Dredd: Superfiend: Watch This Full Trailer For Judge Death’s Origin Story
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While we’re not likely to get a sequel to Pete Travis’ 2012 comic book adaptation Dredd, at least not anytime soon (no matter what star Karl Urban says), we’ve spent a lot of time recently talking about a follow up of sorts. Dredd: Superfiend is an unofficial, unsanctioned adaptation of the 2000 AD comics title, and so far this week we’ve seen the first photos and a teaser trailer. Now we’ve got the first full-length trailer, and like everything we’ve seen thus far, it’s not exactly what we expected.
The brainchild of Dredd producer Adi Shankar, who, as he points out in his introduction, has no legal or practical claim on this material, this is definitely more in line with the comics than the movie. While the film is stone-dead serious, the comics are very satirical in nature, and that comes across in this longer look at Superfiend. While I was initially concerned about the look of the animation, the twisted, Heavy Metal-ish style actually feels like a good fit for this particular take on the source material.
And this isn’t intended as a real sequel to Dredd, it’s really just more of a thank you to legions of fans who have discovered the movie on Blu-ray (it was a notable bomb at the box office) and have started a vocal grassroots support campaign. Shankar says:
I thought I’d give my friends (I mean that figuratively as I don’t know anyone at Marvel) at Marvel a break and myself a taste of my own medicine by “bootlegging” Judge Dredd. Just so that we are clear, this is a different interpretation of the character and the universe, an interpretation that is family friendly and geared towards little children.
Yeah, family friendly.
Superfiend is framed as an origin story of Judge Death, one of the “Dark Judges.” The group includes Death, Judge Fire, Judge Fear, and Judge Mortis, and they are lawmen from a parallel dimension. Near the end of this trailer, Death says, “The real crime is life.” In the comics, he decides that since humans commit all crime, being alive is itself a crime. You can imagine that shit gets real fun from there.
This should hopefully get you through the weekend and keep you busy enough until the first episode of Dredd: Superfiend drops on Monday, October 27.
Also, this isn’t the first time Shankar has skirted around things like copyright issues. Back in 2012, he was behind the Thomas Jane-starring, pseudo-Punisher short Dirty Laundry. Check that out below.
