Alex Garland Interview: Dredd 3D, SLO-MO, Sequel Ideas & More!
After catching up with Judge Dredd himself, Karl Urban, we turned out attention to the driving force behind the film, screenwriter, producer and author, Alex Garland.
Well, we have a film thats yet to be released. Those ideas are certainly not more possible now. They might be, in four weeks time, but its a very big if. Dredd is an 18-rated film. In order to generate the kind of money that would justify a sequel is a tall order. That said, if I was able to work on a sequel, the second film would broadly involve characters like Chopper, storylines like Origins, and it would be about Dredds history and the history of the city. It would involve the weird deal that Dredds a fascist, an anti-hero, and the terrorists are pro-democrats. Id love to try that. But if it went further than that into maybe a third film itd feature the crazier stuff, like Chief Judge Cal and the Dark Judges. Its basically about a Chief Judge whos gone insane and the city gets invaded by completely malevolent riffs of the Judge system.Q. What did you have to go through to re-invent Judge Dredd for a 21st Century audience?
I can say that my intention from the absolute get-go was not to re-invent Dredd but to do Dredd in a way that did justice to the character in the comic books. You could call it a re-invention if you take the Sylvester Stallone movie as your starting point, but my approach was I knew we would never have the budget, and it also doesnt really suit our aesthetic. Andrew McDonald and Allon Reich, the producers I work with want to be seen to try and do something that isnt too far away from reality on some level. We knew that flying cars and very elaborate CG robots would not really be in our scope for a first movie. That aside, the first thing I did when I sat down with Andrew and Allon was contact John Wagner, the writer who co-created Dredd, and bring him in. Not in a way of name-checking the creator and treating him properly, although I would have wanted to treat him right anyway. But I wanted him to actually work on the film a proper, paid part of the team which he was. He would always be there from my point of view, to keep track of his character and make sure we were doing it right. I would send him the drafts he would change lines, which Id accept happily. The short answer is, we werent trying to reinvent Dredd. We were trying to be appropriately respectful to it.Q. Olivia Thirlbys character, Judge Anderson gets the emotional and psychological meat of the film to the point where its almost her film. Was this something you aimed for purposefully?
Yes, definitely. In a film, a character has a big journey and changes a lot. Dredd couldnt do that, hes not about change, thats not who he is. I always knew at the heart of this film there would be a rock that hardly moved in an internal way. The traditional story arc, thats Andersons journey, that was intentional.Q. What was your favourite scene that youd written and were proud to see in the finished movie?
Slo-mo. All the slo-mo stuff was the hardest thing to get right. It began very early while we were shooting Never Let Me Go, Jon Thum the VFX Supervisor was constructing very worked-up, very high-end preview sequences of slo-mo to find out some of the basic ideas. You could have a really extended slow sequence and see how far you could go before it snaps, how trippy you can get, how far you can pull the viewer out into a weird hallucinogenic space before they lose track with the story or the action. We started trying to figure that out a long time even before pre-production. We finished working that stuff out in the final minutes of at the very end of post-production. Tweaking the colours and trying very different approaches to the colour scheme and saturation, the framing, the camera moves. It went on and on and on. On a personal level its my favourite stuff of the film.
He got Dredd in a very deep way. We never had the discussion that you can have with actors about motivation, characters, how a character got to a certain point, which is just part of an actors process and theres nothing judgmental about that at all. But Karl just arrived fully-formed. Like me, hed read it when he was younger. He knew Dredd and he understood it backwards. All sorts of things that we have as private rules that we would observe, Karl sat down and basically said I hope youre going to do this, I hope you do that. He was saying these were the tones hed be interested in doing as the character. It was a fantastic relief. We didnt have to give him notes, he just did it.Q. You obviously have a great working relationship with Karl. Would you like to work with him again?
Its hard to say about future projects that dont exist - if its a story about three Amazonian women on an island, probably not. But if it was Dredd, well I couldnt imagine anyone else doing it. It was such an easy thing to get wrong, people probably misunderstand what hes doing. Its a very controlled performance. If you dont have a whole section of your face, like he does, you have to create a different language of communication and the way you tilt your head or the way you look at something. One of my favourite shots in the film is a pull-focus from Anderson in the foreground whos feeling worried after shooting someones husband and shes freaking out in the lift and is in a state of turmoil. Theres a focus pull from her to Dredd in the background just looking at her and he doesnt move but its got so much information and kind of totality of Dreddness.Q. What essence of Dredd was most important to you to bring to the screen?
A kind of hardness. I wanted the film just to be very hard. Soft and weird in its drugs at times but have a relentless hardness. For me thats part of the character that I didnt create. Im just trying to continue it. It would easy to try and humanise Dredd. Hes not a superhero, hes a man. John Wagner (the creator) said to me the harder you make him the more people will like him and I stuck to that and would always remember that.Q. There were stories that described your relationship with director Pete Travis as unorthodox and that you took over in post-production, can you elaborate on this?
At the heart of those stories was a lie that Pete and I had fallen out and that thered been a disagreement. There really wasnt. Pete and I never fell out - I met him for coffee a few days ago! We had a very clear, honest working relationship the whole way through and I like the guy a lot. The problem I have with this question, or the issue rather, is that I think it unwittingly polarises a question between me and Pete, and that itself is a deception. What it does is take attention away from people like Jon Thum (VFX Supervisor), Anthony Dod Mantle, whos an award-winning genius cinematographer, who when were talking about slo-mo, were talking about him. If this becomes a pissing contest between me and Pete it distracts attention away from Anthony, Jon, Mark Eckersley the editor, the actual editor, Paul Leonard Morgan who wrote the score. I think this happens in film too much anyway, I think theres a lot of bullshit said on how films are made and a lot of bullshit tends to be about taking credit away from these really interesting people who are working in what is fundamentally a collaborative medium. Its a bunch of people working together. I was part of a team, Pete was part of a team and there were also these crucial people Ive just mentioned. Im not trying to be evasive while also clearly being evasive but I just want to reframe the question to what the reality of making the film was. The reality was Anthony Dod Mantle and Jon Thum doing amazing work making slo-mo. It shouldnt be Pete and it shouldnt be me. I dont want the film to be presented as something it is not. Its collaboration.