First official picture of Karl Urban as Judge John Deed

After Martin Shaw's dreadful portrayal of the 2000AD future-cop, we finally get a look at Karl Urban's grittier take on Mega City One's high court judge. Look, it was either this or a helmet joke.

If there's one thing the movie blogosphere can all agree on, it's that Sylvester Stallone's mid-nineties oeuvre - Demolition Man aside - was hilariously shite. Judge Dredd arrived slap-bang in the middle of Stallone's career fartsplosion, complete with Sly decked out in fabulous shoulder pads and a big shiny helmet, with the season's must have accessory, Rob Schneider, on his arm. Needless to say, it was so not a good look.

Fast-forward to 2011, and apparently enough time has passed to give Dredd the kiss of life and trot out a new take on the comic hero - because Lord knows, what Hollywood needs is one more anti-hero who doesn't play by the rules. Donning the helmet - which, in this first 'official' picture, is clearly far too large for the bonce within - is Karl Urban, a man whose very name conjures an image of a character au fait with 'the streets'.

From what I can see of the fifth of Karl Urban's face, I feel confident enough to say this will DEFINITELY be an improvement over the Stallone version - although unless he has hentai tattoos on the other four-fifths of his face, it'd be impossible not to be better. Not sure why this is big news, either - the pic below has been doing the rounds since November and gives a far better look at Dredd's full costume.

Look, he's even got a little name badge. The font size bothers me, though. Any officer with a surname longer than five letters would have to have the font size of their name reduced to fit on the badge. Are we to believe Mega City One's law enforcement agency have the time and money to spend on designing and creating individually tailored police badges? That's clearly a plot hole the makers of Dredd must address in the movie.

Is it too late to make the helmet joke I mentioned earlier?