In Germany it's Pizza Hut, too. I always assumed that this is because nobody in Germany would have had any idea what Taco Bell is, while Pizza Hut was trying to break into the market around that time.
Not of you are European. Because then you have no idea what Taco Bell even is (unless you spend a lot of time studying American pop culture on the internet).
Sure, but it also meant to be a joke and if you don't know that Taco Bell is some sort of fast food restaurant you don't get why the character acts so confused about the notion to get invited to taco bell. You get the joke if you replace Taco Bell with Pizza Hut, though. Like, the first time I watched Ant-man I was totally confused by the "I take whatever is hot and fresh" joke because I had no idea what Baskin Robins is.
Demolition Man was blatant with the Taco Bell advertising but they could get away with it because it was completely acceptable as part of their comically dystopian worldbuilding.
I let it slide because it was played for laughs and successfully so. Product placement is not inherently bad, it's only bad if it distracts from the film or feels out of place. The Taco Bell thing was not clumsy, it fit perfectly with the future parody tone of the movie
I am european and in the 90s I knew Pizza Hut existed. I found out taco bell was a thing when I started hearing english podcast like material in like 2008. The general public probably still doesn't know Taco Bell exists.
Same with Bladerunner. I don’t think the Taco Bell was bad product placement. If anything, it made Taco Bell the but of the joke. It was so unlikely for Stallone to go to Taco Bell for a celebration because it has a reputation for crappy did in the 1990s. They are playing off that.
Alioon6, You are fined one credit for violation of the verbal morality statute. Yes I scrolled all this way to find someone swearing to make that joke, God I'm bored
In the beggining of the video they say few times that it was a 1991 movie and then later they do say 1993 but they never adress their error. I know it is a nitpick, but still it is weird that they would slip like that.
FUN FACT: In the UK all Taco Bell moments were replaced with Pizza Hut branding. This is because Taco Bell had no presense in England until around 2013. EU hygene and nutrition laws prohibited Taco Bell from operating in Europe until recently.
So Rich's go-to example of product placement is the raisin bench in Back to the Future... Apparently he didn't notice the more obvious stuff like Calvin Klein, Pepsi Free, Tab, or I don't know, a time machine made out of a fucking Delorean?!
Fun Fact: Demolition Man is the reason why the Taco Bell logo we know today looks the way it does. Taco Bell corporate liked the Taco Bell logo in Demolition Man so much that they redesigned the official logo in a similar style. The more you know!
"What seems to be your boogle?" LOL. Love it! I'm the actor in "Demolition Man" that said those lines. One of my most favorite gigs! Love this video. You guys are awesome!
The joke's on Rich. It did only take 30 years for us to develop into a society without toilet paper, no-contact social interactions, and where Taco Bell rules the world (or at least rules weekends after midnight.)
I remember watching a cut of this movie on TV when I was a kid and Sandra Bullock explains the three seashells. The first is for the sides, the second is for the middle, and the last is for scraping up what the first two shells didn't get. The only explanation I can think of this is that I know TV stations make their own edits of films using assembly cuts so they can thematically edit in cuts to commercials.
Yes, we need a prequel trilogy to explain the intricate details of the political jostling that created this situation. We could lighten the mood with a wacky character for the kids, but really he's the key to all of this.
I disagree with the Taco Bell advertising criticism in Demolition Man. I thought it was funny at the time, maybe because it was still a novel concept, but I think it's less annoying when they make it so obvious and integrated into the world. It transcends simple brand recognition and becomes a satirical commentary on the watering down of culture and cuisine in this hypothetical future.
It's also less intrusive because of the food the restaurant serves. Had they been serving actual Taco Bell food, it would have been harder to believe. But instead, because it is some fancy stuff, it just becomes one more silly thing (in a good way) in a fun movie.
Thread Bomb, I have just rewatched Demolition Man and thought the same thing. It also works well with the bit about jingles being popular retro music. In a way, it is a clever way to draw a comparison between our 'brutish' and their 'pure' reality. The status Taco Bell gained is ironic.
Worked in the EU cut as well, it didn't even register as product placement to me as a kid because it was so mocking and irreverent. I also associated the rise of blatant product placement more with Brosnan-era James Bond.
The decapitation was foreshadowed in the very beginning of the film. Phoenix says, "I'd lose my head if it wasn't attached." and they zoomed in on Stallone's face as he says, "I'll keep that in mind" very dramatically.
