What the ‘90s thought the future would be is a fascinating subgenre to me. Most are Blade Runner knockoff dystopias like Highlander 2 and Freejack, but Demolition Man went the opposite way! Everything’s peaceful and lush, but it sucks!
The new Arrow 4K UHD includes something I’d only heard about in legend. The international cut is included in 4K. The only difference is every time they say Taco Bell they dub Pizza Hut over it, though it sounds like Stallone did the voiceover for those lines. And they put Pizza Hut logos over Taco Bell in a few scenes. Still fun.
On 4K UHD, this is a sharp future, both the gritty apocalyptic distant 1996, and the clean 2032. It’s nice to see what I now recognize as Los Angeles structures that I still drive by today. That was lost on me in the ‘90s.
The 4K never goes full shadow, even in the underground rebel scenes, but the black police uniforms make nice silhouettes.
Director Marco Brambillla and screenwriter Daniel Waters give a brand new commentary where they actually discuss the studio politics at play. They mention deleted scenes so it’s unfortunate they were never found to be included in any edition. Those include John Spartan meeting his grown up daughter.
Waters explains not only the origin of the three seashells but where people have told them their theories about them. They do briefly talk about Lori Petty, specifically which scene she shot before she was replaced.
Critic Mike White gives another new commentary in which he compiles a lot of good research and interviews he did himself. Sometimes he confirms a Brambilla anecdote from another source.
Additional interviews with several of the below the line crew members reveal good anecdotes about specific problems each department faced. Often those issues involved cast, so this is really deeper inside Demolition Man than I’ve ever found in the last 30 years.