CINEMISSES! Dredd (2012)

In this conversation, Tug and Matt  delve into the film 'Dredd', exploring its themes of crime and punishment, and the moral dilemmas faced by the protagonists. They breakdown the intense action sequences, the portrayal of violence, and the character arcs of Dredd and Anderson, highlighting how Anderson (and even Dredd) evolves throughout the film. They delve into the film's brutal setting in Mega City One, as well as the unique cinematic techniques used, such as the portrayal of the drug Slo-mo. The discussion also touches on the film's legacy and its cult status among fans.  Ultimately, they reflect on the film's impact and the potential for future stories in the Dredd universe. They judged this a CINEHIT! Maybe you will too.

Check us at INSTAGRAM

Find us on X

EMAIL: Cinemisses@gmail.com

Transcript

Matt Loehrer (00:00)
Hey, Tug!

Tug McTighe (00:00)
Hello, Matt. Nice to see you.

Matt Loehrer (00:02)
Yeah, nice to see you. I was thinking, have you ever been asked what you would do if you had access to a time machine?

Tug McTighe (00:08)
I've, I've, we've, yes, it's a little bit like, what would you do if you won the lottery? Right.

Matt Loehrer (00:11)
Yeah, everybody's been asked

that. You know, if you ask the average guy on the street, what's the first thing you do if you had a time machine? They'd probably say they would correct their past mistakes, ride dinosaurs, fight Jack the Ripper, kill Hitler's grandparents. But not me. I would set the controls to the summer of 1995 and travel to the showcase cinemas in Milan, Illinois, where I would confront a sorely disappointed 23 year old version of myself leaving the theater after seeing Sylvester Stallone's terrible take on Judge Dredd.

Tug McTighe (00:24)
Not you!

Matt Loehrer (00:39)
And I would take that opportunity to assure myself that in just 17 short years, a movie would come along that would restore my faith in humanity. That movie, inspired by the ultra violent 1980s UK comics and packed with more thugs, mutants and dystopian mayhem than you can shake an incendiary grenade at, is the subject of today's episode. I'm speaking, of course, of 2012's Dread. I am Matt, and this is Sinemisses. So tug.

Tug McTighe (01:00)
I am Tug.

So you,

you, you, this was 17 years in the making for you. You, you, yo.

Matt Loehrer (01:07)
Yes, it was. And I'd pretty much given up. Like Sylvester

Stallone's, did you see Stallone's Judge Dredd? Okay, don't see it, because it was terrible.

Tug McTighe (01:12)
No, no. Yeah,

no. quite like the spoiler alert. quite like this. So I can. And then I went back and I read all about the Sylvester Stallone version. And I realized that only having seen, you know, two hours of this movie, This is and I have not read a single panel of the comic. This is clearly a much more faithful adaptation.

Then just reading the plot line of the 95, it's like he goes on a murderous rampage after being, well, no, he's the judge. He is by the book.

Matt Loehrer (01:47)
Yeah, it's worth noting that Judge Dredd is considered one of Stallone's worst movies and he made Stop or My Mom Will Shoot.

Tug McTighe (01:55)
Yeah, right! sure did!

Matt Loehrer (01:56)
So ⁓

what did you think you knew about this movie going into?

Tug McTighe (02:00)
Okay,

so yeah, again, I didn't know a lot. I'd never seen Stallone's dread. I'd never seen this dread, but what I did know was I remembered this coming out and I knew it had Karl Urban in it. And Karl Urban is 100 % one of my favorite fantasy sci-fi actors of the past. know, now we're coming up on 30 years because I first saw him as Aomir, one of the writers of Rohan in Lord of the Rings. He's Butcher in the Boys.

which I love the boys. He's Scourge in the Thor movies. And he's one of these guys, he's a great performer that just keeps working and working and working and getting these great jobs. But you know, he's somewhere between that guy and a leading man. So there's not really any that guys in this movie, because again, this is a tight, this is, it all takes place in one day in a locked down building. So.

Aside from all the people trying to kill the judge, there's only five or six really main characters. But Carl Urban is one of these guys who, I have a friend, Jim Saladin, who loves Carl Urban. He likes the same kind of movies we do. And he has a theory that Carl Urban is the happiest one of these actors where nobody sees his fate on the street, very few people are bothering him.

Matt Loehrer (02:52)
Yeah, you have to have.

Tug McTighe (03:09)
They recognize him from somewhere, but he shows up in Marvel. He shows up in this. He shows up in Star Trek. He's plenty busy in these kind of roles, but he's got a great, probably a giant house in both New Zealand where he's from and LA. And he isn't, he's not Tom Cruise getting mobbed on the street. He's that guy that someone's like, I think he was a horse rider in Lord of the Rings.

Matt Loehrer (03:30)
Right. And a huge,

huge franchise guy. mean, that's Lord of the Rings franchise, Star Trek franchise.

Tug McTighe (03:32)
100%. He's in everything.

He's in everything. I also knew Judge Dredd is a comic where apparently he's allowed to just grab, judge, convict, and kill pretty much anybody. Now I learned in this that he's following the law and he has everything memorized or whatever. But that's really about it. And so I came in.

Matt Loehrer (03:37)
He's local.

Tug McTighe (03:52)
pretty clean on this one.

Matt Loehrer (03:54)
Okay, well good, because this was a favorite of mine and very British. So we'll talk a little more about that, but this got started in a comic book in 1977. think Judge Dredd was introduced in a very satirical way, a satirical take on crime.

Tug McTighe (03:59)
Yes.

Like this was real. This was absurd. Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (04:15)
He was very of the time. And

he appeared in the second issue of AD 2000 and then every other issue after that, because he was so, he was like the Wolverine of British.

Tug McTighe (04:24)
Okay. Cause he showed

up and I think this can you tell me if I'm wrong. It was like in an anthology book where there there's three or four stories and he's, know, Judge Dredd is in a, I'm making up a thing, a 10 page basically a bit. And then all of a sudden it just blew up from there pretty much overnight success.

Matt Loehrer (04:39)
Yes. All right. So the log line in a violent futuristic city where the police have the authority to act as judge, jury and executioner, a cop teams with a trainee to take down a gang that deals the reality altering drug slow mo. That's about right.

Okay, so we talk about directors a lot. This one's kind of tough because it's not super clear who actually directed the movie. Initially, a guy named Pete Travis was brought into direct and I feel like he had done like documentaries. I can't even know how he got the job. But ultimately, Alex Garland had written the screenplay. He wrote the screenplay for 28 Days Later in the early 2000s. His

directorial debut, he also wrote was Ex Machina, which everybody seemed to love. And he wrote and directed the series Debs on FX. I don't know if you watched that with Nick Offerman. It was interesting. It was kind of a lot of work. was heady stuff to get through. But yeah, Carl Urban has said in interviews that Garland was the director.

Tug McTighe (05:19)
Machina. Machina.

I didn't see that one.

Yeah, this is, I think, pretty clear that this was a Tobey Hooper, a Steven Spielberg slash Tobey Hooper poltergeist situation where Tobey Hooper made Texas Chanson Massacre and then got hired by Spielberg to produce Poltergeist and then they quickly realized Tobey Hooper did not know how to direct a movie, right? Just because he made this schlocky horror film, he didn't know what the hell to do, so.

by everybody's wink wink nodding and nodding, Spielberg was there every day, directed Poltergeist, cut Poltergeist. And this, when you go down the Wikipedia rabbit hole, you learn some stuff about maybe Pete, old Pete, didn't do the job.

Matt Loehrer (06:16)
Right. So we'll talk about that more, what it is Dread is a 2012 sci-fi action film based on Judge Dread. It first appeared in, as I said, the UK Comic 2018 in 1977, created by John Wagner and Carlos Esguerra. I was like the creators to get their props. Production was announced in 2008 based on a script that Garland had written two years before that. Originally, Duncan Jones was asked to direct and he thought his vision wouldn't jive with it.

as it was written, but who is Duncan Jones?

Tug McTighe (06:43)
David Bowie's son. Yeah, David Jones is David Bowie.

Matt Loehrer (06:45)
That's right. thought that was kind of cool. I'm not familiar with that, but yeah,

exactly. So a lot of this pre-production and production and filming all took place in Cape Town, South Africa. Carl Urban announced that he would be playing the title role in 2010. Olivia Thoroughby signed on late in 2010. Lena Headey came on board in 2011. She was filming this between seasons of Games of Thrones.

Tug McTighe (07:08)
Cersei Lannister, we'll talk about her in a minute.

Matt Loehrer (07:10)
And then the icing on the cake was in 2012, the creator John Wagner was brought on in a consulting role and he gave it his thumbs up and said, let's do it. They made a couple of tweaks to Canon. So I've pulled out my old Dread Rules comics, which were really nice and like glossy paper. And they were like a dollar ninety five. If you bought them today, they'd be fourteen dollars a piece. But I read through those stories and they were a lot of fun. They made some tweaks to the Canon.

Tug McTighe (07:18)
Very good.

Right. Yeah, right. $14.99.