I'm with Jack. If Stallone was anything but a big dumb action man, this movie would have been far different and far worse. Intentional or otherwise, Stallone was EXACTLY what he needed to be here.
The ironic thing is...Stallone is far from dumb. He's incredibly articulate and intelligent. He plays dumb because thats what the roles require at the time.
Calling Simon Phonix as "just one gangster" is a bit of an understatement, the implication is the he *is* the reason why LA was such a criminal hellhole in 1996, if I recall correctly its stated in the intro scene that he united all the gangs into an army and took over part of the city. Him being a ridiculously over-the-top supervillain is what makes the short time span for societal shift to sorta work, as the people would be sick and scared of that much mayhem and accepting of anybody promising to fix society so that it would never happen again.
True, not to mention the fact that while Simon was frozen his brain was fed advanced training in hacking, terrorism and undoubtedly all matters martial, essentially turning him into a specialist in toppling societies and creating mayhem, while Mr. Man was brainwashed into being an avid knitter. Furthermore perhaps the population at large, apart from some individuals who later formed the rebelling faction, also received similar brainwashing to make them more receptive to the society Cocteau built? This movie would definitely have benefited from an extra 10-15 minutes of worldbuilding.
Just about every other night I ride home from work and get taco bell because I'm too lazy to cook. Every night I get to my pc to check youtube for new vids to watch while I eat. 80 percent of the time I watch a RLM video, it's while I'm eating taco bell. Thanks, RLM, for putting my pathetic life into perspective. You're truly heroes.
Funny enough, I'm actually in shape and I suppose it's due to the fact that I commute on a bicycle literally everywhere. Probably 10 miles a day average. so tired though... fuck.
well, to add insult to injury, I can't actually eat too much fiber. I have ulcerative colitis, so too much fiber and I'll usually just trigger a flare. For some reason, the taco bell doesn't seem to affect my uc all that much or else I would've stopped it ages ago. That or the meds I'm taking is working well. Either case, I definitely need to stop. Fucking expensive for that cheap processed shit. >_>
Yeah, it used to be Dunkin Donuts, but I'm in a similar position now. Those Taco Bell bastards took them down a few months ago, artillery cannons and drive-thru's are a brutal combo. If you can't beat em...
I heard a rumor that Wesley Snipes loves the Joker and always wanted to play him. He realized he would never be the Joker, so he decided to play Simon as if he were playing the Joker.
Simon Phoenix is a better version of the Joker than whatever Jared Leto was trying to accomplish. Keeping it white for white sake would make the next Batman worse if the decision was Snipes vs Leto.
and funnily enough, the idea for the new Joker was to make him more gangsta, it seems? at least that's what I can tell from the tattoos and teeth. on another note, it's kind of funny that because now everything on the internet is about "SJW cuckolds" vs "alt-right neo-nazis" the idea of a black person being an option for a clown character has to fall directly into this dumb "war" of "ideas".
@@frankmerker630 You know seeing this movie makes me wonder, has there ever been a movie to age this well? I mean, we've seen lots of movies nowadays that have aged poorly but this movie works FAR better today than it would have back on release to you point.
The low point of Stallone'dom was the late 90's, early 2000's, not the early 90's. He still had Cliffhanger and Copland, but later on, it was Detox, Eye See You, and Get Carter
See how it reaches in and grabs a Taco, asserting its dominance. Meanwhile, the other mammals are unnmoved by its assertion of dominance; they stand their ground and continue their movie analysis ritual.
19:36 I love the backstory behind Stallone doing 'Stop, Or My Mom Will Shoot.' Schwarzenegger was expressing interest in doing the movie, so Stallone jumped on to beat him to the punch. But it turns out, Schwarzenegger knew it was going to be shit and just bluffed to get Stallone to do it.
They use them to scrape their butt. If the seashells were buttons then their use would have been too obvious simply from experimentation. Especially to someone living in LA. The fact that he had to ask what the point of the three seashells was meant that he had recognized that they weren't just decorations on the toilet.
The first two are used together to scoop the majority. The last one is used to scrap clean. In the future if your button isn't inflamed, you're doing it wrong.
Nah, that was just awkward. Besides... clothed women are hotter than naked ones. It leaves more to the imagination, accentuates the figure in special ways and people look pretty much the same naked anyway. Cool outfits are the way to set themselves apart and to make women look especially hot. ;) Oh, I just realized that I admitted that I find women hot. Please everybody, don't sue me for being sexist and don't call the PC police! Mellow greetings!
