Dredd Sequel announced (or as near it to a drokkin' sequel)

[COMMANDO FORCES]

At the end of a Lawgiver MKII 

[JOE SOAP]

I will argue until blue in the face that without Batman: Dead End, there wouldn't have been a Batman Begins. 

Even though Nolan and Goyer were all ready hired and working on Batman Begins Again 6 months before Batman: Cul de Sac was released?

[Professor Bear]

BLUE IN THE FACE I SAID.

The previous bat-treatments - including Goyers - before the urban grit of Begins was decided upon out of the blue are all online and available for ridicule.  My favorite was the treatment where Batman learned his ninja and acrobatic skills as protege to mob hitman Joe Chill, and punched people so hard that the "W" on the Wayne family signet ring left a bat-like impression on mobster's faces (just like the Phantom's skull ring thingy) so everyone calls him "The Batman".  Like Superman Returns, YES I KNOW but still I am morbidly curious how that would have turned out as a film.

[JOE SOAP]

BLUE IN THE FACE I SAID.

The previous bat-treatments - including Goyers - before the urban grit of Begins was decided upon out of the blue are all online and available for ridicule.  My favorite was the treatment where Batman learned his ninja and acrobatic skills as protege to mob hitman Joe Chill, and punched people so hard that the "W" on the Wayne family signet ring left a bat-like impression on mobster's faces (just like the Phantom's skull ring thingy) so everyone calls him "The Batman".  Like Superman Returns, YES I KNOW but still I am morbidly curious how that would have turned out as a film.

Aronofsky & Miller's 1970's style 16mm take of Year One back in 2000 had more grit than Batman: Dead-End's rain-soaked Arkham Asylumesque Joker and the Alien vs Predator combo; which had cribbed images from Shyamalan's realist superhero film Unbreakable (2000) - a film that I think had far more influence on the superhero films that followed in its wake than Dead End's Gotham Knight.

[Professor Bear]

Aronofsky & Miller's 1970's style 16mm take of Year One back in 2000

Even Joel Schumacher talked about doing a "gritty" bat-film.  Dead End still got there first.

[Bubba Zebill]

Don't listen to the naysayers. 

I like that. The power of positive thinking - and high explosives!

[JOE SOAP]

Even Joel Schumacher talked about doing a "gritty" bat-film.  Dead End still got there first.

Aronofsky and Miller had a script being developed at Warners indicating the direction and tone they wanted to take, and continuing in that mode, I can't imagine they hired Nolan on the strength and tone of Memento to make a Burton/Schumacheresque film.

Warner's compliant decision to develop a style of film that many had requested for years was made long before Collora's pedestrian action-short that also was playing to fans. If anything, Nolan avoided that short-film's inherent mistakes.

[Beadle68]

Think John's right about "dont listen to the naysayers" because you dont know what may happen.I personally think that since the dvd has sold well and all the positive vibe the film has been generating even among non fans of Dredd that sooner or later some exec will think that a sequel to our beloved film might be worth one last stab. After all Dredd's profile has been raised in America to the point where they might actually go to a cinema to see a sequel ,now that they how kick ass it is.How many non fan film sites have you all visited where people are submitting comments on how they need a sequel and wish they had got there fat lazy arses into a cinema to see it,I know I've trawled through shit loads. It can only be a positive thing that a short is being made, I just hope that Karl is involved, He is Dredd.

[Professor Bear]

Warner's compliant decision to develop a style of film that many had requested for years was made long before Collora's pedestrian action-short that also was playing to fans. If anything, Nolan avoided that short-film's inherent mistakes.

You seem to be under the impression I am saying one is better than the other - I'm not.  I'm saying one came out before the other, and that a lot of shite was being talked about what the next Batman movie might be like.

I can't imagine they hired Nolan on the strength and tone of Memento to make a Burton/Schumacheresque film.

They hired the director of Lost Boys, Falling Down and The Client and the screenwriter of Silent Fall and A Time To Kill to make a Batman movie and look how gritty and adult that turned out.

[JOE SOAP]

You seem to be under the impression I am saying one is better than the other - I'm not.  I'm saying one came out before the other, and that a lot of shite was being talked about what the next Batman movie might be like.

