Dredd (2012)

[Hawkmumbler]

I'm gonna get shot down for this but I do quite enjoy the GIJ movies on a dumb yet no offencive level (unlike Transformers trilogy) so can see a sequel being viable. Still, where losing out in retrospect here.

[hazy efc]

Good Morning TV has announced that Karl Urban is to reprise his role as the titular law enforcer for a new C4 mini series to be scheduled for sometime in 2015. Best news all year and it came from Holly Willowbooby!

BASTARD i fell for it to haha

[dracula1]

Ha ha ¦~)-

[Muon]

Going back to Kevin Smith's praise for Dredd, he started his most recent "Hollywood Babylon" podcast by going on about how good it is, but it fell a bit flat unfortunately. A few members of the audience cheered when he mentioned it, but his co-host Ralph Garman didn't seem to want to talk about it because, as he said, "we were all talking about it six months ago!" So Kevin Smith then seemed a bit nonplussed and then started talking about something else 

[Muon]

Also, I may as well give my final "report" from Japan, where I live. As I wrote before, the movie had quite a limited release here, showing at only 20 screens out of over 3,000 nationwide. I saw it three times overall (and enjoyed it even more each time). It was showing for about a month, and I guess some cinemas stopped showing it before the month was up. The last time I saw it was right in the last week. By this time they were showing only daytime showings, but luckily there was a national holiday that week, so I got to see it. There was quite a healthy crowd on that day - probably more than on the day of its release. I had been expecting to be the only one in the whole cinema. Another thing that surprised me that there were a lot of couples seeing it this time, whereas the first time it had been only men. I guess some guys who'd already seen it liked it so much that they dragged their girlfriends to see it.  In all, I guess it didn't set the box office alight, but the turnout was actually better than I expected. And I'm sure the lucky few who got to see the film fucking loved it like me.

[Stan]

Thanks, Richey. Maybe the Anderson effect had something to do with people bringing their girlfriends along?

[radiator]

A friend of mine in Japan finally got to see the film when it came out over there. I was almost a little apprehensive to hear his opinion as unlike when the film came out in the UK when there was little to no buzz about it, he's been hearing nothing but good things as the film's cult has grown over the intervening months. He absolutely loved it, which was pleasing.

Re: the girl thing - of all my friends who saw the film, two out of the three who enjoyed it the most were female.

[IndigoPrime]

Re: the girl thing - of all my friends who saw the film, two out of the three who enjoyed it the most were female.

That's what happens when films have women in roles that aren't patronising/eye candy/tokens. The majority of other films (and especially comic-book adaptations) would do well to remember that.

[Muon]

A friend of mine in Japan finally got to see the film when it came out over there. I was almost a little apprehensive to hear his opinion as unlike when the film came out in the UK when there was little to no buzz about it, he's been hearing nothing but good things as the film's cult has grown over the intervening months. He absolutely loved it, which was pleasing.

Yeah, that's exactly the way my experience went. When I first heard there was going to be a 3D Judge Dredd film I have to admit my expectations were pretty low. Then when it came out in the UK and US and I saw reviews of it, my expectations sky-rocketed. The reviews that praised it seemed to praise it for exactly the same reasons I would enjoy a comic book movie (simple plot, stylishness without pretentiousness, etc.), while the negative reviewers either seemed to dislike it for reasons I considered unimportant (lack of unnecessarily convoluted plot, etc.) or just came across like complete twats. By the time it came out here anything less than the most enjoyable action movie I'd seen for about 20 years would have been a disappointment. And then the movie actually managed to exceed my expectations. 

[radiator]

(lack of unnecessarily convoluted plot, etc.)

I've been having a debate/argument on another site with someone who thinks that the Stallone Dredd movie is far better than the new one because it has a 'much more interesting plot', and the new film has 'no plot' and is 'just Dredd shooting people'.

Sadly, it seems that the norm for blockbusters now is a running time of at least two hours - often longer - and a dense, convoluted, often hard to follow plot. I feel that a lot of people mistake this bloatedness for depth. To me, overcomplexity of plot in this type of film suggests either creative compromise or a lack of confidence in the story. I'd point to Prometheus, The Dark Knight Rises and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey as examples of this. Never mind conciseness, consistency, economy - just so long as we're being pounded with lots of expensive-looking effects and an overwhelming amount of ideas and characters.

For me, Dredd really hit that sweet spot of having a tight, simple script, and it is beyond irritating to me that people are comparing it to something like The Dark Knight Rises and dismissing it as having 'no plot'.

[Muon]

(lack of unnecessarily convoluted plot, etc.)

I've been having a debate/argument on another site with someone who thinks that the Stallone Dredd movie is far better than the new one because it has a 'much more interesting plot', and the new film has 'no plot' and is 'just Dredd shooting people'.

Sadly, it seems that the norm for blockbusters now is a running time of at least two hours - often longer - and a dense, convoluted, often hard to follow plot. I feel that a lot of people mistake this bloatedness for depth. To me, overcomplexity of plot in this type of film suggests either creative compromise or a lack of confidence in the story. I'd point to Prometheus, The Dark Knight Rises and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey as examples of this. Never mind conciseness, consistency, economy - just so long as we're being pounded with lots of expensive-looking effects and an overwhelming amount of ideas and characters.

