(this review contains bad language and lots of unfair opinions and shouting. If you dont like any of these things, or for some odd reason you like this movie, you might want to back away now!)
I've had this REALLY awesome idea for a movie.
I want to make a movie about the Green Arrow!
This guy here-
He is a fairly well known super hero, who is a lot like Batman with a robinhood theme (firing arrows at bad guys and wearing a lot of green).
He also dealt with some more hard hitting issues then a lot of other super hero comics at the time, like poverty, social injustice and drug abuse.
I am going to caste Jerry Sienfeld in the lead role.
I wont include any of those hard hitting story lines or mature themes at all, I want to be more generic then that!
Then I am going to have Green Arrow stop wearing his costume, or anything green at all, after about the first ten minutes.
After that he wont fire any arrows at anyone, but will instead just do Sienfeld style stand up!
Won't that be awesome?
Oh course, I am joking! That movie would be an utter waste of the licence.
Thank goodness no one in the real world is stupid enough to pay for a licence and then waste it so badly. Ho ho ho, what a funny concept! Just imagine how silly it would be if someone took a comic book character and turned the movie into a crappy star vehicle? Oh man, I sure do have somecrazy ideas, dont I?
So anyway, lets get back to the review and talk about Judge Dredd.
*shudders*
Weird, I just suddenly got this terrible sense of something ironic and yet horrifying is about to befall me.
So Judge Dredd is a comic book character, who looks like this-
In a post apocalyptic future, where humanity is humdled into huge, over crowded Mega-Cities. Society is so out of control here that tower blocks literally fight wars across the streets with each other. Judge Dredd is the only super cop bad ass enough to keep order in this hell hole, by basically being a complete facist!
Monster chasing traffic? Dredd is the kind of guy who would blow up the monster then give the motorists speeding tickets for driving away from the monster too quickly!
He also never takes off his helmet. EVER! Even in the bath!
Now clearly Dredd is meant to be dark, but still very satirical, mocking our concepts of the incorruptible hero and also the excesses of violence, the media and consumerism in our own society.
For the movie they decided to cast Stallone in the lead role and then have him take off his helmet after the first ten minutes and stop wearing his uniform. Then instead of biting social parody, they went for a generic Stallone sci fi action movie….
ARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!
Dont licences to these things cost money? Why would you pay money for a film licence if you dont want to make a film about those characters? If you dont want to make a film about Judge Fucking Dredd here is a free tip….JUST DONT!!
Now I should point out, I am not a massive Judge Dredd fan, but I am familar with the character enough to realise that this is a complete waste of a licence and 2000AD readers probably had to blind themselves with their own popcorn to get through this thing.
This is not just making a few changes to make the character work on film. This is basically the studio taking the character, wiping their collective arses on it and then eating it.
So okay, we've got a wasted licence that is sure to upset anyone with even a vague familarity with the character.
But that doesn't mean the movie will be bad right?
I mean maybe they made changes they had to make to make the character function in a movie? Right?
The fact I am here, talking about the movie, in the bit where I review movies I hate should probably give you a clue as to the answer to this question.
The answer being-
THIS MOVIE IS FUCKING SHIT!
Have you seen demolition man? Well this is basically just like that…only with 80% more bullshit and the addition of Rob Schneider as a comedy side kick.
Rob Schneider does not annoy me like Chris Tucker, he more just confuses me. Does his mum work in Hollywood? Why does he keep getting starring roles in films?
Here is a statement you have never heard before and will never hear again-
"I want to go and see this new film because Rob Schneider is in it!"
It has never happened! It never will happen!
Does anybody give a shit about this guy (discounting his loving mother, studio executive Mrs Rob Schneider)?
This guy couldn't carry a film if you stapled it to his back!
Now when I said this movie rips of Demolition Man, I mean it feels like they wanted to make Demolition Man 2 but got told to fuck off so came back with this, a sort of stealth sequal. No, not a stealth sequal, that sounds too cool! A shit sequal! There, thats better!
Its the future, where Stallone then he gets accused of a crime he didn't commit, but the bad guys have released a super criminal from prison who only Stallone can stop…FUCK THIS Its the exactly the fucking same! They just mixed a couple of details around and tagged the Judge Dredd name on!
Do you like it when movies use shitty contrived plot devices to keep the plot going and get the hero out of trouble?
No?
Well then you are shit out of luck, because this movie LOVES them!
Stallone arrested? Cannibal Hill Billies who have never been in the film before and have no connection to the plot happen to shoot down the prison transport, and only Stallone and Rob Schneider survive the crash, both completely unharmed. What a bit of luck! Wait, not luck…that other word that rythmes with luck. Fuck. As in FUCK YOU MOVIE!
