THE (ALMOST) UNDELETED

Some assholes somewhere think its a good idea to reimagine Judge Dread. I do hope Rob Schneider will be in the new one!

Someone needs to tell the fools at 2000 A.D. that Sunshine and 28 Weeks Later blew ass.

Sunshine was at least an interesting failure and 28 Weeks Later was just a cash-in sequel we all knew was coming. Irony of it is, we probably would have been better off if Danny Boyle (director of the original 28 Days Later...) had dropped the lousy script that was Sunshine and made a zombie sequel instead. But no, every great new director just has to attempt their own "2001: A Space Odyssey". I still haven't subjected myself to Aronofsky's attempt (The Fountain) but I'm not hopeful.

Ahem, anyway, back on topic...
The only way to bring something like Judge Dredd to the screen with any credibility is to maintain the elements that make the comic what it is. Judge Dredd isn't Lord of the Rings and shouldn't be treated like it is; Judge Dredd is Sin City. It's a violently ridiculous sci-fi story with a badass character the eliminates criminals in a variety of supremely horrible ways. But no, every blow-dried movie executive just has to have their enormous summer blockbuster. So they homogenize Judge Dredd into some Sly Stallone action vehicle that's utter crap and try to sell it to a wide audience, most of whom don't want anything to do with Judge Dredd as it was originally created.

Judge Dredd is an rated R film with narrow appeal, so it should be treated as such. It should be made on a respectable budget (under $50 mil), written with a respectable story true to the damn character, shouldn't have any of the violence compromised and the result will appeal to a smaller portion of the audience but will be good enough to return about a $100 mil. Job done.

GamePlayer wrote:Sunshine was at least an interesting failure and 28 Weeks Later was just a cash-in sequel we all knew was coming. Irony of it is, we probably would have been better off if Danny Boyle (director of the original 28 Days Later...) had dropped the lousy script that was Sunshine and made a zombie sequel instead. But no, every great new director just has to attempt their own "2001: A Space Odyssey". I still haven't subjected myself to Aronofsky's attempt (The Fountain) but I'm not hopeful.

I found them pretty similar in that they both started out very well, then descended into crap. Its like the writers just lost it right before the third act started.

They've been talking about doing a proper Judge Dredd film for years - At one point they were getting all excited over a Judge Dredd vs. Judge Death movie. I reckon they could make a proper job of it... As long as he doesn't take his helmet off I'll be a bit happy

(The Fountain is decent. People disagree with me on that one though )

I liked The Fountain.

I do want to see it, because I appreciate some of Aronofsky's films. I just tend to think he's a bit overrated and like I said, I have a tendency to think of the The Fountain as another 2001 grab, like how most young filmmakers love to do film noir in their early productions. It's become somewhat of a cliche

Still, I've heard nothing but good things about The Fountain and I'm all for existential

GamePlayer wrote:I still haven't subjected myself to Aronofsky's attempt (The Fountain) but I'm not hopeful.

That movie had a certain atmosphere to it that was interesting, but the plot made no sense at all to me. Combine that with the sloooooowwww, ploooooodddddiiiiinnnngggg pace, and it easily gets a thumbs down from me.

Slooooooooow and ploooooooooooding?

Ever seen Tarkovsky's Stalker?

I re-watched the Fountain last night and it makes a lot more sense. It is very very good too and the visuals in the "future" scenes are something else
[edit: It's not the film I thought I was watching first time around - which was a bit unsatisfying. Now I grok what's going on more it's much more better.]

I'm a big fan of Tarkovsky's Solaris - I'm working up to Stalker

After posting about Staker yesterday I went and found the original story it's based on ("Roadside Picnic" by the Brothers Strugatsky) in a bilingual/side-by-side HTML version and downloaded it; still reading, but interesting.

I just checked out the IMDB and WP pages on The Fountain and realized I've seen it.

I guess that tells you how much of an impression it made on me, eh?

I love Roadside Picnic. I had forgotten that Stalker was based on that.

I guess it's actually classed as a novel rather than just a story as I wrote above.

(Having the Russian to look at is a lot of fun, too. A novichok (pl. novichki) is a greenhorn, for instance. A lot of the slang is probably old now, though. )