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From day one and early glimpses we got I always expected Dredd to be a somewhat loose adaptation of the source material - and so I ended up being surprised at how respectful it was. It definitely stands as a film in it's own right though and isn't hobbled by being too slavish - which IMO is the right balance for an adaptation.

Yup. In that sense, it reminded me a lot of the Hellboy films. They were clearly different from the books, but they felt very similar (and even had some improvements of their own, as Dredd did).

There's some great contrast in the design, too. It's sometime hard to get a sense of scale in the comic, but here you've skyscrapers dwarfed by the 'mega blocks'.

Everyone has their own take on what's good and what isn't, but radiator's post really is an excellent selection of what's great about 2000 AD, from old series to relatively new ones.

Anyway, welcome, Dredd Head—I hope you enjoy your time with 2000 AD!

You can take the family, or even a date, to Avengers and the Dark Knight

Perhaps that's it. Depressing, though, that, as ever, it's fine to normalise many, many deaths, as long as we don't show any relatively realistic ramifications. I don't mind that so much in something like Star Wars (which is ultimately a movie for children), but it's a bit rich when you're heading into gritty and supposedly realistic territory that Dark Knight lives in. All those people died? At least there was no blood! PHEW!

[Bomb!]

You've mentioned this before, and I still think it's a mis-reading of the scene. Bond is clearly shaken by her death and the "quip", in that context, is surely bravado in a scene where the power clearly resides with Silva.

In which case, it was terribly scripted, acted and cut, not least given Bond's subsequent practically superhuman exploits that he could presumably have done before she got shot in the guts. Regardless, what happened previously was enough to put me and my wife off of future Bonds pretty much for good (Oh, you're a sex-abuse victim? Fab. How about I sneak into your shower and joke about how I like it when you're defenceless, and then fuck you? Great. I'm sure no-one will consider that a problem in a major motion picture, and in press junkets, we can call that 'sexy'.), and plenty of other people in the showing we watched were similarly disgusted.

I find the juxtaposition most interesting though: Skyfall showcased almost the worst of modern scriptwriting when it came to women and predictably made a mint, and yet, sadly, one of the few action flicks where you didn't just get a female token bombed. That I'd also recently watched Predators (Loads of guys! Oh, and we need one of those 'women' things to chuck into the mix! Got one? PHEW.) further reinforces such thoughts that I really wish Dredd would have done a lot better, for reasons beyond it being attached to 2000 AD and even for it being a no-holds-barred action flick. Smart. Savvy. Tough. Bloody. Pretty much gender-neutral. Bomb! The sexist garbled mess that was Skyfall? $1.1 *billion*. There's no bloody justice.

I agree regarding the Anderson scene. Also, importantly, SHE came out as the stronger party, [spoiler]taking Kay apart to the point he was totally defeated[/spoiler]. In other words, she wasn't the victim. Compare that to Skyfall's utterly reprehensible scene with Sévérine, a victim of regular, brutal sexual abuse. Bond sneaks into her room and into the shower with her for sex, then watches nonchalantly as she's shot, quipping that's a "waste of good scotch". That was something I was genuinely disgusted by, because it was so rampantly misogynistic; by contrast, feminist bloggers were raving about Dredd—including the scene with Kay.

Of course, that's not to negate the fact DrQ himself found the scene not to his liking. That's fair enough. But on watching and rewatching Dredd, I think it's got more depth than most people realise and, as Radiator said, actually had the balls to show the repercussions of all the shit that happened, rather than going for the usual bloodless cannon fodder seen in pretty much every other action movie in recent years.

Quite. Many people have complained for years about the gradual dumbing down of action movies, and the way they're overtly sanitised, to make them palatable for kids. They've been screaming out for something smart, tight, edgy, action-packed and entertaining. Dredd comes along and they're not interested and go and see Looper and Resident Evil instead, largely ending up split on the former and inevitably disappointed in the latter. Both movies make a shed-load of cash, and Dredd bombs. Now they're all "man, I wish I'd gone to see it" and "why won't those idiots make a sequel?" Well, probably because the box office take was miserable and even with subsequent strong rental/home market sales, no-one in their right mind would risk a second theatrical effort. It also puts a spanner in the works for anyone considering any kind of similar movie.

