DREDD (3D) sequel!

[Admiral_Young]

While I would love a sequel to "Dredd"...Alex Garland certainly had some ambitious plans for his trilogy...and Karl Urban has expressed interest in returning and "not off the agenda" (I believe those were his words) this is highly unlikely. The Blu-Ray/DVD sales were good...but I just don't think this is going to happen unfortunately. At least not a theatrical sequel. I'd love to see it return as a web series or even novels written by Garland so that at least he gets a chance to finish his story.

 

[davejames]

Aren't the sales for the bluray/dvd pretty strong?

As much as I loved the film, and enjoyed Urban's performance, it seems to me that Dredd is the type of character that you need a big name actor to sell. There simply isn't enough public awareness of the comic to generate interest among the common rubes without a famous face or a huge marketing push.

I don't think a big name would have made a difference. Ultimately you're still talking about a movie called "Dredd" based off a comic book most people have never heard of.

And the trailers unfortunately made it look like just another generic scifi action flick made only for teenage boys.

 

[JD]

I finally saw the movie a couple months ago, and I really enjoyed it, but I really don't see a sequel happening. The only way it might happen is if the DVD did incredible numbers, but I doubt that that has or will happen.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

And the trailers unfortunately made it look like just another generic scifi action flick made only for teenage boys.

The movie is much better than its trailer indicated it would be.

 

[Admiral_Young]

It was a terrific character study movie balanced with action in a science fiction setting. I was extremely impressed with it and saw it twice in theaters. Don't have the Blu-Ray yet, but eventually will get it.

 

[davejames]

And the trailers unfortunately made it look like just another generic scifi action flick made only for teenage boys.

The movie is much better than its trailer indicated it would be.

Agreed. Unfortunately I don't think any trailer they cut would have made a difference. It's just one of those movies you have to see to understand how truly badass it is.

 

[sojourner]

^But that also ruins the conceit of the comic that you never see his face. Put a big name actor in the role and they feel compelled to have the helmet removed through some contrivance.

Only in a gimmicky and childishly one-note pulp franchise could anyone call seeing the face of one's human protagonist a "contrivance". I mean, remember when we saw The Matrix's Morpheus without sunglasses? How contrived!

How many times in the Batman films has the cowl been damaged and ripped off? Ironman? Spiderman? The Stallone Dredd? It really is a bad contrivance of masked superhero movies how often the mask gets "damage" and torn off just so we can see the actor's face for the finale. I'm not even sure how the Morpheus example relates being that
A. we could see his face, the glasses were minimal.
and
B. He is not a character that was created for comics and wore a mask.

I'm not sure you understand the character if you don't realize that in the comic he has never removed his helmet.

I thought the film was a tight little "one issue of the comic" brought to life. They kept it simple and it worked.

Perhaps, but how may single comic issues take almost 100 issues to read?

LOL, whut???

Myself, I've read enough about the movie to be unnerved by the extent of the passion some seem to have for it. Considering how much violence has been inflicted, lives ended and ruined, and communities torn asunder by America's sadistic, profiteering and often racist war on drug users, I don't see the appeal for a movie consisting of pretty much nothing but cops slaughtering poor people. And some called Dirty Harry a fascist movie upon its release!

Oh, wait, I forgot, a literally magical hot thin white girl builds some self-confidence in her pursuit of carnage. Guess that makes it all okay, then...

Oh, now I get it. You haven't seen the movie. No wonder you're talking out of your ass about stuff that doesn't happen in it.


I will never understand people that feel they can comment about a movie to such a degree without seeing it. It's the definition of arguing from ignorance.

 

[Gaith]

I will never understand people that feel they can comment about a movie to such a degree without seeing it. It's the definition of arguing from ignorance.

No, I've read a number of reviews, so it's arguing from incomplete knowledge. Oh, and welcome to the Internet, where the First Amendment currently still applies.

How many times in the Batman films has the cowl been damaged and ripped off? Ironman? Spiderman?

How many of those movies featured no scenes of the hero without his mask, either in or out of his outfit? None, because "the badass hero never shows his face" is a silly gimmick in a feature-length movie, regardless of its comic roots.

Perhaps, but how may single comic issues take almost 100 issues to read?

LOL, whut???

My bad: 100 minutes to read. "How may single comic issues take almost 100 issues to read." Sorry.

