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SuperMechagodzilla posted:I'm starting to think the best joke in the film is in how Anderson spares that one guy, because she sees that he was forced to do bad things and is therefore a victim. I read that scene completely differently, it was a "gently caress this job" moment - she was even warned about being sent to the isocubes by Dredd. From the very start she harps on about good families struggling in the Mega Blocks and how she wants to make a difference but unfortunately for her (and the poor gits she shoot through the face) she's thrown into the deep end and not given much time to collect her thoughts or argue. Yes, she did what she was ordered to do at the start of the movie in order to pass but how many times have you applied for a job and said you'd work weekends when you didn't mean it? You work a couple of weekends and then tell your boss to sod off, it's the way.
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Jan 22, 2013 00:05
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massive spider posted:Remember dredd is literally a Judge, judges get to decide how the law is interpreted. Law isnt applied immutably in real life. At what point did you get the impression that Mega-City One's laws are applied as in real life? Also, even in reality, not all laws are 'interpreted' - some are very, very cut-and-dry. My point was that the primary weapon rule may be one of those, or it may not. The scene is ambiguous.
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Jan 22, 2013 00:10
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BisonDollah posted:unfortunately for her (and the poor gits she shoot through the face) she's thrown into the deep end and not given much time to collect her thoughts or argue. Yes, she did what she was ordered to do at the start of the movie in order to pass but how many times have you applied for a job and said you'd work weekends when you didn't mean it? You work a couple of weekends and then tell your boss to sod off, it's the way. Kids get inducted into the Justice dept. to become Judges at around age 5 and train solidly until their late teens; Anderson hardly filled out a job application and was told to start next week.
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Jan 22, 2013 00:11
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NoneMoreNegative posted:Kids get inducted into the Justice dept. to become Judges at around age 5 and train solidly until their late teens; Anderson hardly filled out a job application and was told to start next week. Aye, younglings, right? Cool. I think you're maybe reading my post a little too literally. Anyway, I was under the impression this was Anderson's first taste of being a Judge in the real world & despite being incredibly useful at it - it wasn't for her. Not with it's current job description.
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Jan 22, 2013 00:16
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Alcholism Rocks posted:I think Dredd killed fewer people than Ma-Ma's gang did, and the interesting thing is that in this movie, despite being satire, he actually appears to be justified in killing them every single time. I'm not entirely sure why he only tased those two kids, though. Most of the other gang members were kids and those two fired their weapons at Dredd. A real cop might not respond so kindly to that. This gave me pause too thinking Dredd wouldn't give a gently caress. But there have been some pretty great posts commenting on two aspects of that. One is that within the law they're juveniles and the law dictates you don't just shoot them unless necessary because such is the arbitrary structure of the law, fair and just as it is. Dredds strict adherence guarantees they make it to the juvie cubes. Two, instead of killing them as we would expect he invokes the "less than lethal" approach of the modern cop and actually gets the audience to embrace the fact he didn't just shoot them. So instead of us still mentally tearing down this justice system, momentarily we're not only behind him as "hero" but also the system as somewhat "just", making the audience accomplice to his actions and fascism. When that moment of confusion passes we're back to the real world "wait, our cops use these less-than-LETHAL tasers like they're handing out parking tickets and its still all kinds of hosed up", in a parallel to our real world expectations of greater injustice causing us to allow lesser ones to slide in a way that continues to propagate a horrible system that can parade around in better illusions of justice. edit: whoops, quoted post from many pages ago thinking that was the most recent page. EvilTobaccoExec fucked around with this message at 00:34 on Jan 22, 2013 |
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Jan 22, 2013 00:31
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:I'm starting to think the best joke in the film is in how Anderson spares that one guy, because she sees that he was forced to do bad things and is therefore a victim.
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Jan 22, 2013 01:23
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There's a little more nuance to it than just complicity within the system. The film recognizes that the system is immovable- no individual is going to change it. Throughout the story we meet various characters who relate to that system in different ways. There's the criminals, who try to violently overturn it but end up imitating it. There's the corrupt judges who have given up on their ideals and are turning the system to their benefit. Dredd is fundamentally different from all of them. He believes in the system and his place so strongly that he subverts his own identity to it. He is the law. He's not faceless, the helmet, the institution, is his face. He passes Anderson because he recognizes the same qualities in her. She's a fellow traveler. She doesn't identical views to his, but when she defies him and uses her authority granted her as part of her test to free the hacker, she's standing for her convictions and using her authority to do what she feels is right, regardless of the personal consequences to herself. That's why he passes her.
