This was the dumbest movie I've seen in years. Comically bad. So overwheliming bad that I don't know how to approach it. Like. Look at it. It should be self evident.

EDIT: 94% on Rotten Tomatoes!? Wow. I'd have guessed 60-65%.

I have a theory about the state of sci-fi filmmaking falling so hard off a cliff, that movies that would 20 years ago have been called mediocre at best now get hailed as sci-fi masterpieces. Also see Source Code. This also falls into a more annoying recent trend, where a movie being complicated automatically means it's smart and well-written. The art of movies that execute really well on a simple concept has mostly died away, and then when an actual masterpiece like Dredd comes out, no-one goes to see it and people write it off as being dumb and simple. That movie doesn't try to show off and be clever and elaborate every 3 minutes, but instead has a complete and confident understanding of what it's trying to accomplish, a cohesive sci-fi vision (which feels fresh), and a real strong discipline about sticking to it's throughline.

Edit: Before DocSub yells at me, I should clarify I still like both films, I just think there's a double-standard both critically and commercially at play, and it bugs me that simplicity is automatically seen as a negative.

That's an interesting idea for sure, but I have to again disagree that Dredd is anything but dumb trash. I just don't see this brilliant movie that everyone else apparently did.

Well, it doesn't make it smart, either. Certainly doesn't make it a masterpiece on the level of Die Hard. Die Hard also  had funny, clever dialogue and well-rounded, likable heroes and villains. Dredd has none of that. Saying "Well, it doesn't do all these bad things!" isn't the same thing as "It does all these good things!"

I'll also say that I thought Looper was perfectly straightforward, but that's kind of subjective, I guess.

It just seems so easy to me, though. It's not hard to tie up all your loose ends when there are only two ends to begin with. Dredd doesn't want to be anything more, and that's not all that bad, I guess. But Looper is going for big ideas and moral quandaries and complex plotting, and even if it doesn't nail it, I admire it a hell of a lot more for trying.

As soon as they introduced mutant powers I knew it was going to fall apart. And it did.