Karl Urban suited and booted as the legendary 2000 AD lawman…
The first full clip of Dredd 3D, which is based on the Judge Dredd comic-book series from 2000AD magazine, has been released online. The blood-soaked, minute-long redband video returns Dredd to the dark, visceral incarnation of the character that appeared in John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra’s revered comic strip.
Dredd 3D is written by Alex Garland and directed by Pete Travis and critics of the 1995 Sylvester Stallone film will be glad to see the pair create a futuristic neo-noir action film that doesn’t feel the need to add in an annoying comedy sidekick.
The movie takes place in Mega City One, a vast, violent metropolis that runs from Boston to Washington DC on the East Coast of a future America. Criminals rule the chaotic streets and the only force of order lies with the urban cops called ‘Judges’, who possess the combined powers of judge, jury and instant executioner.
Chief among these is Judge Dredd, the ultimate lawman who has been challenged with ridding the city of its latest scourge – a dangerous drug epidemic that has users of ‘Slo-Mo’ experiencing reality at a fraction of its normal speed.
Karl Urban is the new man behind Dredd’s mask, taking on Lena Headey’s prostitute turned drug lord Ma-Ma in a 200-story vertical slum. Dredd and Cassandra Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), a rookie cop with powerful psychic abilities thanks to a genetic mutation, must fight their way to the top of the building as they engage in a relentless battle for their survival.
The storyline may remind some of The Raid, which sees cops fighting their way out of a gang controlled building. However, any similarity to that concept is accidental as Dredd 3D was commissioned before that project.
Anyone who thought Max Payne was the only cop who got to wage war on criminals in slow motion can check out the stunning 3D photography sequences shown off at the Judgement Is Coming website to change that opinion.
Then check out the teaser trailer that’s been kicking around since May, with Urban doing his best Christian Bale “I’m Batman” voice.
Fear not Tim, the upcoming new vesrion has some 800 visual effect shots in it, and according to a crew member who worked on the film and saw some conceptual designs for the new Mega-City One, the new city looks like London’s “Canary Wharf on steroids” and apparently looks “amazing”, so no worries there, I have full confidence it will be a visual tour-de-force, not to mention a much better representation of the source comic-book if John Wagner is happy with it, that’s enough for me! The trouble with the 1995 vesrion was that the producers brought Steven DeSouza in to do a draft of the script, and he basically mangled it even the director of that movie, Danny Cannon, was very vocal about his loathing of DeSouza’s draft at the time and Stallone seized control of the entire film whilst they were shooting it, demanding changes to the script and even directing reshoots himself (with Cannon basically cut out of the process), and was hastily cut to pieces in order to get a PG-13 rating (which it still didn’t get), it’s any wonder it ended up the way it did. If they had stuck with Cannon’s vision of the film (and kept DeSouza away from the script), hired someone like Dolph Lundgren to play Dredd instead of the egomaniacal Stallone, kept some of the early concept designs for the movie (which looked a heck of a lot more Dredd-esque than what ended up onscreen), and spent more time in getting the visual effects and final cut perfected to their fullest potential, that movie would’ve been a lot better, and probably would’ve been better received upon release