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Jan 22, 2013 01:38
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That, and the fact that she manages to kick a lot of rear end and even saves Dredd's life.
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Jan 22, 2013 01:41
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People have mentioned Dredd's use of the incendiary attack as an example of his brutality, but that occasion is better viewed as a combat manoeuvre, not a proper execution (even though the penalty for attacking a Judge is death). Dredd was on a battlefied; the thugs weren't disarmed and cuffed, waiting to be judged at leisure. He was outnumbered and they were closing in on him, so he used a decoy to lure them out into the open and cluster them around one spot, then flank them and hit them with an area-of-effect attack. The standard execution Judges use is a bullet to the head, which is quick and painless, but is only done on a prisoner who has been disarmed and captured.
Baron Bifford fucked around with this message at 02:09 on Jan 22, 2013 |
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Jan 22, 2013 02:06
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Baron Bifford posted:People have mentioned Dredd's use of the incendiary attack as an example of his brutality, but that occasion is better viewed as a combat manoeuvre, not a proper execution (even though the penalty for attacking a Judge is death). Dredd was on a battlefied; the thugs weren't disarmed and cuffed, waiting to be judged at leisure. He was outnumbered and they were closing in on him, so he used a decoy to lure them out into the open and cluster them around one spot, then flank them and hit them with an area-of-effect attack. The standard execution Judges use is a bullet to the head, which is quick and painless, but is only done on a prisoner who has been disarmed and captured. And he was also running low on ammunition for regular rounds so it was a very clever ambush to save supplies and also take out even more heavily armed perps with a area effect weapon.
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Jan 22, 2013 02:13
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At the risk of being redundant, I really liked when Dredd threw Ma-Ma's top lieutenant of the balcony. People have talked about how badass it looked, and people have talked about how Dredd killed Ma-Ma the same way she killed the original three guys, but when Dredd kills the lieutenant it's even more parallel. It's a punishment killing, and it's designed to send a message. He could have just shot the guy in the face, but he wanted to show Ma-Ma "This is what happens when you gently caress with (are we still spoiler tagging stuff in this thread?)
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Jan 22, 2013 02:26
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:I'm starting to think the best joke in the film is in how Anderson spares that one guy, because she sees that he was forced to do bad things and is therefore a victim. He was forced in a much more literal sense. Even though there's overwhelming pressure on the inhabitants to turn to crime, they can still choose not to, and many of them do.
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Jan 22, 2013 02:47
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A bullet to the head is painless? Really?
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Jan 22, 2013 02:47
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foodfight posted:This was the music during the slo-mo scenes, right? This is the plugin that does it.
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Jan 22, 2013 02:50
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Tripwyre posted:A bullet to the head is painless? Really? If it's through the brain, I would imagine so. Through the jaw/cheek, no so much...
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Jan 22, 2013 02:50
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:Compare how they both deal with the other judges that arrive near the end Dredd sees another Morally Untouchable Representative Of THE LAW and treats them as such, almost getting killed because of it. Anderson sees a Person, Reads them, Judges Them, and moves on unhindered. That bit was ridiculously satisfying, even if it was basically quoting Indiana Jones.
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Jan 22, 2013 03:02
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I just like that, in stereotypical movie fashion, there were was a female bad Judge sent to fight the female good judge, but then they totally subverted the expectation of a cat fight with Anderson shooting and killing her immediately.
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Jan 22, 2013 03:44
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I really appreciated all the gruesome practical effects even more after the Blu ray second viewing, really reminded me of the stellar gruesome works from many memorable 80s movies such as The Thing.
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Jan 22, 2013 04:54
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I've started work on the Dredd comics OP. I'll be starting with a bit about Dredd and the basics of the justice system, adding more as it goes along. Is there anything particular anyone would like to know or think should be included?
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Jan 22, 2013 08:44
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Snak posted:At the risk of being redundant, I really liked when Dredd threw Ma-Ma's top lieutenant of the balcony. People have talked about how badass it looked, and people have talked about how Dredd killed Ma-Ma the same way she killed the original three guys, but when Dredd kills the lieutenant it's even more parallel. It's a punishment killing, and it's designed to send a message. He could have just shot the guy in the face, but he wanted to show Ma-Ma "This is what happens when you gently caress with Also getting on the PA system and telling all the gangsters, he (dredd) is going to kill them and succeeds doing so. Just adds more to Dredd's reputation as the judge you have to fear.
