Dune (1984)

Title: Dune (1984)

Director: David Lynch

Cast: Kyle MacLachlan, Sean Young, Max Von Sydow, Dean Stockwell, Sting, Patrick Stewart, Jurgen Prochnow, Jack Nance, Virginia Madsen, Richard Jordan, Jose Ferrer, Brad Dourif

David Lynch’s Dune is a film that is hated by many but loved by another many, it’s a film that divides people, a love it or hate it type of thing, though if you ask me, there’s very little to hate about Lynch’s Dune. I’ve loved this movie ever since I was a kid, I didn’t fully “get it” back then, but there was something I liked about it anyways, my young mind recognized it as a special film. Dune is a film that I have revisited many times over in my life; it’s become one of those films that I will always love. Many years after I first discovered it, I read the book and appreciated the film on a whole other level. Considering the complexity of the book, I applaud Lynch for taking this gargantuan story and transferring it to the big screen because it was never going to be an easy job, the story that Frank Herbert weaved is epic, always has been, yet Lynch took it upon himself to film the thing, he even wrote the script himself! Many directors tried and failed for whatever the reason (Jodorowski and Ridley Scott being two of the filmmakers that didn’t end up directing) yet Lynch stuck to his guns and took the project head on. He even rejected an offer to direct Return of the Jedi (1983) in order to make Dune! Can you imagine what Return of the Jedi might have been like had Lynch directed it? Yeah, I know, the idea of Lynch playing with the Star Wars universe boggles the mind, yet I’m happy he ended up directing Dune instead because in many ways, Lynch was the perfect director for this project, especially when it comes to the more mystical aspects of the story, the telepathic abilities, Lynch had the perfect sensibilities for the more “weird” aspects of the Dune saga.

Herbert’s classic science fiction tale of politics, witches, religion and rebellion is one of those science fiction novels that any self respecting science fiction fan should tackle at some point in their lives. It really is one of the best designed fictional worlds; Herbert really constructed a fascinating, complex universe you can easily lose yourself in, a world filled with mysticism and inner dialog, of prophecies, false gods and abusive governments. The story of Dune is an all encompassing tale that covers many important aspects of our society, as you can expect, like all good science fiction, our way of life is mirrored in the story. For example, one of the main themes of the book revolves around religious fanatism, because after all, the story of Dune is one about a messiah coming to free his people, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg in this fantastic tale of liberation. You see, Dune is one of those books that is so complex that Herbert created a unique lexicon just for these books. So if you ever decide to read it, just remember your going to be introduced to a whole glossary of words unique to the Dune books, in fact, just in case you get lost, the book actually includes a glossary of Dune words! Words like “Kwisatz Haderach”, “Benne Gesserit Witches” and last but not least, the “Spice Melange”, but same as reading Anthony Burgesses’s A Clockwork Orange which also created its own lexicon, all the new words will end up making perfect sense to you by the time you finish reading the book.  So I highly recommend checking this novel out to all sci-fi fans out there. As with any book to film adaptation, the question remains, was the film a good adaptation of the book?

I’d say that yes, it in deed was a good adaptation of the book. In its essence, the film tells the story of the liberation of the Fremen and the rise of Paul Moadib as ruler of the known universe. And this is coming from me, a huge fan of Frank Herbert’s Dune books! I’ve read almost all of them (still need to read the last one Chapterhouse: Dune) so I can say that yeah, Lynch’s adaptation was faithful for the most part. The only area in which he ended up changing things just a bit was in the last five minutes of film, but the rest of the film is pretty much the book. Of course, quite a few things were left out of the book in order to deliver a two hour movie. Speaking of which, the only real problem for me with the film is that if you’ve read the books, you’ll feel as if you’re seeing the story in fast forward. Truth be told, this book has enough story going for it to make two movies, but what Lynch did with the script and what the producers did when they edited the film themselves was compress the whole story into one movie; a pretty daunting task if you ask me. At the end of the day, the film kept the spirit of the book; even Frank Herbert himself complimented Lynch on the film. Herbert mentioned that he was mostly happy with the film, except for the ending which is where Lynch turned things around towards the more theatrical. You see, in the book, Paul Atreides is a man playing to be a god, without in fact being one; he recognizes the power that being a god to the masses represents, so he uses that to the peoples advantage. But the way the film ends, it makes him look like he is actually a god with powers like making it rain on planet Arrakis. This is why Herbert himself said that while he liked the film, he says that Lynch got the ending wrong. “I have my quibbles about the film, of course. Paul was a man playing a god, not a god who could make it rain” So this is really the only real difference between the books and the film. Though the ending of the film has an impact, and makes Paul Atreides a more powerful character, the problem with it is that Lynch’s ending changes the whole character around going against the actual message that Herbert was trying to put across with his book, that religion is a powerful farce used to control the masses.

