90s Science: Demolition Man vs. Judge Dredd

Science fiction movies in the 90s were all over the map. One year you might see gloriously well-presented dinosaur melodrama, the next year you might give up in distress and learn to appreciate art or literature. In many ways, the inconsistency of the past carried into the future. Some people talked about how the 'movies these days' were full of 'special effects', except in that time special effects were something rare and spectacular that tended to be applauded. That or they were incredibly shitty and overused. In many ways, nearly two decades later, things are similar.

90s movies had a certain quality that no longer really exists in the medium. Many of them were totally unwatchable wrecks, many of them aged horribly, and there was much lazy writing and gnashing of directorial teeth. Such is life. I post here today to summarize my experience with two Sylvester Stallone, marginal, action/sci-fi movies from the 90s. Abandon all logic and subtlety, ye who would be so foolish as to follow me. The movies are Demolition Man (1993) and Judge Dredd (1995).

Demolition Man is an insane movie. Stallone jumps out of a helicopter and explodes an entire building before the title sequence. Everything else after that is awesome, but muddled in a stupid, obtuse, poorly-written version of the future. But none of that matters because that future exists only so Wesley Snipes, playing a gleefully violent criminal, can fight Sylvester Stallone, who accidentally killed 20 children when he exploded the building from the beginning of the movie. Both of them were frozen in time because that's how sentencing worked in 1993's idea of 1996.

Demolition Man has an agenda so broad, and so stolen, that even dogs raise their eyebrows when they see it. The future is a utopia, peace and calm reign, but society atrophies because there is no aggression, no uncertainty, no explosions, and no action. Death is by natural causes, spicy foods are outlawed, and people get fined for swearing. It's the original Campy Darwinism. Sandra Bullock and company say shit in the opening half hour that sounds so hideously, hilariously, clumsily out of place that the only explanation is that a computer was given the scenario and two hours to write it. Apparently only intellectual-sounding words would make the future enough of a gutless wimp for two 90s badasses to thoroughly work it over.  "Info assimilated." "Mellow greetings."

In this future, which exists out of sheer laziness, society is childish, naive, and inherited by total fucking infantile eunuchs with too-large vocabularies. But it's still fun. Things get shot up. Wesley Snipes taunts everyone and shoots everything. The whole plot is a weird mixture of old utopia/dystopia books such as 1984, The Time Machine, and Brave New World mixed with basically every science fiction/action film up to its point. It's not particularly smart, or achingly funny, and the satire is dull, but nobody cares. Ten minutes in you know this movie doesn't care. You shouldn't, the movie told you not to. And there's just enough quality action, gun-play, and insanity that you feel okay when you watch it. This was the model for mediocrity. These days it seems awesome only because our current mediocrity is even more slick and bland than the future proposed in Demolition Man. The future-colloquial dialogue is feeble and stupid while trying to make a point about how weakness, pacifism, submission, and herd intelligence are related. Wesley Snipes' awesome action kicks, dozens of quality explosions, at least ten snappy one-liners, and all the swearing make this movie worth it. 1993 was probably just a simpler time.

User Comment Rodeo: The Saga Continues

Sometimes a habit becomes a tradition, and then everyone venerates or denigrates it as they see fit. Once this happens the only rational thing for a human being to do is to abandon whatever the fuss is being made about. Just concentrate on increasing the distance between yourself and that thing. You don't talk about it, you don't think about it, and most importantly, if you do it, you don't make a big deal about it.

Carbonated beverages are probably the third dumbest consumer beverage, coming in after bottled water and slightly behind energy drinks. When it comes to poisoning yourself I tend to think like the Greeks: hemlock or bust. Why stretch the suffering out over years and why pretend it doesn't harm you? What's wrong with alcoholism? Why do some people avoid the bottle but fall for the Full Throttle?

Fortunately I'm not here to answer those questions. Shit I barely even understand them, or the complex consumer economics research that goes into creating them. However we all know that the people who invented bottled water became incredibly rich shortly after the year 2000, and the people who mass marketed energy drinks became rich shortly thereafter. (These data for North American markets only). The grandfather product that all these imitators were imitating was the venerable Coca Cola, brand extraordinaire!

While cigarettes and booze were repeatedly demonized throughout the 1900s, Coca Cola took some mild flak for involving cocaine in their recipe. Profit flowed as freely as the drink flowed out of the iconic bottle's neck. Times were great. An hundred years later and things are still fantastic. Coke managed to survive the 80s, managed to survive all competition, and even managed to survive moralism and nutrito-facism. There is no stopping Coke, or any soft drink, and I think that's wrong.

All they do is sell you poison. Sugar liquor, by any other name, with ingredients you wouldn't throw on your worst enemy. Pepsi, Coke, independent manufacturers. When sugar was demonized in the 80s they all switched to carcinogenic sweeteners that people still drink and that have not been banned. You know when drinking gets serious? It gets serious when you mix white rum and Diet Coke, because all you have to do is add a tylenol to nuke your liver for good. When you recover, just blame the alcohol.