Adorkable: Huxley, big time. There's a reason this film, along with Speed the following year, turned Sandra Bullock into an A-List star.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The naked woman who pops up on John Spartan's video screen in his apartment. He's just as confused, too. The novelization indicates the purpose of the scene is to demonstrate to him that video-calling is the norm in the future.
Broken Aesop: Deconstructed. The film's negative portrayal of San Angeles is juxtaposed deliberately against the Escape from New York nightmare it was before Spartan and Phoenix were frozen. It's made clear that the Police not only won their war on crime and anarchy, they won resoundingly - and now, there are no checks or balances to frustrate their descent into a Police State. As such, neither the San Angeles government or Edgar Friendly are portrayed as being completely right or wrong.
Complete Monster: Simon Phoenix, a psychopathic criminal from the gang-ruled era of Los Angeles in the late 20th century, indulged in theft, kidnapping, arson, rape, and murder to his heart's content. Phoenix holds 30 people hostage and demands a ransom when in fact he had already killed them all, and frames John Spartan for their deaths. They are both sentenced to cryo-stasis and only woken up in 2032 when the new city of San Angeles has become a crime-free nanny state. Phoenix breaks out of confinement by gouging out a guard's eye to bypass the retinal scanner and indulges in his freedom to be a maniac and spread chaos again, brutally murdering almost everyone who gets in his way. It turns out that Phoenix was unfrozen by the benevolent dictator Dr. Raymond Cocteau to assassinate Edgar Friendly, the underground Rebel Leader who has been trying to undo the oppressive system. Simon sets out on this task with murderous glee, killing many innocent bystanders in the process. Phoenix eventually teams up with his old gang after they're unfrozen and murders Cocteau to start a new lawless dystopia. Phoenix starts by unfreezing every violent criminal locked up in the cryo-prison, before gunning down all the technicians because he no longer has any use for them.
Cult Classic: At the time of its release the film wasn't a box office hit and got mixed reviews. But these days it comes across as an Affectionate Parody of action films from The '80s and '90s. There's a good amount of Lampshade Hanging, a mix of Deconstruction and Reconstruction about John Spartan's Cowboy Cop image, and a lot of the satire has become sharper with societal evolution, whether it be the satire about Political Overcorrectness and unhealthy things being illegal, or about iconoclasts actively chafing at rules just for existing and deliberately living in grungy filth and being proud of it.
As noted by Cracked, while San Angeles is supposed to be a Crapsaccharine World, to a modern viewer it can look quite livable and prosperous, at least if you don't mind milquetoast. The reason the police are so helpless against Simon Phoenix is because they won: they succeeded so well that it's been years since crime was ever a problem, leading to complacency. It's especially apparent when you compare it side-by-side with the dystopian hellscape of near-future Los Angeles seen in the opening.
Becomes less cool when the fascistic nature of the city becomes clear; the most sympathetic of observers to San Angeles' soft tyranny is bound to object when it's explained that even sexual intercourse is heavily restricted by law. Naturally, nearly everything else is controlled as well.
Evil Is Cool: Simon Phoenix is an entertaining and memorable villain. Really, what else can you expect from a Card-Carrying Villain placed in a "utopia" where they exchanged freedom for safety?
The film has strong themes of censorship, corporate committee-approved "politeness" laws, sex and abortions are outlawed with conception being handled artificially, commercial food is celebrated as fine dining while local chefs sweat in squalor and a general erasure of culture and personal freedom. To say these themes are increasingly relevant today would be an enormous understatement.
A premise particularly central to the film is that of the possibility of police forces becoming unable to deal with unfamiliar levels of criminality, or simply becoming out of tune with social demands, both of them being part of an ongoing debate today. The "We're police officiers!" meme from the film is often used in context.
Looking through the Cryo-Prison inmate list, Phoenix exclaims "Jeffrey Dahmer? I love that guy!" In 1994, Dahmer was bludgeoned to death in prison; the line was subsequently cut from a number of broadcasts.
