Drokk to the box office

Bad movies fail at the box office all the time and so they should, but often good films also fail to find their audiences, and on times great movies fall flat - Such is the case with Dredd, which is more than simply a good film. In fact Dredd may be as close to perfect as any comic book adaptation will ever get.

When an early cut of the movie was shown at last year's Comic-con both fans and critics were in agreement - Dredd was a great movie, more than that it was something special. It was a comic book movie that was faithful to the source material and dared to aim for an adult audience.

So confident were the makers that there was talk of a sequel, even a whole series of movies that would feature much loved characters and themes from the Dredd comic book - The Angel Gang, the Robo-Wars, Judge Call and the epic Cursed Earth storyline.

Dredd it seemed was a sure box office winner, but when the film,marketed as Dredd 3D opened it was a huge shock as the film bombed titanically. During it's opening weekend the movie went belly up -  Dredd was produced with a 50 million dollar budget. It brought in 6.2 million dollars in North American box office returns, putting it in sixth place behind the likes of End of Watch, House at the End of the Street, and Trouble With the Curve.  And the movie never did pick up and remains a costly failure in terms of box office. Though critics and fans maintain that Dredd is an excellent movie - it holds a 77% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, higher than The Amazing Spider-Man.

So why did Dredd tank?

Was it the 3D? Personally it was the 3D aspect that kept me from catching the movie in the cinema. I couldn't find a 2D showing and I can't stand 3D which gives me a headache. A lot of people feel the same way and there are whole chunks of people who will not go to see a 3D movie. It didn't help that the film was pushed as Dredd 3D - this sounds too gimmicky and made the film sound like either a big Hollywood blockbuster or a children's movie when it is neither.

Was it the ghost of the Sylvester Stallone Judge Dredd movie? Stallone's Dredd was a crap waste of celluloid, but it's been a long time and thankfully the film is not that well know. So I don't think Stallone was responsible for the failure of Dredd.


Maybe the (18) rating didn't help. Maybe there should have also been a less violent 12A version of the movie. Dredd is wrongly perceived by many as a superhero and maybe the adult rating put it out of the reach of a large section of its potential audience. I certainly think this was a factor and whilst the adult nature of the movie kept it faithful to the wonderful comic strip, I do believe that to not take some liberties in order to get a 12 certificate was a dangerous gamble which ultimately cost big bucks for the franchise.

 It is easy given the failure of Dredd to become cynical about the future of movies - if a movie is not family friendly then it has no chance of success in our shallow times where spectacle is more important than the integrity of a project. I actually think there's a lot of truth in that and that the majority of the movies made today can't hold a torch to the classics of decades gone by.

Will we see a sequel? Unless the just released DVD is a mega seller then it doesn't seem likely, which will be a great pity since Dredd is a bloody good movie. And as someone who read the Dredd strip from day one and still pick up the title from time to time, I found it to be a great version of the comic book.


Next time, and I do hope there's a next time,then please leave the 3D behind.

Dredd is available now on DVD/Bluray and if you missed it at the cinema then now is the chance to catch up on this movie that will one day be recognized for the masterpiece that it is. It's an arthouse action flick for the punk generation.

DREDD

I've just seen the Dredd movie via a DVD screener, and was surprised at how good it is. It's a pity the movie flopped at the box office and that a series is unlikely to be developed. So why did a film this good fail to find the expected audience? Personally I skipped it in the cinema because my local multiplex only had the movie in 3D and I just don't like 3D - the standard 2D is immersive enough if the movie is done well and it doesn't give a large percentage of movie-goers an headache.

Dredd really is done well.

We get a really nice early sequence in Mega City One, post apocalyptic America, before the movie wisely confines the bulk of the action to one of the massive mega blocks - blocks are towering high-rises that contain thousands of residents and each are like mini cities within the larger city.

The movie totally makes up for the 1995 Stallone turkey and here on the screen we have a Dredd that in terms in bringing the comic book character to life is nigh on perfect. The plot also is spot on though it is unfortunate that it so closely resembles the Raid, which managed to get the the big screen  before Dredd. Still the similarity in plots was unintentional and there are some great moments in Dredd. Some of the cleverly blocked out sequences even resemble panels from the comic book strips that first brought Dredd to existence.


Dredd's certainly a tough sell - on the surface  he may seem like a superhero, tailor-made for the Batman and Avengers audience, but that is not the case. The Stallone movie made the mistake of depicting Dredd as a square jawed hero, but this time the movie Dredd is very much the fascist tool of the state that the comic book invented all those years ago, and Mega City comes across as grimy as the 1970's UK that first inspired the initial creation of the character.


Let's hope Dredd does well enough on  DVD to inspire a sequel. The film certainly deserves one but next time forget the 3D.



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Dredd -early reviews are positive

Lovingly ripped from the pages of 2000AD, Dredd is an adrenaline-fuelled thrill burst that does Tharg’s finest justice, stays true to its roots and leaves you battered, bruised and hungry for more. SFX Magazine.


