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Purely for the sake of argument, let's say that the following are the major epics from 2K Judge Dredd (only delving into Meg territory with the crossovers) in chronological order:

The Cursed Earth
[Judge Caligula]
The Judge Child
Block Mania & The Apocalypse War
Oz
Necropolis
Judgement Day
Wilderlands
[The Pit]
Doomsday
Terror & Total War

So, out of 11 chosen epic storylines, only 2 of them are what you describe as "different town / different story style":  The Cursed Earth and The Judge Child.

There are over 4 times as many epics that do not follow the style you suggest, and yet are held in high regard by many fans.

Further, only 2 are pure war epics:  The Apocalypse War and Judgement Day.  Arguably (and admittedly) you could describe several of the others as war epics, but they tend more to the style of invasion, occupation and insurgency tales.  Eg. Necropolis & Doomsday.

However, some of the most popular epics are non-war tales:  Oz (sport, celebrity, revenge & insurgency), Wilderlands (exploration & intrigue) & The Pit (thriller).

Of course, armed conflict is apparent in nearly every single episode of Judge Dredd, so a suggestion that an epic storyline would or should not contain an element of it seems odd, frankly.

Part of me is tempted to try and figure out all the "epic-arcs", but something tells me I'd just tie myself in dredd-shaped knots.

For a start, where would I stop?  I'd have to include Anderson Psi, the Meg, 2K, Shimura...

Then there's things like Mechanismo, which tie through to Wilderlands and beyond, and The Dark Judges, which crop up all over the place.

It's interesting to remember the smaller classics, though, such as The Graveyard Shift (which sort of ties into Rumble In The Jungle and Sunday Night Fever).

Oddboy:  I'd have to defer to your superior knowledge of late Dredd (re the Chief Judge's Man stories).  In other words, I think you're right.  I'd already bundled obviously linked stories together (eg The Day The Law Died and about the 3 or 4 progs prior to that are all "Judge Caligula"), so a precedent has been set.

Joining stories seperated by time (eg Terror and Total War) is a matter for judgement.  For example, should Pirates of the Black Atlantic be a part of Block Mania and The Apocalypse War, as it has a clear link to both?  The only thing that stopped me was the span of progs inbetween.

My list didn't include a close look at the Megazine, so Mechanismo (certainly) should be on the list somewhere.

My selection criteria was pretty basic:  40-60 pages for micro, 61-99 pages for mini, 100+ for mega.  All of this meant that (unfortunately) The Haunting Of Sector House 9 never got on the list, and neither did the "sequel", Warlord (the one with the Seven Samurai).  Now, if I joined those together...

[mega-epics]

What is the definition of a mega-epic?

If Total War is a mega-epic (coming in at 72 pages over 12 progs) then so is Darkside (same stats), but does anyone consider Darkside to be a mega-epic?

Block Mania was only 55 pages over 9 issues (although that is tied so closely to The Apocalypse War that it's difficult to consider it as a lone story).  If 55 pages was the measure of an epic, then Goodnight Kiss and Destiny's Angels aren't far off.

If we leave aside statistics, is it instead what happens in the story that marks it out as epic?  Total War had great implications for MC-1 and was historically important.  Destiny's Angels less so.  There was (pardon me) fallout from Total War.

IMO, here's the list of mega-epics (with bracketed page counts):

(164) The Cursed Earth  
(129) [Judge Caligula]    
(163) The Judge Child  
(208) Block Mania & The Apocalypse War
(199) Oz
(297) Necropolis (& Tales of the Dead Man & The Dead Man)
(150) Judgement Day
(165) Wilderlands
(191) [The Pit]
(285) Doomsday

epic-cases
(104) [Luna 1]
(093) [The Mega-Rackets]

mini-epics
(93) City of the Damned
(73) Inferno [although this never really happened]
(60) Crusade
(72) Darkside
(72) Beyond the Call of Duty
(??) Sector House
(72) Helter Skelter
(78) Sin City
(72) Total War

micro-epics
(41) Robot Wars
(50) Destiny's Angels
(47) Cry of the Werewolf
(45) The Graveyard Shift
(40) Dredd Angel
(43) Midnight Surfer
(42) Death Aid
(48) Book of the Dead
(57) The Exterminator
(54) Midnight Kiss
(42) Dead Reckoning
(48) The Scorpion Dance
(49) Revenge of the Chief Judge's Man
(42) The Satanist
(49) Terror

Wils:  thanks for that - my students (who had never heard of a Desmond last year but found it amusing) will now be getting told the whole list.

Swimini - you can do Masters degrees for free (financially speaking) if you work at a Uni.

I would never use these things after my name, just like I'd never frame my qualifications and put them on the wall.  Need to know basis.

I know a "Desmond" is a 2-2, but wtf is a "Douglas"?

Mangamax - Spielberg should hire the members of this board as continuity-spotters.  However, the alien-tech can pretty much do whatever it likes, because it's alien-tech.  As for the video camera, this is a cheesy excuse, but there are various existant technologies that can be incorporated in electrical equipment to protect it from EMP.

Back to things I like:  the essential randomness of the main character's survival.  We can see that it's just as likely he could have died, and his survival is mainly down to luck (apart from the tricky third act scene with the grenade, which would have worked better if a third party had thought of it).