Seeing Sandra Bullock in that dope outfit at a very young age made me utterly fascinated by women in uniform. Of course, all the satire at the time went over my head, I just loved the action, one liners, and of course, Sandra ;)
Stalone was tricked into "stop or my mom will shoot" Him and Arnie were in a rivalry and Arnie "leaked" he was gonna star in it, so Stallone did the film. And he hated Arnie for it
Interesting. Estelle Getty was also tricked into doing that movie because she was not interested in doing an action film. Or maybe rather a film where she has to shoot a gun. I forget exactly. Something like that.
Hey Rich remember Wesley Snipes character wasn't just some ordinary gangsta. No sir the character Wesley portraid had super gangsta abilities uploaded into him before he was thawed out.
Not really, unless in a facetious strawman kind of way. If this review had come out this year, I'm sure that the comments would be filled to the brim with snide remarks and emotive tirades about "wokism". But that's not what's being depicted in Demolition Man. What's being depicted is an authoritarian means of controlling the minds, thoughts and actions of society. It's not any different in its fundamental reasoning than the doublespeak, double think and Newspeak depicted in Nineteen Eighty-Four. And the motivation behind it has absolutely nothing to do with any current concept of political correctness let alone "wokism". In fact it's much closer to where the term political correctness came from, which was describing how authoritarian regimes, such as in the old USSR, Cultural Revolution China and Red Scare period America would police the citizenry for "thought crimes" against the approved political dogma of the government. Political correctness in the context of Demolition Man is just another way to achieve the same end while also convincing the citizenry that they are not oppressed. It is similar to how Fahrenheit 451 describes the gradual slide of its society into authoritarian oppression. The government preyed upon a citizenry that was anxious, angry, afraid and confused about the constant tension of an informational, intersectional, pluralist and multicultural world. In other words, there was a "culture war" and the government capitalised and leveraged those fears and attitudes to exert control over society to its own ends. In the case of Fahrenheit 451, it was through a similar outcome as Demolition Man, but ultimately it was indistinguishable from typical fascism.
You know, it would have added an extra distopian element to that world had Stallone been awakened *after* his sentence was up. Way after. With the explanation being that they didn't think those "cavemen" in the prisons could be reintegrated into society because they were too violent, so they just kept them all there.
They also predicted that Arnold was governer of Cali LOL, and salt was forbidden, which is funny because in Mexico they did made salt forbidden in restaurants (sort of)
The thing is... A lot of their issues with the movie can be summed up as "That's the point." Dennis Leary's character having rants that just sound like his standup, that's the point. Stallone being big bad action man in a future where everyone is a pacifist who don't know how to defend themselves, that's the point.
funny story, the whole salt thing may not actually be true, there's never been a full study of the effects of too much salt in your diet. We know that you will die if you eat a huge amount in one day but the evidence that too much salt over a continued period is spotty at best. It's one of those weird things where doctors just parrot this as it encourages the eating of fresher meals as salt is often an additive in the less healthy meals.
Actually, Taco Bell tacos have very little sodium compared to almost any other fast food item. Meanwhile, burgers from McD's or BK are practically made of salt with meat flavoring. And because they the tacos are rather low in carbs and actual sugars, they're not so bad for die-a-bee-tees.
The thing is, I don't think it really does "predict the 2020s" in anything but a facetious strawman kind of way. If this review had come out this year, I'm sure that the comments would be filled to the brim with snide remarks and emotive tirades about "wokism". But that's not what's being depicted in Demolition Man. What's being depicted is an authoritarian means of controlling the minds, thoughts and actions of society. It's not any different in its fundamental reasoning than the doublespeak, double think and Newspeak depicted in Nineteen Eighty-Four. And the motivation behind it has absolutely nothing to do with any current concept of political correctness let alone "wokism". In fact it's much closer to where the term political correctness came from, which was describing how authoritarian regimes, such as in the old USSR, Cultural Revolution China and Red Scare period America would police the citizenry for "thought crimes" against the approved political dogma of the government. Political correctness in the context of Demolition Man is just another way to achieve the same end while also convincing the citizenry that they are not oppressed. It is similar to how Fahrenheit 451 describes the gradual slide of its society into authoritarian oppression. The government preyed upon a citizenry that was anxious, angry, afraid and confused about the constant tension of an informational, intersectional, pluralist and multicultural world. In other words, there was a "culture war" and the government capitalised and leveraged those fears and attitudes to exert control over society to its own ends. In the case of Fahrenheit 451, it was through a similar outcome as Demolition Man, but ultimately it was indistinguishable from typical fascism.
the thing about Demolition Man is almost all of the things they throw in for craven commercial reasons actually kind of work in the context of the film, even Denis Leary doing his stand up routine. It's kind of brilliant if you view it from the lens of how 90s culture would imagine a relatively recent future.