Matt Loehrer (07:37)
in terms of practicality. So the judges wore these uniforms with a crazy metallic eagle on the shoulder that was just impractical and kind of...

Tug McTighe (07:45)
Right, right. We've

talked about this a lot. works in a comic book. It just doesn't work on screen.

Matt Loehrer (07:50)
Yeah. So these were leaner. The motorcycle drives, the comic had huge tires that just were not functional. So they.

Tug McTighe (07:57)
first time

I saw him drive that motorcycle like that front end is ridiculous.

Matt Loehrer (08:00)
they had to extend the wheelbase. They gave it the they said the largest functional tires possible. His weapons of Glock 17 modified though kind of cool and it has the same interchangeable ammo that he uses in the comics. ⁓

Tug McTighe (08:12)
Yeah, that's that's I'll

talk about that later. That's a cool feature.

Matt Loehrer (08:15)
Is Helmick's comic accurate? And actually in the comics too, you see a lot of people just doing regular stuff and then the judges show up and just arrest them for doing all that stuff they're doing. Like they go to the circus and arrest almost everybody at the circus. The only guy that doesn't get arrested is the clown. They're like, what are you grinning at buddy? He's like, it's painted on, I can't help it. And they're like, aw, you just watch your ass. So it's just, yeah, so the world they inhabit is just disgusting and dystopian and it's really.

Tug McTighe (08:25)
Yeah

What are you grinning at buddy? You watch your ass.

Yeah,

so I like a dystopia. I've read a shit ton of dystopia, dystopia novels and seen the films. But this is a great, this is really well art directed set design film, just the whole look and feel of it. It would suck to live in Mega City. It would suck. Yeah, you get it in five minutes.

Matt Loehrer (08:59)
And you get that you really get. Yeah,

they did a great job of that, kind of showing you things to set it up. production budget 30 to 45 million, which seems like kind of a stretch. Like I didn't find out what it actually what they actually spent. They filmed it in 13 weeks, which I thought was pretty tight. That was the first project filmed at Cape Town Studios. And Garland was constantly on set. He was always there.

Tug McTighe (09:06)
I think so too. Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (09:24)
I think Travis was the director, like a George Lucas director, where it's like faster, more intense, faster, more intense.

Tug McTighe (09:31)
faster, more intense. We've got to get through

it. I've got to get to the special effects.

Matt Loehrer (09:35)
So Garland was not a director, but he was, think, so naturally good at it. You've seen people ⁓ like that. when I started, yeah, when I started working with you, I didn't have a lot of experience in advertising, but I worked around advertising and knew what it was and how it worked. So it worked. So I feel like Garland was just naturally good at it. And in post, Alex or Pete Travis was

Tug McTighe (09:41)
Yep. That just just have a have a skill at it.

Yeah, right, right.

Matt Loehrer (10:01)
prohibited from having any input at all and all directions were made by the parallel.

Tug McTighe (10:03)
Yeah, I love this. Yeah, they just, he just

got shit can. I mean, this is exactly what happened with Toby Hooper, where they're like, thank you for your, thank you for your service. We'll put your name on this, but you got to get out of here so we can finish this movie.

Matt Loehrer (10:14)
Yeah, so they had co-direction credits and actually I think they ended it pretty amicably and Pete Travis was like, I'm in and over my head, this isn't my thing.

Tug McTighe (10:22)
Yeah, it was

not directed by Alan Smithy. Right.

Matt Loehrer (10:24)
Right. It wasn't. ⁓

tomato meter has it at 80%. Not terrible for what it is. Popcorn meter. It's 72, which surprised me because this is.

Tug McTighe (10:37)
Yeah,

you would think that the critics would be a little lower on this. When I was doing my reading, there was another movie that came out the year before, think, called The Grid that was a similar, like, you know, it happens all the time. Like, Deep Impact and Armageddon came out within like, you know, eight months of each other, and asteroids coming to smash the earth. But there was, it was another movie where somebody was in a building.

Matt Loehrer (10:41)
I would have thought so.

Tug McTighe (11:00)
trying to escape the building like and the bad guys are chasing him. So there was there was some kind of critic critics are going like, Hey, this is just like that movie last year, whatever but that that

Matt Loehrer (11:08)
Right. I think the one

you're talking about might have been the Raid Redemption. You said the great Dom. Yeah, I think it was Korean or Japanese. It was one of those. But that has been mentioned. And if you look at the production schedules when they got done, there was there was no way either influence the others.

Tug McTighe (11:14)
the raid! Did I say the grid? Yes. That's what it was. Yes. Yes. That's what it was.

No one, yeah, they were just making the same, you know, again, I've said this before, right? It's creative. It's creatives and creativity. It's the collective unconscious. The same kind of people trying to solve the same kind of problems have a tendency to come up with the same kind of ideas. That's why when something is truly novel, you're like, fuck, that is novel. Because we all, all of us are driving, all of us are driving down the same road.

Matt Loehrer (11:40)
Yeah.

Yeah, no, that's why you get.

Exactly. No, it's why you get William Wallace and Rob Roy coming out the same, you know, three weeks apart. So it didn't do great. Thirteen point four million in North America, another twenty seven point six outside North America for a total of forty one million. Carl Urban blamed poor marketing and a lack of awareness for disappointing numbers. I don't remember seeing anything about it. And I'm positive I didn't see it in theaters. I I found out about this afterward.

Tug McTighe (11:50)
That's exactly right.

Even you, waiting 17 years.

Matt Loehrer (12:11)
For sure. Yeah, I just didn't know. a lot of that was a time and you can speak to this because I know you remember when everybody wanted to do stuff in 3D. I know we saw the Tiger Life of Pi. We saw theater and that was in 3D and everything was in 3D. So.

Tug McTighe (12:25)
Yeah,

3D had a moment in those early aughts, tens, that they really were cramming it down our throats and we swore off of it as a family. The last movie we saw in 3D was Avatar, the original Avatar, because remember that was a big thing for Kim. Hey, we're doing it 3D and we made these cameras and all this shit. And Sean, my oldest, who's now 23, got glasses when he was three.

Matt Loehrer (12:42)
I might have seen that.

Tug McTighe (12:48)
And he has really bad eyes, does. You know, he's a lot better now, wears contacts and he's fine. But he, gave him like migraine level headaches. The 3d movies, they just, it just, cause he had to wear the glasses over the top of his glasses. And it just, so we, we haven't seen it. We had, we still, that was the last 3d movie we saw. And luckily it's sort of gone away. You can go see him if you want. They still finish some of them in IMAX and 3d, but to your point, man, they were really.

Matt Loehrer (13:07)
What is it?

Tug McTighe (13:14)
jamming it down our throats for that four or five year period.

Matt Loehrer (13:17)
Oh, and they were selling young people won't believe this, but they were selling 3D TVs at home. Like, I think the idea was that eventually all movies would be in 3D all the time. And I think it didn't happen. So that was great. But so a lot of those distributors insisted on it being shown in 3D and didn't give a 2D option and a lot of the.

Tug McTighe (13:22)
that were selling 3D TVs.

I think that was what they thought, yeah.

And say PS also

that it was like a it was like eight bucks to see it regular and 16 bucks to see the 3d also by the way Don't forget that So so they were jobbing you that way so you're trying to take a family of four to this thing You're like shit. We'll go see the non 3d movie

Matt Loehrer (13:43)
Right.

Yeah.

So a lot of theaters just didn't have it because it wasn't in 2D. I'd say it's achieved a kind of cult status since then, especially with a certain vocal kind of fan base that really wants a sequel. Karl Urban's performance was praised, especially Urban, for emoting quite a bit, even though he had a helmet on all time.

Tug McTighe (14:01)
As always, right?

He had to do a lot

of mouth acting in this.

Matt Loehrer (14:10)
Yes, and the creator John Wagner who did not like the Stallone version and said so gave this positive review. So that's something there's been a lot of talk about a sequel and then a streaming series and I feel like it's wishful thinking it's never gonna happen.

Tug McTighe (14:21)
could see an eight-parter.

I could see a six-parter series of this.

Matt Loehrer (14:24)
I'd watch it and hurt me.

Okay, well, let's dive into the cast. As we mentioned, Carl Urban as Judge Dredd. He trained hard for this, got the shape. He underwent training for weapons and motorcycle riding and he performed his own motorcycle stunts in this movie.

Tug McTighe (14:38)
so Urban did his own motorcycle riding. He refused to take the helmet off. Like he even dropped some method acting on these guys, just leaving it on during the breaks, just standing there stoically with the helmet on. He'd never left his American accent. He had a scowl the whole time. At one point, somebody made a joke.

And everybody laughed, and he gave him the dreadful, know, like did the double take, like did this, Matt. Right? Looking at him. And what I thought was really would have been bad casting was Michael Bean auditioned for the role. Michael Bean of Terminator, the original Terminator, Tombstone, Michael Bean of Aliens. Great, great, great action movie guy, but man, it seemed a little old.

Matt Loehrer (15:14)
Tombstone.

I thought the same thing. And I can't see anybody else doing this.

Tug McTighe (15:21)
at that time for this. ⁓

No, right. Yeah, he just did a great job.