No, I think you're saying the only reason one exists is because of the other which I don't think is paticularly true:

I will argue until blue in the face that without Batman: Dead End, there wouldn't have been a Batman Begins. 

Whereas I don't feel there's much reason to think one started the ball rolling for the other, a ball that had all ready started rolling 6 months previous especially when Dead End is far more comic-book and Begins more like a Bourne film.

They hired the director of Lost Boys, Falling Down and The Client and the screenwriter of Silent Fall and A Time To Kill to make a Batman movie and look how gritty and adult that turned out.

And both were hired for opposite reasons. It happens.

Because Burton bailed out, they hired Schumacher mid-stream to continue the successful tone and style set by Burton for the series and, if I remember correctly and as you've you often said, this is the very reason you still consider those films to be 'Tim Burton era' Batman films, no?

On the other hand, I don't think it's off-beat to say that Nolan was hired for the very opposite reason: specifically, to reboot the whole merry-go-round in a different direction, a direction they had in the interim indicated by their previous choices and which resulted in Batman Begins.

[Hawkmumbler]

Batman: Dead End? The Predator crossover fan film? I've heard good stuff about it, worth a watch?

[James Stacey]

Batman: Dead End? The Predator crossover fan film? I've heard good stuff about it, worth a watch?

Yeah its fun

[Professor Bear]

There are better Batman fan films out there nowadays, but enjoying a lot of them requires that you not find the presence of Harley Quinn and/or a struggling actor's interpretation of the Joker a teeth-gritting experience, though do not watch The Death Of Batman under any circumstances.  It is The Room of fan-movies.

No, I think you're saying the only reason one exists is because of the other which I don't think is paticularly true:

I will argue until blue in the face that without Batman: Dead End, there wouldn't have been a Batman Begins. 

I could put my hands up and say that I could have been a lot clearer if I meant "in that form" (I did), as the money made by the "flop" Batman and Robin guaranteed it was always when and not if they would make another bat-film, but that would be pedantry so I shall cede the point.

Despite many directors and writers being hired over the years because this time they were definitely gonna make a Batman movie this time, definitely this time, it's definitely gonna happen, Aaronofsky is gonna hit it outta the park and this gritty Year One reboot is gonna happen and be great - one still came out first by almost two full years, and Hollywood's cribbing from low-budget auteurs and the need of producers to have visual aids before an idea sinks in is well-documented, though along those lines if someone were to argue so, I could believe X-Men, Daredevil, Blade and Hulk's successes were more a factor in how Begins eventually turned out, or that their existence simply suggested that a grimmer superhero movie was now a reasonable box office gamble rather than a guaranteed critical bomb.

[JOE SOAP]

There are better Batman fan films out there nowadays, but enjoying a lot of them requires that you not find the presence of Harley Quinn and/or a struggling actor's interpretation of the Joker a teeth-gritting experience, though do not watch The Death Of Batman under any circumstances.  It is The Room of fan-movies.

I'm intrigued.

if someone were to argue so, I could believe X-Men, Daredevil, Blade and Hulk's successes were more a factor in how Begins eventually turned out, or that their existence simply suggested that a grimmer superhero movie was now a reasonable box office gamble rather than a guaranteed critical bomb.

That's why in a previous post I mentioned Unbreakable - released at the same time as X-Men -  and its obvious visual nods to Batman: the drenched cape/rising from the water was cribbed for Dead End.

Both X-Men and Unbreakable had a similar realist tone though X-Men dropped it half-way through - it is a Bryan Singer film. There was no way Warners could ignore those visual aids , or the beans they generated, certainly more than Sandy Corolla's late-in-the-game fan-pleaser.

[Frank]

I share Pro Bear's opinion that Nolan's Bat films differ from the Burton/Schumaker era only in their visual aesthetic - and only slightly, at that. All the angsty stuff and mirroring of heroes and villains is there in the campest of the nineties material, and all the homo-eroticism, unfeasible logic and toy-fixation of the 'kiddie' films is present and correct in the auteur movies.

Since the visual aesthetic of Dead End resembles that of the Nolan films even less than it does that of the Burton/Schumaker era, I'm not sure how it provided any kind of inspiration for the reboot.