Character page for Demolition Man.
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John Spartan
Played By: Sylvester Stallone
Dubbed By: Richard Darbois (European French)
The titular hero of the film, a badass loose cannon cop who fights against crime lord Simon Phoenix. After apprehending him in his hideout but accidentally killing a bunch of hostages in the process in 1996, he is sentenced to cryo-prison with his enemy. He is thawed out 36 years later in San Angeles by the police department, who require his help in stopping the escaped Phoenix. However, he finds himself chafing at how sanitized and pusillanimous their society has become, and yearns for the freedom of his old time. His crass language, frank attitude, ignorance of San Angeles' ways, and lack of respect for Raymond Cocteau's authority in turn gets on the nerves of the police.
- And I Must Scream: Criminals aren't supposed to be aware of the time spent as a Human Popsicle. But John spent the time dreaming of the innocents that he didn't save (not knowing that Phoenix had already killed them), and seeing his wife pounding on the ice cube he was in. When pressed, Cocteau uncomfortably states that "The side effects of the freezing process are unavoidable".
- Blood Knight: Averted with Spartan. Despite his reputation as a Destructive Savior, he doesn't revel in violence. He can distinguish between psychos like Phoenix, and people stealing to feed themselves like Edgar Friendly.
- Cowboy Cop: John Spartan deconstructs it. He's got all the extreme combat skills, the Bond One Liners, the trail of destruction in his wake... but he's also uncomfortable with a lot of his reputation, and clearly doesn't love violence for the sake of it. His superiors are none too fond of him, either. He is distinctly bothered with Lenina casting him in this mold, going so far as to sulkily protest that "I just do my job... and things get demolished." John is also shown to be much more sensitive, and vulnerable, than you'd expect. He was also a family man with a wife and daughter. Furthermore, going in half-cocked all action movie style at the beginning is partly what gets Spartan frozen in the first place; in originally apprehending Phoenix, he's led into a trap, and people die because of it. Although he is later revealed to have been framed as they were dead already, which is why the heat scans didn't show them, and only Phoenix's gang. In short, he only operated the way he did because he was operating in a Crapsack World and that was what it took to take down the kind of people causing it. Huxley eventually changes her assessment of Spartan from a "blow-up-the-bad-guy-while-grinning type" to "the moody-gunslinger-who-will-only-draw-when-he-must type."
- Spartan: Huxley, enough! This isn't the Wild West. The Wild West wasn't even the Wild West. Hurting people's not a good thing! Well, sometimes it is, but not when it's a bunch of people looking for something to eat!
- Destructive Saviour: Heavily lampshaded with Spartan's nickname also being the film's title. It's also one of the reasons why he's put into cryofreeze as well.
- Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: After Spartan's car crash, Huxley comments that his uniform is in shambles.Spartan: Don't worry, I can fix it later. All I need's a needle and thread. (Beat) I really didn't say that, did I? Shit!
- Got Volunteered: The San Angeles police realize they don't know how to deal with Phoenix, but luckily, the guy who beat him last time is also in the Cryo-Prison. Despite otherwise being a Chessmaster, Cocteau is visibly surprised that they thought outside the box like that, but hides it well enough.
- Hidden Depths: At first introduced as the stereotypical one-liner slinging macho Cowboy Cop hero common in action movies at the time, he turns out to actually have a much more nuanced view of his profession than initially believed. Contrary to his reputation, he doesn't like using excessive force and is firmly against needlessly beating down the desperate crooks like Edgar Friendly's gang. It's just that his time period was populated by absolute lunatics like Simon Phoenix, so he didn't have much of a choice in how he approached things.
- Hollywood Law: There is absolutely no legal merit to whatever charges were brought against Officer John Spartan to justify making him a Human Popsicle. A prosecutor would have had to provide evidence of either criminal neglect or willful malice, and the deaths of the hostages should have all been added to Simon Phoenix's charges under Felony Murder statutes. One can only presume the LA courts had all gone to hell in the wake of Simon's rampage among everything else.