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Jan 22, 2013 09:25
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BreakAtmo posted:At what point did you get the impression that Mega-City One's laws are applied as in real life? Also, even in reality, not all laws are 'interpreted' - some are very, very cut-and-dry. My point was that the primary weapon rule may be one of those, or it may not. The scene is ambiguous. Yes, its ambiguous. But its not even possible for every law to be cut and dried, even if the judges are ostensibly supposed to be arbitratrary enforcers of The Law there's still going to be times when they have to rely on their own judgement as to what that means. Passing Anderson for whatever reason is bending the rules, even if you decided that her "primary weapon" was her mind that's still some pretty creative interpretation of a law which is obviously as written intended to mean gun.
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Jan 22, 2013 10:44
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massive spider posted:Yes, its ambiguous. But its not even possible for every law to be cut and dried, even if the judges are ostensibly supposed to be arbitratrary enforcers of The Law there's still going to be times when they have to rely on their own judgement as to what that means. Passing Anderson for whatever reason is bending the rules, even if you decided that her "primary weapon" was her mind that's still some pretty creative interpretation of a law which is obviously as written intended to mean gun. It is creative interpretation, but it also borders on being objectively true. Anderson's psychic abilities absolutely were more useful (and maybe more commonly used) than her Lawgiver. And I don't agree that he was bending the rules either way - either he reinterpreted her 'primary weapon' as her mind, in which case he was bending the rules, or the law actually does specifically refer to her gun, in which case he outright broke the rules by passing her.
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Jan 22, 2013 10:53
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My point is that either way you can't have law without a human interpreting it. Judge Dredd is supposed to embody the law as an unstoppable, arbitrary force but that's not actually possible. Which is what makes it interesting. It would have been "objectively" correct if dredd had failed or passed her.
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Jan 22, 2013 10:59
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There's nothing to say the rules for assessing trainees doesn't give the examiner a fair amount of discretion. All Dredd did was say a couple of lines about "automatic fails" - they may just be guidelines for all we know. The fact that the Chief Judge could make Anderson a rookie despite her having failed the tests shows that the system is somewhat flexible.
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Jan 22, 2013 12:38
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massive spider posted:My point is that either way you can't have law without a human interpreting it. Small Strange Bird fucked around with this message at 12:57 on Jan 22, 2013 |
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Jan 22, 2013 12:48
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Jedit posted:I've started work on the Dredd comics OP. I'll be starting with a bit about Dredd and the basics of the justice system, adding more as it goes along. Is there anything particular anyone would like to know or think should be included? I'd echo the "Where do I start reading?" advice that's come up in here a few times of Complete Case Files 2 or 3. Also maybe also pointing out some of the shorter (cheaper) trades that are out now (Day the Law Died, Dark Judges, and Cursed Earth Saga) if you don't want to make as steep an investment.
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Jan 22, 2013 13:34
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moths posted:I'd echo the "Where do I start reading?" advice that's come up in here a few times of Complete Case Files 2 or 3. Also maybe also pointing out some of the shorter (cheaper) trades that are out now (Day the Law Died, Dark Judges, and Cursed Earth Saga) if you don't want to make as steep an investment. If you have a kindle these are only 5bux. I'm about half was through Cursed earth and I'll get Dark Judges as soon as I'm done.
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Jan 22, 2013 13:47
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sebmojo posted:That bit was ridiculously satisfying, even if it was basically quoting Indiana Jones. Yea, for something so quick and dry it was incredibly satisfying. I don't think any other outcome would have been better.
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Jan 22, 2013 14:26
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Jedit posted:I've started work on the Dredd comics OP. I'll be starting with a bit about Dredd and the basics of the justice system, adding more as it goes along. Is there anything particular anyone would like to know or think should be included? Can you make it a 2000ad featuring Judge Dredd thread? Or at least include info about current Dredd, not just the casefiles.
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Jan 22, 2013 15:27
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Deathroller posted:Can you make it a 2000ad featuring Judge Dredd thread? Or at least include info about current Dredd, not just the casefiles. It'll be open for all Dredd including the stuff you haven't heard of and the stories set in the same world. Adding 2000AD would be a bit much - it really deserves its own thread. There will be a "where to start" guide.