Grim, gritty and ultra-violent, "Dredd" reinstates the somber brutality missing from the U.K. comicbook icon's previous screen outing, the disappointing 1995 Sylvester Stallone starrer "Judge Dredd." A reboot as drastic as Christopher Nolan's "Batman Begins," this hard-R, sci-fi actioner from director Pete Travis and screenwriter Alex Garland should find an appreciative audience among serious-minded fanboys and gorehounds, while the pic's more extreme elements will likely limit its potential of crossing over to the superhero mainstream when Lionsgate releases it domestically Sept. 21. Variety

You've got to give ‘Dredd’ some credit for its fundamental delight in being fascist. It makes ‘Dirty Harry’ look like ’12 Angry Men.’ Screen Crush

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT JUDGE DREDD

Dredd, the second movie to be based on the Judge Dredd franchise has just wrapped shooting in Africa, and there are high hopes that this movie will make up for the 1995 movie which starred Sylvester Stallone and was directed by Danny Cannon.

Judge Dredd is perhaps the only British created comic book character that has the potential to rival franchises like Batman and Superman. I was there when the character debuted in 2000AD issue two, way back in 1977, Dredd then played second fiddle to Dan Dare, and I still pick up the Judge Dredd mag from time to time, and although the character has evolved through the decades he is still basically the same character we saw tearing down the futuristic streets of New York -yeah it was a future New York in the early days. Mega City One, had not even been thought of when the strip started.

And so if you're late to the party it matters now for here is the Archive with everything you need to know about the character in one concise hit.

MEET THE TOUGHEST LAWMAN OF THEN ALL...The first showing of Dredd, issue 2 of 2000AD, told us it was New York and the year was 2099 - a tarnished city where skyscrapers tower miles into the sky and small building like, for instance, The Empire State Building lay in ruins and now serve as hideouts for vicious criminals. Right from the start Dredd was the most popular strip in the comic and soon replaced the revamped Dan Dare as the main draw - Mega City one developed slowly and from very early issues the name New York was dropped and became America's Mega City and then simply, Mega City One.

The reason Dredd was the succcess Dan Dare was not seems obvious with hindsight - 2000AD was a new kind of comic and it's strips, very much initially influenced by the banned Action Comic, had a very 1970's grittiness to them, while Dare, although upgraded, was still stuck in the traditional space opera vibe. The readers were hungry for the violence of strips such as Flesh, Invasion and yes, Judge Dredd.

Dredd evolved from an idea for a comic strip by John Wagner for an extreme version of the Dirty Harry type character. Wagner had written various Dirty Harry-style "tough cop" stories for other titles, and suggested a character who took that concept to its logical extreme, imagining an ultra-violent lawman patrolling a future New York City with the power to administer instant justice. Mills had developed a horror strip called Judge Dread but abandoned the idea as unsuitable for the new comic; but the name, with the spelling modified to "Dredd" at the suggestion of sub-editor Kelvin Gosnell, was adopted by Wagner for his ultimate lawman. The judges were lawman who were able to instantly pass a verdict as to a perps guilt and also pass sentence there and then.

The Dredd character worked well in epic storylines, split across several month's worth of issues - and over the years there have been many, some that have even redesigned Dredd's world - two early examples were the Robot Wars and The Cursed Earth. The Robot Wars ran from issue 10 - 17 and featured a war between mankind and the robots that had been built to serve. The story was notable for its social commentary - The very first story in which the Judge Dredd series finally comes alive is the Robot Wars, where the parallels between the robots in the story and black slaves is made quite explicit. The Cursed Earth was even more ambitious is scope and ran from issues 61 - 85. When this strip finished its run Judge Dredd and the world he operated in would never be the same. Indeed the world depicted in the modern Judge Dredd strips was very much defined within the Cursed Earth storyline. It may have been knocked about a bit in future epics, such as The Apocalypse War but the feel was right here in The Cursed Earth.

The Cursed Earth was also notable for a lawsuit involving the publishers of 2000 AD, McDonalds, Burger King, and the Jolly Green Giant. Four episodes in the series, written by John Wagner and Jack Adrian, featured copyrighted characters without permission. One storyline depicted wars between rival gangs, headed by the Burger King and Ronald McDonald - including scenes of Ronald executing a gang member who spilled a milk shake. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the owners of these characters objected to the use of their trademarks and sued. Publishers IPC settled out of court, publishing a half-page retraction and agreeing never to reprint the offending episodes

Another point is that, unless we're talking about the Sly Stallone movie, Dredd never removes his helmet -
Dredd's entire face is never shown properly in the strip. This custom began as an unofficial guideline, but soon became a rule which artists were required to follow.

As John Wagner explained:

"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."

However, on very rare occasions Dredd's face has been shown in flashbacks to when he was a child, in pictures lacking in detail. In an early story in prog 8, Dredd is forced to remove his helmet and the other characters react as if he is disfigured, but Dredd's face was covered by a faux censorship sticker.






