No I Don’t Know How The Three Seashells Work

Demolition Man suffers from the same self-satisfied smugness that a lot of 90’s era satirical comedy does.  It posits the radical idea that gasp people in the future will be different and act differently! And they might thing swearing in public or eating meat is bad so really they’re going to be complete wimps who can’t stop one guy from running amok. It even has Dennis Leary in it as a brave freedom fighter holding out against the tyranny of social politeness gone too far. So in that regard, it fails pretty hard at predicting where we were heading as a country.

But the San Angeles of the movie’s 2032 — a mega-city consisting of Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and San Diego all smushed together — does have some cool satirical moments. One is that, in the future, every restaurant is Taco Bell — not that every restaurant serves Taco Bell’s brand of ‘Mexican’ food, and yes the italics are on purpose, but that every restaurant from the quirky breakfast diner down the street to the fanciest French-Hawaiian fusion bistro are all owned and operated by Taco Bell. There is but one restaurant conglomerate in 2032, and it’s Taco Bell.

I can’t stop thinking about this in the wake of Microsoft’s planned acquisition of Activision Blizzard. By 2032, everything might be owned by Amazoisneysoftoogle. Or, heck, maybe Taco Bell? Who knows anymore?