Dredd-ful?

[Marlowe]

Dredd has closed down Stookie gland operations and other drugs, including zziz and another involving the harvesting of human arenaline.

Stookie and adrenaline are not analogous to slo-mo or zziz or most real life recreational drugs. The former drugs actually do have substantial, inherent moral issues in their production and consumption that are pretty well spelt out for us, whereas this is not the case for the latter two drugs. I don't see the former as metaphors for the war on drugs.

[Marlowe]

Sorry for the added post. But I forgot to say that zziz has been treated pretty straight and is an example of a drug being treated in a non-satirical manner in plots -- I'll give you that.

[JOE SOAP]

Stookie and adrenaline are not analogous to slo-mo or zziz or most real life recreational drugs. The former drugs actually do have substantial, inherent moral issues in their production and consumption that are pretty well spelt out for us, whereas this is not the case for the latter two drugs. I don't see the former as metaphors for the war on drugs.

I think that's somehow missing the point of their inclusion.

Once the drugs/substances are declared illegal by Justice Dept., it doesn't matter what their actual physical/psychological effects are - even though people can be addicted to all of them, psychologically - as people engage in illegal means to procure them creating social malaise.

Though set in a fictitious environment, they were all analogous to 'real-world' drugs/substances as written in the comic - only reason they weren't called cocaine or heroin is because it was a comic aimed at younger people but the situations the characters found themselves in i.e. secret illegal manufacture, distribution etc. were all criminal undertakings and breaking the law which are the same social implications that we get from declared illegal drugs/substances in the 'real' world.

As you say, it's satire.

[TordelBack]

The other issue here is that, despite Dredd's masterful quip at the end, the film is not about a drugs bust.  It's about chasing down murderers and surviving in a gang-controlled building - the slo-mo is merely MaMa's revenue stream, and presumably part of her system of control. Her monopoly elevates her importance, but it's not really Dredd's beef in the film.  As Anderson says, 'prioritise murders'.

The tension isn't really between the Law and the druggies - it's between the Judges' totalitarian control and the gang's, and the lives crushed and discarded between them.

[Richmond Clements]

I'm rather struggling to see the point of this conversation..!

[JayzusB.Christ]

I'm rather struggling to see the point of this conversation..!

[Professor Bear]

[Hoagy]

Hmm. I just watched There Will Be Blood and while a severe watch it apparently has satire in it. I went with that and watched it giggling at stupid ecclesiastical types and oil barons bitch slapping each other. Then the Guardian reviews it as a " true American epic" and "a powerhouse performance " from Lewis. But I'm thinking these don't tally with satire. But yet looked on in the expectation of satire it is positively dripping with it.

So my point with watching Dredd is that it is more about expectations on watching. Because it is award worthy, meaning its clever, meaning it's not just a sum of all its parts.

The difference Dredd has from other film franchise comic book characters is his metamorphosis is more permanent, as being the result of a character designed to reflect society as a time finite whole is to grapple with the changing attitudes. Now you can't put that sort of evident metamorphosis in one film. To counter, Spiderman is essentially the same wise cracking saint spinner with family issues. As with Batman and a whole group of characters you could think of. They may go through changes and stuff, deaths, rebirths but it will always come done to their common codes. Translated with ease for the screen.
Dredd is just not that simple. He's an enigma. You don't want to be on his side but have you seen the shit he has to put up with? Have you?? There's your satire right there. Go and look at it again and buy thee or four or ten prime examples of three different decades of comics to show yourself the door of these ridiculous notions.

[Patrick]

I have some sympathy with DrQ. Dredd had all the callousness of a good John Wagner script, but little of the absurdity, and I missed that.

[TordelBack]

Yeah, there's no doubt that the wackiness (wrong word, but I'm drunk and struggling) is missing and missed.  It's clear the movie takes one aspect (maybe two) of the whole and does it -ahem- justice, and that's very welcome.  Whether it could have delivered something broader within its constraints is doubtful, but I do regret the absence of the crazy - more so now there's no prospect of more.

[JOE SOAP]

Yeah, there's no doubt that the wackiness (wrong word, but I'm drunk and struggling) is missing and missed.  It's clear the movie takes one aspect (maybe two) of the whole and does it -ahem- justice, and that's very welcome.  Whether it could have delivered something broader within its constraints is doubtful, but I do regret the absence of the crazy - more so now there's no prospect of more.

I'm sure that the welcome possibility of breaking-out into the larger Meg could've afforded more oppurtunity for the prime preposterousness that we'd all like to see and it also could've been done inside Peach Trees - Dredd is the ultimate straight-man after all - but I think 'DREDD' in its effort to correct past mistakes and being very much a broad-brush-stroke affair, had a philosophy based on deconstruction; to be fully-functional from the ground-up, meaning everything needed purpose and was built that way rather than being superfluous or frivolous, from the plot to the dialogue to the sets and uniforms themselves. Personally, I think this controlling idea saved us from a potential tonal mess on its first outing. Further episodes could've expanded its tone-palette.

It is a trade-off but by returning to first principals is also an articulation of Wagner & Ezquerra's proto Dredd: Year Zero. Principally and ideologically, the apocalypse took place in January 1977 and was extrapolated from there.

[sheldipez]

I did only watch half the film, and I haven't read Judge Dredd in recent years

Is your post serious? I wonder what sort of reaction you expected. Assuming you are not a troll, I'm amazed you even posted this. It's a bit offensive.

If you wish to start a discussion, or even join one, it might be a good idea to read the comic or watch the film.

There's a ton of (non-professional) reviews out there with the same theme as this; someone having a moan that Dredd was too violent and straight faced compared to the comic which they last read 20 years ago. If you weren't a fan of Dredd the movie then I'm not too sure I would recommend you picking up the prog which has grown up along with it's readership.

You're right, Dredd is nowhere near the quality of the Resident Evil films.

The second Resident Evil movie is the only time I've went for (and got) a refund at the cinema. About sums that franchise up for me.

[radiator]

The fact that Alex Garland mentioned that the proposed sequel would have possibly featured a version of Satanus leads me to believe that the films would have got weirder and wilder as they went along, but IMO the focus and restraint of Dredd is what really sets it apart. It decided to do a few things well rather than try and encapsulate all of the Dredd experience into one movie.

Would I have liked more of the trademark Wagner humour? Yeah, probably, but this was never going to be a literal adaptation of the comic. It was a damn fine film in its own right, and paid enough lip service to that side of things to satisfy me.

[IndigoPrime]

Would I have liked more of the trademark Wagner humour?

I thought it had that. There was a ton of really black humour in there—tiny little nuggets from Dredd, in the main—and those were very Wagner. What there wasn't was wackiness, but then that's been significantly dialled back in Dredd over the last decade or so anyway. Strange things still happen in MC-1, but it's become an increasingly bleak place to live. On that basis, the Dredd movie seems a pretty faithful adaptation of a modern Dredd, but less so from a 'classic' Dredd-era standpoint.

As for the drugs aspect of the film, TordelBack nails it. The reaction isn't so much to the drugs but everything that surrounds them: turf wars, murder, violence. That said, it's clear that slo-mo is addictive (if not in a literal sense then at least in a psychological sense—people wanting ever more of the stuff to 'escape') and also dangerous in certain situations, such as when driving.

[JohnMcF]

This seems like a skillful piece of trolling to me.

Single original post. 3 pages of reaction. No response from original poster.

It's like putting a wallet on the pavement with a piece of string attached.