New British film poster versus Edmund Bagwell

[vzzbux]

If it was homage to then it wouldn't be a striaght image copy. They would have used fresh images.




V

[a chosen rider]

Also incidentally
and then and also (to a degree)

Pieta homage covers are a whole traditional thing, incidentally.

[jamesedwards]

I don't think that's necessarily the case Vzzbux.

Really, I just don't understand this ceaseless urge to chase down and punish every pleb who might have nicked from 2000ad when DC Comics and James Cameron have done so much to undermine the viability of the Dark Judges and Firekind respectively. A bit of swiping is healthy because it means the comic is culturally relevant enough to be swiped from. I think 2000ad would be fucked if it got to the point nobody was envying it so. 2000ad has used swiping before, both internally (think of all the classic Mick McMahon poses that got traced, and come to think of it that Mick got his start swiping from Carlos!) and externally (that Dante cover).

You're all getting steamy and pissed off over what amounts to a spec image for promotional purposes!

[vzzbux]

V

[jamesedwards]

Regarding the Pieta thing, I was not aware of the connection between it and the Byrne cover.. Perez's cover is just so incredibly close to what Bryne did with it that it's obviously swiped from the X-Men comic and not the statue.

[Richmond Clements]

OK. How do you know the Monster Project image wasn't intended as a homage? 2000ad doesn't have the pop culture saturation of Blade Runner, I admit, but the guy who did it is a fan...

Well, the fact that they've apologised and withdrawn it may give a clue.

[CrazyFoxMachine]

It's a straight-up steal of a stock image that Edmund Bagwell created. YES, US comics do a lot of tracing, yes "shit gets stolen all the time", no of course it's not a f'ing homage they just used an image that Bagwell composed and shot himself. Without asking. It was spotted, it got taken down. They stole it, the end.

[jamesedwards]

Except it's not a straight up steal because the guy used it as part of a photoshopped composite image (I'm curious now as to where those faces come from... one looks like Michael Meyers). Moreover, the original photograph is really, really generic. And they've ruined the best bit of it by replacing the terrors of the imagination with what appear to be half the touring lineup of Slipknot.

Like I said before, I'm not sure why you're quite so angry about this. Do you go after unsigned bands who use photocopied comic images on flyers? Movie Mogul are small fry (the one thing they have done, Panic Button, was budgeted at a third of a million pounds). Spivs have always and will always have existed. I generally do more than browse this board and there seems to be an unseemly mindset of "find swipe, snitch to teacher" when frankly 2000ad needs all the bloody pop culture penetration it can get. If I walk past a stall full of swiped oil canvases of DC and Marvel superheroes (you know the type - really classy stuff) I'd better bloody see a Judge Dredd up there too or something unique I love is losing mindshare to American comics.

Hey. Here's something actually worth feeling aggrieved about, because the resulting film utterly fucked over the viability a 2000ad project in development and will probably haunt Dredd '12 too. May I present Rob Bottin's first concept for RoboCop:

<img src="http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4024/4524587533_6bd0e0e393_z.jpg">

If Monster Project is released fully ripping off Cradlegrave (or being so visually similar that it screws over any possibility of optioning Cradlegrave successfully, like RoboCop did to Dredd) then by all means go completely apeshit. It just makes me weary to see a bunch of adults getting this mad over something so petty - a promotional flyer, basically.

It would have been right of them to give Edmund some money. HE'S got the right to be pissed off over this, certainly.

[JOE SOAP]

I think you could also make a case that Halo's use of supersoldiers/AI is extraordinarily like that of Rouge Trooper's (gosh I really should expand on these). Robocop was clearly based on Dredd to the extent the first mold made of his helmet would have been legally actionable.

Even though there is a definite inspirational history between Dredd and RoboCop from very early on and considering also the relationship between those people involved in the production of both film projects, I don't think there's really any case of RoboCop being a total rip-off of Dredd and the early helmet sculpt was always only a temporary starting point and never intended to be the final design. At the end of the day, it's not the same story, the designs are different and it's about a cyborg not a future lawman who is figuratively machine-like. It's no more a rip-off than Dredd is of Magnum Force.

The re-appropriation of ideas/characters is something 2000AD itself has a long history of doing.

The Halo argument is also tenuous as it had been adapted and done to death by others long before the games existed.


Unless of course the person making the claim is a dogged prick like Harlan Ellison, I would never see much point in pushing a case.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

TV Tropes is a good website.

[JOE SOAP]

Hey. Here's something actually worth feeling aggrieved about, because the resulting film utterly fucked over the viability a 2000ad project in development and will probably haunt Dredd '12 too. May I present Rob Bottin's first concept for RoboCop:

That picture has been presented and digested many times before on this site but the end product is nothing like that and ultimately, in the end, it was Stallone and the execs who utterly fucked over Dredd. The people who owned the rights to Dredd would never have allowed such an expensive endeavour to be made as edgy as RoboCop became, that's why RoboCop was made sooner and Dredd wasn't.

