes, he can look both edgy and menacing, as evidenced by this speech with a homophobic slur that certainly doesn’t make it into blockbusters these days.

“Alright, gentlemen, let’s wrap it up! It’s 2032! That makes 2-0-3-2! It’s the 21st century. And I regret to tell you that the world is now populated by softballs. It’s a remake of Little House. Prairie , played by an awkward bunch in long dresses, all we have to do to be kings here is shoot a guy named Friendly, creator of Tapette-Land!”

There’s also this scene where Sandra Bullock offers Stallone to make love remotely with a virtual reality headset (in this sense, Demolition Man is a vision that predicted the “sanitized” side of our modern societies).

Whatever it is, only John the Spartan can stop such a dangerous criminal, someone who comes from his own era and knows him by heart. Their showdown would be epic at its most epic, ending with a panache that would signal the end of the unbridled action films of the 1980s and 1990s, with no more such heightened freedom of tone in gender fiction.

The director discusses his most outstanding works

“The film has aged remarkably well, and the vision of the future it portrays is sadly more relevant than we thought.– Marco Brambila assured in an interview release in November 2023. The filmmaker also reflected on his departure from the Hollywood scene.

“I came to Hollywood very late. Until the late ’80s, the directors were in control of their films. My arrival, in the early ’90s, corresponds to the moment when the producers took control.”

“If you were Martin Scorsese or James CameronYou still had a hand. But if you were starting out like me, it was already impossible. There were exceptions such as Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson…but it was the last one”Marco Brambilla explained.

The director also hinted at a difficult on-set relationship with the film’s producer, mogul Joel Silver. Marco Brambilla came away broken by the experience. He absolutely did not want to be placed in the box that Hollywood producers tried to confine him to: “After Demolition Man, I was offered only similar films: Judge Dredd, flip / face…I was happy with my film, but I didn’t want the same thing to happen again.”he assured her.

If you want to (re)watch Demolition Man, the movie is available on the Max platform.