I'll make exceptions for those who can't stomach 3D, note. I very nearly stayed away myself because of that. (Fortunately, I was OK with the 3D and Mrs G was only minimally woozy from it.) But for everyone else (and especially those who love the 3D on the Blu-ray): GAH.

I won't castigate his for telling his fans he liked the film.

Nor would I. It's just a *headdesk* when someone like Smith—directly involved in the industry—is yelling "why didn't more people see this?" and "why aren't they making more?", when he's raving about it three months after the shiny disc came out. I wonder if he saw Dark Knight and Avengers at the flicks or tweeted about them a few months after they showed up on rental.

I think that the general consensus on the trailer at the time! I distinctly remember being a little underwhelmed by it, and dumbstruck at how inappropriate the choice of music was. The Japanese and Blu Ray trailers were indeed far superior.

The trailer was quite evocative, but looking at it now, it's like the people who okayed it were trying to distance themselves from what Dredd was: a ballsy, fairly intelligent, old-school action thriller. It should have ramped up the Carpenterness and ensured Anderson was still kicking bottom in there, and just run with it. Again, though, it's easy to say this in hindsight.

Sadly, Harry Knowles' online crusade to get people to see Dredd didn't seem to help much.

No, but imagine a few more people had gone nuts over the film. There'd have potentially been a knock-on effect. I'm not mad enough to think it would have made a big enough difference (such as Dredd sitting at #1 in the US for four weeks), but it could have been enough to raise the profile and perhaps even keep it longer in the top ten. (As people will recall, it did well mid-week and then kept dropping out of the top-ten—and therefore the general public's mind—at the last moment.)

It's easy in hindsight to see where everything went wrong, though. Looking back, the trailer was messed up. The later ones from Japan (more emphasis on action and less on the underlying story) were the way to go; also, overly focussing on a certain demographic (like the wrestling thing) perhaps didn't help. Hyping Anderson more would have helped too, given the hugely positive response the film got from women (who ended up being a very low percentage of the audience).

Ultimately, though, the stink of Stallone stuck around, and there simply weren't the marketing dollars to counter that. Iron Man didn't have traction, but it's more well known in the US and didn't have a terrible prior film lurking in recent memory.

The Smith thing really annoys me though. He's a comics geek, and so it'd be interesting to know why he didn't see the film when it opened. With his two million followers, those tweets at the time could have been enough to get more word of mouth, and even nudge Dredd up a chart position or two. Now, though, he just comes across as yet another of the screaming mob who should have gotten off their arses to see the film during its cinema run.

DrQ: Out of curiosity, have you watched Skyfall and, if so, what did you think of it? Given some of the stuff you're saying about Dredd, I'm very interested to get your take on that film.

Not a bad issue overall, I thought. Cypher rocketed to a conclusion and felt very Dredd, Dandridge was pleasingly silly and imaginative, the Threeriller was amusing, Stickleback was intriguing and then Zombo restarted. The last of those wasn't for me into its usual fab territory yet, but it's set-up time, so that's fair enough. Oh, and there's a letters page with someone made up as Tharg, which was a bit odd.

Daft question, would it be on iBooks? Or just having to get it from 2000ADonline.com?

I imagine you already know this, but in case others don't, PDFs can be loaded into iBooks (through iTunes or the iOS 'open in' option from elsewhere, such as email or Dropbox) if you'd like these books in that application.

I remember it at the time, and that sense of discovery where everything fell into place at the same speed it did for Dredd. That was one of the great moments in 2000 AD's history—a really brilliant twist.

"Creatures of evil! I know you!"

I'm not sure why that has to be taken literally. Dredd had plenty of experience with Dark Judges by that point and so perhaps recognised the signs, in the same way he'd instinctively 'know' a criminal when patrolling the Meg, or suspect someone's trying to con him during an interrogation. That's always how I read it anyway.

On their arrival in the city, I've no idea, but then the Sisters by that point had such psychic clout, it's feasible they could have made everyone instantly aware of who they were.