Demolition Man Cast: Then and Now (1993 vs 2023)

In 1993, Marco Brambilla made his directorial debut with the sci-fi action film Demolition Man. Sylvester Stallone stars as John Spartan — a former Los Angeles cop cryogenically frozen in the year 1996 as punishment for the deaths of civilians he was trying to save from his nemesis Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes).

When Phoenix unexpectedly escapes in the year 2032, he finds a world unprepared for him. Violent crime has been completely eradicated and even the police of this supposedly utopian future have no idea how to handle him.

Spartan is unfrozen to help the authorities catch Phoenix, and along the way Spartan discovers some of the bizarre ways in which the world has changed: In 2032, every restaurant is Taco Bell, people are disgusted by physical contact with each other, and toilet paper has been jettisoned for the mysterious Three Seashells.

In a lot of ways, Demolition Man has proven more prophetic than anyone involved in the film ever meant it to be. But that isn’t the only reason it remains relevant.

Along with the unique world-building and entertaining action, one of the keys to Demolition Man’s success was a great cast. And unlike a lot of films that are more than a couple of decades old, a lot of cast are still very much active in the entertainment industry — one of them was even governor of Minnesota!

While you can’t exactly say Sylvester Stallone “hasn’t aged a day” since he played John Spartan, if you were to say he hasn’t slowed down at all, that’d be a tougher claim to counter.

Decades have passed since the release of Demolition Man, and Stallone still has a pretty full work schedule, with many projects that seem just as physically demanding as the 1993 flick. Among other things,

he still stars in the action star battle royal Expendables franchise, as escape artist Ray Breslin in the prison action thriller Escape Plan movies, and in 2019 he ended the Rambo series with Rambo: Last Blood.

Not to mention that while he isn’t the one in the ring anymore, he continues to reprise the iconic role of boxer Rocky Balboa as Adonis Johnson’s (Michael B. Jordan) manager in the Creed films.