In retrospective, considering how much of the story Lynch actually shot, they should have taken the opportunity to film two movies back to back. Lynch filmed enough of the story to make a four hour long movie! That’s right my friends, Lynch’s original cut of Dune was four hours long! So they might as well have split the thing in two and released it as two movies, kind of like what Tarantino did with his Kill Bill movies. But no, instead the producers decided to take the film away from Lynch and edit it down to two hours and seventeen minutes, which is one of the reasons why Lynch disowns this movie. It’s the one he considers a ‘failure’ in his career. In my opinion the resulting film is not a bad one and very far from being a failure. Lynch had shot too much good stuff for it to be bad; the result was going to be good no matter what. But obviously, had Lynch had final cut of the film, it would have been better. This is the main reason why Lynch has always denied participation in any of the dvd releases of the film. I’m wondering if maybe one day we’ll get a director’s cut of the film; which simply put, would be awesome! But considering how Lynch refuses to even talk about this film, well, I’m guessing we’ll never see that happen. As of my typing this review, there are three versions of the film, each varying in length. There’s the theatrical cut, the extended cut you get to see on television and then there’s the special edition version. The most complete one is the special edition version because it includes many scenes that were deleted from the original theatrical cut, which is a nifty extra for any Dune fan. But out of all the versions, I still prefer the original theatrical version best, it’s the one I have always known and loved. But true Dune fans will get a kick out of seeing all those scenes that were left out of the original theatrical cut.  

Lynch considers it painful to even talk about Dune! I can understand why, here’s a movie that took three years of Lynch’s life to make! This was a huge, huge production. Funny how gargantuan productions like this one often times end up in failure! To have so much of your life invested in a film that would ultimately end up not being truly yours can be a huge let down for any director, but such is the nature of big budget productions; it’s the producers or the studio who have the final say, they put up all the millions so that should not suprise anyone. Speaking of which this here movie cost something around the vicinity of 40 million dollars, yet strangely enough, it looks more expensive than some of today’s 200 million dollar movies. The art direction is truly impressive on this film! Dune was made in a time when sets were completely built, not half way digitized like most of today’s films. The film required a crew of 1700 people! 80 sets were built in 16 sound stages! I mean this movie was huge in every way you look at it; and what about that cast? So many amazing actors! And here’s this big budget movie being made by a director used to working on small budgets. The film proved to be too big for Lynch who obviously works better with smaller, more personal material. Still, if you ask me, I think the film we ended up getting is a great slice of science fiction.

Speaking of the different adaptations of Dune, there was a mini-series from director John Harrison which was actually extremely faithful to the books. From a fans point of view, John Harrisons take on Dune was an extremely complete adaptation, he even went further than Lynch’s films and adapted both Dune Messiah (the second book in the series) and Children of Dune (the third book in the series) by making a second mini-series entitled Children of Dune (2003), which by the way was also pretty good. These television mini-series, though faithful, lack the lavish production values of Lynch’s film, which is one of the things I love the most about Lynch’s Dune: how big budget it is! Speaking of the cinematic future of the Dune series, director Peter Berg (Hancock, The Kingdom) attempted a remake a while back and was actively involved in it for more than two years, but stepped down in order to direct Battleship (2012). I know that doesn’t make much sense but that’s what happened! My take on it is that Berg was probably trying to make a commercial film that would make tons of money so that he could then go on and make Dune, unfortunately, Battleship was a huge ass loud flop! So those plans went down the drain. As I type this Pierre Morel, the director behind Taken (2008) and District B-13 (2004) was the last director attached to the project, but so far nothing has come of it, here’s hoping it happens, I’d love to see the Dune universe resurrected for a new generation.

Rating: 5 out of 5

    FOR A DETAILED ANALYSIS OF ALL THE TIMES DUNE WENT IN AND OUT OF PRODUCTION, AND ALL OF THE DIRECTORS AND PRODUCERS THAT FAILED TO MAKE THIS FILM ADAPTATION BEFORE LYNCH GOT A HOLD OF IT, VISIT RADIOATOR HEAVEN WHERE MY BUDDY J.D. LAFRANCE GIVES A DETAILED REPORT ON THE WHOLE STORY IN AN ARTICLE ENTITLED: DUNE: IT'S NAME IS A KILLING WORD.