Matt Loehrer (15:27)
He did. Olivia Thoroughby is Cassandra Anderson because she's psychic. So Cassandra, like a Greek throwback Cassandra. Amber, yeah, classical.

Tug McTighe (15:34)
I see what they did there. ⁓

He barely calls her Anderson. He calls her rookie all the time.

Matt Loehrer (15:38)
Yes,

he called her Anderson three times. So she worked out, she took martial arts training, and that shows up. I had forgotten that she played then Ellen Page's best friend, Leah, in Juno.

Tug McTighe (15:43)
Ha ha ha!

Yeah, when I first saw her in that very first scene, it was one of those, who is that? God. And then I realized it was learned it was Leah from Juno. And she's also an Oppenheimer apparently, which I haven't seen yet. Maybe we should watch Oppenheimer sometime soon. But yeah, I knew who she looked familiar. And PS, I loved Juno at the time. And I recently saw a little bit of it and I'm not entirely sure it holds up.

Matt Loehrer (16:07)
I heard it's good.

Yeah.

Tug McTighe (16:18)
It's

a little bit, I think I was enamored with the real adult sounding teenager talking. then I saw, and I loved it then, and I saw it a little bit, 30 minutes of it, I don't know, two months ago, I'm like, that's a little much, baby. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Loehrer (16:25)
Yes. ⁓

It's the dialogue, right? It's it's schlocky. It's it's not it's I don't know. It's very of the time. I

agree. At the time, I thought, wow, this is really, you know, this whoever whoever wrote this is really tapped into the consciousness. And I realize it's probably somebody that's 40 trying to write like a 16 year old Lena Hetty as Ma Ma Madrigal. Originally was supposed to be an elderly, obese woman.

Tug McTighe (16:45)
Diablo Cody

Yeah, so.

Yep.

Matt Loehrer (17:01)
but Lena Headey convinced Alec Garland to make the character a middle-aged person with a male-hating personality, and I think it worked.

Tug McTighe (17:08)
I think so too. She's a fantastic evil bitch. Lena is. I read the Game of Thrones books before the series and at one point I threw the book, the paperback across the room. This is well known in the McTighe family lore. I threw the paperback mat across the room and I went downstairs and nobody else knew anything about Game of Thrones.

But I said to Sarah, if Cersei Lannister doesn't get her fucking head cut off soon, I don't know what I'm going to do. And when they cast Lena Headey for that, and she was a absolute perfect Cersei Lannister, just icy evil conniving. And she's great in this. And I love this idea. Again, when we're doing the research, our crack research team, she said she based her performance a little bit on

iconic punk rocker, Patti Smith, which with the hair and the, yeah, I like that. I like that. I like when these actors are like, hey, I watched these old videos of so-and-so and kind of figured out the performance from there.

Matt Loehrer (18:02)
Nice. It's kind of jumping.

Yeah, it's Johnny Depp doing Keith Richards. ⁓ You will be surprised to know that I never watched Game of Thrones when everybody was watching it. Robin and I watched episode one and the kid got thrown out the window to his death.

Tug McTighe (18:12)
That's right.

I'm not surprised. Yes.

That happens in about the, the first 20 minutes.

Matt Loehrer (18:26)
It did. And I was like, I don't know that we want to watch this. This is a little depressing.

Tug McTighe (18:28)
Yeah, yeah. You forgot

that the reason he got thrown out the window brand was because he caught the twin brother and sister having sex.

Matt Loehrer (18:36)
I did forget that. ⁓

Tug McTighe (18:37)
Yeah, Cersei

and Jamie Lannister. So Ben, right off the gate, incest and child murder. Bam. They're like, this is tough.

Matt Loehrer (18:39)
So he had a comment as well. Yeah, my job damn my job damn business kid.

Yeah, would Harris as K I didn't know his name was K. I don't know. They even say his name much but from the wire he was Bobby Cannavale's partner and Ant Man, which is a lore family favorite movie. We love the man. Yeah, he does a really nice job of being just low level. So. You know, wisecracking guy and then Donald.

Tug McTighe (18:55)
That's right. All the Ant-Men I'm for.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Loehrer (19:06)
Donal Gleason? Is that how you Donald? He's got an extraneous in there. So it's Donal. ⁓ So I don't even think he gets a name, does he?

Tug McTighe (19:07)
Yep, Donald, I think. Donald, yeah.

He does, N and H, yeah, yeah, yeah. Domnahal.

I will tell you how I know because my ears are so shitty I watch with the subtitles on He's known as clan techie That's all he gets he's in he has a pretty big role really

Matt Loehrer (19:24)
Right? That's all he gets. But he's in a lot of the movie and he's pretty important.

Yeah, so I didn't know who this was. Son of Brendan Gleason, who's been in a billion things. Hawks in the Star Wars franchise. He was one of the Weasleys in the Harry Potter franchise. And he was in Ex Machina, Ex Machina. I'm going to get it right at some point, in 2014, which was technically Alex Garland's directorial debut. So he kind of cut his teeth on this movie and thought, maybe I can be a director.

Tug McTighe (19:36)
Yes, sir.

Yes? Yep.

So by the way, I knew every one of those facts. So that's two points to Gryffindor.

Matt Loehrer (19:56)
Nice. That's

right. And then there's others with a line here, there, and some judges, but these are the main players. you know, it's a short time frame. It's a single location.

Tug McTighe (20:07)
You're

on Dread and Anderson a lot. You're either on them or mama's people. And there's three or four main people. A lot of people get pulverized by the lawgiver or thrown off a giant balcony. So not too many people walk out of this at the end. Spoiler alert again. Yes.

Matt Loehrer (20:20)
yeah.

They sure don't. The law givers, law givers is gunned by.

Well, let's dive into the plot of the movie, shall we?

Tug McTighe (20:31)
Okay, alright, so here we go. The future United States is a dystopia, irradiated wasteland known as Cursed Earth on the east coastlines of Mega City 1, a violent metropolis with 800 million residents and 17,000, count them, serious crimes daily. The only force for order, which I feel like there could have been more order keepers, are the judges who act as judge, jury, and executioner. We know this, Matt, because we get a voiceover from Judge Dredd himself.

Which again, we've kind of poo-pooed narration over the pod, but I think it works here. Just we gotta set this up quick. And that's one thing this movie does is we're getting into it and we're staying in it. So you get him telling us that story. I caught one small remnant of his Kiwi accent. He says America in the very first line, but other than that, it goes away.

Matt Loehrer (21:20)
I'll do this

in a minute again.

Tug McTighe (21:21)
Because at first when I heard it,

I wondered if he was going to do it as a Kiwi, but no, he did it as his American accent. ⁓

Matt Loehrer (21:26)
And I'm he

did. It's worth noting that comics had a lot of other things like a lot more mutants, aliens from space that were involved that were just part of the population.

Tug McTighe (21:35)
Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (21:37)
weren't people were going to have enough trouble figuring the rest of this out. So I do feel like level setting, like having him come out and say, it just heads up before the movie starts. Here's the situation and we'll go from there. I thought it was pretty useful.

Tug McTighe (21:40)
Yes. Yes.

Yeah, and then they didn't do it anymore. Then it was all real time. Then it was all first person. But again, think you're trying to just, again, get into it. Just jump in, and then we're in, and it's a roller coaster ride for the next 96 or 7 minutes. Which again, nice picking. Not 97 hours.

Matt Loehrer (22:05)
Okay, so it starts. Yeah, right.

No, it's super. It's exactly the same as the 1996 Stallone version. Actually, it was also 96 minutes. But that initial scene, so they kind of set it up and he says this is this is Mega City 1, Mega Bloks, Mega City 1. ⁓ And before you know it, you're watching him, you're watching an out of control van, like panel van careening through the city with

Tug McTighe (22:23)
Megatowers!

Matt Loehrer (22:32)
with some drunk thugs in it doing slow-mo. So we get our first exposure to slow-mo, which is they show it with kind of trippy lights.

Tug McTighe (22:40)
Yeah,

it's like an inhaler, like an asthma inhaler. And then it slows everything. The camera slows down the sort of that matrix, the bullet time. And there's actually a lot of cool sparkly effects and stuff.

Matt Loehrer (22:51)
Yeah, there's

a little sparkles and then there's kind of a musical. Music, there's a music that plays every time they do slow mo and it was a Justin Bieber song that they slowed down to 1 800th. It's regular speed and now that. Yes, I think so and they I don't think they ever asked for permission to use that. They just did it so yeah, so they're doing slow mo and before they know it, Judge dreads on their tail and he gets.

Tug McTighe (23:06)
made it significantly better than at regular speed.

I like it.

And

Matt Loehrer (23:20)
Radio dispatch.

Tug McTighe (23:20)
then they tell us, they say, man, if he catches us, we're Because there's no arresting.

Matt Loehrer (23:24)
Right. And so he gets the radio dispatch

that says like, take these guys down. But again, so this is important because I think it's not until they run over a pedestrian and kill somebody that he says, okay, they killed a pedestrian now it's go time.

Tug McTighe (23:34)
Yeah. Yeah.

Right,

they killed an innocent or something. yeah.