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Jan 22, 2013 16:20
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moths posted:I'd echo the "Where do I start reading?" advice that's come up in here a few times of Complete Case Files 2 or 3. Also maybe also pointing out some of the shorter (cheaper) trades that are out now (Day the Law Died, Dark Judges, and Cursed Earth Saga) if you don't want to make as steep an investment. To be perfectly honest Case Files 2 and 3 left me somewhat cold. They were reasonably entertaining, but it wasn't really what I was expecting at all. Unless you grew up with these strips, I don't know how much you are going to get out of them. By and large they just seem like the typical 1970s action comic aimed at young boys that they were. There were relatively few stand outs among those collections for me. I'm hoping 4 is going to be an improvement. Personally, I recommend just picking up 2000AD each week if it is available in your area. After the film I started buying it and, for me at least, the current strips are way, way better than the early Case Files. Some of the stuff they have done over the past 3 months has been absolutely brilliant, although you're only going to get 8 pages of Judge Dredd at a time that way.
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Jan 22, 2013 16:42
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Back in the late 90's when I got my first real exposure to Dredd it was the imagination of the Judge Child arc (Case Files 4) and the "holy gently caress did he just do that?" end to Block Mania/the Apocalypse War (Case Files 5) that really got me interested in Dredd, then a few years ago I stumbled across The Pit and never looked back. Basically while I feel the Cursed Earth is a good read it doesn't work quite as well as an introduction to Dredd and his world, especially for people more used to modern comics.
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Jan 22, 2013 16:57
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The funny thing is that, in the comics at least, there are very few crimes which carry a mandatory death sentence. Almost everyone gets killed while actively resisting arrest, and very few people are actually straight-up executed. But yes, I think that the tendency of the film to try and normalize and make reasonable a fascist state is actually a strength, in the sense that it shows that such a system is not just an inflexible monolith naturally doomed to failure, but instead that even a terrible system can be surprisingly resilient and functional. It shows the necessity of stopping such a system before it is established, because we can't just depend on inevitable revolution to eventually fix everything, which many Americans genuinely believe will happen. In other words, I'm sort of agreeing with what supermechagodzilla says, but interpreting it instead as a warning against complacency.
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Jan 22, 2013 17:03
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I saw Dredd yesterday, and, speaking as a long time fan of Judge Dredd, I have to say I was somewhat underwhelmed. I thought there was a distinct lack of satire in the movie - beating up a guy in a classroom that has a flag in it is not satire. I think the writers missed some great opportunities to bring the comic book Dredd into the film. For instance: The homeless guy in the doorway of Peachtree - comic Dredd would have passed judgement on him and told him to go find the nearest Judge's station to turn himself in. The hostage scene in the beginning - this would have been a great scene where Dredd shoots through the hostage to kill the perp. "You shot me, Judge!" "Correction citizen - I shot through you. Your assistance will be noted." Where were the robots? Granted, they weren't involved with the story at all, but for a city with 95% unemployment because of robot labor, there was a distinct lack of robots. Christ, even the Stallone version had robots! I appreciate that everything from the comic can't be included, and if you try, you alienate the viewers who are non-readers, but there was very little of this film that I could look at and say "Yep, that is distinctly Judge Dredd." Anderson's (Aaaandersssonnnnnn...) psychics were the only part that really stood out as distinct. Yes, there were shout-outs to the fans (Fatties, "Chopper" graffiti, Owen Krysler movie poster, etc.) but they were all in the background. The whole thing felt really formulaic - take out Dredd and Anderson, plug in Bruce Willis and a partner, and you've got the new Die Hard movie. The swearing in the movie also threw me out of the universe - in the comics, swearing is illegal, so they came up with new words to replace the illegal ones. Why didn't the writers go with that? If a character says "fug that" or "you're fugged", the audience will pick it up right away. I don't get why they repeatedly went with "gently caress." Was it for shock value? Did they think audiences wouldn't "get it?" (Please note, I swear all the time, so my issue isn't with swearing in general, just the choice the writers made.) I really wanted to like this movie, and maybe it will grow on me, assuming I can do subsequent viewings, but I really can't recommend Dredd to anyone, and that makes me sad. 
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Jan 22, 2013 17:08
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How powerful are most telepaths in the Dredd setting? It seems that Kay didn't realize just how powerful Anderson was.
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Jan 22, 2013 17:54
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Baron Bifford posted:How powerful are most telepaths in the Dredd setting? It seems that Kay didn't realize just how powerful Anderson was. Well, going just from what they say in the movie: 1) they straight up say that Anderson is the most powerful telepath they have ever seen, it's why she's in the Judge program at all.... 2) Because telepaths are selected by the Hall of Justice for their unique powers AND we know there hasn't been a Judge in Peach Trees in a long time, it's unlikely that average people have any contact with telepaths above a certain power threshold.