Oh, now I get it. You haven't seen the movie. No wonder you're talking out of your ass about stuff that doesn't happen in it.

Are you saying the movie isn't "pretty much nothing but cops slaughtering poor people"? What, because I left out the handful of dirty cops, or maybe you're saying most of the slaughtered are pretty high up the dealing chain, and therefore not poor?

I've read multiple gushing and scathing reviews of the movie, and none have suggested there's any substance to it; the only disagreements have been over the effectiveness of the style. If my reading has missed something important, I'd be genuinely curious to hear of it.

 

[Gov Kodos]

I will never understand people that feel they can comment about a movie to such a degree without seeing it. It's the definition of arguing from ignorance.

No, I've read a number of reviews, so it's arguing from incomplete knowledge. Oh, and welcome to the Internet, where the First Amendment currently still applies.

Not only arguing from ignorance, but proud of arguing from ignorance. Way to go, dude.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

I'll have to give this film another viewing but I remember it being a solid but firmly b-movie scale actioner. I think the Punisher comparison is pretty apt, the comic trappings are there but really stripped down. Stallone took the helmet off but I think his film showed more of the Dredd world. Dredd was competent but I don't think it's too surprising that it didn't really ignite the public at large (especially where 2000 AD isn't sold).

 

[sojourner]

How many times in the Batman films has the cowl been damaged and ripped off? Ironman? Spiderman?

How many of those movies featured no scenes of the hero without his mask, either in or out of his outfit? None, because "the badass hero never shows his face" is a silly gimmick in a feature-length movie, regardless of its comic roots.

Your comparison does not work. Those heroes in their comics (with the exception of Dredd, which seems to be the point you keep missing) often are shown out of costume. They, however, do not routinely end up having their mask ripped off in the big fight at the end.

Oh, now I get it. You haven't seen the movie. No wonder you're talking out of your ass about stuff that doesn't happen in it.

Are you saying the movie isn't "pretty much nothing but cops slaughtering poor people"? What, because I left out the handful of dirty cops, or maybe you're saying most of the slaughtered are pretty high up the dealing chain, and therefore not poor?

I've read multiple gushing and scathing reviews of the movie, and none have suggested there's any substance to it; the only disagreements have been over the effectiveness of the style. If my reading has missed something important, I'd be genuinely curious to hear of it.

Yep, ignorant and proud! Brilliant.

Maybe instead of continuing to rely on other people's reviews to base your own opinions of the material on, you should, like, you know, see the movie?

 

[RAMA]

I did like the movie overall, but it was way too violent for mass appeal.

RAMA

 

[Xavier_Storma]

I did like the movie overall, but it was way too violent for mass appeal.

RAMA

That's what was so cool about it. It was different, daring, cruel, dirty... special.

Most of the other CB films are completely exchangable. Take hero X and let him fight villain Y to save a city, a continent a planet.
That's how the Marvel films work.

DREDD was down to the Earth (eventhough it happened in a skyskraper up to 1 km above ground). A simple straight story, yet more effective than most other genre films.

 

[bullethead]

I did like the movie overall, but it was way too violent for mass appeal.

Huh? It was pretty much as violent as an 80s action movie and a whole chunk of the population seems to love that stuff. If anything, it was rated too high for most of its potential audience to see (teenagers) and released right when college and American football (collegiate and NFL) was kicking of the season, so it had some major competition to beat while having a stupidly short theatrical window.

A lack of advance screenings in colleges (the ideal environment to build buzz for this kind of movie) probably also hurt.

 

[TremblingBluStar]

I don't think a big name would have made a difference. Ultimately you're still talking about a movie called "Dredd" based off a comic book most people have never heard of.

I seem to remember a little film called Men In Black from back in 1997 based on a comic that nobody had heard of. It did okay at the box office. Not to mention Blade, The Crow, 300, and Road to Perdition. All were huge hits based on comics hardly nobody had heard of at the time.

I'm not saying having a big name involved would guarantee it is a hit. After all, even the Stallone version flopped at the box office - though the 90's weren't exactly kind to Stallone. I just think there has to be something to get people interested, and I don't necessary think the setting or the character is what the problem is.

Of course, releasing a scifi/action film in September certainly doesn't help it's chances!

 

[TremblingBluStar]

Huh? It was pretty much as violent as an 80s action movie and a whole chunk of the population seems to love that stuff.