Matt Loehrer (23:41)
Right. So

he's very by the book. Like he's I don't know if he takes joy in it. This is just his job.

Tug McTighe (23:45)
Yes.

No,

he, he, this is who he is. Cause he says multiple times, like he says to a homeless guy, Hey, loitering is 30 days in the ISO cubes. Don't be here when I get back. Like he, he would have, that's right. He would have taken him, taken him in.

Matt Loehrer (23:50)
Yeah.

Right. And actually, if they weren't in hurry, he would have, he would have taken him right back there. Yeah.

So he's following these guys. He's got machine guns on his motorcycle, as one does, and he blows up the van's tires and it wipes out. And two of the three guys are dead immediately. But the third guy, they recycle the bodies, I suppose. But the third guy,

Tug McTighe (24:16)
Right, he calls for, he calls for recycle.

Yeah, and then he has to

chase the guy down.

Matt Loehrer (24:24)
Yeah, he's in a mall in a food court or something and he's got a hostage. And this is one we see. think Dredd says, you know, if you give up now, you'll get guaranteed life in an ISO cube with no possibility of parole. And he's like, well, that's not a good deal.

Tug McTighe (24:36)
Right. If you

have nothing to negotiate with.

Matt Loehrer (24:41)
Right. So then, you know, he says, you know, what are going to do? Hot shot. The guy's like, what did you say? And he's like, you heard me. Hot shot. And that's his the bullet that he shoots it in his mouth. ⁓ Yes, which I was told that this is what I read. And it sounds like Internet. Hope them that if you shoot someone in the mouth that like freezes their reflexes, whereas if you shoot them in like the brain, they could have a twitchy

Tug McTighe (24:50)
shot kind of right the guy burns up

Matt Loehrer (25:06)
finger and kill somebody. That sounds like baloney. But anyway, that's pretty good. So he shoots the he shoots the hot shot bullet into the guy's mouth and the guy's head catches on fire. And he's safe. He saved a bystander who seems terrified anyway.

Tug McTighe (25:08)
Haha, that sounds like wick wack to me. Internet Hokem is a good name for a band also.

Yeah, they're all just terrified of the judges.

Matt Loehrer (25:25)
Yeah, and that's the end of his day. Well, that's the end of that scene. So you get a really good idea from the start, the kind of world they live in, the kind of situation that you're dealing with with slow mo, like how it works and what it does and how to recognize when they're using it and exactly the kind of guy that Judge Dredd is.

Tug McTighe (25:37)
Yep.

Yeah, you get that he's intensely competent. He has no problem taking out bad guys. yeah, yeah, almost like a robot, which is a foreshadow on something I'll say later. ⁓ That's right. So then he goes back. He gets a call that chief judge wants to see him.

Matt Loehrer (25:48)
Yeah, he's efficient and ruthless. He's not going to try and talk them down. This is your option.

Tug McTighe (26:03)
And she says to him, hey, I got a rookie out here, Cassandra Anderson, who barely failed the aptitude tests, to which he replies, a fail is a fail. ⁓ But she says, because she's a mutant, and she's got more powerful psychic abilities than we've seen in a long time. And I think she can be an asset to the force. So I need you to take her out for a day and see if she, it'll be up to you. See if she passes muster.

Matt Loehrer (26:11)
Right. So why are we why are we here? She failed. What is why are we doing this?

Tug McTighe (26:29)
⁓ right. So he's warning her that disobedience, sentencing incorrectly, being disarmed, you're just going to fail. I'm not, there is no gray area for Judge Dredd. and I, this was my first want of the movie so far, cause I'm, I'm, I'm in up to here, but I'm like, all right, mutant, cool. And when you told me in the comics, there's mutants and aliens and that's what I think I might have to go read some of this. Cause I, I want to know, I.

Matt Loehrer (26:29)
Yeah, like a ride along.

Tug McTighe (26:53)
have read so much sci-fi and so much fantasy, consumed so much in my life that anymore I'm mostly interested in the world building. Because I've seen a lot of movies where somebody shoots a lot of people and saves the day. I've watched, a lot of books where we have to go get, they have the box, we have to get the box. If we don't get the box, they'll blow the world up. Or where's the thing? Go get the thing. We have to run and hike across the.

hole in to take care of the thing. But I'm interested in the world building, so I'm craving a little world building here that I didn't feel like I got even by the end.

Matt Loehrer (27:22)
Yeah, you might have to.

I guess you do get a comment from Wood Harris later. He says, you know, you look pretty well put together for a mutant. Most of you have three stumpy arms or no arms. ⁓ So, yeah, and they said she lived within, you know, a few hundred feet of the outer irradiated wall. So little details like that. Yes, radiation. Yes, there's probably a Complex, right? I think there are like six mega cities in.

Tug McTighe (27:28)
Later, yeah.

Three arms or... yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, clearly it was a nuclear problem, right? Exactly.

Matt Loehrer (27:49)
North America. But this one

Tug McTighe (27:49)
Yeah, and when you

go down the Wikipedia rabbit hole on the comics, like, Mega City is even like in the comics. It's like Florida. Yeah, it's all the way. So all right. So this is they get a call. Peach Trees is a 200-story slum tower, super skyscraper where, yeah.

Matt Loehrer (27:55)
The whole seaboard. Yeah, it's all the way.

I thought this was a funny name for,

you know, the rest of them, you find out are named after, if you go through the whole movie and look at it, they're named after people or places from the comic. But this one was named after a restaurant where Alex Garland and Judge Jared, creator John Wagner first met to discuss the film. And I think it's a really fitting name that they would give, that they would put a pretty package on what's just obviously terrible.

Tug McTighe (28:27)
that's funny.

Yeah,

100 % because they do it everywhere when they're building a new development. rolling acres. You mean this frickin' suburban neighborhood at 95th and Antioch? Right. rolling acres. Green Gables. Yeah, I liked it. And hey, like this similar to Alien, this look, they're in a building and it's gonna get locked down soon. Their job is to escape the building and I was...

Matt Loehrer (28:45)
Yeah.

Yeah, I thought it was great.

Tug McTighe (28:59)
looking at my Save the Cat book, he would, they would category, Save the Cat would categorize this as a golden fleece, which is, it obviously plays homage to Jason Argonauts, but golden fleece is like a road trip, like planes, trans automobiles, or sometimes the journey can be more of a spiritual one, or it contains a road that is oceans or time, or even down the block, or in this case a building, and it has a team.

or a buddy that one of them has to, the hero has to guide them, take them under their wing. And there's always a prize that they have to get, which is sought. And the prize here is we have to escape, right? We have to get out of this. I just, yeah, it fit right in.

Matt Loehrer (29:35)
Yeah. This feels like a video game to me. mean...

So they're Peach Trees. We meet the drug lord, Madeleine, Ma-Ma Madrigal. She just goes by Ma-Ma. And she's got three drug dealers who have crossed her. she has them, gives them a hit of slow-mo, skins them alive, and has them thrown off the 200th floor to the bottom of the atrium to send a message. ⁓

Tug McTighe (29:52)
Yeah.

Hey

Right,

and slow-mo slows your perception of time to 1 % of normal, so that is a long fall.

Matt Loehrer (30:05)
I think the idea is that you, it seems much longer, like your torment goes on. So that seems mean, but she's pretty ruthless.

Tug McTighe (30:09)
It seems much longer. Correct. Correct.

There's three great splat

special effects. The woman with the baby carriage almost gets hit by the third body.

Matt Loehrer (30:17)
Right.

Right. So Dred and Anderson are instructed to investigate the incident and they learn, they go in, they encounter that guy, the bum sitting in the door and they're like, right. He's like, what do we do Anderson? She says, put him in jail, but prioritize murders. And it's like, yeah, probably. Let's do the murder. So he had to think about it. So they, they meet the doctor, the medic on that

Tug McTighe (30:29)
He says don't be here when I get back or it's 30 days in the ISO cube

Correct. Right.

Yeah, the

medic who's like taking care of the crime scene.

Matt Loehrer (30:47)
So he gets some exposition out of him. He's like, you know, that's not what's going on at all. Here's the whole story.

Tug McTighe (30:50)
Yes. Here's what's

slow mo mama. She lives upstairs. She controls this whole building, cetera, et cetera. There's a lot of info that's dropped by him. But again, you know, it feels fine.

Matt Loehrer (31:03)
I thought it was, I thought it was too. didn't seem.

Tug McTighe (31:05)
He would know he would know and he would and Yeah, yeah, it's like in like in Wayne's world when Chris Farley's the doorman and they go well that sure was a lot of information for just a regular doorman to be able to tell us and then they're like Hey, yeah, yeah, if mr. Bigg's limo driver ⁓ Right, right some cool-looking effects we talked about

Matt Loehrer (31:07)
Right, but was just interesting how he got all that backstory.

Great.

He was a limo driver. Wasn't he a Mr. Big's limo driver? He's he's going to be going across the country.

Tug McTighe (31:31)
with slo-mo. slo-mo was a cool looking drug. and ps mama is a bad mama-jamma at one point the medic says rumor is she feminized him with her teeth.

