Dredd (2012)

[CrazyFoxMachine]

Absolutely. Pacific Rim was my favourite film from last year. Dredd is great, but IMO is not even as good as The Raid... (obviously, opinion on here may vary!)

Dredd has nothing for the casual viewer to hook onto - which is something I realised about it a while ago. Anderson has no real character - pretty much all personality she has is what you and I bring in as comic readers who know the character.
(now is the bit where everyone tells me how not comic reading friends of theirs love it! I loe the movie too - it's just that I recognise my opinion is coloured by my love of the comic)

Everybody being determined to see everything as shit really wears me down...

[Dark Jimbo]

 

[JOE SOAP]

Absolutely. Pacific Rim was my favourite film from last year. Dredd is great, but IMO is not even as good as The Raid... (obviously, opinion on here may vary!)

Dredd has nothing for the casual viewer to hook onto - which is something I realised about it a while ago. Anderson has no real character - pretty much all personality she has is what you and I bring in as comic readers who know the character.
(now is the bit where everyone tells me how not comic reading friends of theirs love it! I loe the movie too - it's just that I recognise my opinion is coloured by my love of the comic)

I don't usually like comparing films as it's always better to analyse films on a case by case basis (what works for one doesn't necessarily work for another and under the surface they're 3 quite different films with different styles) but since it's been raised in relation to the titular character and film we all know, I'll give it a go:




Specifically among the 3 in question: Pacific Rim, The Raid and Dredd, character is where Dredd suffers least. It's pared back all right but at least we, the audience, throughout its course and with each new scene, get to know how both main characters work and also see how Anderson and Dredd bear witness to  each other's strengths and weaknesses and as minimal and as haiku as she is, Ma-Ma is quite compelling (a testament to the right casting).

Of the other 2 films the only one that comes closest to this is The Raid because of its laser-sharp focus on its central protagonist –hinting at slivers of a deeper, personal story– and we really see how resourceful and tenacious he is against the opposition whom mostly function as pure binary opposites (in this film's case it's a strength not a weakness. But at the end of the day it's all really there to serve the beautiful fights.

The 2 young leads in Pacific Rim are a write-off for most of the film and the only characters that are actually interesting and have actual character are secondary: Ron Perlman and Idris Elba, and they're seriously under-used. They should've been central.What it has in its favour is an extended middle-act of pure spectacle, and spectacle that's well directed and put together, but it really only arrives in the second act –along with all the best character stuff– and then deflates to a drab end.

What Dredd doesn't have in comparison to the other two is a stronger sense of a singular directorial style and both Guillermo Del Toro and Gareth Evans are tough, tough, tough competition. Pacific Rim relies solely on its mid-film spectacle and humour but The Raid is arguably the best directed and edited film of 2012 and shouldn't be underestimated. It's crafted within an inch of its life (it was shot and cut twice, once as a rehearsal and then the actual shoot/edit) and in its singular purpose achieves precisely what it set out to do leaving no prisoners and every other film, in all genres, behind. Nothing was wasted so putting Dredd up against it means putting it up with one of the best of that year.

All 3 films share about as much significant plot/story as each other but Pacific Rim contains a lot of extraneous exposition and structurally is a dog's dinner: sloppy and causing indigestion. Individual bits looks nice on their own but they don't really go together.

The Raid in terms of story is an hermetically sealed miniature and like its chop-socky choreography works like a Swiss watch.

I feel Dredd could've done with a bit more of 'the citizens of Peach Trees' (maybe a different environ within the block) plus one extra story element to lift its back-end and add a bit more to Anderson's mutant conflict– a conflict which is very well set-up in both the first and second acts for some kind of pay-off in the third, and ironically, I think Arthur Wyatt consciously or subconsciously (or not at all) picked up on this loose-end and paid it off with his mutant-traffiking angle in Underbelly, which most interestingly, works like a coda rather than as a sequel for the film. They really go together as a piece.

As for engaging a 'wider' audience, that's rather subjective, and Dredd is sliding more to The Raid end of the scale in terms of audience size but commercially Dredd was also fighting against an older taint to its brand that just might have been dispelled since; a burst in the 3D bubble and faulty marketing. It should've at least made its money back at the box-office.

Pacific Rim didn't engage me until about 40 minutes in and lost me in its last half hour but it was commercial and had big robots and monsters. The Raid had me from the start but the fights can be wearisome for a general audience which is probably why it didn't crossover from its niche too much into the mainstream (it made less money than Dredd though with a smaller general release) but it pays itself off very well.

Dredd could've done with a broadening of its opening scenes in the city, the city-block and to add that extra bit of plot/story to play around with in its third act but that = mo' money and technically if I was forced to rate it amongst the others it would be second only to The Raid in terms of execution with Pacific Rim very much last. No means a perfect beast and small-scale, it works very much through its characters, tight writing, pacing and atmosphere. Along with lovely production-design, blunt and to-the point gunplay, it succeeds in what I believe it set-out to do: faithfully bring those characters to the screen whilst hinting at a broader canvas.