- I Did What I Had to Do: As he puts it, he just does his job, and things get demolished.
- Insult Backfire:Taco Bell patron: What would you say if I called you a brutish fossil, symbolic of a decayed era gratefully forgotten?
John Spartan: I don't know... thanks? - Martial Pacifist: John Spartan is clearly a Destructive Savior. He had no qualms about destroying a mall to a save a girl. But he doesn't enjoy violence, and can distinguish between hardcore criminals like Simon Phoenix who need excessive force, and petty crooks like Edgar Friendly who only commit crime because they are forced to the margins of society.John Spartan: Hurting people's not a good thing! Okay, sometimes it is, but not when it's a bunch of people looking for something to eat!
- Meaningful Name: John Spartan is a mighty warrior like the Spartans of old.
- Nice Guy: Believe it or not, he firmly embodies this trope as opposed to the wisecracking musclebound jock that Stallone usually plays. Violence notwithstanding, Spartan is consistently shown to be a kind-hearted and considerate man who prioritizes the safety, lives and happiness of others above his own; he immediately shows compassion and empathy towards the Scraps upon finding out they are stealing to feed their loved ones, and in spite of having eaten a burger made of rats warmly compliments its cook because rats is all she has left to cook with. Even though Lenina proved herself a competent warrior and would have been invaluable aid in his final battle with Phoenix, Spartan incapacitates her to keep her safe upon seeing how it broke her kind heart to kill even in self-defense. To John Spartan, nothing comes before protecting the lives and dignity of the innocent, not a million-dollar shopping-mall, nor even his own life; violence is the unfortunately necessary means to achieving that end, and just because he is good at it does not mean he actually likes it.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
- In 1996, Spartan accidentally destroys Phoenix's lair due to Phoenix lighting gasoline that then came into contact with C4 explosive barrels. The firefighters found dead bodies in the rubble, bodies of the hostages he was trying to save. However, they were already dead when he arrived to capture Phoenix.
- Phoenix later states explicitly that he knew Spartan would use a thermal scan to check for hostages, which is why they were "cold as Haagen-Dazs." You'd think that kind of thing would come up during the investigation, but given Spartan's reputation for recklessness, it's clear his superiors seem to have been looking for an excuse to get rid of him (and with him having finally caught Simon Phoenix, who was flash-frozen into the same cryo-prison Spartan was sentenced to, they really didn't need him anymore).
- Not Me This Time: Non-villain variant. Almost word-for-word, John then tells his superior that Simon rigged the building he was hiding in to blow up.Captain Healy: Yeah right, like you had nothing to do with it.
- Outdated Hero vs. Improved Society: Cocteau, the police (minus Lenina and Zachary), and the citizens of San Angeles all view Spartan this way. Lampshaded by one of Cocteau's guests at Taco Bell.Woman: What would you say if I called you a brutish fossil, symbolic of a decayed era gratefully forgotten?Spartan: I don’t know—thanks?[The woman gives him a rather nasty glare for that remark.]
Simon Phoenix
Played By: Wesley Snipes
Dubbed By: Jacques Martial (European French)
An infamous and brutal criminal warlord from Los Angeles who loves violence and murder. He fights against John Spartan in the first part of the film in 1996 - upon finally being apprehended, he and Spartan are both sentenced to cryo-prison. He is then mysteriously released in the future society of San Angeles 36 years later, and immediately goes about causing mayhem. Since the police of the future are used to vandals and thieves at worst, Phoenix completely blindsides them with his brutality and is able to terrorize the city unopposed. Only John Spartan could ever hope to stop him.
- Asskicking Leadsto Leadership: Simon Phoenix is the leader of his own gang and, eventually, takes control of the city through calculated brutality.
- Ax-Crazy: Phoenix lives to kill people. It's used as a plot point; Spartan notes that someone like Phoenix wouldn't hesitate to MurderDeathKill Cocteau, unless there's a sinister reason.