Matt Loehrer (31:34)
Yeah.

Yeah, so we get some kind of that narration and they show some kind of a montage of scenes and they show that the gangs that she, yeah, the gangs that she took out and scars that she's got on her face, she was mistreated by her pimp

Tug McTighe (31:45)
little backstory. She's violent and right, right.

Okay, so he inexplicably decides he's gonna raid mama's like keep. It's like a keep. She has thousands of bad guys around and she's at the top of the thing, but he doesn't call for backup. He's so confident in his own skill set. And don't forget he's dragging this rookie along. So you know this is gonna go bad. So they raid the den, they arrest Kay Wood Harris, who she

Matt Loehrer (32:17)
that's this

is another cool scene to the bust in and everybody's on slow mo. So when they start shooting them, you've got like slow motion bullets like block, break, you know, blowing through their skin and blowing teeth out.

Tug McTighe (32:24)
It's rea- yes. Flying- yep. Blowing up faces and it's- again, it's

like the Matrix times 10. Yeah, really, really interesting look and feel for sure. ⁓ and there's-

Matt Loehrer (32:34)
Yeah, it was pretty cool.

And there were some complaints

from reviewers, like critics were like, this is too violent. I'm like, just watch something else, Go watch, go watch beaches.

Tug McTighe (32:44)
That's what you're getting. That's what you signed up for. It's

yeah, it's just it's beaches. The wind beneath my wings indeed. There's so then you also get her Anderson using her psychic powers and there's a wow like a shimmer and a swell. ⁓ 100 % because it. Right, right. No, I think it's cool.

Matt Loehrer (32:56)
Like a shimmer in a.

I think that's useful. Like they could have done it where she's just nothing happens. She's like, oh yeah, I read his mind. I mean, it's.

So there are a lot of thoughtful ways to do this. I feel like.

Tug McTighe (33:09)
And it looks a little, it looks a little

taxing too. Like it looks like it's a little bit like she's like, I'm, I'm, I'm using a skill cap. ⁓ so I think that's really cool. so she says, Hey, he has, he knows what's going on here. So Dred says, well, we got to keep them alive and take him from questioning. Cause they all break under questioning, right? I can scarcely imagine what the questioning is like back at headquarters. I don't want to even imagine it.

Matt Loehrer (33:15)
has to work at it. I like that.

for sure.

That's rough. And it was it's funny. There's a scene where they're marching him around. So I've got Wood Harris in handcuffs and they're marching him around and she says, he's thinking about stealing your gun. Yeah, he's not thinking that anymore. He changes. I thought that was good. ⁓

Tug McTighe (33:47)
He changed his mind. So mama

is worried that they kept him alive. Mama wish he had, if he's going to get arrested or if he's going to get busted, he should get killed because he knows about her. She, knows everything about her operation and she knows he's going to break. So she goes into Klanteki, Dom O'Gleeson, and they lock the whole buildings like war shields, nuclear shields, like

Matt Loehrer (34:07)
I'm Chuckie.

Tug McTighe (34:13)
a metal, like a metal case comes over the building and she gets on the PA and says, this is mama, there are two judges in the building. Anybody who murders them will be handsomely rewarded by me. Anybody that helps them will be killed by me. So she sets up the right, the ticking clock. It's now, and then you see a montage of every able bodied person getting a gun and going after, gonna go, essentially go after the judge.

Matt Loehrer (34:39)
And the vagrant who was sitting in the blast doors is not a problem anymore because the blast doors just crushed him.

Tug McTighe (34:43)
Yeah, he

says, warned you, and then the door cuts him in half.

Matt Loehrer (34:46)
Yeah, he gets crushed. So that was pretty good.

Tug McTighe (34:48)
Yep.

and Cleo Ntechie is an augmented human. has these like computer eyeballs that are, the irises are getting real big. Yeah. I think he can maybe just, yeah, you know, run the, run the data better or understand the data better. But we find out why he has those, but we find out why he has those computerized later.

Matt Loehrer (34:54)
Right. I don't know what they do. Is it just let him be a better computer guy?

Maybe. Yeah, so he

we do. So yeah, he contacts, you know, the security that and says we're running tests. And, you know, if if if you think there's something wrong, don't worry about it. Everything's fine. And for some reason, they're like, OK, we believe you. Yeah, so then it's, you know, mama puts out a hit on these on these guys. She's and not isn't worried about it.

Tug McTighe (35:11)
Right.

Hahaha

and

Matt Loehrer (35:25)
She says, run or don't, either way you're dead. We're gonna getcha.

Tug McTighe (35:28)
That's

right, that's exactly right. So literally this begins a sort of ballet of blood and you see all the cool shit that Dredd can do where he says to his gun, grenade, poof, it shoots a grenade. I thought the gun was super cool. He's like stun, stun, armor piercing. He has all these different kinds of bullets. And at one point,

Matt Loehrer (35:43)
It was cool.

Tug McTighe (35:50)
He's mowed down about eight guys and Anderson hesitates executing one of the thugs who tried to kill them. But he goes, hey, attempting to kill a judge is a death sentence. And she does end up killing the guy. So there's a moment where she's changing, starting to change, right? She's starting to be on a character journey as well.

Matt Loehrer (36:10)
Yeah,

that was kind of a litmus test. So that was like early, early on the job for her. Is she going to kill this guy or not? But her, she hesitates her, her inclination is not to immediately dispense justice where it's dreaded to be like done.

Tug McTighe (36:15)
That's her yeah, that's her first real fight. That's right, right

That's right.

Right, yeah.

So they get to the 76th floor and Mama, so she's got Klanteki who's like, got them, I got their location. And he puts these blast doors down, these basically cages, they cages them off on this floor. And so they know where they are, the bad guys know where the good guys are. And then they fucking bring up these.

three gigantic Gatling gun like howitzers almost and they just yeah and they're loading these belts of gigantic bullets in and it just they just unload on the the place where they know they're hiding and it is carnage she does not care she probably kills several hundred citizens

Matt Loehrer (36:53)
but they're rotary, they just, they spin.

yeah.

Tug McTighe (37:11)
who were just living in the building. yeah, looks a little bit like an old embassy suite.

Matt Loehrer (37:14)
Yeah, and they're firing across the atrium. So they're on one side of the atrium firing across.

It did look like that. ⁓ I know exactly what you're talking about. They didn't have the glass elevation in the corner. But otherwise, so yeah, they just fire all these rounds. And they end up blowing out a back wall to escape, right? So they, so they get outside.

Tug McTighe (37:21)
Right? The pools in the middle. Yeah. No, they didn't the elevator.

Yes, they shoot and he, right. And

this was a nice callback. When they were going into the building, they cut to these skateboarders on this balcony doing their skateboarding tricks. they did that for probably a minute. I'm like, what is this nonsense? That's what it is. They got locked out onto the balcony when the shields came down and then they blew the soap. there was a nice callback, just a little bit of a detail that came back. I said, one.

One for the director on that one.

Matt Loehrer (38:00)
Yeah, that was good. So at that point, they're outside. They can contact Central and say, hey, we got a problem. So they say, hey, this is what's going on. Send some, you know, send some cops. And they said, well, can you, you know, can you hold your position? He says, no. They're like, okay, well, we'll do our best. ⁓ So they go back in and Mama has sent some guy to make sure they're dead.

Tug McTighe (38:04)
Yeah, because their comms weren't working,

Negative. We're in huge trouble. Yeah. Right.

Yeah, one of her dudes.

Matt Loehrer (38:24)
Well, the next thing ⁓

you know, see Dred walking out to the corner of the atrium, marching this guy out and throwing him over the side.

Tug McTighe (38:31)
just

throws them off the edge and then turns around and walks away. Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (38:34)
He just turns around and walks back in.

there were a lot of these moments where. You know, they're like, you know, they've killed 30 of our guys and they haven't even taken a scratch yet. The crushing.

Tug McTighe (38:44)
That's right. That's right. We haven't

even touched him, right? So they get their backup called, luckily. He's now pissed because all these innocents have died. he's left Kay alone while he's been with them. But now he just starts beating the shit out of him and asking him, saying, what's the story? I'll get the information out of you myself. He knows she's not doing all this for no reason.

And Anderson goes, well, you don't have to take him back to headquarters. I can figure out what's going on. There's this great scene where she gets in his brain and then they sort of cut to a construct, which is him and her in, in like a black room. And he's talking about, I can do this here. this is my brain. She goes, Hey, you're not even in handcuffs in here. And then he tries to shoot her and it doesn't work. And she disappears and shows up and scares him. And, and then there's a, you know, she's.

He's like, you know what I'm thinking about now? And she goes, yeah, you know what I'm thinking about now? And then we cut to her as mama feminizing him, right? So there's a lot of shit going on. And I thought that was a really cool scene. right. Her psychic powers under, I learned from Kay that mama is not only selling slow mo, she's manufacturing in the building. She controls the whole building. She's the main distributor of this.

Matt Loehrer (39:39)
Right.

