There are positive vibes coming out of Comic-Con about Dredd, which opened the event. Riding that wave of approval, here's a short new Dredd clip from the official website. It's not a trailer, but if it were, you might call it "red band", given the slo-mo blood-splattering that fills its minute of run-time.
"Bare, rippling flesh gets pierced in loving slo-mo," says Empire**'s Chris Hewitt in his Dredd review. This is exactly what he was talking about, as veteran Judge Dredd (Karl Urban) and rookie Anderson (Olivia Thirlby) make an impromptu entrance into a den of druggies. Slo-Mo, you'll have read by now, is both the name of Mega City One's new illegal drug of choice, and its effect. So there's a plot reason for the bullet-time; it's doesn't just look cool.
"We're fighting the Stallone film to some extent," Dredd creator John Wagner told us this week in an exclusive interview. This clip seems a reasonable salvo in that battle, demonstrating that bloody violence and a down-and-dirty aesthetic are the order of the day rather than big-budget fantasy FX, catchphrases and comedy sidekicks.
"Zarjazz!" we say,* and we'll probably keep saying it until Dredd's released on September 7.
*It's a 2000 AD thing.