If you were to shove the works of Marvel and DC aside for a moment, there’s a whole world of varied comic book adaptations swirling out there in the void. Be it the super-noir or roided-up history lessons of Frank Miller’s Sin City or 300, to the colourful deconstructions of the superhero genre seen in live action punts at Alan Moore’s Watchmen, Mark Millar’s Kick-Ass and Garth Ennis’ The Boys, there’s a never ending list that even contains Sam Mendes’ take on Road To Perdition or David Cronenberg’s adaption of John Wagner’s A History Of Violence – hell, even the infamous, banned horror comics of the 50s got a new lease of life thanks to the HBO series; Tales Of The Crypt.
My point is that with this wealth of product, it’s absolutely fucking galling that movie versions taken from legendary British publication, 2000 AD are shockingly thin on the ground and the reason for this is a movie that famously kickstarted the temporary death of the comic book movie that Batman & Robin finished off back in the mid-90.
I guess it’s time for some judgement…
In a ruined earth during the year 2139, we find the remainder of the human race crammed like sardines into Mega-Cities; towering, over populated metropolis’ that are surrounded by inhospitable deserts known as the Cursed Earth. Of course, what with humans being the violent, maniacal species it usually live, crime runs rampant and the only way it can be subdued is thanks to the Judges, gun-toting, up holders of the law that have the right to be judge, jury and executioners.
The best and most infamous of these is Judge Joseph Dredd, a lawman who holds the law to an almost fascist degree and who gives out harsh sentences at the drop of a hat for the most minor of offences which even gives his peers moments of pause.
However, in the upper echelons of the high council, a rot is about to spread as the corrupt Judge Griffin springs psycho ex-Judge and Dredd’s former best friend, Rico, from prison to frame Joseph for the murder of a journalist.
Found guilty and dumbfounded by the irony of his situation, Dredd is saved from execution by his old mentor, Judge Fargo at the expense of the council member having to step down and accept banishment. With the way now paved for Griffin to reopen an old cloning project in order to restaff the Judges into something that he wants, Dredd is in his way to jail when fate gives him a chance to escape and after making his way past cannibals, cyborg thugs, flaming jets and marauding Judge-Hunters, Dredd, unwilling criminal side-kick Fergie and the idealistic Judge Hershey take the battle to the maniacal Rico who’s definitely a couple of bullets short of a Lawgiver…
One of the most irritating things about the disaster that was Judge Dredd was the amount of people who had never picked up a 2000 A.D. comic in their lives suddenly acting as wannabe pundits that smugly announced that the movie was shit simply because the movie had the temerity to have Dredd actually remove his helmet. However, while the movie does indeed take a noticable nosedive once Stallone removes Dredd’s iconic head gear, the problems of Danny Cannon’s Judge Dredd goes far beyond the film’s disregard for the hero’s polished helmet. You see, the whole point of the Judge Dredd comic was to originally satirise British authoritarianism and the notion of a police state in much the same way Paul Verhoven would sarcastically champion fascism in both Robocop and Starship Troopers – however, while we’re gifted something of a close aproximation of the comic in the film’s first fifteen minutes, the film soon pulls heavily on the handbrake clearly marked “Satire” and instead becomes a typical action movie where the endgame is to turn Dredd into a nice guy.
This would be frustrating enough, but Stallone had already made a far superior version of the exact same plot in the form of Demolition Man, a movie with extraordinarily similar goals that achieved it without spraying hot, steaming piss over twenty years of comic book history. Fans watched aghast as Dredd got a comedy sidekick in the form of Rob Schneider (yep, Deuce Biglow becomes Dredd’s best mate) and a nicer disposition by the movie’s end while non-fans just saw a horribly dated, lunk headed action flick that warmly embraced every overused cliche in the book in a way that made The Simpsons’ parody, McBain, seem like fucking Die Hard in comparison.
Evil clones are introduced and then immediately forgotten in the next shot; the movie introduces Joan Chen’s dodgy scientist half way though and gives her the uncanny ability to brawl like a drunken sailor simply to give Diane Lane’s Hershey someone to literally butt heads with in the lazy final reel and it even has the indignity to infer that the law-obsessed Dredd and Hershey have a romantic entanglement when the whole point of the character is that his entire personality is literally just upholding the law.
Needless to say, the reviews were harsh and the box office was brutal, but is Judge Dredd still that bad all these years later? Well, yeah, but now that a lot of the original indignity has faded thanks to the 2012 Dredd film by Pete Travis and Alex Garland, it’s easier to spot the things that actually worked.
Visually speaking at least, it’s still the most faithful 2000 AD adaptation around, with such things as Dredd’s uniform, the look of Mega-City One and the Lawmaster motorcycle actually matching the comic pretty well. Elsewhere, other aspects of Dredd’s world and the 2000 AD aesthetic in general are also faithfully ported over into three dimensions as Block Wars, the glaswegian kiss-delivering, dial-headed cyborg Mean Machine and – best of all – a fully practical, lantern-jawed ABC Warrior Robot all are virtually perfect. Best of all, an utterly unhinged Armand Assante consumes the scenery like a starving man in candy land as the sneering, anti-Dredd, Rico and he seems like the only member of the cast that includes Stallone in autopilot mode (key catchphrase: “I knew you’d say that.”), a permanently hysterical Jürgen Prochnow and a tired looking Max Von Sydow, that’s actually enjoying himself.
Producing a film about a comic book hero who frequently bellows that he is the law, and then making the entire plot about him finding out that the law is fallible is as unforgivably stupid as giving us a Batman who’s afraid of the fucking dark – but the occasional glimpses of the source material proves that we didn’t always have to have a movie that was famously Dredd on arrival.
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