- Big Bad Ensemble: He is a ruthless Diabolical Mastermind whose escape from the cryoprison and subsequent criminal activities set off the plot, and John Spartan is recruited to stop his crime spree in San Angeles. In truth, he's also an enemy and unwilling asset of Dr. Raymond Cocteau, ruler of the False Utopia of San Andreas who set him loose to wipe out the lawless Scraps living beneath his "perfect" city, and the two spend as much time trying to dominate each other as they do fighting Spartan. Eventually, Phoenix finds a way around his programming and usurps Cocteau's seat, becoming the final enemy.
- Dragon-in-Chief: Simon Phoenix is this until he's finally had enough of Dr. Cocteau. While Cocteau is Genre Savvy enough to program Phoenix to be unable to kill him, he neglects to do this for the other criminals Phoenix has released. Oops.
- The Dreaded: By his own admission, people have always been scared of Simon Phoenix.
- Dystopia Justifies the Means: Simon Phoenix is a mass murderer who wants ultimate freedom just so he can destroy, plunder, and rape as much as he wants. This is the primary conflict with his boss Dr. Cocteau, the benevolent dictator of the San Angeles future society, who represents the Utopia Justifies the Means side because he wants to preserve peace by suppressing free will. Phoenix eventually murders and usurps Cocteau's position to give the people his own ideal society of constant death and chaos.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Phoenix invokes this several times on Cocteau, and in the end seems to kill him as much because he detests Cocteau's prissy brand of fascism as much as anything. Of course, it is subverted in that he ultimately only wants the freedom to be a psychopath. In the novelization, however, he does express genuine horror that Cocteau had Associate Bob castrated.
- Phoenix: Why the hell did you follow that guy around, anyway?
Associate Bob: Well, sir, you see, he had me... castrated.
Phoenix: Shit! He took your balls?!
Bob: Yes, sir. To limit any aspirations of power I might have.
Phoenix: Well, don't you worry, man, I'm gonna get you some new ones.
- Evil Counterpart:
- He and Spartan both fall foul of the verbal morality code soon after getting out of the cryoprison. Moreover, they're both men with an exceptional talent for violence (though Phoenix enjoys it a lot more), and the only reason for one to exist is because the other is still around. (As soon as Spartan has finally collared Phoenix, his superiors don't regret at all that he seems he played a role in the hostages' deaths and send him to the same cryo-prison Phoenix has been sentenced to; with Phoenix out of the way, there's no need for someone like John Spartan. And soon as Phoenix is revived and returns to his old ways, the obvious answer is to thaw out John Spartan to stop him once more.) Lampshaded by Spartan's echoed lines at the start and the end.
Spartan: Send a maniac to catch a maniac.- Also to Edgar Friendly. Phoenix is a maniac who believes in freedom only so he can create as much violence as possible, while Friendly is an iconoclast and Rebel Leader who believes personal freedom is the path toward a fairer society. All three men hate San Angeles and its repressive dictator Raymond Cocteau, but Phoenix lacks the moral compass that Spartan and Friendly have.
- Evil Is Not a Toy: Cocteau releases Phoenix to kill Edgar Friendly, gives him combat training, and knowledge on how to hack various computers. He did implant a program in him to keep Phoenix from killing him, but then he decides it's a good idea to let some of Phoenix's gang out, who don't have any restraints to keep them from killing him.
- Faux Affably Evil: He seems like a real fun guy to be around. Too bad he's a psychopath who'd probably maim you twice for shits and giggles. Think of Heath Ledger's Joker in the body of Ruby Rhod.
- Genre Savvy: Simon Phoenix shows he has at least a passing familiarity of Star Trek after he finds a stash of rifles (in a museum).
Simon Phoenix: (inside of the museum armory, puzzled) Wait a minute... this is the future; where are all the phaser guns? - Hoist by His Own Petard: Phoenix set up an elaborate plan that would send John Spartan to jail with him. Though he had no way of knowing it at the time, if he'd have just let Spartan arrest him, Spartan would have stayed out of the CryoPrison and would have been an old man when Phoenix got out, unable to stop his rampage in San Angeles. He might have even been dead, killed in the Big One of 2010.
