[Wargamer]

One of those films that I never saw from beginning to end, Judge Dredd was on TV over the weekend, and yet again I failed to watch it. I did, however, watch enough to be reminded in part of why.

For those who know the plot, I got up to the bit where Dredd's being taken away in the prison ship. For those who don't know the plot, I wouldn't bother.


As a big fan of 2000AD, I didn't really enjoy the "Americanisation" of the film. For starters, it was nigh on impossible for any character to open their mouth, or even take a deep breath, without doing something that was utterly, utterly wrong.

Let's go through in sequence. First off, the Judges uniforms looked ridiculous. Yeah, I know in the comics they wear bright colours and over-sized pads and stuff, but the director of the X-Men film at least had the sense to realise that Wolverine in dark grey combats would look far cooler than in bright yellow spandex. Maybe, just maybe, whoever directed this film should have considered going down the same route, and made the Judges dress like bad-ass future-cops.

Next, the "Lawgiver 2". Presumably they meant "Lawgiver Mark 2", but the two guns look nothing alike. They don't work alike either.
In the comics, the Lawgiver fires "standard execution" rounds. Normal bullets. It also has five additional, voice-activated settings. These are; High Ex (for blowing up cars and whatnot), Incendiary (for setting things on fire), Armour Piercing (for shooting through armour, or a dozen guys at once), Ricochet (for bouncing off walls and junk) and Heat Seeker (self-explanatory).
In the film, they went a different route. I recall seeing used the Standard mode, but the voice-activated settings included Grenade, Rapid-Fire, Flare (a signal flare) and... *shudder* the "Double-Whammy", which made a second barrel pop out and fired two bullets at once. Dear god...

Shortly after this travesty is revealed, we're treated to the blasphemous recitation of Stallone pretending to be Dredd, and misquoting The Law. He arrests a man for damaging civic property (a Droid), and says he should have jumped out of the 40th-floor window to escape the gun-toting lunatics because "it would have been legal".
Firstly, Dredd in the film takes no account of mitigating circumstances, which he does recognise in the comics; when a man staggers out of a restaurant complaining about "dying" and vomits on the floor, Dredd tells him to stay down on account of 'potential littering of a sidewalk'. When Dredd realises the whole restaurant has been poisoned, he presumably lets the guy off. So, Dredd is not behaving in character; he should by rights have taken one look at the vandalised droid and thought "Well, there were a dozen guys with assault rifles here, and they did blow away a Judge, so maybe we can let him off."
However, all of this pales in comparisson to the most infuriating of blunders; littering is against the Law. One of Dredd's most iconic moments was when he approached a suicidal man and cried "Don't do it, citizen! Littering is an offence!" Yes, it is against the Law to splatter yourself over the sidewalk because of littering! How did Dredd forget this?

Oh yes, and they couldn't even get the size of Mega-City One right. The film claimed the population was something like 68 million. Well, since Fargo is alive we can guess it's set Pre-Apocalypse War, and that means the Population could be anything up to 800 Million. Even in the "modern" strips the city has around 400 million living in it.

Anyway, this is where I'd pretty much completely tuned out. I doubt it would have been worth the effort to force myself to watch the entire film, and so I didn't.


Now, the point of this thread. Firstly, is there anyone out there who actually liked this film? Secondly, how would our resident Dredd-heads (I can't be the only one) go about actually doing a Judge Dredd film?

[Tim the Tau]

Saw the film all the way through, hated it, thought it was rubbish... except for one scene.

That bit where the old man walks out into the desert in a long trench coat and carrying a badass gun, and then you see him all silhouetted against the blazing sun. Now that is an awesome scene.

The rest of the film was awful.

[deraj]

Since I don't have fanboyism on my side, I went into the film without having read the comics and you know what? It was a damned good movie. It was cheesy, but in all of it's cheesiness, it was a good film. Besides, how old is it?

The plot was decent if predictable, the lines were cheesy as hell and predictable, though I think in the end where the girl tells him that he could feel emotion, etc, it would have been far more epic and made more sense if he'd said "guilty" than the annoying "I knew you would say that."

I personally loved the film.

[Genmotty]

I'd agree that the movie was bad, it was as bad as;



(Mug Travel)...