Keep your eyes peeled for David Lynch's cameo as one of the Spice Miners! 

Dreamscape (1984)

Title: Dreamscape (1984)

Director: Joseph Ruben

Cast: Dennis Quaid, Kate Capshaw, Max Von Sydow, Christopher Plummer, David Patrick Kelly

Review:

Dream movies are a special bunch of films; they offer things that no other kind of movie can offer us:   dream sequences that explore the surreal landscapes of the mind. In Dreamscape we meet Alex Gardner, a young man who can transport himself onto other people’s dreams. He is psychic, something we find out early on, when he wins a bunch of money at the horse track. His psychic abilities are what augment his dream traveling abilities. Once the government gets a whiff of Alex’s abilities, they kidnap him and convince him to help them with their new project; a project which consists of using a machine to enter other people’s minds. At first we are introduced to the benevolent side of the project, which is to help people confront their fears, but then we go into the negative applications of the technique, mainly, if you kill a person in the dream world, you can kill them in real life!

Dreamscape is a film that explores the fascinating world of dreams. I’ve always found dreams to be incredibly interesting and the idea that we can consciously control what happens in dreams? Mind blowing! These types of dreams are called ‘Lucid Dreams’ and in them you become aware that you are dreaming and attempt to control what happens in the dream. This is not fantasy, and it’s something you can look into and learn how to achieve. I read up on it and tried some of the techniques, and I gotta tell you guys, Lucid Dreaming actually works! I was personally successful in my attempt; I actually became aware that I was dreaming, while dreaming! The bitch of the thing is trying to stay asleep once you become conscious in the dream, because the minds natural reaction is to wake you up when you become conscious. But the few seconds that I managed to be conscious within my dream was actually kind of frightening and intense, but also strangely exhilarating. Dreams are something we can all identify with because it’s something we all experience; we all dream. We all confront our fears in those wee hours of the night, which is probably the reason why dream movies are big hits with audiences. I mean, look at the success of the  Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, or Tarsem’s The Cell (2000), two films that have a whole lot in common with Dreamscape, the film that explored these themes first.

I see Tarsem’s The Cell as an update on the ideas presented in Dreamscape, but done in a far more stylish manner because of Tarsem Singh’s involvement in directing the picture. The Cell is a superior film in many ways, but that’s due to the fact that it had a bigger budgetthan Dreamscape, which was made with a measly 6 million dollars, mere pocket change in Hollywood terms. The Cell on the other hand had 33 million dollars to play with. Still, even with its meager budget, Dreamscape is a film big on ideas. I love it when these films get made in spite of their small budgets. The filmmakers say:  “screw it, we’ll make do with what we got!” The amazing thing is that most of the time, something cool comes forth none the less, which was the case with Dreamscape. The ideas presented are pretty outlandish! The president of the United States is having nightmares because of the Cold War. He has nightmares of people dying in a nuclear blast! He can’t take the pressure of being the president and having to be responsible for pressing the proverbial button that can kill millions. Once again, same as many films from the 80’s fear of nuclear holocaust is present because this is what people were living through at the time. So the film not only explores the dream world and all the possibilities therein, it also deals with political and moral issues.

An interesting aspect of Dreamscape, and I mentioned a bit of this earlier, is how many similarities it shares with the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. We got characters going in and out of dreams; we have an evil dream demon type of guy who even has claws, just like Freddy Krueger does! Plus, there’s the idea that if you die in your dreams, you can die in real life! Even more interesting is that both A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and Dreamscape were being made at the same time, and released mere months apart. There’s a possibility that one studio was trying to copy the other studios dream film and so, we get two extremely similar films being released. But Dreamscape was released first in August 1984, while A Nightmare on Elm Street was released in November of the same year, so Dreamscape did it all first. Another connection that Dreamscape has with A Nightmare on Elm Street is that Dreamscape was partially written by Chuck Russell, the very same writer/director who ended up writing and directing A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), a film that shares many similarities with Dreamscape. On that particular Elm Street film we meet Kirsten and Nancy, two characters with the ability to enter other people’s dreams, they can even bring people into their own dreams. So I’m guessing that Chuck Russell’s experience with writing about dreams in Dreamscape landed him the gig to write and direct the third entry in the original Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.

