Best Dredd

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