[jamesedwards]

Ah, I like Halo. You can play a game from beginning to end just picking out the bits they stole from other games though - Halo 1 has an almost actionable resemblence to Aliens. It also the last of the super soldiers who runs around with an AI chip plugged into his helmet - an AI taken from a dying human brain. That last part feels very specific to me. Not that I'm suggesting it's grounds for Rebellion to sue but it does suppress the uniqueness of Rouge Trooper somewhat... the danger of Monster Project isn't lazy visual sampling but that the finished film would prevent Smith and Bagwell (and I guess 2000ad, since the strip wasn't creator owned) from benefiting from the IP being optioned. John Smith is a swell guy and I'd like to see him get rich... I have less experience with Edmund Bagwell, but I'm sure he's just as swell.

Regarding RoboCop... sure, Murphy is a very different character from Dredd. Almost completely opposite to Dredd. Yet you've still got a film about a futuristic cop in a chin-revealing helmet who carries a special gun. You've got an incredibly bleak and misanthropic satire on urban humanity too. Those ad breaks and the buy that for a dollar guy are so close to the humour of Dredd it's unreal. Hell, Clarance and his gang could pass for Whitey - cop killers with advanced rifles.

The result? A Dredd film done right has to tread a lot of the same ground as Robocop, and runs the risk of suffering from the comparison. Robocop actually has the advantage of presenting a more relatable, likeable character. I think Jon Davison, Robocop's producer had a hand in trying to make a Dredd movie but my source for that is a Megazine feature and I can't remember which one.

It's incredibly disingenuous to suggest the Stallone film fucked over movie!Dredd more than RoboCop, because that film was written and produced post-RoboCop. It's entirely possible RoboCop compromised it and lead to the straight action approach.

[Goosegash]

OK. How do you know the Monster Project image wasn't intended as a homage?

How about the fact that the guy obtained permission under false pretences, claiming it was for an Attack The Block fan piece? If that isn't dishonest, I don't know what is.

[jamesedwards]

OK. How do you know the Monster Project image wasn't intended as a homage?

How about the fact that the guy obtained permission under false pretences, claiming it was for an Attack The Block fan piece? If that isn't dishonest, I don't know what is.

I think you've got the wrong end of the stick and all, that quote seems to be refering to this:

http://victoranomalous.deviantart.com/art/Attack-the-Block-278114771

So either Edmund is talking about a different guy (the deviantartist) or they later did the flyer.

Worth pointing out that the poster for Death Race 2000 was used internally as Dredd concept art:

[JOE SOAP]

Regarding RoboCop... sure, Murphy is a very different character from Dredd. Almost completely opposite to Dredd. Yet you've still got a film about a futuristic cop in a chin-revealing helmet who carries a special gun. You've got an incredibly bleak and misanthropic satire on urban humanity too. Those ad breaks and the buy that for a dollar guy are so close to the humour of Dredd it's unreal. Hell, Clarance and his gang could pass for Whitey - cop killers with advanced rifles.

That really wouldn't get you anywhere in court.


The result? A Dredd film done right has to tread a lot of the same ground as Robocop, and runs the risk of suffering from the comparison. Robocop actually has the advantage of presenting a more relatable, likeable character. I think Jon Davison, Robocop's producer had a hand in trying to make a Dredd movie but my source for that is a Megazine feature and I can't remember which one.

It's incredibly disingenuous to suggest the Stallone film fucked over movie!Dredd more than RoboCop, because that film was written and produced post-RoboCop. It's entirely possible RoboCop compromised it and lead to the straight action approach.
[/quote]


No, it's not, in hindsight you're retrospectively seeing the situation from a very narrow and linear perspective, and it's not that simple. Dredd was in development long before RoboCop -since the early 80's- the producers/writers of RoboCop (Miner & Neumeier) were involved in an early phase of Dredd development at Cinergi -before RoboCop- with Edward Pressman who eventually produced the Stallone Dredd. Charles Lippincott who owned the film rights didn't want an edgy film but a heroic one. Miner & Neumeier eventually went off on their own to develop RoboCop.


The fact is they couldn't get Dredd made as a proper Dredd film because it was too risky for 'Hollywood' to make an edgy, satirical, R-rated film on the level of RoboCop but way more expensive.

RoboCop, a cheaper yet edgier film, got made instead and Miner & Neumeir deserve the credit for having the guts and brains to pull-it-off when so many studios and directors wouldn't touch RoboCop nevermind Dredd.


Yes, RoboCop stole some of Dredd's thunder, in HINDSIGHT, but only because Hollywood never wanted to make a true Dredd film in the first place and ultimately, it didn't.

I believe the only things that really pushed the execs into greenlighting a Dredd film at all was the huge success of RoboCop and Stallone's interest. Stallone was the only reason finance was secured for Dredd '95 and the film ultimately was designed around his own cinematic character trope: an innocent man on the run, otherwise it would never have been made at all.