Ugh Ahm.... Th' Lugh: "Dredd" - The Preview

I'm not Dredd-ing this September as much as I am December 21st, but what did the Mayans know anyway?

Borag Thungg, Earthlets! It's Summer 1995, and a slightly smaller, way less hairy version of your beloved reporter, after a day of endangering innocent beach-goers lives with a surfboard is attending a cinema in Newquay to see a movie based on one of the UK's most enduring cult comic characters - Hammerstein, the noble leader of the ABC Warriors.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRN-X74VVK4&feature=fvst for a shakey, digitised from VHS episode of Film '95 which details some of the production, thx Bazza!

Also featured in the movie was Sylvester Stallone, performing a passable impression of another 2000AD character; Judge Joseph Dredd, infact it proved to be more about him than anyone else and was even named after that character, but who could forget that scrotnig ABC robot?

Now a full 17 years later, perhaps to the day, my 2000AD subscription lapsed more than a decade ago, but despite this crushing blow to the publishers, I'm surprised to see the franchise is still running strong.

So much so that with Hollywood's constant plumbing of comic book material they have once again looked across the rad-soaked wasteland of what used to be Middle America, past Mega City One which occupies what used be New York and a big chunk of the surrounding Eastern Seaboard. Before setting off over the Black Atlantic ocean (wait, was that Judge Dredd, or Syndicate on the Amiga?) and landing firmly in Brit-Cit One. There, out of hundreds of great characters they've once again predictably chosen to base a film on the most widely known and marketable character, Judge Dredd.... Just call him Dredd... Ain't got time for the "Judge" part these days.

And so I'm watching this exact trailer as magically interlinked above^, thinking wow, this is zarjaz, even though it has no ABC's, no Judges of Death and the whole thing kinda reminds me of Robocop 2 somehow but at least there's no Rob Shneider cracking jokes. (aww c'mon Fergie wasn't that irritating was he? Remember the servo-droid? hehehe, the popcorn? hehehe, the fireball up my ass? hehehe - Rob)  

But still... I could nitpick a bit: Given all the other vehicles are just normal vehicles - as opposed to the sumptuously designed futuristic vehicles littering the streets of the Big Meg in Danny cannon's '95 production - the futuristic Judge bikes here look over designed. I might go as far as to say maybe even a little uncool and silly because they're really looking out of the usual scifi context of slickly designed flying cars and so on.  Specifically  the over-designed kinda old fashioned looking curving bodyshell and the red trim really remind me of something... Can't remember what for the life of me however... Infact the latest, tragedy laden Batman series seems to do ridiculous vehicles much more plausibly. 

Nananananana-na, Judge-man, Judge-man, Adam-Wesssssssst.

Though in fairness, I haven't seen a "Lawmaster" design yet that didn't look overwhelmingly silly and impractical. Silly and impractical works far better in a comic strip than in a movie, and pleasingly really everything about the design of this movie is the grittiest and most realistic seen yet out of, erm, this and the other one.

A typical Vehicle of 1995's Judge Dredd... Dredd 2012 takes a more "relaxed" approach to the production design

Its impressively different to the '95 version, which tended to look a lot like the comics - a lot of campy gold bling on the uniform for example, but the ridiculous looking Lawmaster at least looked in place. So in terms of production design, the more toned down everything is, the better it all fits that environment (and the less it costs, too), of course if its too toned down it loses identity, there's a certain lack of personality in the costume design.

Whatever the design, you could still question the practicality of having basically your entire front line police force out on motorcycles and thats something that has been with Dredd from the early days of Pat Mills and Carlos Ezquerra.

Silly, yes.  Impractical, yes. More terrifying without the helmet than with? Yes. 

I guess in-keeping with the toned down nature of the production, out of all the infamous, elaborate and imaginative foes Judge Dredd has battled over the years our bad guy is a fairly normal looking woman, but she's got a scar so you know she's maybe been in a car accident or something and is on an NHS waiting list for reconstructive surgery, maybe they could have given her a beard and a German / British accent?

Nuke or perhaps another serving of that primordial soup from Prometheus again... Either way Kane finds it delicious.  BTW Did I ever tell you about the Klingon proverb that says that primordial soup is best served slightly chilled?
Enjoy responsibly, it's moreish.

Don't drink primordial soup and drive, folks... Our villain after shooting up some heroin(e) - some clever word play there...  

The upshot of all this is as I have accurately deduced from the trailer is a terrible traffic problem on the corner of Abbot and Costello, and the Judges are dispatched to deposit some tickets on the offending vehicles. After attempting to return a stray cat to an old lady they become trapped by oddly tattooed and heavily armed drug people, who aren't impressed with the concept of Prohibition and are addicted to a substance that perceptually slows time, so their crappy lives seem to take even longer to live out, a trip to the benefits office could take a whole perceptual week for instance, AFAIK, this is the only thing that it does, no actual dizzying high or even a mild giddiness.  

