Judge Dredd
Saw the movie DREDD tonight, on the free trial of Nowtv from Sky on xbox.
I liked it. It was better than the Stallone one, though I did actually like that too. Got me to thinking though, I could have sworn in a very early Judge Dredd comic, I didn't have the original it would have been in a compilation 200AD special, there was an appearance of a police officer? A rather startled and overwhelmed officer, had a highish rank too if I remember, and was only in a few frames.
Is there any official back story of when police were fazed out in the mega cities?
I liked it. It was better than the Stallone one, though I did actually like that too. Got me to thinking though, I could have sworn in a very early Judge Dredd comic, I didn't have the original it would have been in a compilation 200AD special, there was an appearance of a police officer? A rather startled and overwhelmed officer, had a highish rank too if I remember, and was only in a few frames.
Is there any official back story of when police were fazed out in the mega cities?
Post edited by thx1138 on
Comments
I enjoyed it!
Good to see Judge Anderson in there as well. Lots of nice touches that fit with the original stories. I liked it.
The Stallone one would have been ok as a film if they hadn't tried to kid us he was Judge Dredd. He was just Soooo not Dredd.
I don't know how true/false either films are to the Dredd mythos, but I do think that the new film is great for action film fans, whereas Stallone's version isn't.
needs a sequel though.
- IONIAN-GAMES.com -
It was shortly before World War 3. Judges were brought in to replace police in the Mega Cities as regular justice wasn't working in conurbations of that size. Standard police forces remained in smaller settlements.
The Judges were initially just a peacekeeping force, but in the chaos after World War 3, they were asked to assume controlling power to retain order, basically becoming a dictatorship.
The three Mega-Cities - Mega City One (conglomeration of NYC and other cities on the Eastern Seaboard of the US), Mega City Two (California Coast) and Texas City declared city-statehood and their Judges ruled their respective cities independently of one another. The US as an entity was destroyed, with pretty much all the rest of it now being a radioactive wasteland known as 'The Cursed Earth'.
This thread nudged me into watching the film again last night, and it improves with multiple views as you get to notice more of the details and nice little touches.
I wish this had been advertised more and released in more cinemas as it deserves a wider audience imho.
Another reason according to Wagner is that Dredd represents the faceless cop.
from Wikipedia: "It sums up the facelessness of justice − justice has no soul. So it isn't necessary for readers to see Dredd's face, and I don't want you to."
Agree that the new one is much better than the Stallone version by miles.
EDIT: Was a bit too rapey as well.
It supposedly cost $35 million dollars to produce - now whilst thats not in Avatar territory - it's not small potatoes either.
"He's Dredd 'JIM', Dredd"
:D:D:D:D:D:D:D
Miles directed that film? He kept that quiet.
wouldn't you
Just for interest, one of co-creators of the Dredd character, Carlos Ezquerra, drew the graphic novel that accompanied the '95 film, so had to draw Dredd's face. In my opinion, if anyone gets to say what Dredd looked like, it's Carlos. If you see it, I think he's drawn his Dredd, rather than his Stallone.
There was also a strip drawn by Cam Kennedy in the mid-80s where he drew way too much of his face profile (Dredd was in the bath at the time).
As for the film, totally agree with comments about the city-scape and vehicles; however, the grittiness is spot on. If you know your 2000AD artists, then the '95 vision was Ron Smith, and the recent one was 100% Mike McMahon.
As for a sequel... don't hold your breath. It doesn't look like it was quite successful enough.
Okay, I'm all geeked out for a Tuesday morning. Time for work.
Tobo.
I've not seen the new Dredd film but I expect that a lot of the things that let people down were a budget issue. If they'd had, say, twice the budget to play with you'd doubtless have seen a "proper" Megacity and futuristic vehicles.
I saw the Stallone version ages ago and, whilst I know only a little about the original comic strip, I could still tell it was largely a travesty. Stallone was, for Hollywood, clearly more important that the comic book license and this lead to the infamous "no helmet" thing for most of the film. It also, from what I can gather, got rid of the comic book's satire and shades-of-grey morality and turned the Judges into a heroic organisation who were there to protect freedom and democracy rather than an essentially morally neutral ultra-authoritarian dictatorship who are only as "good" as the laws they enforce.
I gather the new film didn't do all that well in the cinema and people are pinning their hopes on DVD/netflix to demonstrate a wider audience and maybe get some more milage out of the series. Poor marketing probably didn't help (I didn't notice any pre-release hype and only heard of it when it came out and film reviewers started talking about it), nor did releasing a comic book film with an 18 certificate.
Lack of advertising has got to be the largest failure of the film.
However, I don't think it helps that it was shot for 3d ( which adds a significant amount to filming cost's and imho adds nothing ) which in turn limited the release to 3d only cinemas.
I used to have hundreds of comics but gave them away, never really been one of lifes collectors, instead of that brief period where I collected retro games. Liked reading them th
Wouldn't you just download a torrent of them? Reading magazines/comics on a laptop or tablet is great. Not as good (if you ask me) as having the real paper item, but it's much more convenient as you can store stacks of them on one hard drive or memory card.
A quick search of a well known torrent engine (I don't think WOS allows torrent links to copyright material, pm me if you want the links)
shows a lot of 2000 AD torrents, and the main two are;
1) Judge Dredd Collected from 2000AD progs 0001 - 1829 (1977 - 2013) (complete) (Inc. Specials &... (Size: 7.13 GB), includes Judge Dredd Collected from Annuals & Specials (1977 - 1999) - 7.13 GB
and
2) 2000AD Progs 1100 - 1854 (& Annuals 2000 - 2013 + FCBD) - 14.66 GB
Granted there's a lot of overlap, but you don't have to download all files in a torrent. And it will take a while to download this lot, but just leave the PC on for a few days and you'll soon get them. Anyway, I'm not familiar with 2000 AD, so I'm not sure, but it does look like this is everthing you'd want, unless there were 2000 AD/Judge Dredd spin offs you want (which are probably also available for download).
There is talk of a Dredd 3D sequel maybe happening, as the film has proven very popular on DVD, sitting at the top of the charts for a couple of weeks, and there's an official petition for one. Karl Urban has said he'd be happy to keep portraying Dredd too, and most fans should be okay with that as he was pretty good!
Oh, and it kind of already has a sequel, that's appearing in the Judge Dredd Megazine right now!