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Jan 22, 2013 17:57
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Baron Bifford posted:How powerful are most telepaths in the Dredd setting? It seems that Kay didn't realize just how powerful Anderson was. And Snak is correct with his observation - normal Judges are rarely seen in Peachtree, so that would make a Psi Judge even more rare. There is a pretty heavily anti-mutant sentiment in Mega-City one anyway, so anyone with a psychic gift would likely keep it hidden (and possibly become a gateway for the Dark Judges.)
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Jan 22, 2013 18:17
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berzerkmonkey posted:
I think its more along the lines of sci-fi movie goers are use to it and a lot complain about it. Theres so many fake Fbombs out there already/ Frack, frell, gorram. Some people think that it removes them from the movie/show. So less to annoy Dredd fans and more to please the average movie goer.
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Jan 22, 2013 18:18
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berzerkmonkey posted:The swearing in the movie also threw me out of the universe - in the comics, swearing is illegal, so they came up with new words to replace the illegal ones. Why didn't the writers go with that? If a character says "fug that" or "you're fugged", the audience will pick it up right away. I don't get why they repeatedly went with "gently caress." Was it for shock value? Did they think audiences wouldn't "get it?" (Please note, I swear all the time, so my issue isn't with swearing in general, just the choice the writers made.) Because there was no particular reason to go with fake words. They sound ridiculous and the movie was going to be rated R anyways. Profanity, to some degree, is about shock value, but I suspect that in this case swear words were used to make the dialog more natural. These are people who would swear, and I don't see what would be gained by having to explain that in the future people use a weird, muddy version of the work "gently caress." Essentially, you need a reason to use fake words, not a positive reason not to use them.
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Jan 22, 2013 18:20
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berzerkmonkey posted:In the comics, Anderson is pretty much the only one you ever see. There is a dedicated Psi Division, but they're not heavily portrayed. Anderson is powerful, as the Dark Judge storylines show, but the movie version is probably more on a level of the standard Psi Division Judge. Just like the self-destructing Lawgiver, just because something is an established part of the Judge Dredd universe, that doesn't mean that every person in that universe is aware of it. It's easy to say "A criminal should know that only a Judge can fire their lawgiver, everyone knows that" but really we only know that because it comes up several times in Judge Dredd stories. We know it because we are privvy to the stories, but the average thug in Mega-City 1 isn't. The number of witnesses to such things are also probably limited because they're either dead or in the iso-cubes. Kay thinks he hot poo poo because he's given some thought to how to mess with a psychic's head, but like the audience he didn't expect a strong female character. Guys like him are used to threats of sexual violence being very effective, because they're very scary. He, like the audience, didn't count on Anderson being just as tough as a male character in this situation. It's one of the reason's I like that even though they hint at something Anderson is afraid of that Kay could use against her, it's never revealed. For one thing, this leaves it up to our imagination, and considering what the movie doesn't leave to our imagination, whatever we come up with in our head is going to be pretty bad. Almost more importantly, it doesn't give people an easy "There's her woman-weakness" moment. Almost no matter what they put there as her fear, some people would read it as related to her gender, simply because it's in contrast to Dredd who has now fear. It could be fear of being alone, it could be fear of death, it could be fear of reading her own mind it could be literally anything, and people would say "Anderson brings the feminine element to being a judge, with both it's strengths and it's weaknesses and blah blah blah" or they would say "The writers of this film apparently think it's important to imply that women police officers have a weakness that their male counter-parts don't and blah blah blah" I think the gender-politics of this film are much stronger than they appear on the surface, and that's still a rarity, even in todays "progressive" atmosphere. By not showing what her fear is, and explicitly telling us that it's NOT rape, it takes away a lot of ammunition that critics would use but in a way that doesn't weaken the film. Lots of films try to "play it safe" and the film suffers as a result, this film "plays it safe" in a way that is also a genuinely good storytelling technique. edit: Also, while Anderson is a female Judge, and she shows more empathy than her male counter-part, this is almost entirely because she's a psychic and not because she's a woman. There are any number of cinematic partnerships where a female character teams up with a male character and lends "a woman's touch" with similar results as in this film, except in all of those films they don't have psychic powers, it's just because they're a woman. I'm not saying that this film gets gender-politics right, but it definitely offers some things to think about. Snak fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Jan 22, 2013 |
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Jan 22, 2013 18:34
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