Best Dredd

(face it folks, no american will ever admit to liking judge dredd, since for many, liking judge dredd = liking sly stalone.)

"The Judge Child Quest" has two or three really bad pacing flaws but when it's good it is bloody good, too.

Best short ones? "Father Earth" is top, and the one where Dredd fights Captain Skank.

First story ever read: Summer special 1986: sth about a boy who got into a secret garden and was let off the hook by Dredd; drawn by Steve Dillon.

Judge Child is up and down. Best when Dillon, not Ron Smith, drawing?

Chopper: some good moments over the years?

Whitey - first ever strip (?); Uggy Apelino; Classic Beginner status like Bill Haley records?

What about Democracy (?), c. June 1987 (?)?

Ezquerra Dredd is my definitive vision as i look back.

On the prospect of working on a new Judge Dredd film, Danny Boyle said reports linking him to the 2000 AD sci-fi franchise were not accurate.

"Where has this come from?" he said. "Someone asked me about Judge Dredd the other day!

"I hated the last version of it; I can't imagine the next one will be any better."

you'd think he'd be used to people confusing him with Danny Cannon

Still reckon Verhoeven could do a killer Dredd movie.

Total Recall was very 2000ADish.

Apocalypse War as long as I get to include Block Mania as part of it.

Also I remember a one-shot that freaked me out as kid - it was all about the fad for people making themselves ugly through surgery. Don't know the title though!

Apocalypse War is fucking untouchable, yeah. I like Oz a lot, though not a lot of other people seem to. It's really interestingly structured; the first and third acts barely feature Dredd at all.

Block Mania - totally awesome, but for me Apocalypse War was where Judge Dredd started its slide into shite. Ezquerra phoned in his art, while the story was plodding and uninventive.

pretty sure those two posts before the break are me too. wonder why my name fell off? :-/

anyway - what is this, revive thread friday??

http://www.avclub.com/articles/judge-dredd-20-oh-yeah-its-happening,32666/

Potentially exciting news, I've been waiting most of my life for a decent Dredd film.

Block Mania - totally awesome, but for me Apocalypse War was where Judge Dredd started its slide into shite. Ezquerra phoned in his art, while the story was plodding and uninventive.

Really, this is an absurd thing to say. Absurd! "Apocalypse War", while padded like most of those long stories are, is full of great inventive moments, like the whole sequence with the Mega City nukes being teleported to a parallel earth and wiping it out in the space of two pages. And the brilliantly nasty scene of the Judges coldly executing traitors! And "The citizens? What makes you think *they'd* be interested?" And sorry, you are just plain WRONGE about Ezquerra's art.

I think it is true, however, that fans tend to overrate the Wagner/Grant era, maybe for nostalgic reasons. Certainly, reading lots of these together in the Casebook reprints makes me realise how forgettable a lot of them were(which is unsurprising when you think how many they had to churn out per year, added to the fact they were writing something like two thirds of the whole comic at one stage). And I def think Wagner has done more interesting stuff as a solo writer, cf "America" et al.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2JhQXCjTLY

http://judgeminty.blogspot.com/

That looks pretty Zarjaz! Excellent casting on Dredd, looks wise anyway.

http://io9.com/5694517/first-look-at-karl-urban-as-the-new-judge-dredd

Didn't even know there was a new Dredd film in the offing! I still have my reservations about the costume, though the helmet and grimace look pretty spot on. I get a kind of Wire of the future vibe from that pic, which would be too far in the other direction from the Stallone film.

I'm looking forward to the new flick, though it doesn't appear they've quite got the look of MC-1 right:
http://www.joblo.com/newsimages1/Dreddimage_2_big.jpg

The buildings should be more bulbous, and there should be more twisty ramps.

http://youtu.be/PifvRiHVSCY

La Roux!

Really not sure about the current Dredd story seems to be rather too all over the place, though maybe some somewhat extraneous bits were tidied up a couple of weeks back. Put in a bottle for further good use?

Occurred to me that they didn't know what to do with Dredd at the moment and might actually be trying to kill him off. Though likelihood is that he will come through and save the day. & maybe it isn't Dredd they're killing off, major deathtoll in MC1 so far.

Interesting to hear about a film in the works, not sure how I missed hearing that before. & yes MC1 does look a bit wrong in that image

Should have said that current story started off ok but just seems to be going on & on. Are there too many people writing variations on things or something?