Exactly. More violent than Predator, or Commando, or Robocop. For a modern example, was it more violent than the Saw or Hostel movies? Or even Kickass?

 

[Captain Craig]

Most of the other CB films are completely exchangable. Take hero X and let him fight villain Y zu save a city, a continent a planet.
That's how the Marvel films work.

Ever see a Batman, Superman film, Green Lantern even Constantine and Jonah Hex from Warners DC Comics where they were saving....oh, I don't know a city, planet, universe etc was the goal?
Picking on Marvel is just a bias showing.

Dredd played well, it was violent sure but so were both Punisher films and the Thomas Jane version especially has a solid fanbase. So the question might be is overt violence the problem with breaking through to general audiences. It keeps a fanbase in the printed medium but it doesn't seem to translate to mass audience appeal. A theory anyway.

 

[Xavier_Storma]

Most of the other CB films are completely exchangable. Take hero X and let him fight villain Y zu save a city, a continent a planet.
That's how the Marvel films work.

Ever see a Batman, Superman film, Green Lantern even Constantine and Jonah Hex from Warners DC Comics where they were saving....oh, I don't know a city, planet, universe etc was the goal?
Picking on Marvel is just a bias showing.

Dredd played well, it was violent sure but so were both Punisher films and the Thomas Jane version especially has a solid fanbase. So the question might be is overt violence the problem with breaking through to general audiences. It keeps a fanbase in the printed medium but it doesn't seem to translate to mass audience appeal. A theory anyway.

DC... Marvel... who cares? They are all the same (essentially). Although I admit, I love the X-Men (films) and the Nolan Batman films and do not care about the rest.

But that's a whole different topic. What I intended to say was, that the average superhero film follows a certain pattern simply because the general audience EXPECTS to fit that pattern.
From this perspective DREDD was refreshingly different.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Dredd played well, it was violent sure but so were both Punisher films and the Thomas Jane version especially has a solid fanbase. So the question might be is overt violence the problem with breaking through to general audiences. It keeps a fanbase in the printed medium but it doesn't seem to translate to mass audience appeal. A theory anyway.

Going by US box office:
Punisher $33M
Dredd $13M
Punisher War Zone $8M

Almost all of the films listed by others such as Kick-Ass (or Saw(!)) made around $50M or less. Though I'll admit it's not always clear why a film makes say $15M instead of $30M when you're in this lower tier.

 

[Reverend]

Films like 'Saw' can afford to make relatively little because they're pretty cheep to make, so it's not about the box office so much as the profit margins. Even though Dredd was very much mid-to-low budget, it still cost more to make than it would have had it been say a straight up cop movie set in modern day. <insert "The Raid" joke here>

The trouble with films like Dredd making money isn't that they're violent, it's that being violent means that it has a fairly narrow slice of the audience it can target (18+).
The feeling I get these days is that--partly thanks to big screen TVs, surround systems & DVDs--most (and I stress *most*, no *all*) people only go to the pictures for the social aspect. Be it a family treat with the kids, a date with the other half or a night out with friends. As a result, people tend to go see films with a broader appeal, be they family movies, romantic comedies or the big-summer-blockbuster type.

So it's not surprising that films like Dredd don't get much of a look-in as one assumes that cinemas prefer to

Then of course there's the whole self fulfilling prophecy thing. Like when a studio has something they don't understand, or didn't focus test well with whatever brain dead numpties they showed it to and so don't think it's likely to do well. So to minimise potential losses they choose to spend as little as possible on promoting the film....which means very few people even notice it when it comes out and so it doesn't do well at the box office. Thus the circle of stupidity is complete.

Fortunately the home video market means that often these gems do eventually find their audience. People often forget that some of the greatest films of all time didn't do so well at the box office it not bombed altogether. Many didn't become recognised until years later after they'd been shown on TV, done the rounds with cinema re-releases or (more the case these days) with home video and word of mouth. The Wizard of Oz, It's a Wonderful Life, Fight Club, Citizen Kane, Bladerunner, The Shawshank Redemption, ALL of them were box office disappointments.

So at least Dredd is now getting the recognition it deserves and if I had to choose between the film we got with no sequels or some dumbed down homogenised crap with half a dozen half-arsed knock-offs that'll be forgotten in 5 years...well, not really a choice is it?