While Stallone is off doing all this, his evil brother starts slaughtering all the other Judges (which turns out to be the easiest thing in the freakin world…these guys suck!)
Oh no! Killing judges? How evil!
Wierdly though, the movie has hordes of judges in black armour that covers their faces (why they dress differently is never explained) who keep trying to stop Stallone. What is weird about this? Stallone freakin slaughters them! He mows them down with his gun, makes them crash into buildings at high speed and throws one of them off a flying bike at about 2000 feet!
We get one scene of one of these guys killing an innocent person because he is ordered too, but I dont see why that makes every member of their organisation guilty! So in proving his innocence, Stallone is commiting dozens of murders…MURDERS OF THE FUCKING POLICE!!!
There is an unintentionally hillarious scene where the death tole of judges is reported at 96, then Stallone gets told the total later it is 108. This is clearly meant to imply the bad guys have be killing more judges off screen, but I was really hoping for Stallone to mumble "yeah, sorry about that, I got a bit carried away!"
He is doing the exact same thing as the mother fucking bad guy!!!
They are even present during the end sequence where Dredd is exonerated. You cant help but think they would be feeling a bit cheesed off under those helmets. This guy who just killed 20 of their team mates is getting cheered as a hero? Talk about getting under valued by your employer! These guys are so worthless that killing them isn't even murder! Unemployment must be pretty fucking bad in this city because I cant see why these guys keep showing up to work!
The Stallone gets helped by a fairly useless chick judge, who is at one point shown to be incapable of even intimidating someone enough to give them a parting ticket. She gets held hostage a lot but makes up for this by constantly saving Dredd with that old "The bad guy VERY slowly takes aim to fire, then a gun shot goes off and *SHOCK* the bad guy is hit by another unseen goody." There are some things in movies that never get old. This cheesey bit is unfortunately not amongst them! It was shit and dated before I was even born!
Rather amusingly the bad guy has an evil chick to help with his evil plans (did I mention they are evil?) who gets no characterisation and appears to only exist to give the hero chick someone to fight during teh final battle, with some good old fashioned chick-fu.
Isn't it great the way in Hollywood the way everyone always pairs off to their respective genders when a battle starts?
This is a topic that has always interested me. Movie makers seem to want to have their cake and eat it when it comes to feminism.
On the one hand, we have to have tough action chicks who are just as able as the men etc, but on the other hand, we cant show a woman getting hit by a man! Especially not a woman getting punched by the hero!!!
So women are both tough ass kickers, the equal of men in all ways, but also delicate flowers that we have to protect and patronise….you can see how this gets a bit schizophrenic.
For this reason, movies generally make sure there is always at least one woman on each team so they can fight each other without any uncomfortable cross gender violence.
I've always thought this taught the rather twisted moral that violence is okay as long as it is men hitting men, or women hitting men or women hitting women, but if a man hits a woman, suddenly that is terrible. Last time I checked, isn't anyone hitting any body else a bad thing? In real life, we simply shouldn't be violent to each other at all, so singling out one type of violence as unsightly while happily encouraging all others is nonsensical. In real life, a woman hitting a man is not funny and it is not okay. No one should hit anybody. Are you hitting someone right now? If so, STOP IT, YOU ASSHOLE!
My view is that if you want me to take the woman seriously, as either a villian or a hero, you cant just SAY she is equal to a man, you need to SHOW it.
If the hero beats seven shades of shit out of every bad guy but some how beats the female villian without laying a hand on her, dont think I wont notice! I ALWAYS notice that shit! I am not going to buy her as a serious threat, when the hero has to pull punches when he fights her and yet beats her anyway! And a female hero who never gets beaten up like the blokes is going to stand out as the pathetic faux feminist symbol she is!
Heroes should not discriminate! If a woman says she is evil and wants to take over the world, and considers herself capable of fighting the hero, he is well within his rights to kick her ass! Otherwise, she is not a serious villian.
Going slightly off topic, the worst offender for this trend that I have seen is a fight between my arch enemy Chris Tucker and a Chinese villian lady in Rush Hour 2. During the fight, Chris Tucker not only defeats her without ever throwing a punch or fighting back in anyway (imagine if a man got beaten by an opponent who was not even fighting back? Would you consider him a tough fighter? Or a pathetic joke?), he actually goes so far as to start sniffing her during the battle and making lewd suggestions. News Flash Tucker- THREATENING TO RAPE THE BAD GUYS IS NOT COOL!