Somebody's just upped several different torrents containing all the Dredd epics to date on Demonoid.

Looks like the current epic is drawing to a close too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8lMmRe6Z44

:D :D :D

nsfw btw

I saw that there was a cardboard advertising stand in the cinema i saw Spiderman in this week, so the film is obviously much further along than I'd assumed. & IMDB has it as complete since April.

Looks like it's a bit more near future than I'd've expected. Looks like its current dystopia plus people in uniforms but I guess it's only 100 years from now in the stories I'm reading now from the mid 80s, getting on for 30 years ago. Though the change in the way things look now from 100 years ago is a bit more extreme isn't it?

That is going on that clip and the other trailer.
& yeah would repeat what somebody said earlier about the cityscape looking much more square/rectangular than the rounded shapes you get in the comics.

Is that Judge Anderson the blonde with who I suppose to be Dredd? Only blonde I'm aware of from the comics that you frequently see with no helmet on. Is the helmet free thing supposed to enhance or rather not limit her psychic powers? Cos otherwise you'd expect her to be wanting to wear one in a situation like that, wouldn't you?

Looking like an SF version of The Raid.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/07/12/dredd-review

Looking like an SF version of The Raid.

I thought the same thing!

It's not dissimilar to The Raid, but it's also pretty good at being Dredd. Fascist police, lots of good incidental details (including most of the bullet-types), Dredd keeps his bloody helmet on.

It also, I was _very_ surprised to find out, one of the most beautiful 3D films I've ever seen, up there with Avatar.

Al Ewing just posted his thumbs-up on Twitter.

Really want to see this in the cinema, but don't think I know anyone who'll go with me.

Personally, I would have liked Mega-City One to have been more like it is in 2000AD; more stylised, more sky walkways and rounded buildings. More life, more craziness. But as a rough, tough action flick, it delivers. And Urban nails Dredd.

I was thinking "Not enough chin!" but that's probably just a result of later artists (including imho the definitive Dredd artist Ron Smith) emphasising it, if you look at the Mike McMahon from Dredd's first appearance on the wiki page, Urban pretty much nails it.

Haven't seen the Raid but did really enjoy this.
It does look like its a lot less futuristic than the comic strip but it might be the more realistic for it. Also the uniform looks like its more practical than the strip one, may just be over what looked right on an actual human being. Though leather or synthi-leather smoothness plus joint pads might be more sexy.

I can't remember to what extent the Stallone film changed the uniform. & I'm also only just realising the absence of robots in the film, whereas there was a Hammerstein in the old one.

But it is great that this exists without a need to make a direct comparison to the earlier film, even having done so. This is a very atymospheric film that seems to keep up a level of intensity throughout. It just seems to be about 50 years before the comic version in termas of distance from now.

It starts with a chase on ground level in a part of the city that has been pretty much closed off to the normal human population in the comic strip. Seems that people are still living in contact with the original city ground level in this. I think it's a mutie only zone or at least an undercity in the comic. The roads in that are all in the sky to the current city level, in the film there actually does appear to be a floor.

Liked it though & it does seem that most films do tend to make rather large changes to source material to make things work on screen. Think I would have preferred a straighter translation though. But if there are more films by this team on this subject matter I won't be complaining, unlike the Stallone one.

Wouldn't mind seeing a Johnny Alpha film if it was done as well.

agree with the beauty in the use of 3D somebody says above too. droplets and water sheets especially .
& slow motion shootouts pretty impressive.

Really enjoyed this a lot, the repositioning in '10 minutes into the future' really works. This was made worse by the trailer for End of Watch beforehand, which made Los Angeles today look like a slightly more low-rent version of Mega City One.

Two Fatties shown during the film as far as I could see. My reaction to the first one was that he wasn't that fat and to the second one that he was a real guy without makeup. The future is now, huh.

ha this was awesome, saw it twice, in 2D and 3D. 2D was better i thought

i think the fatty in his apartment may have had some padding!

the satire & ambiguity was there imo, it just wasnt played for laughs

i'm not sure it was played for laughs in the comics, either, tbh.

there was that part with the panhandling dude who got crushed by the door

Well yeah, I didn't mean the corrupt Judges, they're a cop movie cliche... What I meant was that here Dredd and Anderson and their employers were still forces of good, whereas in the original comics the dynamic is that whenever you start feeling Dredd and the Judges are heroes, there's always an issue or a storyline that reminds you they're fascist cops working for a fascist police state. And that wasn't in the movie, the social commentary was limited to a couple of throwaway jokes, like then panhandler scene. So Dredd felt more like a Dirty Harry style "tough but honest cop" story imported into the future than any kind of dystopian fiction.

iirc the second-movie-that-may-never-happen was going to focus on the fascist police state aspect.