The name "Scott Peterson" comes up during Huxley's access of the parole hearings. Presumably, this is not the man who kidnapped and murdered his pregnant wife in 2002.
Spartan crashes the 1970 442 through the floor of an Oldsmobile dealership in 2032. Oldsmobile was discontinued by GM in 2004.
Spartan tries to kiss Lenina, even though it's "breaking the law".
Taco Bell being replaced by Pizza Hut in some international cuts due to the fast food chain's lack of availability outside North America during The '90s due to failed attempts at expanding overseas becomes this when you consider that the restaurant's second attempt at overseas expansion during the mid 2010s has been more successful than its previous attempt.
Jack Black plays one of Edgar Friendly's loyal followers. Almost a decade later, Black would voice Zeke in Ice Age who, despite being in the same pack as Diego, who is voiced by Leary, is anything BUT loyal to him.
The three seashells.note They've supposedly replaced toilet paper, but are otherwise Noodle Implements, so many memes have sprung up about them. Taken to a new level during the COVID-19 pandemic due to toilet paper shortages caused by people panic-buying.
"We're police officiers! We're not trained to handle this kind of violence!"note Brought up when talking about real life cases of police inefficiency.
No Yay: Spartan's attraction to Huxley. Not only is she younger than his daughter, but due to growing up in a sheltered zeitgeist, she acts like a child most of the time.
One-Scene Wonder: The "Fuck you, Lady!" girl from the old news report. Both for the line coming from a small child and that the line can be seen as a Take That! to people criticizing others from handling situations they deem as bad despite never being in similar situations.
The Problem with Licensed Games: The 3DO version was fairly ambitious and even had exclusive footage of Sylvester Stallone. Unfortunately, the varied gameplay at times was lacking, such as Shoot 'Em Up levels where the objective was non-intuitive, and lots of lame one-on-one versus fights against Simon Phoenix.
Retroactive Recognition: Jack Black is a mook next to Friendly when he and Spartan are talking and gets his gun knocked down by Spartan. He has no speaking lines.
Because the citizens of San Angeles are so incredibly prissy, arrogant, and self righteous at times, coupled with the overall Crapsaccharine World Cocteau created, it's not hard to start cheering for Phoenix to just burn the whole thing down.
Could work the other way around too. Seeing how Los Angeles was a burning, wartorn hellscape at the start of the movie, the clean, propserous and utterly peaceful San Angeles that most inhabitants are perfectly happy living in could be considered a massive improvement. And Spartan's initial distaste for the city can appear as Skewed Priorities, as Political Overcorrectness seems like a somewhat less serious flaw than Axe-Crazy criminals running around murdering civilians left, right and center. Of course, Cocteau personally loses all sympathy by unleashing one of those criminals on his own city.
When the future cop car was jumping through the SAPD sign, the letters and symbols were each engraved on a separate plate of glass. Just before the car hits it, all but one of the plates are pre-broken; the unbroken one has a broken one on the other side of it, making it obvious it wasn't the car that did it.
While it's more Makeup Failure, but keep an eye on Phoenix's Heterochromia. Several times in the film his blue and brown eye noticeably switch sides between shots.
When Simon's hideout is blown up at the beginning, you can clearly hear people in the background cheering at this extraordinary demolition.note While in-universe, it could be other criminals cheering at the destruction, in real life, it's probably the noise of onlookers or crew; they actually destroyed a real building for that shot, an old Power & Water in Los Angeles that was in fact scheduled for demolition at any rate.
Strangled by the Red String: By the end of the movie Spartan has had at most two days to come to terms with his wife's death, yet he rebounds onto Huxley when they have little in common outside their professions.
The stunned, horrified expressions on the cops' faces as they watch Warden Smithers, who they seem to know and like, bleed out on a surveillance monitor are surprisingly sobering.
Any time Spartan mentions his dead wife and now adult daughter is depressing, especially when he learns his wife is dead and describes still being conscious when she visited the cryo prison.