- Instant Expert: He was given new skills on Cocteau orders while in cryo-sleep to help him assassinate Edgar Friendly, meaning Simon wakes up a skilled computer hacker, weapons expert and martial artist, making him even more dangerous than before.
- Just Between You and Me: Phoenix indulges in this, in the middle of a Car Chase, to confess the earlier murder of the hostages from 1996.
- Large Ham: Wesley Snipes is definitely enjoying himself as Simon Phoenix.
- Laughably Evil: Simon Phoenix is evil, but he also has some of the funniest scenes in the movie and is having a grand old time.
- Literally Shattered Lives: Phoenix in the end, as a result of the contact with cryonic "seed" and, seconds later, Spartan's boot.
- Loophole Abuse: Since Phoenix can't kill Cocteau himslef, due to Cocteau planting command so Phoenix doesn't kill him, Phoenix hands a pistol to one of his flunkies who kills Cocteau.
- Manchurian Agent: The reason Cocteau thaws out Phoenix to begin with. "Don't you have someone to kill? Mr. Edgar Friendly?" Notably, the compulsion doesn't seem to be very strong, as Phoenix only gets down to sniffing out Friendly after being told a second time by Cocteau personally, and even then he seems to arbitrarily give up on that so he can get back to scheming against Cocteau. Indeed, by the time the two do come into conflict, Phoenix puts more emphasis on his archenemy Spartan (who's also in the room) than Friendly.
- Meaningful Name: Simon Phoenix is raised from death-like cryo-sleep, like how the phoenix dies and is reborn.
- Mirror Character: He and Spartan have many parallels, yet opposites. The most prominent is that both hate the False Utopia of San Angeles, and for the same reason, but Spartan is a mostly law-abiding policeman. Simon is just psychotic and wants to murder, rape, and steal as much as he likes.
- Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Normal is relative when it comes to Simon Phoenix. He's undoubtedly an extremely dangerous criminal but the 90s had tough-as-nails cops like John Spartan to face him. In 2030s San Angeles the entire police force is completely incapable of taking him on because of how peaceful and nonviolent the entire society is.
- Nothing Can Stop Us Now!: Phoenix after gathering his old gang together and killing Cocteau.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: Phoenix proxy-killing Cocteau, who went to extreme, disgusting lengths to create a saccharine dystopia.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Phoenix mocks some Asians at the San Angeles museum. They walked away in disgust.
- Practically Joker: He has a lot in common with the Clown Prince of Crime, being an Ax-Crazy killer who commits wanton acts of violence for fun and loves to make jokes at his victims' expense.
- Psycho for Hire: Phoenix is initially this to Doctor Cocteau but then, like many psycho henchmen, he turns the tables.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: While he doesn't rape anyone on-screen, there is a scene where the cops in the future look up his rap sheet and rape is listed as one of his crimes, likely to make him seem even more evil.
- Sadist: Simon Phoenix, a maniac who lives only for carnage and sees a future where world peace has been achieved as a way to kill people more easily.
- Scary Black Man: He's a maniacal warlord who kills people for fun and rampages throughout San Angeles- only Cowboy Cop John Spartan is a match for him.
- Villain Has a Point: Simon Phoenix is a total psycho, but even he is correct in pointing out that Raymond Cocteau's society is horrific. He'd rather have hellish chaos than sissy fascism.Simon Phoenix: You can't take away people's right to be assholes.
- Villains Blend in Better: Phoenix happily hacks his way into electronic systems and has no trouble finding his way around the city and calling up information on prominent people; meanwhile, Spartan cannot even use a futuristic toilet. Justified because Phoenix's "rehabilitation program" was altered to give him inside knowledge of computers and hacking in preparation for him being sent to kill Edgar Friendly, which in turn would mean he could easily access maps and personal data, while Spartan's program taught him... how to knit.