Ah, okay. I guess I would've been more okay with this if was a great action introduction to the Dredd world, but even the action bits started feeling repetitive and boring towards the end. They should've spiced things up by adding weirdo block inhabitants like in the comics, now everything felt too serious.

nah you can see him not wanting to put a wide audience off with weird shit first time out. if the second one had happened then it would totally work that they start expanding the world out and underlining the iniquity of the world more from there.

that said it's p f obv from the judges/block setup in this that it's no utopia!

Yeah, it's not utopia, but like I said this felt more like a "tough but honest cop in a violent world" type of story than one where the cops are part of the problem, not the solution. (Though TBH the comics aren't always very consistent on this subject either - in some stories the writers seem to be saying that Judges are necessary because everyone in Mega-City One is so crazy and violent.)

I think that ambiguity is one of my favourite things about the comics - the Judges are fascist bastards but for the most part the population are feckless idiots who would likely not be any better off without them. Mega-City One voted to keep the Judge system in place when given the option to adopt a more democratic society, after all.

As I said upthread, I really liked this movie - I want to see it again now!

hasn't Dredd typically been portrayed as honest/unsentimental to a fault, tho, tuomas? how many stories end with him arresting the supposed victim?

there's always an issue or a storyline that reminds you they're fascist cops working for a fascist police state. And that wasn't in the movie

i thought almost everything they did reminded you they were fascist cops in the employ of a police state... the ending gag is that dredd passes anderson and we get a more conscientious, humane boot stomping on a human face forever

no kidding, she was practically a pacifist hippie compared to the rest of the judges

tbh Dredd passing Anderson was a bit of a surprise; failing her would've been v much in character

But isn't there a connection between them in 2000ad, or am I misremembering?

there is, yeah, but don't remember the deets

It must be 20 years since I read it!

Anderson was a supporting character in Dredd who got her own series in the 1980s. In the comics Anderson and Dredd are friends (well, as much as anyone can be Dredd's "friend") and often work together, though there are similar moral quarrels (Anderson being far more liberal than Dredd) between them as in the movie. They usually collaborate when Judge Death and the Dark Judges are involved, because Anderson has a special connection to them, and was originally introduced in the same story as Judge Death.

The Dark Judges play the role of justifying Dredd's fascism and that of the Mega Cities' governments to some extent, don't they? Police state required to stave off the greater evil etc.?

I don't think so... The police state tends to be pretty powerless against the Dark Judges, it's usually a few courageous individuals who manage to defeat them. The Dark Judge stories are more typically good vs. evil kind of stories, instead of ones with social commentary or satire.

aha okay, only properly familiar with early Dredd tbh

this got comparisons to The Raid right? (On iPhone)

cuz I have tried and failed to watch that twice now because of the overbearing fascistic tone of it. v diff from this Dredd I thought

Yeah, both films are lean action movies about cops fighting their way to the top of a tower block filled with murderous maniacs in order to bring a crime lord to justice. In practice though they're quite distinct from each other (and I enjoyed Dredd more).

I gave the Dredd movie a viewing on Netflix. I thought it was really well done. I think if anything, it wasn't going to be a hit as it is so dystopian. There is nothing about this future that looks good at all, you can see why people might want to use Ma Ma's stuff and just disengage.

I wonder if the guys that did this have thought about trying to do this type of movie as a net show or high end cable show, considering what they did with this budget, I think they could pull it off.

dredd is incredible i thought. indreddible! enjoyed the soundtrack too. lena headey was a good, kinda surprising pick for the villain. there was definitely a decent amount of CGI blood but it didn't bother me in this one as much as it has in other films.

This was the most shoegaze comic book movie ever. Liked it a lot - far better than what I was expecting

If I was a gazillionaire I would bankroll the sequel myself.