Zachary Lamb is the last cop on the force to really remember the bad old days, and is an old friend of Spartan, but he barely appears after Spartan is woken up, when his interactions with Spartan and Huxley could have provided a long and satisfying subplot to the movie. And it could have been worse; a deleted scene had him reappear later in the movie, only to be murdered by Phoenix.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Given how the programming of both Spartan and Phoenix while they were frozen did have results it would have been interesting to see an actual felon who was reformed and made into a productive member of society that way (there's the piano singer at Taco Bell, but he's used only for a throwaway gag), and watch Spartan wrestle with the conflict between free will and a scumbag having been changed for the better.
Unintentional Period Piece: The whole film's premise of a future society where everything bad you say and do is banned is a pretty clear product of the Early '90s backlash to the concept of "Political Correctness" (although looked upon through the lens of late 2010s eyes, the "backlash" part falls into YMMV as a number of statements made in the film—or perhaps even looped around in The New '20s with the backlash against the "woke", which is just another form of political correctness).
The film was released in the early '90s, but has become a rich source of essays discussing how accurately it predicted the social conflicts of the The New '10s and The New '20s. The film's main storyline concerns conflict between Moral Guardians who have imposed tyrannical control on speech and behavior, and their ideological enemies are crude, filthy slobs who live in poverty and champion greater freedoms. It's also worth noting that Friendly, Phoenix, and even Spartan introduce a great deal of violence and destruction to a society that was more-or-less functioning before Phoenix showed up. The film leaves it up to the individual viewer to decide where they fall in this debate — in Spartan's own words at the end of the film, "[the San Angeles residents] need to get a little dirty, [the Scraps] need to get a lot clean. And somewhere in the middle, you'll figure it out."
The film also takes a nuanced look at the issue of Police Brutality: Spartan is unfairly criticized for his excessive force against criminals who do need it, but he makes it clear it's wrong to use that kind of force against people who steal out of desperation, reflecting modern-day debates over how police can do their jobs without violating the civil liberties of others. At the same time, going in the same vein as the above point, it also unintentionally puts a mirror up to the relative impotence of police forces in some jurisdictions in The New '20s.
Some have described Demolition Man as being one of the most libertarian movies ever made. One of the film's villains is a scientist who has basically created the ultimate nanny-state, where everything deemed bad for you has been outlawed. And Edgar Friendly and his followers, who are initially portrayed as terrorists, turn out to be sympathetic freedom fighters who want to make their own decisions without the overbearing government's influence. The worst thing they do is steal some food and spray graffiti.
The movie seems to take a Both Sides Have a Point approach to the issue of police conduct: yes, police officers need to be able to act against dangerous felons, but they also have to be held account for their actions and not use that force against relatively minor offenders.
The entire movie has been treated as a general critique of California's politics since the film's contemporary times, in which the state is often touted as a socially liberal and wealthy state while also facing housing issues, income inequality (especially between the income between executives and employees in tech sector), and harsh criminal code (having Three Strikes Laws and Death Penalty). At the same time, as noted in Values Resonance, it has also become an unintended mirror for many of the problems facing California in The New '20s, and not just in the impotence of its policing, as many of the above issues have gotten exponentially worse over time, and have spread beyond the state.
Woolseyism: Some versions of the movie replace Taco Bell with Pizza Hut. This is because Taco Bell wasn’t as familiar in some countries at the time.
For the pinball:
Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Some players will always select the "Freeze" award on the Cryo-Claw — it provides progress towards multiballs.
So Bad, It's Good: The promotional video for the pinball, which attempts to duplicate the atmosphere and special effects of the movie on a shoestring budget, while hyping up the game's gun grip controllers, all intermixed with actual film clips. It fails spectacularly, but has an innocent appeal, like watching an eight-year-old attempt to duplicate a Michael Bay film in his backyard.
by Cracked, while San Angeles is supposed to be a Crapsaccharine World, to a modern viewer it can look quite livable and prosperous, at least if you don't mind milquetoast. The reason the police are so helpless against Simon Phoenix is because they won: they succeeded so well that it's been years since crime was ever a problem, leading to complacency. It's especially apparent when you compare it side-by-side with the dystopian hellscape of near-future Los Angeles seen in the opening.