Lenina Huxley
Played By: Sandra Bullock
Dubbed By: Françoise Cadol (European French)
A police lieutenant and John Spartan's love interest. She is well-ingrained in the ways of San Angeles and tries to teach Spartan of how their society works. However, she frequently fails to get to Spartan, who dislikes the new society.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: She starts the movie unsatisfied and bored with being a police officer in a city without crime, wishing that her job could for once be like the 20th Century action movies she's a fan of. Then Simon Phoenix breaks out of prison, her life becomes the very action movie she's been craving, and she finds actually being involved with the violence she passively enjoyed on TV to be a traumatizing experience.
- Fair Cop: Oh, yeah. Being played by Sandra Bullock in one of her first big roles will do that.
- Fan of the Past: Lenina Huxley collects 20th Century memorabilia; her superior calls it an "addiction" at one point. She rather shamefully admits to Spartan that she had to use not-strictly-legal means to buy some of it. Meaning that in 2032 the black market deals in cocoa, coffee beans and moonshine for the regulars and G.I. Joes and Jackie Chan movies for Fans of the Past.
- I Know Mortal Kombat: Huxley learned elaborate kicks by watching Jackie Chan movies.
- The Ingenue: Lenina is a subversion. While she is a Nice Girl and generally naive and innocent, she secretly chafes against the oppressive world she lives in and longs to do some of the forbidden things.
- Meaningful Name: She's named Lenina Huxley and lives in a regimented, eugenicised future.
- No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction: The main reason Huxley's such a fan of Spartan's era. Being a police officer in a city with almost no serious crime, she feels very unsatisfied and so longs for a time when things actually happened, though Spartan does set her straight on how those times really were, she still proves to be a capable ally against Phoenix, and is more than happy at finally being able to put her skills to use.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Lenina assumes that Spartan is a a blow-up-the-bad-guy-while-grinning type but realizes he's more the moody-gunslinger-who-will-only-draw-when-he-must type. This is part of her general fangirling about working with a real 20th-century police officer. For his part, Spartan claims he can't be defined by a "type". He's just a cop, trying to do his job to the best of his ability. Unfortunately, his best ability is blowing shit up.
Dr. Raymond Cocteau
Played By: Nigel Hawthorne
Dubbed By: Jacques Ciron (European French)
The head of San Angeles. He is responsible for transforming it from a crime-ridden hellhole to a peaceful utopia, and is beloved and revered by nearly all the citizens, the only exception being the Scraps. In truth, he is a moral busybody who has outlawed anything potentially offensive and a control freak who keeps the citizens under his thumb.
- Affably Evil: Friendly, fatherly, cares about the well-being of the utopia he's made... and plans to keep it that way by unleashing criminals like Phoenix on the underground populace that causes problems for his utopia. Lampshaded by Phoenix, who calls him "an evil Mr. Rogers" before having another criminal MurderDeathKill him.
- Big Bad Ensemble: He is the ruler of the False Utopia of San Andreas who set Simon Phoenix loose to wipe out the lawless Scraps living beneath his "perfect" city, and the two spend as much time trying to dominate each other as they do fighting Spartan. Eventually, Phoenix finds a way around his programming and usurps Cocteau's seat, becoming the final enemy.
- Big Bad Wannabe: Dr. Raymond Cocteau, founder of San Angeles, who is willing to enforce his Crapsaccharine World by any means necessary but is defenseless when the hero Spartan gets the drop on him, and when the much more dangerous Phoenix later kills him by proxy.
- Bullying a Dragon: Cocteau is smart enough to realize that Phoenix is a dangerous sociopath who wouldn't hesitate to betray him so in addition to reprograming him with the skills he needs to be Cocteau's personal enforcer, he also inputs a command that makes it impossible for Phoenix to kill him. However, he fails to take into account Phoenix is smart enough to find a way around it... by telling one of his underlings to kill Cocteau for him.