An aborted idea was to have Dredd as a non-white character. In Carlos Ezquerra's original design he drew Dredd with large lips, "to put a mystery as to his racial background.However not all of the artists who worked on the strip were told. As a result Mick McMahon spent four months drawing Dredd as a black man, while Brian Bolland and Ron Smith drew him as a white man.

<sup>For many years it became popular for readers to send in drawings of what they thought Dredd looked like - many of these had him terribly disfigured.


Over the years the Dredd series has matured and these days satire, both political and otherwise is ingrained in its DNA.

The WIKI gives us the following bio of Judge Dredd -</sup>  
Senior Judge Joseph Dredd and his brother Rico Dredd were cloned from the DNA of Chief Judge Fargo, the first chief judge, in 2066. Their growth was artificially accelerated so that they emerged with an apparent physiological age of 5, with all the appropriate knowledge for their age electronically implanted in their brains by computer during gestation. The name Dredd was chosen by the genetic scientist who created them, Morton Judd, to "instill fear in the population."

In 2070 they saw action for the first time during the Atomic Wars, when as cadets they were temporarily assigned the rank of full judge and sent to restore order to the panic-stricken streets. Distinguishing themselves, they were chosen to take part in assaulting the White House when the Justice Department deposed President Booth. They were fast-tracked through the Academy of Law, Joe graduating second in his class in 2079 (Rico came first) Later that year Joe was forced to arrest Rico for murder and corruption.

Joe Dredd excelled as a judge, rapidly gaining promotion to the rank of senior judge. Offered the opportunity to become chief judge in 2101, he declined, preferring to serve on the streets enforcing the law. On several different occasions he saved his city from conquest or complete destruction by powerful enemies, and in 2114 he almost single-handedly saved the world from being destroyed during the Fourth World War.
Although Dredd puts his duty to uphold the law above everything, this devotion is not blind loyalty. On two occasions (in 2099 and 2112) Dredd resigned from the force on points of principle, but both times returned to the fold. In 2113 Dredd insisted that the Justice Department gamble its very existence on a referendum to prove its legitimacy as a form of government.In 2116 he risked 20 years' imprisonment with hard labour when he challenged the policy of a chief judge which he was unable to support. In 2129 he threatened to resign to persuade another chief judge to change the city's harsh anti-mutant laws.

After over fifty years of active service, Dredd's career may be drawing to a close. In 2130 he was diagnosed with cancer, though it was said to be operable. In 2132 Dredd was appointed to the Council of Five, Mega-City One's highest governing body.

So that's it, a pretty rough guide but basically all you need to know - just remember, if you put Margaret Thatcher in a figure hugging leather suit, and gave her unanswerable power then you'd have Judge Dredd... Hey, come to think of it - maybe that's why he never takes his helmet off!

Dredd - first look

Back in the day I had high hopes for the Judge Dredd movie starring Sly Stallone - you see Judge Dredd was like our own hero and it felt as if we had some sort of ownership. Where Batman and Superman belonged to an earlier generation, I was there at the start with Judge Dredd (I was twelve when the 2000AD comic came out) and what's more Dredd, although operating in a future America, was British.

Then the Stallone movie came out and fans everywhere went - "What the fuck?"

Will the new movie, simply titled Dredd make up for the fiasco that was Judge Dredd: The Movie? Pete Travis is directing Karl Urban, Lena Headey and Olivia Thirlby are starring, and we’ve seen a few shots from the set already, as well as a nice image of Urban as the man himself, and this new picture is ripe and ready to be poured over by Dreddheads everywhere.

At least they seem to have the look right this time - the uniform looks modern and yet functional, and those shoulder pieces are not as big as those in the Stallone movie, which although true to the comic book style made Dredd look rather camp up on the big screen. And best not mention that cod piece.

Dredd is expected to hit cinemas this December.

Let's hope they keep the helmet on this time - that helmet is Dredd's face!


Sly Stallone said of his Judge Dredd movie -

Stallone's camp Dredd

"I loved that property when I read it, because it took a genre that I love, what you could term the 'action morality film' and made it a bit more sophisticated. It had political overtones. It showed how if we don't curb the way we run our judicial system, the police may end up running our lives. It dealt with archaic governments; it dealt with cloning and all kinds of things that could happen in the future. It was also bigger than any film I've done in its physical stature and the way it was designed. All the people were dwarfed by the system and the architecture; it shows how insignificant human beings could be in the future. There's a lot of action in the movie and some great acting, too. It just wasn't balls to the wall. But I do look back on Judge Dredd as a real missed opportunity. It seemed that lots of fans had a problem with Dredd removing his helmet, because he never does in the comic books. But for me it is more about wasting such great potential there was in that idea; just think of all the opportunities there were to do interesting stuff with the Cursed Earth scenes. It didn't live up to what it could have been. It probably should have been much more comic, really humorous, and fun. What I learned out of that experience was that we shouldn't have tried to make it Hamlet; it's more Hamlet and Eggs"