ANOTHER DREDD PHOTO

[Goaty]

There's clearly a tip you hat moment in Robo Cop when actor Peter Weller utters the immortal words 'Your move, creep.'

Only one Lawman uses that line and it isn't Dirty Harry.  I think the Film makers really were showing their appreciation of one of Robo Cops prime source materials -2000A.d's Judge Dredd.

Of course it is! What visual of human does RoboCop got? His chin! Remind you of someone?

[IAMTHESYSTEM]

Verhoevan directing Judge Dredd? >sigh<

Still let's hope the team of Pete Travis and Alex Garland have done their homework. I'm sure they have.

[M.I.K.]

Judge Dredd, 1978...


Robocop, 1987...
http://youtu.be/TV-3PzGXTEM

[Angry Vince]

Not to mention the use of ricocheting bullets in Robocop 2

[Psidude]

Robocop always pissed me off ! Because its just a blatant rip off,its like what Mac and me was to ET! and why talk of a new robocop film now,trying to steal Dredds thunder?  

[IAMTHESYSTEM]

Mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery. Or something like that.

[radiator]

Judge Dredd, 1978...


Robocop, 1987...
http://youtu.be/TV-3PzGXTEM

Funny that you chose to illustrate your point with a cover from The Cursed Earth, which could reasonably be called a 'rip-off' of the 1977 film Damnation Alley.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnation_Alley_%28film%29

Just goes to show that everything is just a remixed version of what came before. Dredd and Robocop share some DNA, but one is not a 'rip-off' of the other. Robocop stands alone as a piece of work.

[IAMTHESYSTEM]

Blimey the name of the other Film Produced by the Studio that made Damnation Alley was Star Wars.

The Studio thought they'd both be flops apparently.

Hollywood nobody knows anything there after all.

[James Stacey]

Funny that you chose to illustrate your point with a cover from The Cursed Earth, which could reasonably be called a 'rip-off' of the 1977 film Damnation Alley.

Which as far as I can tell wouldn't have been released over in the UK till around or after the prog chosen. It might have been influenced by the book but has Pat ever cited it as an influence?

[radiator]

I've definitely heard Damnation Alley cited as an influence on The Cursed Earth before (either the film or novel - the wiki of which lists The Cursed Earth as an 'adaptation' of the story: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnation_Alley) - can't remember where - maybe Dredd: The Mega-History?

In much the same way that Mach 1 is very much 'inspired' by The Six Million Dollar Man.

[Eric Plumrose]

The biggest Dredd 'take' by RoboCop, apart from the obvious man-machine dispensing law concept, is the coupling of that idea with interstitial-ad/media satire.

I'm not that au fait with ROBOCOP's development but that aspect seemed influenced more by Chaykin's AMERICAN FLAGG! than DREDD.

You could equally say where did Chaykin get the idea? Dredd had been out 6 years before American Flagg. The producers more or less admitted how RoboCop started out as a Dredd film but they couldn't get the rights.

I'm not disputing there wasn't a direct influence; ROBOCOP's approach and style, however, has more in common with Chaykin's work on AMERICAN FLAGG! (irrespective of whatever his influences may have been) than Wagner's on DREDD. Trashy news reports and egregious TV commercials interspersing the tale of a cop clearing up corporate corruption doesn't sound much like the JUDGE DREDD I was reading even after FLAGG! hit the stands.

[M.I.K.]

Just goes to show that everything is just a remixed version of what came before. Dredd and Robocop share some DNA, but one is not a 'rip-off' of the other. Robocop stands alone as a piece of work.

I actually pretty much agree with that. Robocop, the film, is not a rip-off of Judge Dredd, but remove the Frankenstein/Pinocchio/Astroboy stuff and Robocop, the character, becomes a totally blatant rip-off of Judge Dredd.

Haven't read American Flagg, so can't comment on any similarities there.

Interestingly, there are a few references to "robo-cops" in some early 2000ads too, (though not in Judge Dredd).

[A.Cow]

Blimey the name of the other Film Produced by the Studio that made Damnation Alley was Star Wars.

... and wasn't Star Wars just a rip-off of Flash Gordon "'cos they couldn't get the rights"?  Sounds familiar...

[TordelBack]

Aye, and the Bible 'rips-off' the epic of Gilgamesh, and I 'rip-off' my parents every time I do this 'language' thing that I copied from them.  It's not a 'rip-off', it's 'culture'. 

The problem I have with the term 'rip-off' is that it's pejorative (and maybe that's just me misunderstanding the current usage of the word) - in my mind a 'rip-off' is where you have been deliberately misled as to what you're getting.  If Robocop was a film version of Judge Dredd (garishly outfitted judge-jury-and-executioner monk raised from birth to dispense instant justice on the streets of a 22nd C gigapolis) but  titled 'Robocop', that would have been a rip-off, because you'd have quickly discovered that you were watching a Dredd movie that juat hadn't acquired the rights. 

That the Detroit family man turned cyborg Murphy spouts Dreddish quips and has half his face covered is just making use of an existing example of emotionless future lawman.  It's a good thing. 

[Cthulouis]

I'm with TB Block. Let us not forget that 2000ad's (well, okay, Pat Mill's at least) original ethos was to ride the wave of everything that currently popular, just with a bit of a twist.

Cultural ping-pong is what culture is all about [/over-simplification]