- Control Freak: As is common with totalitarian dictators, he treats anyone who doesn't conform to his exact vision of the world as a danger that needs to be permanently stamped out, as their mere existence, much less any attempt to meet their grievances halfway, would be an admission that he has not in fact created the "perfect society" he's so proud to show off.
- Didn't See That Coming: Cocteau is shocked that the SAPD would be clever enough to defrost Spartan to fight Phoenix, though he manages to hide it well enough. Also, Cocteau reprogrammed Phoenix so that he wouldn't kill him, but didn't anticipate that Phoenix would find an obvious workaround: have someone else do it. Way to not see that one. Simon lampshades it.
- Didn't Think This Through: Along with the obvious Loophole Abuse that proves to be his undoing, Dr. Cocteau never seemed to consider what he would do with Simon Phoenix and his gang after his Evil Plan succeeded. Sure enough, Phoenix is already planning to take over San Angeles by force before he's even carried out the hit, but Cocteau himself doesn't survive long enough for this particular oversight to cross his mind.
- Even Evil Has Standards: He's actually horrified when he finds out that John Spartan was completely conscious during his time cryogenically frozen.
- Evil Brit: Dr. Cocteau, in a way. Although his last name suggests he's French, his actor, Nigel Hawthorne, is British.
- Evil Plan: Dr. Raymond Cocteau seeks to assassinate the Rebel Leader Edgar Friendly so he can consolidate his nanny state. Unfortunately, he awakens the madman Simon Phoenix to do this, who kills him and decides to cause chaos For the Evulz.
- The Evils of Free Will: Cocteau believes in this. Of course, it means turning Southern California into Sissy Land. Right before he gets shot, Cocteau reveals that once he's rid of Friendly's resistance, he plans to create a "perfect society" by removing all of their free wills and rule them as a god.
- Fatal Flaw: Dr. Cocteau is so convinced of the infallibility of his genius and desire to engineer society that he fails to consider that there are things no technocrat can anticipate, such as Phoenix getting around his Restraining Bolt brainwashing by just having one of his minions shoot Cocteau.
- Godhood Seeker: Cocteau's ultimate ambition is to rule San Angeles as a god by removing "imperfect" elements such as Friendly's resistance and eliminating free will entirely. He's massively in over his head.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Cocteau intended for Simon Phoenix to be his weapon against Edgar Friendly, but ultimately his weapon MurderDeathKills him instead. On a greater level, Cocteau's freeing of Phoenix and the subsequent freeing of Spartan to go after him effectively sets in motion the events that result in the demise of his society entirely.
- Knight Templar: Dr. Cocteau is ruling over a totalitarian society to protect people from anything he worries could possibly harm them or make them uncomfortable in any way, basically turning them into helpless children, but he goes into this territory with the reveal that he's using Phoenix's murderous talents to eliminate those who have chosen to break free from his control and are living outside the city. In Cocteau's mind, allowing these people to exist or trying to relax some of the restrictions that caused them to reject his vision would be an admission that his nanny state isn't the perfect society he wants, so it's better to just get rid of them.
- Lawful Stupid: Cocteau really didn't think things through when releasing Simon Phoenix. He takes a complete psycho, gives him a bunch of upgrades and conditioning that make him more of a psycho, and releases him to deal with a guy who was annoying to him. This is like taking a rabid lion, surgically modifying it into a chimera, slapping it with a shock collar, and then setting it loose to deal with a rat. Worst still is that Phoenix is in many ways just an Ax-Crazy version of the man he is trying to kill and thus just a vastly more dangerous version of the problem he's trying to eliminate; it may be that Cocteau saw this as some sort of poetic justice, and/or thought it might "remind" people why his utopia is preferable to anarchy, but it ultimately just jeopardizes everything he has built for the sake of a petty grudge and ultimately leads to his own death.
