Payn's Ponderings; Jack Reacher vs. Reacher

[Mannahnin]

It was like a slice of tasty Verhoeven style film making.

Eh. Starship Troopers was much campier. I liked Dredd better.

 

[payn]

Eh. Starship Troopers was much campier. I liked Dredd better.

I was speaking to the dark humor and satire being so subtle that if you blink during all the violence and action you miss it.

 

[GreyLord]

Eh. Starship Troopers was much campier. I liked Dredd better.

I didn't really care for Starship Troopers, BUT...

Ironically...

I'd say Dredd captured the feel of the Starship Troopers book in how it portrayed it's seriousness...

While Starship Troopers actually was more of the type of feel I think would have been appropriate for a Judge Dredd film.

It's not really how it was made, but the FEEL or the replication of that type of style is more in line with what I'd see from Judge Dredd rather than what Dredd was.

And the style of Dredd is actually more in line with what I'd have thought a Starship Troopers movie based on the book would be like.

 

[Zaukrie]

On the topic of Reacher......there is little about the tv show (so far, I think we are three in) that is super original. But, I do love the female officer and her attitude. I'm enjoying it for what it is.

 

[payn]

On the topic of Reacher......there is little about the tv show (so far, I think we are three in) that is super original. But, I do love the female officer and her attitude. I'm enjoying it for what it is.

There is a certain brand of typecast going on in the series that was absent in the film. Reacher being a boy scout and Roscoe being the southern belle cop. Frankly, I liked the film's approach better, where it was less a factor of their identity. Reacher (cruise) and Rodin (Pike) just felt like real people that were formed by their experiences.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

But the end did feel like a video game.

 

[payn]

But the end did feel like a video game.

For the film? I can see that. Most of the series felt that way though.

 

[Ryujin]

It probably isn't a good humor for our modern times, but it was a type of humor that Dredd simply did not reflect. It is really what I would consider...Camp...or what was considered camp in the past. It was the antithesis of (the then) culture, a satire on society and a reflection against what society would have us be.

The Judge Dredd comics were full of Camp, defying what many would consider good taste and good comics even back then (though strongly appealing in it's own way to the other portions of society that were out of favor). It was also commentary on a society full of elitism and tradition.

The movie Dredd is basically the opposite of that from what I see. Not only is it not Camp, it seems to be giving the exact opposite message of what the comics did.

Judge Dredd at least had the SOME Camp to it, even if it wasn't as full of Camp as the comics and really didn't follow the comics or replicate them...at all.

If recyc on aisle 4 and deadpan, "Do you need a social worker" isn't social satire, then I don't know what is.

 

[Ryujin]

Dredd wasn't campy, but it was satirical and dystopian. It was full of black humor about the excesses of Law & Order punitive criminal justice culture taken to the extreme. But you're right that it played it straight enough that viewers with authoritarian leanings could probably squint past the satire and take it largely at face value.

I'll agree that it skated pretty close to Poe's Law, but I think that the subtle satire was obvious enough to avoid it. If you want to see it in full force then watch the 2014 film "Dark Dungeons", based on a Chick Tract of the same name. Made by gamers but played absolutely straight, to stay within the licensing. It's equally laughed at by people like me, and held up as Gospel by fundies.

 

[MarkB]

The movie that best captured the humour and satire of the Judge Dredd setting was Demolition Man. Which just makes it ironic that Stallone's Judge Dredd failed to do so.