Put me in the pile of old 2000AD readers who also really enjoyed the fuck out of this movie. The art direction and set design is pitch perfect - makes sense that they shot it in South Africa as I kept getting a District 9 crossed with Blade Runner vibe. And Karl Urban is surprisingly good in it, especially given that he's under a helmet for the whole thing. I started watching this expecting to like it in a semi-ironic Punisher: War Zone way, but ended up just, you know, straight up liking it.
This was totally awesome. I need to re-watch it. Really hope we get a sequel with either Caligula or Judge Death, maybe? Or hell, just another day in the life of everyone's favorite fascist psychopath serving The Law in Mega-City One would be just fine.
Rumors of a sequel, from Karl Urban. Sounds more like cologne announcement than I intended, but there you go.
Here's a link to the Facebook page dedicated to bringing about a sequel. In case anyone's interested.
I seem to remember hearing the DVD sales brought it up to at least even. Maybe they'll actually market the sequel this time.
I know it's no excuse in the eyes of the law, but the 3D Blu Ray is the only option. It's kind of pathos-filled, because when you play it, it starts off with a message along the lines of: you don't appear to have a 3D TV. It'd be ever so much cooler if you had a 3D TV! So so much cooler! Please go out and buy a 3D TV! Please? Pretty please? Oh god we're dying over here please buy a new TV.
I found this thread overhyped the film somewhat. I found it pleasantly enjoyable, but I expected something a little less black and white in terms of good guys and bad guys.
Dredd sees a vagrant. Lets him off with a warning. Dredd sees some kids. Only stuns them. Dredd finds the computer guy. Lets him go. In this entire film every single person Dredd kills is in self-defence. He goes through a tower in which he encounters only comic book evil. The film in no way shows Dredd as anything other than good because there's nothing to contrast him to besides a lot of people who are trying to rape his partner and kill him.
You are dead to me. I mean, by section 468 dash 5 of the code of Mega City One law, I find you guilty of everything. Your sentence is death. Don't go for your gun.
Dude he literally flat-out executes roomfuls of people. He burns a bunch of perps to death. He gives the villain a drug that turns her death into an endless (if beautiful) odyssey of suffering. Plus, it's Anderson, who's technically in charge, who lets the computer guy go. She also decides to let the vagrant off with a warning.
He executes rooms of people who are all trying to kill him and are all armed. Good guys do that in film all the time! As for the drug ending, I think that minor, minor violation can be excused by having hundreds of guys trying to kill you. I imagine he was a little annoyed by then. The film is just looping it back to what Dredd saw right at the beginning crime scene. Does Dredd disagree with any of Andersons calls? No. The vagrant one it appears he'd have done himself, while the computer guy he doesn't have the mental powers to know the story
I think your definition of "Good" is pretty Bad, Quitch. And probably a shining example of the original idea behind the comic. Hint: Slaughtering armed civilians and putting unarmed civilians at extreme risk by turning their homes into a war zone is not generally considered an act of Good. I could probably Godwin it to make my point but I don't really feel like it should be necessary.
But he didn't turn it into a warzone, he was locked in the building and unable to get a signal out. Killing people was not his first act in that situation, nor did he choose the ground on which to fight, nor did he start the fighting. He avoided direct confrontation on at least one occasion and attempted to evac the second the situation presented itself. He also does what he can to keep his prisoner alive throughout, even though it puts him and his partner in more danger. What would you have had him do in that situation that he had not tried?
You know, it's fair to point out that Dredd has had a lot of changes in the last few, erm, decades. It started as pulpy sci-fi - pretty kiddish stuff, where the toughness was a virtue. Dredd really came of age in the 80's and early 90's as a critical backlash to the Thatcher/Reagan era of heavyhandedness, and that's really where people are drawing from when they say Dredd is parody. In a lot his stories, it's not parody - he's played straight, but the city itself manages to be even more awful than he is. It's a balancing act entirely dependent on the writer. My favorite Dredd is the one who walks into the Hall of Justice after saving the city from Necropolis and tells the ruling council, "Fuck you. We're having elections because I damn well just said so," combining all the best parts of unthinking autocracy, hilarious timing, and sheer bloody-minded stubbornness into one. The movie tips the balance a little more evenly then I might have expected, but really. Dredd was never bloodthirsty - the point is that he's efficient. And efficient means following the protocol of the law, up and until the point where he melts someone's face off. The joke is that he does awful, awful things, but he's carrying out the law. EDIT: Oh, and there's the time he tells Anderson to kill the wounded guy. And the beating up of the hostage.
Brian, you should make a thread called "Modern entertainment Brian Rubin doesn't like"... it would be one post. I like you, but seriously I can't recall any single thing you saw that you didn't adore. I envy your positive outlook. I'm with Quitch here. People read a lot of ambiguity into scenes where there were none. Executing roomful of enemies is par for the course in modern action movies and this new Dredd is not different. It was a good action movie, but not a great Dredd movie - it would have worked just as well without the license. It's also the best Dredd-movie made... but the other one was more fun in how it showed the world of the megacities. Shame about the protagonist.
I was thinking of the group of people he sentences to death and literally executes, with Anderson. Not the one where he breaks in the door. But, w/e. I'm glad the just-this-side-of-unbearably-psychopathic Dredd was the one we saw, not the one where he's casually shooting children and vagrants.
