For our annual summer countdown, we are looking at our favorite 25 movies that were not huge hits during their initial release, but mean a lot to us. Check out last year’s Summer of Stars countdown or the year before when we did blockbusters! Find the rest of the Flop and Fizzle series here!

by Nikk Nelson, Staff Writer

Remember 3D movies and 3D TV’s? For a hot minute in the twenty-teens, it seemed like the technology was the new standard at home and at the movie theater. I remember my skepticism: (Avatar, 2009). I remember falling in love with it: (Prometheus, 2012). And then I remember, when it was at the height of saturation, where it seemed like every movie was released in 3D, very suddenly loathing it. Now, it’s all but disappeared from both the home and theater experience. Dredd (2012) was one of the last movies I saw in 3D and, looking back, it was my favorite next to Prometheus.

I’ve always loved the character, Judge Dredd. I read a few of the comics when I was a kid but couldn’t get my hands on many of them due to the content. People forget there was a world of comic book movies before the Marvel Universe. Believe it or not, we had our own deluge in the early to mid-nineties and I think, because of various property rights, older and/or indie comics were easier to adapt into films. So, we saw films like The Rocketeer (1991), Barb Wire (1996), The Crow (1994), The Phantom (1996), and Tank Girl (1995). None of them I would call good movies (with the exception of The Crow), but I love all of them for their kaleidoscope of good-badness. When Judge Dredd came out in 1995 starring Sylvester Stallone, it felt like comic book movies were facing a sort of legitimizing—if, at the time, one of the biggest movie stars on the planet was playing a comic book character in what was certain to be that year’s summer blockbuster, then these movies must be solid, right? But it flopped.

Not only did it flop, but I remember it being the last gasp for that brand of action movie. It seemed like from that point on, stars like Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Van Damme, and the movies they’d been making for a decade were slowly but surely losing their audience. But life moves in cycles and with the resurgence of both comic book movies and the gimmick of 3D at the turn of the decade, someone decided to take another chance on Judge Dredd up on the big screen. Not only would the character return, but this time they might actually get it right with rockstar screenwriter Alex Garland at the helm of the script. But it flopped again.

To put it in context, the original flop in 1995 still made close to $115 million at the box office. The 2012 adaptation pulled in only about a quarter of that. And to be honest, when I saw it for the first time, I thought it was just okay. I had no idea it would go on to be one of the better 3D films produced in that era. I was naïve and believed 3D movies were here forever and they would just get better. After multiple viewings of Dredd (2012), I can honestly say it has become one of my favorite action films, period, it is one of the most faithful comic book adaptations you will find, and there’s a reason it has such a cult following. It’s over the top in a good way. Lena Headey gives an incredible performance as Ma-Ma and Karl Urban manages to turn in a perfect to the character, cold-but-emotive performance using only half of his face. The only thing that still bothers me is how similar it is to The Raid: Redemption (2011). Everything I’ve managed to find insists it’s a weird cosmic coincidence and part of me will just never buy that. Still, objectively, what a kick-ass double-feature to throw on.