New Judge Dredd film!

There is a new Judge Dredd film coming out on the 21st of September 2011. I am very excited. It stars Karl Urban as the eponymous Dredd and I think he will do a damn fine job. He was brilliant in Star Trek and has a suitably square jaw. I am planning an article on 2000AD at some point so I won’t go on too much about the awesomeness of that magazine and the effect it had on my teenage years.

Judge Dredd was a British invention that appeared in 2000AD magazine. When he first appeared in 1977, the year in the comic was 2099. The comic setting’s date then followed ours with Dredd getting a year older in pace with real life. So it is now 2133. Which is a pretty cool idea. He lives in Mega-city one which is a huge conurbation covering the entire Eastern seaboard of the the United states. All of central U.S. is a wasteland and nuclear-toxic no go area. The population was originally 800 million but at one point the was an uber destructive Apocalypse war, which halved that. This size causes a few problems – one of which was massive levels of crime.

The Judges were brought in to kick some justice into the asses of the populace. They were a highly trained and double-hard mix of a police officer, judge, and executioner. They are superbly brutal. The judges wear masks and this is crucial as it represents the faceless law. In the comics you never see Dredd’s face while he is a Judge. (You see it later when he quits a couple of times but it is very rare.) Chief writer John Wagner stated:

“It sums up the facelessness of justice − justice has no soul. So it isn’t necessary for readers to see Dredd’s face, and I don’t want you to.”

So when Stallone did a Judge Dredd film and took his mask off almost immediately, fans were outraged. And rightly so. It also didn’t help that the movie was absolutely fucking dire.

I’m praying that the new film stays more true to the source material. They have already confirmed that Karl Urban will keep the helmet on to avoid the ‘Helmet-gate’ controversy of before. I am hoping it will be an 18 rated movie too with lots of unnecessary violence. So far there have only been a few pictures released. And they look cool. Stay tuned for further news.

Picture from http://www.2000adonline.com/movie/