The only problem for me with Dreamscape is that sometimes the special effects look pretty outdated. There’s this one scene where we meet a half man, half snake creature, and the stop motion animation leaves a lot to be desired, I mean, not only is it stop motion animation, it’s bad stop motion animation. But aside from that, we get some trippy visuals every time we go into dream world, I sometimes got the feeling that the film was made for 3-D but never got around to getting converted. On the plus side of things, the film has an excellent cast, we get Dennis Quaid in the prime of his youth, actually, it might take you some time to get over how young he looks.  Christopher Plummer plays a political douche bag and Max Von Sydow his counterpart, the good natured scientist. Kate Capshaw (aka Spielberg’s wife) plays one of the heads of the dream project. And finally we get David “Warriors, come out and play” Patrick Kelly, playing the Freddy Krueger like villain of the piece. Final words on Dreamscape is that it’s a film with an interesting premise that did a lot with very little. Its budgetary limitations didn’t stop it from exploring its themes thoroughly; recommended to those who love movies that explore the fascinating world of dreams.

Rating: 3 ½ out of 5  

FOR A LOOK AT MEMORABLE DREAM SEQUENCES ON FILMS GO HERE!   

Original vs. Remake Comparison: Judge Dredd (1995) vs. Dredd (2012)

Judge Dredd is one of those properties that has huge potential for becoming the Next Big Franchise, but for some reason, Hollywood has never really figured out how to start it up properly. There’s been two films based on Judge Dredd, the first one was Danny Cannon’s Judge Dredd (1995) and the second, Dredd (2012). Both films were not as successful as expected by their producers, yet I have enjoyed both cinematic incarnations of the character, both for different reasons. Still, one could safely say that American audiences have not truly warmed up to Judge Dredd yet; both films were failed attempts at jump starting a franchise. One of the best examples of a failed franchise that Hollywood just won’t give up on are the Punisher films, which Hollywood has attempted to start off three times with no success; and two of these adaptations were produced during the current boom of comic book movies, so why the failure? If you ask me, I’d say that no matter how how much franchise potential a property might have, when a film like Green Lantern (2011) fails it proves only one thing: you still need a good movie to kick things off. Without that good first film, your franchise is going nowhere; which is why Danny Cannon’s Judge Dredd is such a conundrum for me. Cannon’s Judge Dredd is not a bad film in my book; actually, if you ask me, it’s quite the contrary, it should have started a whole franchise of Judge Dredd films! Still, back in 1995 audiences in the United States didn’t think a Judge Dredd movie was such a good idea, even with Sylvester Stallone attached as the main star of the film. Why did this first attempt to bring Judge Dredd to the silver screen fail?

In retrospect, Danny Cannon’s 1995 film wasn’t a total bomb. While it is true that the film failed to make its budget back in the United States where it only made 34 million; it did make more cash abroad, recuperating its 70 million dollar budget and making a grand total of 113 million worldwide. So things weren’t all that bad for this Stallone vehicle, it just didn’t make as much money as expected in the United States. But still, one has to wonder, why didn’t it perform? Well, it could have something to do with Judge Dredd not being as well known a character as other popular comic book properties. The roots of Judge Dredd go back to the U.K. where it first appeared in the illustrious science fiction comic book magazine 2000 A.D., way back in 1977. Now in the U.K. Judge Dredd is a well known comic book character, for example, it was considered one of the top ten comic book characters ever created by Empire Magazine. But the truth is that the grand majority of Americans don’t know what the hell 2000 A.D.  is and with the exception of those hard core comic book geeks like myself, Judge Dredd simply hasn’t reached that level of recognition that other comic book characters have. So we could attribute the low box office intake to the fact that in the U.S., Judge Dredd is not that well known a character.

Judge Dredd has had a long and fruitful comic book life

But was Danny Cannon’s film really all that bad? Was it really all that unfaithful to the comics? Well, if you ask Judge Dredd creator John Wagner he’ll tell you that Cannon’s film “had nothing to do with Judge Dredd”. I can see where he is coming from, but I don’t necessarily agree. I’ve been reading the first issues of the old 1970’s Dredd comic books (and having a blast with them I might add!) and I have to say that Danny Cannon’s film is actually very close to what Wagner and Ezquerra originally created with their comics. There’s Mega City One, which by the way looks absolutely stunning in Cannon’s film. There’s a grand set design here, the city looks massive and convoluted the way Mega City should be, filled with crooks and chaos. Judge Dredd himself looks amazingly close to how he looks in the comics; the wardrobe by the way was designed by famed fashion mogul Gianni Versace!  The suit might not look functional, but hell, it’s the Dredd from the comic books, there’s no denying that! The look for the new film looses the giant golden eagle shoulder pads for a more toned down and functional shoulder padding, but I have to admit, I like the look on Cannon’s film better, it just looks more like the Dredd from the comic books. You can tell there was a desire to be faithful to the iconic Judge Dredd suit, it only he’d worn it more through the film.

