The new 'Judge Dredd' movie Dredd has all the same problems to solve as the loathed 1995 original...

One of the biggest and most inaccurate criticisms of the much-hated 1995 Judge Dredd outing with Sylvester Stallone is that it was faithless to the comic strip. This is almost impossible to accept for anyone who has ever actually picked up 2000AD: visually, Judge Dredd was about the most accurate comics>movies adaptation ever put on screen. Mega-City One was practically the original comic-strip metropolis come to life, and the oversized Lawmaster bikes were also incredibly respectful of the originals in the comic.

As for the sardonic humour of the original strip, Robocop (1987) screenwriters Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner admitted long ago that they sequestered it for the Paul Verhoeven sci-fi thriller. Leaving Dredd very little left to play with, without looking, ironically, like a Robocop wannabe.

One of the main reasons cited for the failure of the Danny Cannon version is this very fidelity - even Stallone has been quoted as saying that the producers should have toned down the very garish garb of the futuristic lawman from the original Carlos Ezquerra designs in the 1970s weekly British comic 2000AD.

And then, today, we get this pic from the set of the Judge Dredd reboot entitled simply Dredd...

Karl Urban's 'Dredd' costume has a more modest shoulder patch than the one Stallone sported in the Cannon outing, but that helmet is at least as wild as the Stallone version...

Guys, as someone who bought the first ever edition of 2000AD when it came out, and suffered through a subsequent 18 years of rumours about a 'Judge Dredd movie' (which Clint Eastwood was put forward for as ideal casting many times), let me tell you that this character suffers from the same problem that Hollywood has with all 'superhero' types - change the costume too much, and it's not the original character. Don't change it enough and it looks like a cartoon. Cartoons have a different and often exaggerated aesthetic...

Sometimes the cartoon aesthetic is so exaggerated that there's no choice but to tone it down...

What the hell do people want from a new Judge Dredd? As originally conceived, he's a larger-than-life, basically fascist caricature, working in a culture of 'zero-tolerance' that many urban audiences (particularly in London and modern America) are likely to respond to in a cathartic way. But he's not a multi-dimensional character. And one thing he certainly is not is subtle, either in appearance or outlook. There is no scope for turning Dredd into the new Batman without making the new DNA Films version considerably less faithful to the spirit and style of the original than the Danny Cannon version.

I'm a fan of Karl Urban as well as Judge Dredd as a character, so I'm certainly looking forward to the new movie, but in one sense you can file it under the 'Spider-Man reboot' heading - "one bad film and it's time to start over". But whether or not you liked or (as most people seemed to) hated Judge Dredd back in 1995, don't be surprised if it ends up looking a lot like the Cannon version. Because Cannon and production designer Nigel Phelps got it about as right as they possibly could have in terms of getting 2000AD's lawman - and his environs - onto the big screen.

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