- Light Is Not Good: Raymond Cocteau, who dresses in white, speaks calmly to everyone, encourages peace and well-being, and dreams of a utopia without freedom of thought or choice. As a telling trait of his true nature, when shown in his private home, he wears a black robe over the white one.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: While it might be lost on today's audience (the man now being best known as an environmental activist), in the early 1990s Cocteau could easily be seen as a parody of Al Gore, and what many at the time saw as the overly-sanitized society he wanted to create. Prior to 2000, Al and his wife Tipper were best known for helping to form the Parents Music Resource Center, one of the premier Moral Guardian groups of the time, which led Senate hearings on raunchy Hair Metal and pop music lyrics and pushed for the creation of the "Parental Advisory — Explicit Content" sticker (aka the "Tipper Sticker").
- Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: His excuse of creating a utopia free of negative thought is completely undermined by his ambitions of achieving godhood. In the end, he's nothing more than a Control Freak who can't handle being remotely uncomfortable with anything.
- Oh, Crap!: He doesn't say it aloud, but he can clearly be seen with his eyes widening in horror when Simon gets sick of him and passes off a gun to a subordinate saying "Could you please kill him for me? He's pissing me off!"
- Skewed Priorities: A very dramatic example, all things considered: he keeps talking about Edgar Friendly as this ultimate evil criminal mastermind that needs to be expunged by any means necessary when Friendly is at his worst a Card-Carrying Jerkass and at his best a Justified Criminal (poor people are starving, so he steals food. These people are poor because asking for salt or saying "shit" are unforgivable crimes in San Angeles). This makes The Reveal pretty shocking for Spartan and Huxley. The "any means necessary" being releasing Phoenix is essentially unleashing King Ghidorah to try to get rid of a yappy puppy.
- Smug Snake: It turns out he sucks at being ahead of the game when a real maniac is involved.
- Underestimating Badassery: He truly believed that Simon Phoenix is an easily controlled moron, both because Phoenix is psychotic and simply because he was captured by "that brutish ape, John Spartan." Unfortunately for him, both men are way, way smarter than they look, and Simon is particularly clever, cunning, and resourceful. As such, it isn't long until Simon finds a way of killing Dr. Cocteau indirectly. There are hundreds of ways Simon could have done it too, but passing off a gun to a subordinate is simply the easiest.
- Utopia Justifies the Means: He suppresses the free will of the populace and seeks to eliminate anything he deems remotely negative in order to create what he deems a perfect society. Phoenix finds Cocteau's vision for the world overly stifling for a psychopath like himself and ultimately kills him over it.
- Villain Has a Point: While he goes too far, he is correct that given what a cesspool society had become his ordered utopia was a massive improvement.
- Villain with Good Publicity: The people of San Angeles revere him almost as a god for eliminating crime and creating a clean utopia, and never have anything bad to say about him, despite him being a Control Freak who controls every aspect of the citizens lives, wants to kill all dissidents, and is even willing to sacrifice the very people who love him to get at said dissidents.
Edgar Friendly
"I've seen the future, you know what it is? It's a 47-year-old virgin sittin' around in his beige pajamas, drinking a banana-broccoli shake singing "I'm an Oscar-Meyer Wiener". You wanna live on top, you gotta live Cocteau's way. What he wants, when he wants, how he wants. Your other choice: come down here, maybe starve to death."
Played By: Denis Leary
Dubbed By: Philippe Vincent (European French)
"See, according to Cocteau's plan, I'm the enemy. Cause I like to think, I like to read. I'm into freedom of speech and freedom of choice. I'm the kind if guy who wants to sit in a greasy spoon and think, "Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecued ribs with the side order of gravy fries?" I want high cholesterol. I want to eat bacon, butter and buckets of cheese, okay? I want to smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in a non-smoking section. I wanna run through the streets naked with green Jello all over my body reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I suddenly might feel the need to. Okay, pal?"
The blunt, rude, freedom-loving leader of the Scraps. He hates Cocteau's San Angeles for being an oppressive nanny state and longs to be free to live however he wants. Spartan is sent by Cocteau to kill him, but the cop winds up liking the guy.