So back to to Judge Dredd…the bad guys and heroes have a final face off in a lab where hordes of cloned criminals are about to be unleashed when the timer reaches zero…Alright stop right there! Stop right fucking there!
This is just demolition man again! Swap cloned criminals for frozen criminals and it is the same fucking scene!
Alright, from now on, this movie is officially DM2 : Future Shit.
The movie then pulls the remarkable move of having the bad guy unleash the clones before they are ready, so they sit up in the tanks looking all slimy and zombie like.
Stallone has to blast through armies of evil zombie criminal clones in a desperate battle to ….Oh sorry, that is what a good movie would have done.
What actually happens is the clones sit up and…thats it.
They dont attack, they dont get killed, they just aren't in it again.
What sort of editing room nightmare is this?
Why have the bad guy unleash an army of minions, only to not have them do anything?
WHAT FUCKING IDIOT EDITED THIS HUNK OF CRAP?
Not wanting to spoil the ending (as usual, that would not be possible even if I tried) the bad guy takes a plunge off the top of the statue of liberty. yes, the bad guy falls to his death in the same bad guy end of movie death plunge ever villian of the early 90's seemed to have written into their contract.
Stallone (I refuse to call him Dredd anymore!)follows this up with the utterly nonsensical one liner "Court is Adjurned!"
WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT EVEN MEAN IN THIS CONTEXT? You aren't in a fucking court, you idiot! You just killed your brother and you come out with that piece of shit pun? It feels like Stallone was thinking of that for the whole fucking fight!
Does this movie have anything going for it?
Well at least it was made before CGI took over the universe!
These days every movie has to have CGI, the more unconvincing the better! Hollywood director school seems to teach that volume of CGI will always make a movie better. I am here to tell them that CGI looks like shit.
Sorry, but it does!
YOU CAN ALWAYS FUCKING TELL!
Worst of all is when human characters turn CGI to do a stunt.
In LOTR, Legolas looks like a poorly rendered playstation sprite half the time!
Is this like the Emperors new clothes? Are we all jsut kidding ourselves that it is good, trying to bury that nagging sense that it looks like shit deep down in our souls? Well fuck that! I hate CGI! It is over used and looks pathetic on screen! Half the time you cant even tell what is going on with it. Just a swirl of pixelated bollocks.
THis film has an animatronic robot and some real sets that actually look pretty good. Yeah the robot moves around like a brain damaged muppet but at least it is THERE! It exists! If it wasmade these days it would look like Who Framed Rodger Rabbit trying to be played straight!
This movie sucks all of the fun, all of the dark humour and all of the character out of this franchise and replaces it with generic, action movie crap and a moronic Stallone star vehicle.
I guess they felt they had to have him take off the helmet because the audience are so stupid we might not have realised it was Stallone under there and demanded a refund…as opposed to demanding a refund because this movie is BULLSHIT!!!!
The worst part is, Stallone is perfect as Dredd! Over looking the lifts in his boots to make up for his shortness (most of the other actors cast appear to be umper lumpers, considering how short they look next to the notoriously stunty Stallone). He has a big chin and him slurring the characters catch phrase "I AM THE LAW!" is completely awesome!
But instead they wasted this opportunity, so now the only time I will ever get to see Stallone as Dredd will be in this awful hunk of shit.
Anyway, want to hear about my idea for a Movie about The Flash, played by Jack Black where he doesn't where the costume and instead teaches people about how awesome rock music is?
Summary- Dreddful!
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Random Nonsense
Judge Dredd- a (really unfair) review
You're right, this movie should have been much better. Stallone in the Dredd costume looked and sounded great. Some scrotum over thought the plot and turned it into a Demolition Man clone, a shoddy one at that since I actually liked Demolition Man. The religious fanatic hillbilly cannibals just made me cringe, it's a cudgel moment (a moment in which someone needed to be beaten with a bat for the entire concept). Hey! I know! What about if we add a Texas Chainsaw Massacre feel to it? That will work! And that stupid robot! Looks like it fell out of a bugs bunny cartoon! You were complaining about the evil chick only being there so the cop chick will have someone to fight. The robot was only there so Schneider would have something he could defeat, being a tech dude.
What the hell is it with movies where people have to kill a bunch of police officers to prove they are innocent of murder? Does that make any sense at all? Why is it okay to put police in danger and even kill them sometimes for the greater good? That was my biggest complaint about Batman Begins, he put an awful lot of police officers in danger to save Rachel Dawes.
