I am a massive 2000AD fan. It has fed my imagination for a quarter of a century or so. Am a fan? Was a fan? I've let my subscription lapse in recent years. Nothing to do with the quality, which, when I stopped reading, was pretty high, and more to do with time and space. In fact, I need to sell my hundreds and hundreds of old progs and replace with collected editions that I will actually read, and lend. Before that there will be a similar purge of my US comics. And then I'll fill whatever space that leaves with more boardgames and RPG books and... I need a bigger house (fat chance of that).
Anyway, Rebellion have finally got their Dredd movie off the ground, which, thinking cynically, might give me a nice market in which to sell all those progs printed on bog paper from the mid 1980s (as well a boxes full of Megazines, Best of 2000ADs, Complete Judge Dredds, etc.). But as for the film itself, I'll go against the majority opinion here and say that I don't like the look of it. I'll even go so far as to say that, with warming effect of rose-tinted glasses, I'm worried that I'll prefer the Stallone version. Why? For the evidence of the trailer, the new film is humourless. I associate Judge Dredd, even when it has taken a darker turn, with satire, even spoof, of contemporary society. It has to be satire, else you're left simply to cheer on a fascist! And it has to be slightly spoofy, else you're playing the ridiculous with a straight face (and a massive chin).
Aside from that, it seems that the drug on the streets of MC-1 stimulates Shatner's Basoon.
And, just before Dredd says, "We'll have to go through them", I really hope he says, "We can't go over them, we can't go under them".
Trailer via Old School Heretic.
Yeah, I do worry that they might be trying too hard to make something different to the Stallone film and we'll lose the satire and humour; the best Dredd film so far is still the first Robocop, at least in terms of spirit.
ReplyDeleteI love 2000AD but I too found myself tiring of getting it every week. I still get the annual Christmas release, and it more often than not gets me to pick up the weekly for a month or two.
I ended up with weeks' worth backed up, and that was before I had kids!
ReplyDeleteI also treat comics - the physical things - with far too much reverence, which, coupled with the fact that they go in boxes in a cupboard and you get 5-6 pages of a story each prog, means that they are rarely re-read. It'll be a long time before I actually get rid of my 2000ADs - they're way down the list after all the American comics - but I don't think I'll be that sad to have the Collected Judge Dredds and Strontium Dogs on my shelf rather than boxes of disintegrating newsprint. I've got some of the old Titan collections, which get read far more often than any progs. Will I miss The Mind of Wolfie Smith and the rest? I doubt it.
It's a long term nerd rearrangement project. I just can't be arsed listing comics on eBay, but nor can I countenance giving hundreds upon hundreds of pounds worth of comics away.
Anyway, the best Stallone Dredd film was Demolition Man!
I think it's ironic that Robocop was so heavily influenced by the character of 2000ad's Judge Dredd, while the character that Stallone played had pretty much nothing in common with him.
ReplyDeleteI knew you'd say dat!
ReplyDeleteNo Power Tower? No ape gang? No Troggies? No shuggy? No fatties? No dinosaur park? No Judge Death? That doesn't look like any MC1 I know; more like a lowbrow Blade Runner fanfic.
ReplyDelete"Many people have tried to film Judge Dredd. None have succeeded." -- Tharg the Mighty
No Boing(tm), no bat-gliders... no Chopper!
ReplyDelete