Tug McTighe (39:55)
new potent drug and learns that they've got to get peach trees under control. And I really liked after she got out of his head and goes, I got everything I need, they show him he's pissed his pants. Because she's just been futzing with his brain. So a nice chef's kiss.

Matt Loehrer (40:06)
Yeah, right. There's that CGI urine that creeps out. I thought that was a cool,

I think I had an expectation going in that she was soft and weak and that maybe she's in this guy's head and he's going to like control it. And he thinks he is for a minute. They let you think that he's like, you know, my head, my rules. I can make you do what I want. I can freak you out.

Tug McTighe (40:25)
Correct. Correct.

Matt Loehrer (40:30)
And she's like, we haven't even gotten started yet. She just.

Tug McTighe (40:32)
Right.

And you're starting to see her, she hesitated 10 minutes ago in the first altercation. She's getting stronger. She's realizing this is life or death. The stakes are high and you start to see her growing.

Matt Loehrer (40:45)
If you wondered if this movie passes the Bechdel test, it does. And it's it's actually pretty pro female. All the women in this movie are strong women.

Tug McTighe (40:48)
It does.

Right, there's a, yeah,

they never talk about a boy.

Matt Loehrer (40:55)
They don't talk about boys.

Tug McTighe (40:56)
All right, on that note, let's take a break and let's do talk about our wonderful sponsor, Little Bear Graphics. In the world of Dread, there's one judge, one law, and zero room for bad decisions. The judge solves problems his way, usually with a gun. We don't have a gun or the legal right to execute bad guys. What we do execute though is amazingly thoughtful and beautifully designed creative solutions.

Little Bear Graphics, we serve creative direction, branding, illustration, and pixel perfect judgment. No committees, no wishy washy feedback. You provide the brief, we deliver the justice. Actually, it's creative, but you get the idea. Little Bear Graphics, where bad design gets sentenced to death. Check us out at littlebear.graphics today or the judge will come looking for you.

Matt Loehrer (41:40)
Yeah, you don't want that. Hey, I feel like we should do a giveaway.

Like for everybody that emails us at cinemass.gmail.com and copy a friend. You will go into a drawing to get some cool little bear swag. All right.

Tug McTighe (41:56)
love it.

So you heard it. Email us at cinemases at gmail.com to be entered to win. But you have to tag a friend and tell them to listen.

Matt Loehrer (42:05)
You have to, you have to copy them on the email and they can be in it too. So if they're in there, then they're in the drawing.

Tug McTighe (42:07)
That's right. Now, of course, everybody gets a chance to win. We're

like, we're like a really unsuccessful Oprah, significantly less successful than Oprah and no one else gets one. Okay.

Matt Loehrer (42:15)
Yes, like, like you get one and nobody else gets one. All right. How about this?

How about for everybody that sends us an email and then copies a friend, I will pick that person and their friend. Cause that would, that would be a bummer if you like, you're like, Hey, tug, I'm going to copy you in and then tug wins the prize and I win nothing. It's like, why did I even do this? All right. All right. Thanks.

Tug McTighe (42:30)
there we go.

Right? I'm screwed. I judged that poorly. All right. So

Anderson now is like, why don't we wait for the backup to get here? And he's like, no, we're going to mama. We're getting mama. ⁓

Matt Loehrer (42:48)
Yeah, there were two options

and he recommended a third go get her. She's like, okay. She's like, we could stay where we are or we could retreat. He's like, well, we have a third option. She's like, damn it. Right.

Tug McTighe (42:51)
Right, a couple of, okay, a couple of tea-

Let's go to get mama.

So a couple of teens distract these kids who he stuns, luckily. He goes, now you're going to go to a juve cube. He goes, even though he stuns him, like, you're still going to juvenile.

Matt Loehrer (43:09)
Right.

No, but it was great. He said they had a gun on him and he said, he said, well, how are going to shoot me if the safety is on? Like what? And then that he takes that opportunity to draw his weapon. He's like, he's like Juve cube or Recyc doesn't matter to me. They'll go either way.

Tug McTighe (43:19)
right stun right stun right

Doesn't matter to me. ⁓

So while she's distracted, Kay frees himself and disarms Anderson, capturing her and taking her to the elevator. And this was one of the things that he said at beginning, hey, if you lose your weapon, you're going to be a fail. So she's already a fail. Now Volt and Guthrie come to support Dread, but Clan Techie convinces them that the Blastors are malfunctioning.

and cannot be opened. Hey Matt, these guys suck!

Matt Loehrer (43:53)
Yeah, these are judges by the way, and they're just terrible. It's like, they're like.

Tug McTighe (43:55)
Yeah, they walk up

to the front door and they're like, hey, open the doors. We can't. All right. We're out of ideas.

Matt Loehrer (44:02)
Well, they said they had a

they said they had a fire on the 76th floor and there was smoke up there and they're like, well, get it under control. Like, you know, cops called in something here, but whatever.

Tug McTighe (44:09)
Right, right. No, no, your your

other judge said I'm under attack So bring it and they just walk up to the door. They don't have a tank or a helicopter or a ship. It's ridiculous anyway And and by the way, they stand they just stand there for quite a while so So anyway dreads working his way. that's my favorite part of the whole movie dreads working his way up toward mama

Matt Loehrer (44:15)
right?

No, they're smoking or whatever. They're hanging out playing, playing wordle.

Tug McTighe (44:35)
Again, I like all the cool shit his gun does. And his speech over the PA to her is awesome, where he not only gets to say the name of the movie, he goes, this is Judge Dredd. And then he gets his action hero line, his first action hero line of several. He goes, as for you, mama, judgment time. Yeah, awesome.

Matt Loehrer (44:54)
That was great. That's a

if this were the rewatchables, I would say that's one of the most rewatchable scenes in movie. Yeah. When he gives his speech. Judgment time. Very cool. So Mama decides that at this point, all her guys are getting killed. So she's going to call in a little favor from some corrupt judges that are on her payroll.

Tug McTighe (45:00)
Right, right.

Judgment time.

Matt Loehrer (45:15)
So,

Tug McTighe (45:15)
Yeah, she says

we're just gonna call 911.

Matt Loehrer (45:17)
call 911 and then the next thing you know, you cut to these four judges on their motorcycles pulling up to peach trees.

Tug McTighe (45:23)
Yep, pulling up. Lex,

Kaplan, Chan, and Alvarez.

Matt Loehrer (45:26)
Yeah, so they go to the two that are standing outside. They're like, what are you guys doing out here? And they're like, well, we can't get in. Pushes a button and says, Lex, Lex push the button says open up and they open up. He's like, you guys are relieved. Idiots. ⁓ So these guys were awesome. And they're also terrible.

Tug McTighe (45:32)
and it goes up.

Yeah, just morons.

They're awesome and

they suck, but they're awesome because they are just, they're the dread, they're the corrupt version of dread. We'll kill anybody, don't care, just want money.

Matt Loehrer (45:52)
for sure. They go to see Mama and she's like, how much? And he's like, a million. And she says, that seems like a lot. They said, do you know who this guy is? And she said, no. They said, I do. It's Judge Dredd. So it's a million.

Tug McTighe (45:55)
million million yeah

Yeah, so it's a million. He's bad, right?

he gets another great kill line here when he dispatches one of those guys. Yeah, he goes choke on it because he hits him in the throat.

Matt Loehrer (46:10)
Chan, I think.

he,

he hits him, he crushes his throat. my God, that's hard to watch. ⁓ So that guy's dead. Meanwhile, we cut back to Anderson and Kay has her gun pointed at her. So he's gonna kill her because mama said, you know, kill her. And she's, she's pretty bold, even as he's about to kill her. And we've realized it's because when he pulls the trigger,

Tug McTighe (46:15)
It's like choke on that.

Matt Loehrer (46:36)
There's a DNA lock that does not recognize his DA. So his hand explodes.

Tug McTighe (46:37)
It says DNA not recognized.

It self-destructs

and blows his arm off.

Matt Loehrer (46:44)
Why didn't understand did it did it self destruct because she had another weapon didn't she or maybe she took his? Okay, so yeah.

Tug McTighe (46:48)
She got another gun later. No, it blew up. Yeah, she

did not have her lawgiver gun the rest of the movie.

Matt Loehrer (46:54)
So he was stunned and kind of apoplectic because his hand is now he is missing a hand. And she took that opportunity to stand up and do a roundhouse kick, which she had been practicing in her martial arts training and knocks him out. So that's the end of what he is. Yeah, I don't think we see him again.

Tug McTighe (47:07)
She has sweet karate move here. And again, this is her. Now she's

turning into a judge. She's badass. She's confident. She's learning how this has to work. And then she goes out the door, and she just mows down some dudes. Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (47:16)
Ruthless. Yeah. Yeah. So she heads out and

Yeah, she's just shooting people left and right, which

is which is what she needs to do. Yes, you said she straight executed these next few fools and you are right. They didn't even see it coming. She's like boom, boom, boom. It was great. OK, so Dredd realizes that these reinforcements are corrupt. He already smashed chance throwed in because Chan never asked about the second officer. Yeah, and so that he figured that out pretty quick.

Tug McTighe (47:29)
These next few sheets straight... No! Pop pop pop! Right.