Anyway, back to Dredd. The movie could have done so much more with the basic Dredd idea. It would have been interesting to have Stallone wear the helmet for the entire movie. He'd have the helmet on while he's eating, sleeping, and even bathing. That would have been funny. I mean, we know what Stallone looks like right? Having him remain a judge throughout the movie and uncovering a conspiracy in the judge organization would have been much better. You could have had the same basic story with Dredd as a judge. He would have been resistant to the idea that there was a conspiracy, that's just the way he is so it would have taken a while for him to accept that he must do something.
That's all I got to say about that.
Oh, and CGI can KMA (kiss my ass). The characters in the Transformers movie were like a jumble of part slamming into each other when they were fighting. It was impossible to focus on the action because your eyes couldn't make out what exactly was happening. It was seizure inducing. Most of the characters looked like when somebody lost badly at Tetris. Just a puke of metal and rubber with a face somewhere. CGI is like a step back for movies. Usually a movie looks better on the big screen, but any movie with heavy CGI is miles better on a television set because your eyes can't make out all the flaws as easily.
Most of the characters looked like when somebody lost badly at Tetris
Excellent!
My brother described it as looking like someone threw a lot of Lego in a washing machine.
I ought to do a review of Transformers, because loads of people seem to think it was a master piece, but I found it utterly pointless…..
Actually, the cgi for the transformers was really good. Apart from when they were TRANSFORMING!!! When the robots were standing around or moving a little bit they were among the best cgi thats been done. The problem is the animators went over the top and it became a jumbled mess.
Oh and I cant tell any of the decepticons apart from each other They are all just metal. How did this: 
become this:
and this:
became this:
CGI is getting on the cusp of being really good for inanimate objects. We can't do real people yet (Though characters like gollum in lotr and dobby in harry potter are well done, they are still obviously CGI and if you did a human character in thet style it would be obvious.) And frankly I'd be scared when we get to a stage where you can.
I haven't read any of the Judge Dredd comics and Stallone taking off the Judge Dredd helmet did kind of bug me, but I still enjoyed the movie as a cheesy popcorn movie. Nothing more, nothing less.
Though I do agree that Stallone did make for a good Dredd.
As for Transformers…I'm sort of mixed on it, the plot was sort of basic and the humans got way too much screen time, especially when they were churning out stupid jokes. I mean come on, Autobots are fighting Decepticons, there are giant robots out there threatening the city! I don't want to watch Sam argue with his parents about masturbation!
The fights were shit too, I'm surprised no one brought that up yet, you couldn't even tell who was winning or losing since they all looked the same. EVEN if you could get past that, on the off chance that you knew who each and every Decepticon and Autobot was, who was punching who and all that, then that's good, great, good for you, I'm proud of you and all…but that still doesn't change the fact that they decided to go with the shaky cam method for each and every fight scene, making things just disorienting and even harder to keep track of. UGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH! Say what you want about the overuse of CGI, personally I don't mind it for the most part and in some films it can work pretty well. But the shaky cam method has to be the worst directing method out there, it's disorienting, it's horrible, it should just stop being used altogether since it just makes things more confusing, the only other time I ever really enjoyed it - or rather found it fitting was in Cloverfield and that was only because of the way it was directed and before any of you mention me forgetting about Blair Witch, I haven't actually seen the movie. So it's not so much I forgot to mention, rather it's I have no idea if it's any good or not.
As for what I liked about the movie, well the plot wasn't too bad, kinda basic, but I didn't think it sucked. The first Decepticon fight was cool and I did like seeing Scorponok lurking beneath the sand fighting against the humans. Megatron was pretty badass too and after seeing the Decepticon's designs individually in various pictures, screencaps and toys on the TFwiki, they aren't too bad. Sure they all look exactly the same in the film itself, but design-wise they were decent I think, they just needed to look more distinct from each other, maybe with more unique designs as opposed to looking like a clump of deconstructed cars. Maybe they needed better CGI, or to animate the thing traditionally, I don't know. Oh, and they needed actual personalities too, that probably would have made me care more about what was going on as opposed to just wanting Megatron to kill everyone.
Revenge of the Fallen sucked though, no doubt about that. Nothing saving that movie. (Well…okay, I did like The Fallen's design, the Transformers also got more screen time this time around but that was it.(AND I HATE THE TWINS UGGGGGGGGGHHHHH WHY DIDN'T THEY DIE?!)) It would totally make for a good Hark review, as bad as the first movie was for you, picture that, except longer, and up the stupid jokes to 11, add in tons of unlikable characters and there you go, there's Revenge of the Fallen, if there's anything I left out then I'm probably just trying to block the movie from my memory.
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