The asshole we need. In 1993, at the peak of our first flu-like wave of “PC Culture,” Sylvester Stallone, America’s most iconic everyman, introduced me to a kind of working class Catholic libertarianism in the instant action classic Demolition Man. Stallone’s John Spartan is an LAPD cop, not a nice guy, but a “good guy,” strong and capable (and by the way jacked as hell), willing to sacrifice for his community, and ultimately willing to play by the same rules he enforces, no matter the cost; at the top of the film he submits willingly to an unjust prison sentence in California’s new “cryo-penitentiary” alongside his arch nemesis, the charming, psychopathic, totally evil Simon Phoenix, played by Wesley Snipes. The two are frozen solid, and left on ice, where they’re perfectly preserved for decades. Forty years later, a super-powered Phoenix escapes into a smiling, crime-free, “utopian” Los Angeles of the future, and predictably goes on a murder spree. Since law enforcement has atrophied in peacetime, there’s no cop left alive with the experience — or courage — to stop him. Spartan is therefore thawed to save the city, and with him an archetype lost to history: the American hero.

God, I love the 90s.