Sylvester Stallone’s Surprising Take on Which of His Movies Has Aged the Best

Sylvester Stallone has starred in plenty of now-classic films, but he has an unexpected pick for which one he thinks still holds up.

Stallone, 79, appeared in a video for GQ on Oct. 25 where he revisited many of his iconic roles. When 1993’s Demolition Man came up, the actor said, “I think it was a great movie. It’s one of the few films that really hangs up.” He also added that the dystopian world the movie depicts is “almost close to happening.” He called the movie “very contemporary” and “really well done.”

In the sci-fi action flick, Stallone plays Detective John Spartan, who’s brought out of suspended animation in 2032 to help catch his old nemesis Simon Phoenix, played by Wesley Snipes. Suspended animation is used like a prison to trap people deemed too violent. In the video, Stallone said the movie shows “the gentle-ization of society, everything’s so meek.”

He also praised Snipes, 63, at length. “Wesley was wild,” he said. “He’s a wild man, very energetic, good fighter.” He said that during some of their fight scenes, he was wearing protection, so Snipes “could really lay into me, and I could feel it and it was good.”

“Wesley, he really dug down there and gave a very memorable character,” he said, noting he was “at the top of his game.” Stallone also praised the set design, noting of some of the intricate set pieces (like a giant claw), “Those things really worked.”

The Rocky star noted that the movie involved two of his “most dangerous stunts.” One involved a giant claw, where, if the hydraulics went wrong, “the strength of those metal claws would tear you up.”

The other was when he was cryogenically frozen. “They put me in this round tub, thick plexiglass, you couldn’t break it with a sledgehammer,” he said. “And they started pouring in warm oil and it’s filling up, filling up to here, and right here, it’s supposed to cut.” If the oil poured in for more than 30 seconds, he wouldn’t be able to get out because the lid was bolted on. As a back up, they had people with sledgehammers and hatchets as a back up, but after they finished shooting the stunt, “They hit it 20 times, couldn’t crack it.”

Demolition Man also starred Sandra Bullock, Nigel Hawthorne, Benjamin Bratt and Denis Leary. It debuted No. 1 at the box office when it hit theaters in October 1993. 

Back in 2020, Stallone told his Instagram followers that a sequel was in the works. “We’re working on it right now with Warner Bros., and it’s looking fantastic,” he said. “So that should come out. That’s going to happen.” 

However, there have been no updates since then. Director Marco Brambilla told Yahoo in 2023 that he thought the movie was too odd to get greenlit today.

“There was a lot of interesting experimentation going on,” he said. “The film was quite commercial at the time but it still had some eccentric elements that I threw in that I may not have been able to do today.”

He added, “In fact, if I was making it today, you probably couldn’t say the things we said in the context of a big-budget science fiction movie.”