I really enjoyed this episode (I was present for the live record). I had seen the film for the first time mere hours before, and I loved it. Apparently, the original creator of Judge Dredd was a consultant on the film and I think it shows. Furthermore, in addition to being naturally funny, Down In Front was in top form in explaining why the movie works and suggesting alternatives or how to fix the few things that didn't work. Great episode! One of my favorites!

Things I noted down whilst listening to your commentary

Dredd's expression - in the comics he wears shoes that are one-size too small, not sure why though.

The elevator inconsistency thing - looking back it appears that her finger was on the trigger and he puts his hand over the top of her hand so would be able to activate the gun by pressing down on her finger - kinda like someone unworthy picking up Thor's hammer by picking up Thor whilst he is holding the hammer (ish)

The sentence fitting the crime thing - one of the comic stories is set at a blood donation center, man is scared of needles, runs away, steals a blood transportation van (full of blood) to aid his escape, van crashes and blood is ruined. Dredd sentences him to the IsoCubes where he must remain until he has repaid the blood, and at 1 pint a day (or maybe a week) that will be quite a long time (it was a big van).

What spoilt the movie for me was, having seen The Raid some months before, I was waiting for the time when Dredd dropped his gun, or run out of bullets, and had to go up against a room of baddies armed only with his two fists and night stick, so we could have seen just how tough and bassass he is - but it never happened.

The thing I don't get is, if they needed it to make $50 million in the USA for them to get their sequel (which would have deatl with the corruption in the force and Dredd venturing into the Cursed Earth), and I know hindsight is 20-20, but why take a character who is pretty much unknown there and saddle the movie with the more expensive 3D ticket price and 18 certificate ? If they'd ditched the 3D and gone for a 15 (they have 15 in USA, right ?!) wouldn't that have widened their possible audience by being more enticing - no being asked to pay extra for the glasses to see something you know barely little about. Then they could have brought out an unrated version for the DVD/BlueRay market. (appeaseing all the 2000AD fans up in arms about the 15 certificate)

Last edited by Fido (2013-01-21 21:09:01)

Well, if it wasn't an uncompromising R it would lose a lot of what makes it good to begin with, this movie would suck as a PG-13, and after the PG-13 Stallone one, would be losing a lot of good-will with the fan community.

I agree that the 3D was probably a mistake, that probably would've saved them 20 mil, and it didn't really bring in any extra money. That combined with the shitty marketing campaign, which made it look stupid and "EXTREME" instead of playing up the serious tone and gritty sci-fi aesthetic really fucked the movie over. Why they chose to focus the trailer around the bad one-liners (which work great in context, but sound really bad slapped into a trailer like that) kills me.

I mean you look at something like Battle: LA, where they cut masterful trailers for a pretty shit movie and it ended up making bank, and you compare to this, it's just really unfortunate how much bad marketing can fuck you over

Regarding Trey's nitpick:

The way he's holding her, she has the grip on the gun and can't let go while he's only touching the trigger. So it's safe to assume that the gun would fire under these conditions. And even if that wasn't the case and the gun didn't fire, her head would get blown off. So whatever she tries in that elevator, if the trigger gets pulled, she's screwed.

I heard Trey mention the term "Arcology" and how they don't exist yet, or something like that.  I happened to live and work at a community that is being built as a model/pilot arcology in central Arizona:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcosanti

It was designed by Paolo Soleri, who also coined the term arcology.  Paolo was a student of Frank Lloyd Wright until he was kicked out of Taliesen West in Phoenix, for reasons that remain unclear. He's still alive in his mid nineties, and construction is still ongoing, though it's slowed considerably since it's height in the early seventies.

Larry Niven visited several times during it's heyday, and another story I heard is that Lucas and Co visited some of his earlier constructions in Scottsdale, AZ as a possible shooting location for the Owen & Beru homestead in Star Wars.

I lived there for about a year total between 2004-2006, running the small organic farm on the site, and later volunteering in their archives.

There's also a pretty cool book called City in the Image of Man that has schematics for arcologies for different climates & landscapes:  http://www.amazon.com/Arcology-The-City … 1883340012

Okay, back to lurking

I'm with trey on the dead-man's switch. A properly design dead-mans system would not send a "continous" stream, but rather, small "I'm still alive packets" at intervals. If sufficiently many of these packets are missed - kablooey. There could, of course, be an explitic "Oh, person diead, kablooey NOW" packet in addition.

Ideally you use a 2-way handshake protocol so that single missed packets can be retransmitted. It's not rocket science. Standard WiFi would work fine.

Also, I don't really agree Dredd "grows" in the movie, and if so, very little. It seems you guys missed WHY SHE PASSES THE TEST?

/Z

iirc wasn't there a big hoohar in the UK when the last Die Hard came out and people saw it was 15 rather than 18. The hoohar being from people thinking the rating reduction meant a lessening of the De Hard violence they craved. But rather than hurt the movie, it went on to make more than the previous ones. So going 15 (movie ratings wise) was the right way to go. Though, if it was still an R in America (I should google that) then maybe things weren't that simple.

As to Ma-Ma and her ''poorly conceived switch thingie", maybe she had a more thought-out version but it clashed with her outfit ?! 

I knew I didn't know much about movies, but now I see I know even less.    - btw: looking down that link I'm kinda shocked about the Die Hard 2 figures cos I was so certain it was generally felt to be a pale imitation of the first and thus did badly at the box office, but instead it blew the original away. 

I liked this one. Good movie and good commentary. I'd actually class this as a perfect movie, and apart from my personal irritation with the slowness of the slow-mo scenes, I can't recall a bum note. Sure, you guys raised a few criticisms but these are mostly on the pernickety side and aren't egregrious.

I've not really read any Dredd stories (one or two perhaps decades ago) but I imagine that this movie has everything you could want from a movie adaptation. It's easy to go in and expect something more like the Watchmen or with characters and setting that are more nuanced, but I guess Dredd is what it is.

That's the feeling I get from the new one's trailers. It seems like a fun, over-the-top actioner, perfectly acceptable as long as we don't try to pretend it takes place in the same world, with the same rules and characters, as DIE HARD.

Driving testers are taught to have great poker faces. If thy give away in the middle of a test that you've failed, thy run the risk of you getting really upset and crashing the car. Sucks, though.

We did it, you guys.

http://www.comicvine.com/news/dredd-top … ts/145864/