Where's the other? Yeah. Where's the other judge, right?

so he knows they're bad guys there and they're all right. They all have GPS. So they're all converging on his location. So Dredd initiates a firefight and kills Alvarez. And then Anderson is a woman judge and Anderson.

confronts her and realizes she's bad because she's a psychic because the judge says she'll see another judge and she'll hesitate and then I'll kill her but Anderson looks in her brain and just shoots her right away so that's really great and then we get Lex who corners Dredd they're down in the in the slow-mo manufacturing lab and he wounds Dredd with an armor piercing bullet and and Dredd's kind of sitting there and he goes

Matt Loehrer (48:14)
lab.

Tug McTighe (48:21)
Lex is like, I thought you'd be better. All the rumors about you were, weren't true. And he's like, wait, hold on. And Lex is like, you're, you're dying. I'm taking up the, the judge dread. You want me to wait? And he's like, what do you want me to wait for you to bleed some more? goes, no, wait for her. And then Anderson pops him from behind.

Matt Loehrer (48:41)
So you thought that came out of, you thought that was low, schlocky?

Tug McTighe (48:44)
⁓

It's a little day of sex mocking a little God outside the machine, but I'm so used to God outside the machine and God outside the machine everybody meaning Something that they didn't show you was gonna happen. didn't You didn't know it was gonna happen it just kind of happened like when the t-rex comes in and you haven't seen the t-rex for 20 minutes in Jurassic Park and just as the Raptors about to kill grant it just comes in the room, but you Yeah, right

Matt Loehrer (49:05)
I mean the T-Rex needed to be there, right? Like it was natural that

it would be in the. We have had this conversation many times.

Tug McTighe (49:09)
It's right. He would go to where the humans are. But you, but,

but again, you know that she knows where he is because she's got his GPS. So she's going to try to find Dread. So.

Matt Loehrer (49:20)
Right. And they,

I thought they, the pacing was pretty good and they kind of split it up in a way that made sense that you didn't see her for a minute. It made sense. I honestly wished when he said, no, waiting for her to shoot you. I, I feel like that line could have been a little better. But it was still pretty cool. And I, what I liked, right. And then he takes, he takes Lex's ammo because he's out of ammo. Yeah.

Tug McTighe (49:23)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've- I've been- I've been-

There's an opportunity, yeah, yeah. Waiting for my partner.

Yeah, he's like, reload, reload.

He's so pumped.

Matt Loehrer (49:46)
He's like, hi X, you know, no, do do do, you know, ⁓ hot shot, do do do all this stuff was out. So, then.

Tug McTighe (49:48)
Right. Nope. Right. All gone. Right. Now, hey,

one piece of this I like is he, we show him cauterizing the wound. He's got a little med kit. We show him cauterizing the wound. show him he has these sort of automated staples that close it together and clean it. So at least there's, he's not a superhero. He was shot and he has to give himself, and he goes, standard field dressing.

Right? at least there, no, I like it a lot where they just ignored that someone just got shot or jumped off a building.

Matt Loehrer (50:13)
I like that a lot though, so many movies.

Yeah, people get

shot and then five seconds later they're, you you know, jumping onto a moving train or something. So, so Anderson gets the access code to Mama's apartment from the mind of the computer guy from Donald Gleason. ⁓ I feel like from Planteki ⁓ and she in the process of using her psychic powers, sees that he has been tortured by Mama that she basically like dug his eyeballs out with her.

Tug McTighe (50:23)
Correct, correct.

Please, can't, Clanteki.

Doug is

eyes out and that's why he has the digital eyes.

Matt Loehrer (50:49)
Yeah, so he's as much a victim as anybody, she thinks. So she allows him to go dread kind of looks at her sideways like, you know, what are you doing? He. You just let a perp go. That's that's a crime. That's not just a. That's a that's a fail. That's a crime. And she says, you know, he's as he's as much a victim as anybody. And you know, I my job is to dispense justice, so at least I can do that.

Tug McTighe (50:58)
You just let a perp go.

That's a fail.

And she goes, I already failed anyway. I lost my gun. Right, right.

Matt Loehrer (51:15)
That's true, because she lost her primary weapon. ⁓

And then it's up to the apartment, to mama's place.

Tug McTighe (51:21)
Yep, they get all the way up to mama's

place, right? They get all the way up to mama's place where they, again, mow down probably 20 of her dudes. And Anderson, but Anderson gets shot and wounded. And she's kind of out of commission for the minute. Mama reveals that. She puts this little digital countdown device, like dug into her skin. She shows it to him. says, look, you thought I, she goes, you thought I didn't think I'd ever get busted? I knew someone of you was going to get up here at some point.

So this whole place is rigged with explosives. This is tied to my heartbeat. If I die, the whole building blows up. then Dredd says, now we're going to, let's try to, let's try to, There's a lot to unpack here. He's, I'm not either, or a mathematician, but Dredd says, I don't think the signal for your detonator is that strong.

Matt Loehrer (51:59)
I'm not a scientist, or an engineer. I'm not an engineer.

Tug McTighe (52:08)
So he shoots her in the gut. He gives her slow mo and then he throws her through the window down the atrium, which was cool and took a long time because it was in slow mo. he, so this is dodgy. He figures she will stay alive long enough for the signal to fade and it won't connect to the, cause she's far enough away from the explosives. Again, a little convenient.

Matt Loehrer (52:14)
which was cool.

Tug McTighe (52:30)
But it was cool as shit. She falls all the way down and she's euphoric from the drug and then the camera's looking up at her as if it's, it shows her head smashing on the floor, like through the glass. Yeah, then it gets, then the red blood fills the frame and then we cut to outside peach trees, the blast doors open.

Matt Loehrer (52:35)
Oh yeah, and slow-mo all the way down.

and just like it's getting crushed.

Tug McTighe (52:54)
Dred and Anderson are out there. All the reinforcements are arriving. He tells her Anderson, your assessment is complete. And she just gives him her badge. He doesn't even have to say it. He notes.

Matt Loehrer (53:01)
And she just walked away. Like they've been

through all this and that's the end of it. All right, you're done.

Tug McTighe (53:07)
That's right. Your fail.

And then the chief judge shows up and says, well, when you, when I heard you called in a 1024, I knew it must've been something big. What happened? goes, drug busts went wrong. Lots of casualties. ⁓ Just another day in, in mega city. And then he goes, she goes, what about, how'd she do? How'd Anderson do? Is it a pass or fail?

Matt Loehrer (53:17)
That's all he says.

Standard is a typical day.

Tug McTighe (53:30)
And he pauses and he sort of looks at her and goes, pass. So gigantic for him.

Matt Loehrer (53:34)
Okay, now that's huge, but you and I

think it's huge for different reasons.

Tug McTighe (53:39)
We yeah, he I think that she taught him that these there's more than criminal and not criminal There are So many victims in Mega City that are just she's and she says it's out there just trying to live their lives They're just trying to you know, eke out an existence and at one point they said there's you know, 96 % unemployment and these people are poor and they're living in this slum and and I think

that he's now gonna start to, and again, baby steps. But I think he realizes there are shades of gray because he gave her a pass when the day before he would not have given her the pass.

Matt Loehrer (54:21)
Okay, I think that's interesting. I don't completely agree because I don't think it's about the criminals at all. I think it's about her. That he went from being a by the book judge who would have automatically bounced her to a judge who's willing to accept that maybe she does things a little differently or does things that he wouldn't necessarily do, but that doesn't make her a bad judge or an automatic recheck. Yeah, so maybe these are kind of like two sides of the same.

Tug McTighe (54:41)
But that means she can still, but she can still be effective. I like that too.

I like it. Yeah. He wouldn't have done it at 97 minutes ago. He would not have done that.

Matt Loehrer (54:50)
But it was huge for a character art.

No, and when you have a character like that where they move, they don't need to move from here to here. You move from here to here, that's still character development. It's still progress. Yeah, and for a character like that, that's huge. So, all right, so any closing thoughts?

Tug McTighe (55:02)
100 % 100 %

I do have quite a few closing thoughts. So I liked this quite a bit. I could not help but compare this to RoboCop 2, which came out in 1990, which was written by one of our heroes, Frank Miller of Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, Lone Wolf and Cub, Daredevil, many, many great comics. mean, Frank Miller's a legend. Yeah, legend.

Matt Loehrer (55:09)
I thought you might.

This Jaredov run was great. Yep.

Tug McTighe (55:30)
Please note that Robocop 2 was also directed by Irvin Kershner, who directed Empire Strikes Back, because George Lucas is not a good director. ⁓ So Robocop 2 has a similar storyline. Set in a dystopian Detroit, the plot follows Robocop as he becomes embroiled in a scheme made by Omni Consumer OCP to bankrupt and take over the city, while also fighting the spread of a street drug called Nuke and its gang of dealers led by Kane.

Matt Loehrer (55:38)
She is not.

Tug McTighe (55:55)
So there's similarities, and I cannot help but wonder if Frank Miller knew about Judge Dredd. I cannot fathom that he didn't.

Matt Loehrer (56:05)
Right. About the character or the movie?