Regarding the Back to the Future / California Raisin thing... I've heard that commentary a few times. Rich doesn't get the story quite right here (I'm not trashing on Rich, just correcting the story). Universal made the deal with the California Raisin Board to feature raisins in the movie, with the promise that them being featured in BTTF would "do for raisins what E.T. did for Reese's Pieces." Both Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis were frustrated with this. Bob Gale is the one telling the story in the commentary. Part of the problem was that it wasn't for a specific brand of raisins (i.e. Sunmaid Raisins)... it was just raisins (think of it like the old "got milk?" commercials, which was never for a specific brand of milk like Deans or something). So it wasn't like they could show a box of raisins since it wasn't a brand specific deal. At one point it was suggested that they have a bowl of raisins next to the punch bowl at the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance, but in the commentary, Bob Gale explains that on film "a bowl of raisins is going to look like a bowl of dirt." So when all was said and done, having the general "California Raisins" logo on the park bench was the result of the deal. While I'm sure having the bum laying on the bench didn't help, it really wasn't the bum specifically that upset them... it was the fact that simply having the logo on the bench at the end in no way, shape, or form came even remotely close to the promise of BTTF giving raisins the same level of attention and promotion as E.T. did with Reese's Pieces. It was at that point that the California Raisin Board got upset, wanting their money back and was otherwise ready to sue Universal. When Universal brought up the issue to Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis, their response was basically that if they get involved in the dispute, they are going to testify in favor of the Raisin Board because it was a bad, ridiculous deal to begin with that had to realistic chance of giving them the kind of promotion they were looking for. So, the Board got their money back.
Thomas Wheeler haha, I couldn't believe it when I saw it. I've been looking for someone else who comment on it. would love to play some analog games with these dudes.
Even Sandra Bullock's character is a Brave New World reference. Lenina Huxley: : Lenina (love interest-ish in BNW) and Huxley (Aldous Huxley wrote BNW)
For those of you too young to clearly remember the early 90's, I can tell you that nobody back then thought the hellish city-scape of 1996 as depicted in the film was terribly unrealistic. The Rodney King riots took place in the summer of 1992, probably during the filming of this movie.
I always thought this movie was about a world run by corporations, highly sanitized to please everybody and super generic, people listen to advertisements as music, Taco Bell, poor people displaced out of the view of the rich. To me that is what was being satirized a safe world brought to you by Corporations.
Good job guys! I can remember going to see Demoltion man in the theater with my mom, she wanted to see Stallone's ass. Can you believe the movie was rated R? I a couple of swear words in an otherwise almost bloodless action movie (with frozen head of course.) I could have sworn in my pre-teen mind I saw more of Sandra Bullock in the "sex" scene than I have seen in subsequent viewings as an adult. I have to say, the Taco Bell in Demolition man doesn't seem like much of an endorsement. The bemusement of Stallone at the fact that Taco Bell won, the odd haute cuisine? The movie seemed to push ratburgers, best damn burger Stallone had had in years. In addition, the sea shell conceit was the best! I love that they thought up a system for something so basic and made it just flat out as incomprehensible to the audience as it was to the main character. I also liked Stallone's solution!
I was pretty much gonna post the same thing. They seemed to have already gotten rid of things like due process (inherently individualistic concept) even in 1996 to have frozen John Spartan in the first place and I'm guessing it was already going downhill ideologically before the technocracy was installed so it's not such a big leap. I see us moving towards a similar kinda technocracy although at the same time it's getting a lot more chaotic like the movie depicts 1996, isn't it.
@@Wolfshifter Yeah, I'm not gonna lie I'm kinda terrified. The Korean war was in the 1950's and they're in a way more extreme situation than San Angeles. 200 years is overshooting by miles. It can go Brave New World or 1984 and it can happen in increments or violent revolution but it's naïve to think it takes that long or even that it's impossible for us. That naivety is what allows it to happen and it seems to be the standard right now.
