Sylvester Stallone has had a spectacular career. A bona fide industry legend, he’s one of only two actors in history to have starred in a box-office No. 1 film across six consecutive decades (the other is Harrison Ford, if you’re curious). Throughout his career, his film projects have generated over $7.5 billion worldwide. But when asked which of his many explosive movies has aged best, Stallone didn’t point to any of his more famous works; instead, he surprisingly named his 1993 sci-fi flick Demolition Man, describing it as “one of the few films that really hold up.”
Speaking on GQ’s Iconic Characters series, Stallone reflected on the dystopian action-comedy that paired him with Wesley Snipes and Sandra Bullock in a futuristic Los Angeles where crime has been eradicated, mostly because everyone’s too polite to commit any. “I think it was a great movie. It’s one of the few films that really hold up,” Stallone said. “And it’s almost close to happening. There’s a certain kind of mannerism… we call it the ‘gentilization of society.’ I thought it was just very contemporary. I thought it was really well done.”
For the uninitiated, Demolition Man follows Stallone’s John Spartan, a hard-nosed cop cryogenically frozen after a failed rescue mission, only to be thawed decades later to chase down Snipes’ flamboyant villain, Simon Phoenix, in a pacified future that’s forgotten how to handle violence. The movie was a box-office hit, raking in $159 million worldwide, and has since become a cult favorite among action fans.
Despite its eventual success, the film’s road to completion was anything but smooth. “It wasn’t an easy movie to make,” Stallone admitted. The script went through multiple rewrites, and Stallone wasn’t even the studio’s first choice. Steven Seagal was initially attached to play Spartan. Alongside Cliffhanger and Cop Land, Demolition Man stands as one of his more well-received action flicks of the ’90s, holding a fair 66% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Speaking of the difficulty he encountered on the set of Demolition Man, Stallone added;
“I thought the set design was brilliant. It was what we call a practical set. Those things really worked. Those are the two most dangerous stunts I’ve ever done, is the one with that giant claw… Sometimes the hydraulics would go sideways, and the strength of those metal claws would tear you up.
“And the other thing is, when they froze me originally, and they put me in this round tub [with] thick plexiglass, you couldn’t break it with a sledgehammer. And they started pouring in warm oil, and it’s filling up, and it’s supposed to cut. If it goes longer than 30 seconds, it’s going to go to here [point to his mouth], and you can’t get out.”
What Has Sylvester Stallone Been Up to Recently?
Decades later, Demolition Man feels strangely prophetic, predicting everything from cancel culture to sanitized public discourse. These days, Stallone is heavily involved with Tulsa King, the smash-hit Paramount+ crime series where he plays Dwight “The General” Manfredi, a New York mobster rebuilding his empire in Oklahoma. His most recent action thrillers, Alarum and Armour failed to match the success of previous Stallone action flicks. Now late into his 70s, he has also been busy producing and mentoring through the Creed spin-offs. Stallone wrote and produced the 2025 action thriller, A Working Man, starring Jason Statham.
Release Date
October 8, 1993
Runtime
115 minutes
Director
Marco Brambilla
Writers
Daniel Waters, Peter M. Lenkov, Robert Reneau
Producers
Howard G. Kazanjian, Joel Silver, Michael Levy
