I never thought the first Dredd was that bad. It had quite a lot of 2000AD in there if you knew where to look. It made two big mistakes, though.

1. Dredd took his helmet off
2. The "Dredd having to fight the system he had spent his life upholding" was a "Part 3" storyline, not one for the first part of a Dredd franchise.

The Karl Urban version was well made, but just didn't grab me.

Arnie's "Total Recall" was fun, but the other was forgettable.

I think that if the grittier versions had come first my thoughts would have been much the same.

@DRDMovieMusings said:

Dredd, a new adaptation of a character/story we first saw on screen with action star Sylvester Stallone, came out in 2012. And it did not do as well as Stallone's Judge Dredd.

Total Recall 2012 was also an adaptation of a character/story we first saw on screen with action star Arnold Schwarzenegger. And it did not do as well as Arnie's.

Seems 2012 was the year for the grittier darker adaptations of campy shlock.

Both these adaptations stand-alone very well...but, once people get in their minds the "first" one, the campy ones, it makes it difficult to let that go and see the character and the story afresh.

My question is...if the grittier interpretations hit the theatres first, would we also embrace or prefer the campy remakes, or would we dismiss the campy remakes as parodies, too unserious to be worthy?

Yeah, better as their own thing but shit when compared to their originals.

That's a good point that it's very hard to rewrite a camp classic. Could someone do a dark gritty version of 1980's Flash Gordon? Never.

Maybe the 2010s scifi writers were emboldened by the 1 success that comes to mind, the 2004 dark reinvention of Battlestar Galactica. I was a fan of the original and swore I'd never abandon ship, but dang it, the new one nailed it perfectly. That series actually made me rethink my entire stance on reboots & remakes.

So I'd say it's possible, but NOT easy.

Can you hit it from the other direction, remaking a serious classic as camp? Much easier I think. When done right, comedy breaks all barriers. And just by nature, almost every serious story is begging for a satire. I mean... 2 words... Young Frankenstein!