I'm more familiar with Dredd as a concept than as an actual character and I quite liked the movie. At the time I didn't understand why you specifically get Karl Urban for a role that literally any human being with a chin could play (so, basically, not Roger Ebert, if I was making that joke when the movie actually came out, but now I can't think of any other famous people with no chin), but given that he just got a television pilot picked up at Fox, maybe he's not doing the whole classic movie star thing the way that people usually do.
I know you meant literally no chin, but I was suddenly reminded about fan concerns around Michael Keaton not filling out the the cowl back in 1989.
Dredd the concept is satire. Dredd the character is, more often than not, played straight. Which means the outright parody and satire isn't quite as thickly laid on as you might expect (though there are exceptions). So while the body count might be similar to The Raid: Redemption, the joke is that The Raid's dead mooks are the product of viewer expectations, while for Dredd it's exactly what he is empowered to do. It's subtler than you think. You should read some Dredd comics, there is a huge variety and literally forty years of backstory at this point. And for the sequel, fingers crossed for Walter the Wobot, Dredd's incompetent robot servant, who drives Dredd to robot racism (robotism?)
Sorry, but that was more or less my point, and I have no idea how you could read my posts and get the idea, that I don't know the comics. I've read them all except for whatever they are doing these days. My point was that you guys are adding a lot from the comics to he film, that is not on screen and that anybody watching it without having read the comics won't be getting all that. All that satire? Not on film - you can't go "that's the joke", when talking about how much it's played like a straight action movie, when the joke requires you've read the comics.
And I'll bet you won't see Walter or muties in the next one, because that would drive all those action movie fans, that are not in on the "joke" away. "Hey! Why is there a silly robot in my straight action flick?" It's like hoping for a gay kiss in a Schwarzenegger movie.
Well, fair enough, although the relevant information about Dredd as Judge, Jury, and Executioner is all within the movie.
I don't know. Maybe I'm just not watching the same movies you guys are, but in the typical action films I see, the good guy kills whole rooms of bad guys because he is either defending himself or because he's trying to rescue someone. And while Dredd is sort of defending himself, because they are trying to kill him, I got the impression that he was killing whole rooms of bad guys because they were breaking the law and it was his job. So, for the people who didn't like this, do you instead prefer the Stallone campy Judge Dredd?
Can't answer that, because as stated, I liked it. And I liked it more than the Stallone one (I said as much a few posts up). It's been a while, so I might misremember it (perhaps I'm even adding stuff from the comics that isn't on screen), but from what I remember I found the world surrounding Dredd to be truer to the comics, but the character of Dredd itself as played by Stallone as well as that stupid comic relief sidekick was terrible. The new one has a much greater Dredd, a nice Anderson, but the world itself was somewhat plain compared to the comics. In my opinion it was a great action movie, but a so so Dredd movie. But still the best one we have.
The reason I objected to Quitch's categorization of Dredd as a regular Good guy was not, as I imagine some thought, that Dredd should be viewed as Evil. And yes, let's all be absolutely clear that we are talking about comic book and action movie terminology here. Not the concepts of Good and Evil in the real world. I would point to a general rule in this kind of storytelling, that of the Good Guy(s) respect for human life. So while we're all accustomed to protagonists that kill plenty of armed opponents, I would say that a normal presentation of these opponents would, in some subtle or, more often, completely obvious way, depict them as ”bad people”. They are the henchmen of the antagonist, hired mercenaries, escaped convicts, willing accomplices et cetera et cetera. The people who are gunned down and burned alive by Dredd are, to some extent, merely people who happen to be residents in the mega-block and who have been told that if they don't help kill the judges, Ma-Ma will murder them and their families. Anyone doubting she would carry this out got a floor full of minigun fire to ponder. Now, the crux of the matter, to me, is that Dredd doesn't care. They could be willing or unwilling accomplices. It doesn't matter one iota in how he approaches the situation. All he cares about is punishing the guilty. If anyone tries to stop him from that, he'll kill them, if that's the most efficient and expedient way to deal with them. The loss of human life is irrelevant to the equation. Whether the ones trying to stop him were criminals prior to the crime of standing in his way is irrelevant. If he has to slaughter hundreds to serve the law, he will slaughter hundreds. Call me old-fashioned but that's not normal good guy-behavior. That he also happens to be very efficient at killing is pretty much beside the point. His report to the Über-Judge confirms this approach nicely. “Drug bust. Perp resisted arrest.” That's all. There's also the, to me, strange indication that if only Dredd had killed some more people (the kids, the surveillance guy) he would have been depicted as less ”Good” and therefore more interesting. I don't get that. To me, that's a really weird statement. If a person can show a complete disregard for human life (like Dredd) and still be described as ”Good” (yes, comic-book and action movie ”Good”), that is to me along the lines of ”well, he's the protagonist so obviously he's the good guy.” I thought the movie did a pretty much perfect job with presenting Judge Dredd as Judge Dredd. I also enjoyed the ambiguity in the presentation of the Judges. Judge Dredd is not a masterpiece in any way, shape or form, but it is Really Good comic book movie and a Pretty Great Judge Dredd movie.
