New Judge Dredd movie artwork online

THE first bits of artwork for the new Judge Dredd movie have been put up on io9 and they are awesome.

Moody, vicious, cool - in short, everything the 1995 Sylvester Stallone film wasn't.

Looking back now, it is hard to credit just how much Sly's stab at portraying 2000AD's finest sucked.

Taking off the helmet (for virtually all of the film), Rob Schneider (for god's sake, I just wrote Rob Schneider), the stripping away of the central premise of Judge Dredd - it sucked like a Dyson vacuum cleaner that has fallen through a hole in space and time from the 25th century, rendering all modern day vacuum cleaners obsolete.

The film was less about Dredd and more about Sly, his bulging torso and his determination to crack truly awful puns.

It meant any originality or momentum the film built up was quickly submerged beneath a sub-par, by the numbers blockbuster.

Since then of course, The Dark Knight has set the bar pretty high for the type of film Judge Dredd should be. Matching that would be tough for any film, but given the depth of the source material in the right hands it could fly.

Personally I'd like them to use the dark judges - I love Judge Death and his gang - while Jason Statham has the right screen persona to play Dredd.

That's as maybe though. Going on the artwork, the early signs are good for the film's release in 2012, but I'll be the judge of that (ho-ho)... thanks Sly! I'll be here all week.