I don’t know how studios decide what images to release for their upcoming films, but there doesn’t seem to be any actual consideration for showing something of interest or toward editorial worth. I have found recently when looking for images to accompany my reviews that I often have to try the trailers for a screen capture that will help convey the points I’m trying to get across or at least present the film as something interesting.
A recent example is John Carter a film of which I have a gallery of 130 images and yet the best I could do was the shot you see here at the top of my review. Exciting right?
Today, Lionsgate seems just as uninterested in presenting something audiences can get excited about with two first look images at Dredd, a new adaptation John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra’s science fiction anthology “2000 AD”, which last hit the big screen with Sylvester Stallone in the title role.
This time around Karl Urban is the titular lead, an American law enforcement officer in a violent city of the future where uniformed Judges combine the powers of police, judge, jury and executioner. During a routine day on the job, Dredd is assigned to train and evaluate Cassandra Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), a rookie with powerful psychic abilities thanks to a genetic mutation. A heinous crime calls them to a neighborhood where fellow Judges rarely dare to venture- a 200 story vertical slum controlled by prostitute turned drug lord Ma-Ma (Lena Headey) and her ruthless clan. When they capture one of the clan’s inner circle, Ma-Ma overtakes the compound’s control center and wages a dirty, vicious war against the Judges that proves she will stop at nothing to protect her empire. With the body count climbing and no way out, Dredd and Anderson must confront the odds and engage in the relentless battle for their survival.
So, with that, we get the above skyline shot at the image I’ve included below giving an overhead look at Dredd as he mows a few people down, which I guess could be considered mildly interesting, but it simply looks to me like just another version of The Punisher in terms of style, just a different suit.
However, one interesting thing has come out, which is a bit of pre-vis work done by Sagar Rathod, which you can see in the video at the bottom of this post. Scroll to the 34-second mark and you’ll see a shoot-out from Dredd is included in which bullets fly and blood flows. The music is a bit off-putting, but until an actual trailer arrives, which I have to assume will be any day now, this will have to suffice.
The film hits theaters on September 21 and if you’d like a peek at the poster just click here
