9. So People Stop Comparing The First One To The Raid
In the same year that Dredd came out, of course, we did get another action film which was an intense thrill-power overload with guns and explosions, one-liners and over-the-top bad guys. It was called The Raid (add a "Redemption" to the title if you're in the US) and it was, admittedly, pretty amazing itself. It also, admittedly, had a similar premise to Dredd: in Dredd, two officers of the law are trapped inside an apartment complex controlled by a murderous gang, and have to fight their way out. In The Raid, a team of police officers are slowly whittled down to a few after being trapped inside an apartment complex controlled by a murderous gang, and have to fight their way out. So you can see why a lot of people were comparing to the two films on a basic level, albeit often unfavourably for Dredd. A lot of people saw it as nothing but a cheap rip-off of The Raid's premise which, well one: that's stupid, and two: Dredd was in production before The Raid, and three: they're really not that similar. The Raid is an Indonesian martial arts thriller, whereas Dredd is more of a straight-up gun-shooty affair. They're also not the first films to involve people facing impossible odds in a tower block - you only need to go back to Attack the Block or superior French zombie flick The Horde for that - or even the first movie to place people under siege in a single location - look at Assault on Precinct 13, Rio Bravo or, er, Under Siege. A second Dredd movie could help the first move even further from The Raid's shadow. Unless it's about Dredd going undercover to infiltrate a gang in the iso-cubes, in which case...fair cop.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