I quite liked this, but felt something was missing – it's partly the social satire thing that Tuomas mentions upthread, but it felt like a more general lack of wit comp. to the Dredd of my memories– too straightforwardly murder/drugs/torture dark.

basically at the start when Dredd kills the perp who's using the fast-food-stall worker as a human shield, he should then arrest the worker for a health and safety violation or something.

Exactly, the humour wasn't really there. And if anything else was missing it was the framing of the story - the hugeness and diversity of the massive population of Mega City One was missing.

I kind of feel they would've addressed that stuff in a more expansive, bigger budget sequel if they'd been given the chance.

has anyone watched any 2000ad fan films? Judge Minty, Slaine: the horned God? They were mentioned at a thing I went to last night (Pat Mills & Dave Gibbons at the British Library) & I was a bit intrigued.

basically at the start when Dredd kills the perp who's using the fast-food-stall worker as a human shield, he should then arrest the worker for a health and safety violation or something.

Yeah, they have a drop of sweat hit the floor and everything, I was a little annoyed they didn't go that way - the best Dredd stories are the anonymous done-in-ones where everyone ends up arrested, IMO.

I've seen Judge Minty, it's pretty well done! For what it is.

This is probably a minor complaint but did any of you feel it was a bit contrived the whole scene of Anderson overcoming the really sexist criminal? Like "we gotta have a scene that gets giffed and reblogged on tumblr loads".

Really nice colors.

Every time this gets bumped I get excited that they've finally got funding for a sequel.

Every time this gets bumped I get excited that they've finally got funding for a sequel.

ditto

Almost Human is your best bet for Dredd methadone there :)

Ex Machina is getting dece reviews

love the look of DREDD: trying to pin down exactly what it is -- the reconstructed 80s low-res cheapie grunginess, the weirdly gorgeous colour palette within the grunginess, the way the interiors all look like sets and the petty claustrophobia of that, anderson's frodo-esque telepathy sequences, the way the judge's computers look as 80s ppl imagined computers of the future wd look if they had no budget (and not much imagination), the general anti-CGIness (i imagine a ton of CGI went into this)

(it's not an exact reconstruction of ay particular look but the ways it is and isn't are well, er, judged)

I pretty much leave Dredd on anytime it's on IFC. I mean, I do other stuff, like post incredibly valuable revives like this while it's on.

So if they make the TV show that's being bandied around right now is it going to be weird? I mean, the law and order fascism of the Dredd world kind of works in this situation where it's essentially two cops up against a gigantic building full of people that want them dead so you're more or less rooting for them; on a TV show that's probably not going to be a plot they can recycle endlessly.

I've never read the comics, btw, so I don't really have a sense of how that played out there.

The movie is only representative of a tiny portion of the comic's scope. If I were the showrunner on a Dredd TV series I'd do it as a kind of anthology with Dredd only an incidental character in a lot of the stories. The world is much more interesting than the character, purposefully so.

Guess I've got to check out some comics, then.

you should! 40 years of dredd stories have created a massive, intricate world that could supply a tv show with a huge amount of cool content

chap otm basically, although i think dredd is actually a really interesting character in his own right - he's aged in real-time over the entire run, and john wagner and others have handled his development in all kinds of interesting and unexpected ways

Yeah you're right, but the complexities of later years relies for their power on having built him up as an intractable facist for so many years, and is not something that could be pulled off effecively in the first season of a TV show, for example.

Sorry that was a very gramatically knotty sentence.

I realise I've not actually read any new Dredd since the late 90s.

yeah, that's true - still, they could dip in and out of dredd's origins (and judge fargo's story and the origins of mega city one) and add some neat shading to his character without waiting like 20 seasons for karl urban (or whoever) to get old first

I've just been re-reading the cursed earth saga, hopefully the tv show will make time for people getting their heads bitten off by dinosaurs and stuff in amongst the character development

wait is it still an ongoing comic??

On several levels (Dredd's Megazine, stories in 2000AD, IDW's recent series of miniseries).

It's hard to determine what the most recently updated or canonical Dredd thread is!

In any case, I finally read The Small House, the recently collected arc from last year. A few scenes didn't really land for me, and the twists are a little too on the nose, but I enjoyed it and am thinking about following more in real time instead of via collections.

I make this claim every couple years, forget, and then go back to buying trade paperbacks, though