I am the Law: How Judge Dredd Predicted Our Future

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Central reports a triple homicide in Peach Trees, a two-hundred-story apartment complex. The three bodies were thrown from the two-hundredth floor after being flensed. They were also high on Slo-Mo when they were tossed, so they got to really savor the experience of falling to their doom. Judge Dredd: And you haven't even been out of jail for 24 hours. He's habitual, Hershey. Automatic 5 year sentence. How do you plead?

Judge Dredd: You're one of the smartest of a new breed, but you've only been on the street a year. You haven't gotten used to the isolation yet. Dredd is riding his bike through Mega City, chasing a van that is obviously being driven by someone under the influence. The occupants are taking Slo-Mo, a new narcotic on the streets that makes time go by very slowly. (Why this would appeal to junkies, most of whom want to escape from misery, is an exercise for the viewer, unless there’s a concomitant high, though that’s not at all clear from what we see of the drug.) I Am the Law" is a single by thrash metal band Anthrax, from the album, Among the Living. It is one of Anthrax's most famous songs, appearing on their best-of albums: Return of the Killer A's, Madhouse: The Very Best of Anthrax and Anthrology: No Hit Wonders (1985–1991). Players of Strontium Dog may find a few familiar ideas within the core rules of Judge Dredd. This game heavily expands on those skirmish rules, however, to reflect the urban environments of Mega-City One. The Judge Dredd rulebook contains everything you need to know about playing the game and includes rules for fighting within buildings and using vehicles. As well as a number of scenarios, there are rules for developing your chosen faction in a series of linked games.However, for all that Judge Dredd looks like the comic, the story is a disaster. While the characters are nominally from the comics, they bear only a passing resemblance to them. The three writers of Judge Dredd took the basic setting for Dredd and slapped a bog-standard action-movie plot on top of it. The whole point of this particular future is that judgment is faceless and emotionless. That’s why we never see the judges’ faces. They’re the embodiment of the law. Having Dredd take off his helmet, and keep it off for 85% of the movie is just a disaster. And yes, it’s a movie, and yes, Stallone’s face is famous, but he was doing just fine at the beginning of the movie. Vartis Hammond is a reporter who is on the verge of exposing corruption among the judges. He and his boss are killed by a judge wearing Dredd’s badge and using Dredd’s gun. (Judges’ weapons have biometrics that enable them only to be used by the judge it’s issued to.) Judge Dredd: Towing is for a first offence, this is your fourth violation, barf breath. You're a menace. How do you plead? Unfortunately, the film was beset with difficulties, mostly the tension between Stallone and director Danny Cannon, as the former saw it as an action-comedy, while the latter viewed it as a dark satire. The film found no audience in the U.S., though it did decently overseas, not aided by the storyline breaking one of the cardinal rules of the comic strip, which is that Dredd’s face is never seen.

Fuppie: [ interrupting] Hey, you'd better listen! I suggest you walk away and bother somebody else! At Griffin’s urging, Rico foments more chaos, which should be enough to unseal Janus and allow Griffin to tighten the reins, as it were, with his private army of clones. Rico uses his knowledge of judge procedure and his big-ass robot to kill more than a hundred judges. This massacre, and subsequent rioting, leads the council to unseal Janus so Griffin can re-create it. If you take these two movies and average them out, you get the prefect Judge Dredd movie. Each has significant flaws, and each has elements that are perfect. Dredd is put on trial, with Hershey defending him. The chief justice, Fargo, who is Dredd’s mentor, doesn’t want to believe that Dredd would commit homicide, but the evidence is overwhelming. However, when a judge retires, he goes on “the long walk”—bringing justice to the Cursed Earth outside the city until he or she dies. Traditionally, a judge’s last wish before retiring is always followed, and Fargo decides to retire with his last wish is for Dredd to be judged leniently.The dystopian future world of Judge Dredd is the most popular feature to come from 2000 A.D., and in 1990 it was spun off into Judge Dredd Megazine, which is still being published today. And twice, Dredd has been adapted into a feature film. While the cast is less famous in Dredd—only Urban and Lena Headey are what you’d call names—the casting is much stronger. For one thing, Judge Dredd‘s Mega City is populated entirely by white people, while Dredd remembers that if you shove everyone on the east coast together into one big city, you might actually encounter a person of color or twelve. And even if you’ve never heard of Rakie Ayola, she’s better at playing the chief judge than either von Sydow or Prochnow. Dredd and Anderson go on the run, with Kay in tow, taking care of all the thugs who try to stop them. TJ refuses to let them into the medical center. Dredd accuses him of taking sides; TJ says there are no sides, that Dredd’s already dead. However, the 2012 movie also failed to find an audience in theatres, though it has performed better on home video platforms, and there are rumblings of a sequel. TJ, the doctor who runs the medical center in Peach Trees, explains to Dredd and Anderson that an ex-hooker named Madeline Madrigal, a.k.a. Ma-Ma, runs all the gangs in Peach Trees, having taken over the four rival gangs that had been running things in the complex. TJ tells them where one of the drug dens is, and the judges raid it. Everyone is killed except for Kay, whom Anderson is fairly certain is the one who killed the three guys. Fairly certain isn’t enough, so Dredd plans to take him in for interrogation.

Judge Hershey: No. No, I don't think that's right. No one should be alone all the time. I mean, is that really what it's been like for you? Haven't you... haven't you ever had a friend? Both Rico and Dredd were clones, created from genetic material from the finest of the judges’ council. The project, codenamed Janus, was abandoned and sealed after Rico went binky-bonkers. Now, though, Griffin wants to revive Janus so he can have perfect judges. He freed Rico from his secret imprisonment, had him impersonate Dredd to kill Hammond (Rico and Dredd have the same DNA), and for shits and giggles, he also got his hands on an old robot enforcer.We don’t get that with Dredd, which never manages to feel like it’s the future. There’s nothing in the production design that screams “awful future,” it mostly just screams “contemporary Los Angeles.” Worse, Peach Trees never once feels like it’s two hundred stories tall. The production design and look and feel never quite live up to what the script (or the source material) call for. Judge Dredd: [ pulling Fergie, by the mouth, out of the service robot he's been hiding in and slamming him against a wall] Mega City code 7592: Willful sabotage of a public droid. That's 6 months, citizen. Let's see your Unicard. Anderson encounters another judge, but her psychic abilities reveal her intentions, and Anderson shoots her too. The remaining two corner Dredd, and even manage to wound him, but Dredd kills one, and Anderson kills the other before he can kill Dredd. They then proceed to the control room where the techie is willing to give up Ma-Ma’s location (the top floor) and the passcode to get into her stronghold (which Anderson reads psychically). Anderson lets him go free, to Dredd’s annoyance, as he’s guilty, but Anderson also saw in his mind how badly he’d suffered at Ma-Ma’s hands. And she figured she’s already failed her assessment once she got taken hostage, so in for a penny in for a pound.