They got the guns right, they got Dredd’s motorcycle just as huge as in the comics and with built in machine guns! I tell ya, in look and overall feel, Danny Cannon’s film succeeds in transferring the comic book character and the world of Mega City One to the silver screen in a more successful and faithful manner than director Pete Travis’s Dredd (2012), which by comparison brings us a very scaled down version of Mega City One. This due to the fact that the makers of Dredd had a smaller budget than Cannon and Stallones film. The makers of Judge Dredd had a cool 70 million dollars to play with, some sites even say the budget was closer to 90 million, while the makers of Dredd had only 50 million. But apparently 70 million dollars could get you a heck of a lot back in ‘95 and as a result, Cannon’s film looks expensive, it’s one of those movies where you can see the millions up on the screen. It has big effects, big stars, and an imposing musical score arranged by Alan Silvestri. So if you ask this film connoisseur, I say Cannon’s film is better in these respects. It’s bigger, badder, louder. Unfortunately, the films levels of violence garnered it an ‘R’ rating and so, I think this too might have hurt its intake at the box office. Its target audience couldn’t go and see the film because it was restricted.

Thematically speaking, the film plays with a lot of important (if somewhat redundant) issues. First off, we have a corrupt judicial system, corrupt cops and a corrupt government. Their main purpose in life is to build an army so they can overtake the city. Same as real life politicians, the corrupt government of Mega City One uses criminals to purposely inflict fear in the hearts and minds of the people so they’ll have an excuse to build a clone army. By the way, the theme of corruption amongst the police force is touched upon yet again in Dredd. Cannon’s film centers around a story line from the old comic books called “The Return of Rico”, where ‘Rico’ - Judge Dredd’s evil brother- returns from exile to exact some revenge on those who sent him to prison. Armand Assante, one of my favorite actors and one who is criminally underrated in Hollywood, plays the over the top Rico, a great asset to this film. And speaking of Judge Dredd’s cast, we also get the awesome Max Von Sydow playing Judge Dredd’s father figure Judge Fargo. Sometimes the performances are tuned up a bit too much, Stallone himself said that the tone they went for was too ‘Hamlet’ when they should have kept it fun and gone more Hamlet and Eggs. I get what he’s saying, but I actually think it’s not all that serious, there’s a fine balancing act between serious sci-fi and goofy comic book movie on this one, what with Rob Schneider hopping along for the ride, a joke a second is always assured. True, I’m not the first to admit that Schneider doesn’t always hit the mark, but in my opinion he isn’t all that annoying, he’s just the a-typical comic relief character. If you want to blame someone for including Schneider here, blame Stallone, he’s the one that asked for him! Originally Stallone wanted Joe Pesci, but Pesci declined so they went with Schneider. 

  

I’ve read many die hard Judge Dredd fans (the purists) complain that they didn’t like the fact that Stallone takes off the helmet and the uniform for most of the film, and I have to say I agree, taking the iconic Judge Dredd suit and helmet off for 90% of the film was not a good idea. In the Judge Dredd comics, we never get to see Dredd’s face, ever! It’s this big mystery that bathes the character with an enigmatic  aura that works like magic. But in the films defense, we have to understand that Stallone was the big draw here and the producers didn’t want to hide their bankable film stars face in a helmet for the whole film, so in a way, it’s understandable that they did this. But I, along with many Dredd fans would have preferred to see more of Dredd looking like a Judge, not like Stallone. Wardrobe issues aside, Stallone did a good job in bringing the character to life, he plays him cold and robotic, the way Dredd should be. He shouts things like “I am the law!” and calls people “citizens and perps”. He sentences people on the spot, I mean, for all intents and purposes, this is Dredd come to life. I say you and I are lucky that this film turned out as cool as it id, during this production Stallone and Cannon didn’t see eye to eye in a great many things, yes my friends, this was a troubled production, things didn’t run smoothly between actor and director. So much so that Cannon vowed never again to work with big movie stars like Stallone.  Still, I say that the end result is a fun movie, with great action, a good story, a good cast and great visual effects, Mega City One looks like something out of The Fifth Element (1997) mixed with Blade Runner (1982). An escapist film with great production values, I say give this one a second chance!