Genmotty

[Wargamer]

Originally Posted by Tim

That bit where the old man walks out into the desert in a long trench coat and carrying a badass gun, and then you see him all silhouetted against the blazing sun. Now that is an awesome scene.

Yes, the image of Fargo taking the Long Walk was a rocker.

The plot was decent if predictable, the lines were cheesy as hell and predictable, though I think in the end where the girl tells him that he could feel emotion, etc, it would have been far more epic and made more sense if he'd said "guilty" than the annoying "I knew you would say that."

I'd have much rather they didn't insist on giving Dredd a catchphrase. He doesn't have one. Well, aside from calling anyone and everyone "creep".

[Merqu]

The film itself isn't half bad. If you think of it as a Stalone film rather than Judge Dredd then you'd probably enjoit. Unless you can't stand Stalone of course. But there lies the problem. It shouldn't be a Stalone film. Your right that it's only Dredd in name, and the names of the characters n such.

Now if they were to release a new Judge Dredd, completly unrelated to the Stalone Dredd, It would probably be awsome. They seemed to of finally gotten Comic Book adaptations right. Iron Man and the new Batmans both awsome, the new Hulk not as good as those two but was a dam sight better than the other one *shudders*. and I am led to believe V for Vendetta is also awsome, not seen it myself though.

Now to make it awsome what they'd need to do is pick one of the big baddies, but not the biggest most iconic one though (I'll explain later). They should keep the idea of the armour but make it less comical. Those shoulderpads wouldn't look out of place on a Space Marine looking at their size LOL! Apart from the 'Block War' the city seemed to... tame... Hell even the Block War wasn't that good. Where were the dam fire bombs? I'm not saying make the city look like a warzone, but it needs to look more gritty and violent.

Now the reason I say don't use the Iconic one first is that in some ways, getting the baddy wrong can be worse than getting the good guy wrong. Plus if they feel confident with it then they can do a sequal with them in.

Oh and Wargamer, Judge Dredd has been on TV like 4-5 times since the summer lol! It's been over played just a smidge

[Circus Freak]

Not read the comics, but I ****ing love the film. I keep meaning to read the comics, but on hearing they're not like that then I'm thinking I might not bother. It just seemed to me to be mad balls-to-the-wall silliness, and there's not enough of that going around.

If I had read the comics first I'd probably be disappointed as I prefer things to stay close to the subject matter on the whole, but... like I said, just seen the film. And as a silly way to spend 90 minutes, I don't only merely "like" it but I'd say it's one of my favourites.

[Wargamer]

Originally Posted by Circus Carnage

Not read the comics, but I ****ing love the film. I keep meaning to read the comics, but on hearing they're not like that then I'm thinking I might not bother. It just seemed to me to be mad balls-to-the-wall silliness, and there's not enough of that going around.

If I had read the comics first I'd probably be disappointed as I prefer things to stay close to the subject matter on the whole, but... like I said, just seen the film. And as a silly way to spend 90 minutes, I don't only merely "like" it but I'd say it's one of my favourites.

The comics are insanely brilliant. You have to read them to understand why.

One of the best strips ever was Graveyard Shift. It saw Dredd working on the Meat Wagon (which picks up dead bodies). It was end-to-end brilliance.

[enderwiggin]

Originally Posted by Circus Carnage

Not read the comics, but I Y'xa'uuk love the film. I keep meaning to read the comics, but on hearing they're not like that then I'm thinking I might not bother. It just seemed to me to be mad balls-to-the-wall silliness, and there's not enough of that going around.

If I had read the comics first I'd probably be disappointed as I prefer things to stay close to the subject matter on the whole, but... like I said, just seen the film. And as a silly way to spend 90 minutes, I don't only merely "like" it but I'd say it's one of my favourites.

See you like this movie the way I like 'Mystery Men'. ;D

Overall, I must echo with a few others here and say that I liked the film. No, I also have never read the comics. They can't be that much more reasonable if Judge Dredd fights Aliens though.

That being said, I do think the film portrayed an overpopulated post-apo society poorly. All-in-all I think it rates a solid 80% for me (out of 100%), because I do like cheesy flicks.

[Circus Freak]

I like Mystery Men too

Originally Posted by enderwiggin

That being said, I do think the film portrayed an overpopulated post-apo society poorly.

Because I'm sure they tried their best to give it an accurate representation =P