Sylvester Stallone Deeply Regrets Messing Up His Judge Dredd Movie
In his entire acting career, Sly Stallone’s biggest regret is the failure of Judge Dredd — the movie that could have started the superhero frenzy years before the MCU.
Today, we have new generations of action heroes — think Tom Cruise, Matt Damon, and the entire Fast & Furious crew — but back in the 1990s, the action scene was totally dominated by the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. Their movies about restlessly exterminating bad guys were the pinnacle of action.
Every action star from that generation went through ups and downs: some movies became international cultural phenomena, and others fell flat with humiliating force.
It’s generally how the movie industry works, and big-name stars learned to treat their failures as nothing special — but still, some cases hit too close to home.
Throughout Sylvester Stallone’s incredibly long and fruitful career, there was just one movie he really regrets about. Back in 1995, Sly did a comic book adaptation of Judge Dredd, and that film had all the chances to ignite superhero frenzy way before the MCU came around. There was just one problem with that: the movie was terrible.
“The biggest mistake I ever made was with the sloppy handling of Judge Dredd. It could have been a fantastic, nihilistic, interesting vision of the future – judge, jury, and executioner. That [film’s failure] really bothered me a great deal,” Stallone shared during the Rambo press conference.
Unfortunately, Judge Dredd failed to meet the audience’s expectations, and even almost three decades later, it’s still widely considered a terrible movie. As of now, this 1995 film has a horrible 8% top critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, and viewers rating is not too stellar as well sitting at 30%. No cult classic here, folks.
Despite Sly Stallone’s failure, the franchise itself got a chance to redeem itself and used it well. In 2012, a new live-action adaptation of the same comic book — Dredd — was released, and it fared way better. Starring Karl Urban, Olivia Thirlby, and Lena Headey, the new movie rightfully earned its praise and an 80% critics score on RT.
Source: Digital Spy