Then again, the story within the story is that the failed, emotionally-crippled father regains the respect of his immediate and extended family.  For that to work at all, there had to be more than just luck on the table.

I did like the disaster movie cliche:  when warnings of impending doom are shown on the television, they are always ignored by channel-surfing soon-to-be victims.

Yeah - I'll agree that my list of nitpicks (or those things that I decided to put to one side in order to maintain my willing suspension of disbelief) included:

[SPOILERS, if it's not too late]

The "turned out nice again" ending, which was unfortunately obvious given that we never actually saw his son killed.  An option would have been to bring the son back in as some kind of "alien-fighting veteran", and doing the grenade thing instead of Tom:  however, that's all a bit "Jurassic Park III", and nobody wants that.

The "buried machines" conceit.  You're right, cloaking tech could explain away the unseen arrival, and given that we see it from the family POV, there's no requirement to explain how they got their unseen.  I did think the EMP was a great idea:  used on it's own it reduces the modern technology of our era to that of the era portrayed in the book (almost).

What you would lose, I think, with capsules landing, is the scene of a bemused public coming to investigate.  The hole in the ground is something to be investigated, but a ruddy great metal bomb-a-like would have todays public moving away from and not to it (don't you think).

On a more positive note, I'm glad Spielberg took more from Welles radio adaptation, and the book, than from the previous movie version.  What I'm getting at is the tripods:  they're pretty much indistinguishable from the "League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen" versions.

Hang on, though:  what's all this "OHHHMMMMM" all about, eh?  Whatever happened to "OOOOOOOHH-LLAAAAAA"?

Yeah - moving it to a modern setting makes various things impossible:  Mars has been (sort of) explored, so that's out.  Large capsules could not only be tracked approaching earth, but if one landed in the middle of the common, the army would be there in seconds:  there'd be none of the books "ooh, I wonder what it could be" naivety.

"...had no element of threat..."

[This post sponsored by the Typo Police.]

Okay, the ending was too nice, in that retrospectively nobody died, but to say that means the movie had to element of threat to the central characters is frankly ridiculous, given that the core essence of the movie is the danger posed to them.

If you have a three course meal, and the first two courses are gorgeous but the pudding turns out to be a bit off, does that mean the first two courses weren't gorgeous?

I wonder how many people here decided that they would dislike this movie before going to see it.

I really enjoyed this movie:  the first act was absolutely stunning, the attempt to escape the onslaught was unrelenting and the tension of the third act cellar masterfully handled.  

My only criticism would be the final part of the third act, with Cruise's heroics with the grenade seeming slightly off, and the happy reunion rushed and neat.  

What was interesting was his single-minded protection of his daughter, which stretched to murder, and of course provided the motivation (finally) to fight the martians.

Mind you, it's obvious that most posters here consider Spielberg and Cruise to be the lowest of the low, devoid of redeeming features.  

To suggest that Spielberg hasn't made a good movie since Jaws belies my belief.  Is it just me that holds Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan in incredibly high regard?

As for Tom Cruise, it's easy to slag him off for the likes of Top Gun and The Last Samurai, whilst conveniantly forgetting his frankly superb acting in such movies as Risky Business, Rain Man, Jerry Maguire, Magnolia and Vanilla Sky.  His religious beliefs are neither here nor there.

Would a period version of this film, set in England, really be any better?  I can't imagine why.

Now, to get in on Professor Bear's pub debate:

:: "Why, at the start of the film, are the aliens capable of shooting individual people inside buildings, yet can't see Tom and Tim hiding inside one at the end of the film?"

It could have been looking through windows.

:: "Why, if the death-rays destroy vehicles, buildings and human flesh, do they leave clothes unscathed?"

I assumed that the clothes were from collected humans.  However, this is a good nit pick, as when Cruise is collected he remains clothed.  Even the "sucked dry" gentleman outside Tim's cellar is clothed.

:: "If the aliens are millions of years ahead of us in terms of technology, how come they don't know what a bicycle is?"

They have 3 legs, and as you say, they're millions of years ahead of us:  maybe they've forgotten basic tech.

:: "Don't they have thermal imaging or sonar or something? "

The machines are millions of years old, so maybe they don't.

:: "Why did they need to 'harvest' each human individually? Surely some sort of mincing machine would be a better idea?"

That's very efficient thinking.  I'm glad you're not an alien invader.

:: "And how come no-one ever noticed hundred-ton killing machines under the earth?"

Good point.

:: "And how come the lighhtening had to strike the same place so many times?"

To open a hole big enough for the martian to port through.

:: "And why use individual death rays to seek out every human individually and exterminate them?"

Scare the shit out of them, thus causing panic and confusion, whilst still leaving enough alive to feed the weed, man.

Who's Martha?

Large48:  if this is the same Mike Collins that pops onto the board occasionally and actually joins in with discussions of his work, then, despite the fact that I don't know him incredibly well, that one fact proves that he's generous (with his time), brave (if you've seen the slating creators get on this board from people who don't like their work, you'll understand what I mean) and patient (again, you'd have to be).

All I know of you is that you like to boast about the amount of cash you can spend on original artwork.

Nobody's perfect, of course:  maybe you're having an off day, and maybe Mike was when you met him.  Things aren't often black & white.

Ah, that should probably be "Millar", but if he can f*ck up Robo-Hunter and Dredd for years, then I claim the right to spell his name wrong.