- Anti-Climax Boss: A variation in-universe, anyway. Dr. Cocteau builds up and clearly views Edgar Friendly to be some kind of terrorist mastermind threat, but when the main characters actually meet him he turns out to basically be a drop-out who just wants to do his own thing without being part of Cocteau's prissy little 'utopia', and at most is simply guilty of leading raids on San Angeles with other outcasts to get food.
- Card-Carrying Jerkass: Edgar Friendly is proudly both a jerk and one of the closest things to a criminal in San Angeles... but he's not actually evil as he's just fighting for the right to eat real food, have real sex, and have something resembling free will. He also delivers a speech that is very similar to the rant in the middle of Denis Leary's song "Asshole."
- I Did What I Had to Do: He doesn't like having to live in the sewers, vandalizing stuff, or stealing food, but it's the only way to live free and survive in Cocteau's dystopia.
- I'm Not a Hero, I'm...: Edgar admits that he doesn't consider himself much of a "leader" of the Scraps, merely someone who subscribes to I Did What I Had to Do and that this attitude happens to convince like-minded people to go with him.
- Meaningful Name: Edgar Friendly is a perfectly nice, reasonable man, if a bit unclean and crass.
- Motor Mouth: In true Dennis Leary fashion when he starts talking it's difficult to get him to stop. His (heroic) Motive Rant is the shining example.
- Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Edgar Friendly is built up to be a major resistance leader and a threat to San Angeles. Turns out he's just a foul-mouthed, red-blooded American who refuses to conform and has attracted like-minded individuals. If anything, Edgar's actions in keeping Scraps fed might be the only thing stopping them from trying to unleash a massive uprising on San Angeles.
Chief George Earle
Played By: Bob Gunton
Dubbed By: Yves Barsacq (European French)
The Chief of SAPD. Not finding other ways to deal with the mayhem Simon Phoenix is causing, he very reluctantly orders to thaw John Spartan, then spends the rest of his screentime being annoyed at Spartan's "primitive" (read: 20th century) ways.
- Da Chief: John Spartan annoys him to no end with his very 20th century behavior that doesn't fit Cocteau's society one bit. He threatens to put Spartan back in the cryo-prison several times.
- Jerkass: He is, in Huxley's own words, a "sanctimonious asshole" who shows No Sympathy for Spartan when he's told that he's been thawed thirty-five years into the future and his family is dead, keeps calling him terms like "neanderthal" and chalks the worthlessness of his law enforcement methods to the ignorant primitivism of his adversaries instead of, you know, them being criminals.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: For how prissy he can get, he is still willing to bridge the gap between the society of San Angeles and the Scraps in the end of the film after some prodding from Spartan. He also agreed to get Spartan thawed when it became apparent that Phoenix was too much for the SAPD.
Associate Bob
Played By: Glenn Shadix
Dubbed By: Patrick Préjean (European French)
Raymond Cocteau's flamboyant assistant.
- Ambiguously Gay: Associate Bob, in the film. In the novelization he's a eunuch. It helps that he was played by Glenn Shadix, who was openly gay.
- The Dragon: Of a sort. He certainly doesn't serve as any sort of physical threat and is actually quite harmless, but he is Dr. Cocteau's #2 who helps him run his nanny-state False Utopia. Once Simon Phoenix usurps him, Bob becomes this to Phoenix instead.
- Eunuchs Are Evil: Downplayed in the novelization, where it is revealed that Dr. Cocteau had him castrated as part of making him The Dragon in running the dystopian San Angeles. He is really a Minion with an F in Evil who is treated as being a victim of Dr. Cocteau than anything else.
- Minion with an F in Evil: Administrative Assistant Bob. Of course, with Phoenix, he has no choice. He would have MurderDeathKilled him, too. And Phoenix needs an assistant, anyway.
- Professional Butt-Kisser: In the novel, it's revealed he's been castrated for this purpose.
- Punch-Clock Villain: He basically just serves whoever is in power, regardless of their alignment, because that's his job. Appropriate, considering who his boss is. Of course, in the novelization Bob literally doesn't have the balls to stand up to his bosses.