Tug McTighe (56:06)
because he was about

the character. So in nine, right, of course he did, right? It's Frank Miller. And there's just some of Dread, if he were a robot, could be Robocop. Right? No emotion by the book. But I just, couldn't help but think, and it really, stuck out to me was the drug ring that OCP is pushing. There's just a lot of similarities. And again,

Matt Loehrer (56:09)
of course you did. Yeah.

All

right.

Tug McTighe (56:30)
What I'd said at the top was,

I've watched a lot of movies that are, go get that box, we need that box. And I don't care, I like the world building. So I like the world building here, but I just, I couldn't help make that comparison as I was watching this. And then the comic book nature of this being a comic and then Frank Miller being a comic book writer and illustrator. Pretty impressive shit.

Matt Loehrer (56:49)
That makes sense.

Thordesworth, I love Peter Weller. I loved him in Naked Lunch, which was a misleading title for sure. the old William Tell, Buckaroo Bonsai across the eighth dimension was a childhood favorite of mine. Robocop also gave us a need to do a shout out to the greatest of 80s, 90s bad guys. He was Dick Jones. He was Kohagan.

Tug McTighe (56:57)
Yeah, for sure. Do the old, hey, we got to do the old William Tell.

Yep.

Matt Loehrer (57:14)
He was Captain Jellicoe in Star Trek The Next Generation. He was also in, he was also Bogomil, a nice guy in Beverly Hills Cop. That's Ronnie, Ronnie Cox, ⁓ all around great actor. I believe he's a country music singer. He's got it all going on, but yes, Dick Jones in that movie was amazing. So good. All right, so Tug, is this a sin hit or a sin?

Tug McTighe (57:17)
He's incredible!

Bogan Mill, yes. Ronnie Cox.

It's incredible that guy. ⁓ for sure.

Yeah, I think

it's a mild sin to hit for me, maybe even more than mild. Now that we've talked about it for an hour, I enjoy the world building part of it. Again, I'm going to go look at some of the comic, I'm going read that book you showed me. Again, I wanted more of the backstory, more of why this character, why the world. And again, that's all there in the comics. But yeah, right? And here's another hot take. Maybe not another, or a hot take. And maybe it's not even hot.

Matt Loehrer (57:50)
Give me a sequel, man. Make some more. Make a show.

Tug McTighe (57:58)
I think why I didn't see both of these movies was I think it's bad for him to have your fucking hero in a helmet the whole time. So he never took it off. And that's the lone helm. And it does, it's kind of a dumb looking helmet and I'm pretty sure it's hard to see and they never give you a, it digital? They never give you, it camera? They never really tell you that I'm assuming it is, but there's something about those goofy helmets that I just couldn't shake. So I actually think that's maybe why I didn't see it. But then yes, I,

Matt Loehrer (58:16)
Mm-hmm.

Did you watch Mandalorian though? And

Tug McTighe (58:25)
find that I loved it yeah but

Matt Loehrer (58:25)
did you like it? Well.

Tug McTighe (58:29)
he does take it off at one point but anyway I did like this when I was doing my research I found this out from John Wagner the the creator Dread's entire face is never shown in the strip this began as an unofficial guideline but soon became a rule it sums up the facelessness of justice justice has no soul so it isn't necessary for readers to see Dread's face and I don't want you to

So if he doesn't want you to as the creator, then I don't want to either. And I can get over my, it does make sense. And I'm glad they had a reason.

Matt Loehrer (58:53)
That makes sense.

Yeah, and again, having read some of the comic books, a lot of the stories, the judges are just interchangeable. it could be Judge Dredd doesn't have enough of a personality that he couldn't be Judge Johnson or Judge Smith or whatever, because a lot of the stories where people doing bad stuff and then the judges just come in. All right, so I'll make this really fast. There was one where a guy has this genetically produced saber-toothed tiger that's illegal.

Tug McTighe (59:07)
Right, Yeah, correct.

Just

Matt Loehrer (59:25)
and it has an infected tooth. So he's kidnapped a guy that he thinks is a dentist to fix the saber-toothed tiger's tooth. But the guy's not a dentist. So he's holding him at gunpoint. Judge Dredd shows up because he's busting some people for having sex in an alleyway. And he gets attacked by the saber-toothed tiger. and he can't reach his gun. So he rips out the offending tooth and stabs it in the heart with it, brings it back to the guy, shoots him with a stun gun.

Tug McTighe (59:40)
Right.

Matt Loehrer (59:50)
and says, by the way, you owe me 50 credits because I brought back your missing cat. So it's just him. It's just other people doing stuff. And then he just shows up and does his thing.

Tug McTighe (59:55)
my god. So yeah. So there's some

more satire, but more, there's some more, I wouldn't call it comedy, but there's more satire. Anyway, I dug it. thought, you know, if you look at some of those Hong Kong, John Woo, you know, the ballet of violence kind of,

Matt Loehrer (1:00:04)
It is kind of faceless.

It's satire

Tug McTighe (1:00:22)
you know, diving across the car, two guns shooting that stuff. Like I said, John Woo, really cool, interesting kills in this. ⁓ It could have been the same old same old, but it wasn't. It looked really cool.

Matt Loehrer (1:00:26)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I enjoyed seeing the.

Yeah,

I enjoyed seeing low level henchmen being executed in various interesting ways. Yeah, it was fun.

Tug McTighe (1:00:37)
Me too. I love

Batman, right? I love Batman. He's my favorite hero. And my favorite Batman is Street Justice Batman. He just clotheslines a purse snatcher, you know? And in Frank Miller's The Dark Knight, my favorite line in The Dark Knight, he says that he's beaten up cops now. And the cop has a gun right here. And Bruce says, there are seven working defenses from this position.

Matt Loehrer (1:00:44)
He'll just take it out.

Tug McTighe (1:01:00)
three of them disarm with minimal contact, three of them kill, the other one hurts. And he kicks the guy and the other cop says, my God, you've broken that man's spine. And he goes, he's young, he'll probably walk again. Right, so there's that, that's the Batman Street justice is my favorite.

Matt Loehrer (1:01:17)
I'm a fan of henchmen. feel like there should be a show devoted to henching. Making that a career path.

Tug McTighe (1:01:22)
Yeah, yeah, how

you get into the henchmen biz. So before we carry on, I'd like to take one last break and talk about our sponsor and our promotion again, our sponsor, Little Bear Graphics. In Dread, criminals take slow-mo and see the world in super slow motion. At Little Bear Graphics, we move fast.

Matt Loehrer (1:01:27)
pretty much and like, are you gonna hinge for? You

Tug McTighe (1:01:43)
Unless you're paying us a seric gradients all day, then sure, slow-mo it is. Whether it's branding, illustration, or design, our stuff hits harder than a drop from level 79 at Beech Trees. We're not judges, but we do have strong opinions on typeface selection. Little Bear Graphics, you need justice for your business, and we can deliver. Check us out at littlebear.graphics today.

Matt Loehrer (1:02:03)
Very nice. And again, send us an email, tag a friend, and share our info, like our stuff.

Tug McTighe (1:02:07)
And yeah, please,

if you like it, subscribe. you please tell somebody else, please give us a rating. really does help us. ⁓ And yet.

Matt Loehrer (1:02:16)
feel like we need

better sponsors than this. It's like the worst sponsor.

Tug McTighe (1:02:19)
my God, right? But you're going to get,

but one lucky winner and their friend will win some cool little bear swag courtesy of our sponsor, MatLore.

Matt Loehrer (1:02:27)
Right.

If we can just get like a Roach Spray sponsor or like Jockish Jockage Spray sponsor at some point. All right. All right. So moving along, What is our next episode of Cinemissas and what do we think we know? What's it going to be?

Tug McTighe (1:02:31)
Something right? Right. Anti-fungal cream.

All right, Matt, we're going to watch Sideways starring the incomparable Paul Giamatti. So this one came out a few years ago. I don't know the date. I didn't look it up. It doesn't matter. We'll have it next time for you. We'll have all the details, as we always do. But Matt, you are the cinema mister here. So what do you think you know about the movie Sideways?

Matt Loehrer (1:02:46)
Love Paul Giamma.

Okay, what I think I know is stuff I got from you, but I know Paul Jomadi is in it. I love Paul Jomadi. I believe Thomas Hayden Church also co-stars. It is very much about wine and wine drinking. And it's my understanding that it destroyed the Morello business for years.

Tug McTighe (1:03:06)
Yes, sir?

Yes?

Literally for a decade, it tanked the Merlot business. And we'll talk about that when we meet, because it has been studied and talked about quite a bit.

Matt Loehrer (1:03:22)
And that's all I know. think maybe it's a comedy, a dark comedy, a dramedy.

Tug McTighe (1:03:26)
Yeah,

it's part comedy, part drama, just like life.

Matt Loehrer (1:03:31)
All right, that works for me. I'm looking forward to it. That sounds great. And thanks for joining us. This has been a lot of fun. I'm Matt, and we'll see you next time on Cinemassas. Thanks a lot. Bye.

Tug McTighe (1:03:38)
I am Tug.

Bye!