[Steve Green]

Second act battle aside, Pacific Rim didn't grab me.

I wish Dredd had a bit more variety in it, nothing to blow the budget.

One of ma-ma's goons going headfirst/getting their arm caught in a garbage grinder seems like it would have suited it, and cost eff all.

Something to break up the standard executions, anyway.

[Rusty]

I thought Pacific Rim was pretty poor to be honest. It had a couple of exciting fight scenes that looked nice, but other than that, it was borderline terrible. Charlie Hunnam should never be allowed near a lead role in a film of this scale again, his acting was that bad and wooden, and the supporting cast and characters (Perlman aside) were equally as bad, especially those with the hooky Aussie accents, which was just awful to listen to. By far Del Toro's worst film I think.

[shaolin_monkey]

Nice round up Joe.

In defence of Pacific Rim, the 3D is ferkin incredible both on big and small screen. Kudos to the visuals all round.

Other than that, I unfortunately found it to be like a corny over-extended less awesome episode of Megas XLR.

That's only my opinion though - I don't want to piss on anyone else's chips. Just don't get me started in 'Man of Steel'...

Re Dredd, I found a way to increase the 3D effect on my telly last night, so rewatched it. It gave me a slight headache, but really made the visual effects stand out all the more. Things looked more 'solid', if you get what I mean.

[JOE SOAP]

Re Dredd, I found a way to increase the 3D effect on my telly last night, so rewatched it. It gave me a slight headache, but really made the visual effects stand out all the more. Things looked more 'solid', if you get what I mean.

Watch out! You'll be noticing strange orifices appearing in your abdomen.

[dweezil2]

Re Dredd, I found a way to increase the 3D effect on my telly last night, so rewatched it. It gave me a slight headache, but really made the visual effects stand out all the more. Things looked more 'solid', if you get what I mean.

Watch out! You'll be noticing strange orifices appearing in your abdomen.

Long live the New flesh! 

[Richmond Clements]

Posted by: CrazyFoxMachine
« on: 08 January, 2014, 08:47:25 PM » Insert Quote
Quote from: Richmond Clements on 08 January, 2014, 06:16:14 PM

Absolutely. Pacific Rim was my favourite film from last year. Dredd is great, but IMO is not even as good as The Raid... (obviously, opinion on here may vary!)

Dredd has nothing for the casual viewer to hook onto - which is something I realised about it a while ago. Anderson has no real character - pretty much all personality she has is what you and I bring in as comic readers who know the character.
(now is the bit where everyone tells me how not comic reading friends of theirs love it! I loe the movie too - it's just that I recognise my opinion is coloured by my love of the comic)

Quote from: Richmond Clements on 07 January, 2014, 01:01:50 PM
Everybody being determined to see everything as shit really wears me down...

Because much as I love Dredd

Quote mining! Yeahhh!

I'll go back to keeping my mouth shut then... I'm obviously totally wrong in my personal opinion...

[TordelBack]

I'm obviously totally wrong in my personal opinion...

Yeah, well, that's like just your opinion, man. 

[radiator]

It's apples and oranges innit. The one thing both films have in common was that they both should have done better at the box office.

[radiator]

Not having a pop at anyone, mind. Rich made a fair point - a fairly common criticism of Dredd was that it was a bit bleak and some people found it hard to get involved in the story. It was always going to be a relatively cult film.

[IAMTHESYSTEM]

DREDD was a tough, 18 Film so it's audience appeal was always going to be limited.

It did far better in DVD/Download sales in comparison to it's Box Office appeal and that indicates there was an audience for it but that audience decided not to go and see it in the Cinema.

The question remains why that was so. Some say it was the Marketing; they gave away a lot of the plot in the Trailer as I recall which is never really a good idea and of course the shadow of Stallone's effort colouring peoples perceptions since the 2012  seen as a remake of the 1995 Movie in some quarters. 

[IndigoPrime]

Giving away the plot in a trailer seems par for the course these days—the problem with Dredd, though, is the plot is extremely basic, and every one of the major twists is included. It might have worked better in playing up the more general dystopia, action and, frankly, gender-neutrality. We'll never know now, but I don't really know anyone who was excited by that Dredd trailer, but some of the overseas ones (like one, IIRC, from Japan) did a better job of selling the gritty, tough, unsanitised nature of the film.

Fundamentally, a hard 18/R of a little-known property is always going to have a tough time, not least given that Americans mostly thought it was a Stallone-series reboot. Add to that the emphasis on 3D prints and it's not a huge surprise the box-office take was limited (although I was nonetheless surprised at quite how limited in the USA). That said, take away the 3D aspect of the film and lower ticket prices might have meant it wasn't the #1 in the UK for that single week...

[shaolin_monkey]

I'm obviously totally wrong in my personal opinion...

Yeah, well, that's like just your opinion, man.

Sorry mate, I didn't mean come across as to totally bashing your opinion. Just stating my own is all.  It's all horses for courses, innit?