Day of the Dredd

Well here we are then - October already, and as it's the first it's also Day of Dredd, er, day.

What? Oh come on. Star Wars fans get their own day and they've had eight movies of their own so far, while Dredd fans have had a quarter of that number if I'm even being generous (and in the matter of Rob Schneider's career that's quite generous enough, thankyou). So, somewhat half-heartedly and with the sure sense that Mickey Mouse won't ever want to buy THIS franchise, I'm putting my drokkin' hand up for the Make a Dredd Sequel campaign. I joined the Facebook group two years ago, signed the petition, have bought the DVD (just not on the same day of action last year), and though I'd be happy to buy the Blu Ray, it' not really an option right at the moment.

However, I still love Dredd,even the glum, somewhat introspective mood it put me in on the busride home from seeing it. One of my heroes is a brutal, methodical tool of the System. I always knew that about him, although in his comic strips that persona has changed over the years. Dredd has had doubts, found reasons to question the system, and even before meeting the man who created it and with whom he shares a genetic heritage, has confessed to its shortcomings and failures, his own misguided beliefs. Judge Joseph Dredd is a complicated, human character inside a rigid, fearful authoritarian shell, and the miracle of his parent strip is that this has all come about through his own creator, John Wagner, in a slow, near forty-year burn.

 The tragedy of Dredd's failure at the box office is that we as fans or casual viewers won't get to see that remarkable evolution of character. It's a damned shame. The Dredd we have is a cold thing of beauty, but it feels to me like the first chapter of a bigger story. And I'd very much like to see it continue, because from what I've seen and heard of Alex Garland's plan for the movies, the best was definitely yet to come.

And that's my 2014 Day of Dredd post right there.