If you want to slow down time, I'll tell you how, go and get a regular day job and you'll see time slow right down to a crawl, esp on a Friday afternoon, works great.

Essentially the movie seems to be set in a single building for the most part, with Dredd and 'a Rookie' attempting to escape a Drug Lord-ette's (lordette, really?) heavily armed manor full of people from Delta City looking for more irresistible Nuke after Robocop destroyed the lot in the sequel to Paul Verhoeven's excellent movie. As with John McTeirnan's also outstanding Die Hard, the restrictive environment of a single structure could be a good thing to keep the action and the script tight.

So while the story deals with everyday inner city problems like, double parking or stray felines, there's also a sub plot about illegal drug use. But will that have any relation to actual real world urban decay, will the story be as realistically realised as the visuals? Or In a Frank Drebin inspired approach to law enforcement, are the clouds of combusted soup material gushing from a plebeians mouth merely an indicator of whom one should shoot? Classic comic book Dredd with his somewhat cavalier approach to law enforcement would certainly approve.

 

"Ma'm put the gun down, we've found your cat."

"I inhaled, deeply and frequently, that was the point." - B Obama.

One of the best things about Judge Dredd (based on several hundred 'progs' of 2000AD collected during my youth) is that everything is so over the top that the Judges cause as much havoc as the bad guys, you're often left wondering who's worse. Will there be any depth, any blurring of the lines of good and evil, shades of grey, or really will everything just be a series of things that happen in conceptual black and white to get from one explosive, gory set peice to another? Dredd himself in the comics is really an anti-hero, as an over the top authoritarian he's scarier than the bad guys. 

For a citizen of Mega City One, just being in the wrong place at the wrong time can lead to a lengthy time in the slammer with no chance of parole, at worst, on the spot execution. Its harsh frontier law with rules dictated by fascist bureaucrats (the council of the judges) and executed (literally) by their subordinates.  In a resource starved and overpopulated world, its apparently the only way that works but its never been something that anyone was intended to approve of or applaud so I hope the Judges are not overly glorified in this production, again they aren't clear cut good guys as such, having been brainwashed from an early age to defend the fascist state. 

Anyway, I'm kinda running out of things to say, and other Sci-fi things to reference... Oh apart from the thing that will TOTALLY RUIN THE MOVIE FOR EVERYONE!*

Because the first time I watched the trailer I had no audio, it was late so I couldn't use the whopping great Jamo speakers I annoy my neighbours with during the day, headphones destroyed in a terrible accident with an office chair and my replacement cans hadn't turned up yet.

So, boring details of my audio setup aside, I assumed certain things; as Karl Urban's lips moved I kinda heard Stallones mangled version of what Dredd might sound like pouring out of his mouth, which if anything was appropriately naturally deep, as that actor has a naturally dark timbre. Today I saw it again, but with audio and something wasn't right, quickly pinning it down to Mr Urban's vocals, I honestly laughed out loud as Karl immaculately annunciated Dredd's catchphrase; "I am the law." - A phrase utterly mangled by his predecessor.

Because although to his credit as an actor he can actually pronounce words, Karl Urban doesn't have any natural depth to his voice, he sounds incredibly strained and unnatural.

It reminds me of a weedy looking comedian pretending to be a superhero - think Simon Pegg trying to sound hard, it just doesn't work as anything other than comedy. Urban also perhaps somehow just looks too small, maybe its the diminished shoulder pads. Even though Stallone is a relatively tiny man, barely 3 foot 4 inches in height, thanks to smoking a healthy three packs of flavor country's finest a day for the entire 80's he has the voice of a much larger person and an orange crate or two deal with height issue. While Urban's take on the character is far more serious in tone due to the scripting, I think I might struggle to take his character seriously if the voice isn't right -like you might struggle to take a real law man seriously if his voice sounded all fake and ****.

Apparently Christian Bale's version of Batman has also received similar critique, so if it didn't bother you there it might not here - though it makes more sense with the dual character of Batman. 

Honestly, I haven't seen anything Batman related since 1989, well, at least nothing after that whole Joel Schumacher effort, so it was amusing to find a video on Youtube of Simon Pegg discussing the exact thing I was just talking about.

All is not lost however, maybe they will overdub him with James Earl Jones... Or maybe the whole thing will be so great that no one will care, or will I giggle through the entire thing and have an inadvertently great time anyway? - Like watching a terrible horror movie thats hysterical, like Prometheus. 

Splundig Vur Thrigg!

-Steve the Mighty.

*or not.