@@dreamsof3dspace555 I’ve been in a weird zen state for the last month or so. All these things must come to pass and all that. The rubber band effect is real and the Fourth Turning book correctly correlates the patterns of the timeline for four generations to go through this cycle. I have hope. Like my dad pointed out to me. On 9/11, CNN posted a poll asking how many people would give up some freedoms for security. 10% said NO. A month later, they ran the same poll and 30% said NO. He said “This shows that in a crisis, only 1 in 10 people can keep their wits about them when those orchestrating a crisis seek to take advantage of them. A month later, only 2 join them. 10 years later, 2 more will join. 20 years and hopefully more than half will catch on.” I’ll carry that lesson forever and pass it on.
It is sci fi. It is social commentary on the future. And the fact that it is so quotable means the writers or ad libbing actors really hit their lines.
......................"they needed to make it 250 years in the future, 30 years is too soo for such transformation" ....loool, WHAT? year 2020 was enough to achieve it!
Yes it's unbelievable Taco Bell became a fancy restaurant same as TGI Fridays, Olive Garden, Old Chicago, Applebees, Pizza Hut, and other restaurants that aren't fast food restaurants. McDonald's and Burger King it would have been believable if either of those 2 powerhouse fast food restaurants won the Franchise wars.
This movie was Way ahead of its time. It is a smart action movie from the early 90s with a lot of social commentary and a great combo of sci fi and action. All I can say to the idiotic teenagers and adults that did not go to see this when I was a little kid is "WHAT'S YOUR BOGGLE?" I remember seeing this for the first time in the late 90s on NBC Sunday night when they played a movie. The edited version was still really good and I remember even as like a 10 yr old this movie seemed smarter than the average action movie. The one problem for me is THEY CUT OUT THE PART WITH JESSIE VENTURA GETTING KILLED AND MOST OF HIS SCENES!
Yeah I don't agree that this is a smart movie 😂 The premise and world building is pretty bog standard sci-fi, and the rest of it is just scene after scene of "so bad that it's good".
Fun fact. One of the earliest examples of product placement was in the 1961 film One, Two, Three. It was about a coke businessman in Berlin before the wall fell. But a bunch of executives on the film who represented Pepsi were unhappy that Coke basically got an entire movie of advertising. So the director threw in one instance of Pepsi in the movie. At the end, the main character is buying his family cokes from a coke machine. When he buys his own, a pepsi comes out and he grimaces at it. Then the movie ends.
Demolition Man opened on October 8, 1993, only a few months after the terrific Stallone film, Cliffhanger (that was May 1993). So the movie starts three years after it was released, not five. As for product placement, that was going on way before BTTF. Remember the box of Cheerios in Superman - The Movie? The Bond films also have lots of product placement in them. There was a random AMC car dealership in 1974's The Man With The Golden Gun.
BTTF movies had some pretty egregious product placement: Pepsi, Nike, Mattel, Pizza Hut, Black & Decker, The Weather Channel, Texaco, 7-Eleven, AT&T, etc
WalterLiddy I was responding to Rich's comment that he didn't remember product placement before Back to the Future (1985). I've been pointing out that there was product placement before that movie, and far more prominent.
Don't forget stallones 1991 movie Oscar when discussing his low point and the Pepsi free gag in back to the future in regards to earliest memorable product placements.
The timeline was probably chosen because Bullok's character was at one point meant to be Spartan's daughter... can you imagine the kind of awkward regarding the vr scene? 😂
The time period thing is something that always bothered me about Fallout 2. You play the Vault Dweller's grandkid but are from a totally tribal society that was founded by people from Vault 13. So in 80 years they went from technologically advanced to believing in spirits and whatnot. Like the Village Elder and Hakunin are only one generation removed from the original founders but are super weird and superstitious.
The inability to comprehend the vast societal change in a short amount of time shows lack of historical understanding. You only need to look ~100 years back to see the same amount of change happen in Europe in the same timeframe. Take 1910-1950. Europe goes from imperial culture with strong religion influence to Anglo-American consumerist society. All because of two huge world wars that destroyed the culture completely. The problem isn't the 40 year timeframe in the movie. It's the earthquake. U.S. needed to be conquered and have foreign powers write a new constitution for this shift to happen in 40+ years. You can see changes of similar magnitude in for example China. Or Ostblock states that joined EU after the Soviet union collapse. 40 years isn't a problem, Richie. The calamity is.
The repeated "250 years" is an overkill for such a little change. Even ~110 years ago from now Russia still had serfs that were owned by the nobility as property and had little to no rights. If you take 250 years, that's barely the start of industrial revolution.