In comparison, Pete Travis’s Dredd is the complete opposite of Cannon’s film. It’s a smaller scale story, less epic, more personal. We get to follow Dredd and a rookie try and stop ‘Ma-Ma’, a big time drug dealer who resides on the 200^th floor of Peach Tree building complex. It isn’t going to be an easy task, especially when Ma-Ma locks down the whole building! By keeping Dredd confined to one location, the filmmakers keep costs down by not having to show the futuristic exteriors of Mega City One, while at the same time giving us more time to focus on Dredd himself, which is something that sets this film apart, we are with Dredd for most of the films duration.

Gotta tell ya, if I’m given the choice to choose between both of these films, I’d choose Cannon’s film simply because its way more fun. Dredd is such a serious affair, so dreadful, it needed something to liven it up, it needed more sci-fi to it, more action, like the comics. As it is, we simply get Dredd going from floor to floor shooting people in slow motion, which in my opinion felt a little redundant after a while. I did like the slow motion effect of Slo-Mo. Basically, once you take it everything around you slows down to a crawl. Because of this, blood, shards of broken glass, bullets and tearing flesh, can all be appreciated in slow motion. Cool visuals in deed.

On this one, Dredd looks awesome as well. Yeah they lost  the giant golden eagle shoulder pads, but it’s not a big loss, they went for a more realistic approach. Dredd almost looks like a real cop, closer to something we might see on the streets someday. But again, if asked to choose, I’d take the look from Cannon’s film better, simply because it’s more comic bookish, it’s the Dredd of the comics, not a toned down version that wants to be more realistic. This is something that filmmakers need to remember, when we go see a comic book film, we’re not looking for realism, we’re looking for escapism, we’re looking to see something we haven’t seen. Characters who do things we can’t do. And in my opinion, this is what brings Dredd down a bit, its desire to be more serious and realistic. In a Dredd film, I want the futuristic motorcycle, the flying cars, the killer robots, the cool weapons, the sci-fi, Dredd needed more sci-fi to it. But I get it, the budget was smaller, this wasn’t as big a production as Stallone’s film was, this is a smaller scale production, so I accepted it for what it is. And truth be told, I enjoyed Dredd.  I read an article where Alex Garland speaks about this decidedly smaller scale film, and in it he explains that they went with this because they were testing out the waters to see if people would approve of this new film. Had this one worked, had it made some dough, we would have seen two more films, bigger in scale with the possible introduction of infamous Judge Death! But alas…this was not to be.

Unfortunately, Dredd bombed at the box office, even more so than Cannon’s film. Dredd cost 50 million, but only made 32; it didn’t even make its money back! That is the mark of death for any franchise. But again, you need a good entertaining first film to grab audiences and this one was so small scale that it failed to impress. Though well made, it simply wasn’t epic enough. Dredd feels like a whimper next to the big and loud Stallone film. But I’m not going down as saying Dredd is a bad film, I just think it wasn’t all it could have been.  Sad story in my book, I wanted to see more of Judge Dredd! But fear not, thanks to the efforts of Judge Dredd creators John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra, Judge Dredd is becoming better known across the United States and the world. The old comics are getting reprinted and collected in these giant volumes that compile all of those old Judge Dredd comics that appeared in 2000 A.D., highly recommend searching those out! It’s very entertaining to see how this character has evolved through it’s comic book history. Judge Dredd has gone through various  comic book companies, writers and artists. For example, DC comics has printed a couple of Judge Dredd series, and so has IDW Publishing, which by the way is currently printing a series as I type this. Hopefully Dredd (2012) will find its audience on dvd and awareness of the character will grow over the years. Until then, we got volumes of comic book history and these two films to quench our thirsts for all things Dredd. Here’s hoping that a couple of years down the line, Hollywood decides to give Judge Dredd another chance at franchise glory. Until then, according to municipal code 213: good hearted attempts at jump starting a franchise and Code 310: films that don’t deserve the bad rap they get and Code 201 of the Cinematic Crimes Journal, I the Film Connoisseur find both of these films NOT guilty! Go watch them and have a good time!

Rating Judge Dredd (1995): 4 ½

Rating Dredd (2012): 4

A fan made poster that Danny Cannon made when he was a teenager, before he even dreamed of directing Judge Dredd (1995). He submitted it to a contest for 2000 A.D. and won!