Episode Details

We like DREDD

We do. We all like DREDD.

Not the god awful Stallone attempt, which we’re not going to mention again.

Not even the original comic, even though it’s “seminal” and we’re about to talk about it much more.

We like DREDD. The 2012 movie starring Karl Urban’s jaw, and written by none other than auteur writer director Alex Garland and, basically, his unofficial directorial debut.

We like *that* DREDD.

Watch the full video essay

Because…

…because it’s “gritty*. Because it’s “uncompromising”.

Because we can sit in front of our 150 inch home projector screens –

I just set this up and I thought what better way to test how deep the blacks go than a trip to Mega City One.

– we can sit in our home cinema sipping our artisanal IPAs while we say to ourselves.

“I am watching a sophisticated critique of the military-industrial complex and the erosion of civil liberties in a post-democratic landscape.”

When actually ​we’re just watching a man with a very cool gun kill people who make us feel…uncomfortable.

Because if we admit that we just quite like the idea of a stern man in a helmet coming along and…tidying up…the “chaos” of the modern world with a high-velocity armor-piercing hotshot… 

Well, then…

We might have to admit that we like the jackboot.

We like that the man wearing the boot doesn’t have to check his privilege because his privilege is a gold eagle on his shoulder that gives him the authority to throw you off a balcony.

We want the boot. But…we just want the boot to be “clever”? To have read a bit of Baudrillard. We want the boot to be “self-aware.”

​”Oh, look at that boot,” we want to be able to say. “That’s not a boot. That’s a deconstruction of the very concept of the boot.”

​We love the boot. We salivate over the boot. We watch the boot in 4K hi-res so we can see every detail of its stitching as it stamps on a human face – forever.

And if the boot also has a cute blonde bob, petit figure and the suggestion of nudity under the leather…

…then we might have to admit that fascism is at least a little bit…just a tad…sexy?