For me, Dredd really hit that sweet spot of having a tight, simple script, and it is beyond irritating to me that people are comparing it to something like The Dark Knight Rises and dismissing it as having 'no plot'.

Exactly! I've been thinking for years now that filmmakers seem to have forgotten that simplicity and conciseness have just as much value as complexity, and more value when the complexity serves no particular purpose except to make the film seem deeper. In all other forms of storytelling, particular written fiction, storytellers get criticized if their stories are unnecessarily bloated, but current filmmakers always seem to get away with it. It's like the audience has been collectively brainwashed into believing that more running time and more "plot" (which usually boils down to tacking on a couple of meaningless twists and having a load of boring exposition) is always good.

Being a fan of short stories, I'm a big believer in what is sometimes called the principle of Chekhov's gun. You probably know of it, but basically there's a quote usually attributed to Chekhov that goes something like: if you describe a gun mounted on the wall at some point, the gun must be fired later on in the story. Everything must be there to advance the story, and anything that doesn't have a clear point is just flab that should be removed. We could perhaps update the principle for action movies and call it "Dredd's gun": if Dredd has a gun, it must be fired multiple times, preferably with a shot to the face 

A related bugbear of mine, particularly with comic book films and general action films, is the copious amounts of unnecessary exposition you always get. Any budding writer of fiction is always told over and over again to "show not tell." Its a basic concept of fiction! If you want to portray someone experiencing an emotion, don't have the character say "I'm really angry"; show that the character is angry through their behaviour. To me, that's what makes Dredd superior to something like The Dark Knight. Whereas one disapproving glance at Anderson in the elevator from Dredd speaks volumes and tells the viewer all he needs to know, someone like Nolan would probably have Dredd make a ten-minute speech about how disappointed he is in Anderson, and how it's not the kind of behaviour he expects from a judge, and how his leg hurts and how tortured he is and yadda yadda yadda.   

[dweezil2]

Judge Dredd (1995) had a plot, but it had was poorly executed without any attempt to retain the character's integrity or translate what made the character so interesting in the first place-unlike Dredd (2012).

[radiator]

A related bugbear of mine, particularly with comic book films and general action films, is the copious amounts of unnecessary exposition you always get. Any budding writer of fiction is always told over and over again to "show not tell." Its a basic concept of fiction! If you want to portray someone experiencing an emotion, don't have the character say "I'm really angry"; show that the character is angry through their behaviour. To me, that's what makes Dredd superior to something like The Dark Knight. Whereas one disapproving glance at Anderson in the elevator from Dredd speaks volumes and tells the viewer all he needs to know

Oh, absolutely. In Dredd, we get that brilliant opening v/o ("The streets, the gang, the gun") that lasts for one or two minutes and really feels like it has been crafted and honed to be as lean as possible, and that's pretty much all the exposition and backstory we get. It tells the audience everything they need to know, and then we're off. Almost everything else (aside from the introduction of the Mama Clan) is told through character's actions. We learn about this world by experiencing it.

Every setup in the script has an appropriate payoff - for example the close up of the lawgiver early on, accompanied by that cool signature sound and the 'ID Check OK', which comes into play at the end of the film with Kay. It's just good writing. It feels like an authoured script that has been crafted, not like a Frankenstein's monster that passes for a script in most modern genre movies. I'm not saying it's a work of literature, but it works.

Compare with something like Prometheus which as a film is (IMO) broken. In that film the lead character picks up an axe to defend herself, we even get a close up of the axe. Then she gets attacked by the alien, and immediately drops the axe. It's poor storytelling pure and simple. It's a film chock full of scenes and characters that are entirely redundant. The scene with the big exploding head? What did that have to do with anything?

[Goaty]

Oh, absolutely. In Dredd, we get that brilliant opening v/o ("The streets, the gang, the gun") that lasts for one or two minutes and really feels like it has been crafted and honed to be as lean as possible, and that's pretty much all the exposition and backstory we get. It tells the audience everything they need to know, and then we're off. Almost everything else (aside from the introduction of the Mama Clan) is told through character's actions. We learn about this world by experiencing it.

Every setup in the script has an appropriate payoff - for example the close up of the lawgiver early on, accompanied by that cool signature sound and the 'ID Check OK', which comes into play at the end of the film with Kay. It's just good writing. It feels like an authoured script that has been crafted, not like a Frankenstein's monster that passes for a script in most modern genre movies. I'm not saying it's a work of literature, but it works.

Compare with something like Prometheus which as a film is (IMO) broken. In that film the lead character picks up an axe to defend herself, we even get a close up of the axe. Then she gets attacked by the alien, and immediately drops the axe. It's poor storytelling pure and simple. It's a film chock full of scenes and characters that are entirely redundant. The scene with the big exploding head? What did that have to do with anything?

THIS! Better than many films in last 10 years!

[nicklambo]

Watched it again tonight....really feel that visually MaMa's death scene is metaphorically like watching a falling angel.....passing down from above through the clouds into the hell below...also her blood splat as she lands reminds me of the red sections in a judges helmet as it spreads outs.....(just my observations)....This definitely now counts as the most watched film by me for 30 years....!...notice different moments each time I watch it....cinematography/sound are on another level with perfect comic references/pallets throughout.