The Definitive Credits Model

I finally got around to seeing Dredd tonight. I don't want to really talk about the story or the characters or anything like that, though. Instead, I'm going to highlight the end credits.

You know how films generally work these days, as far as credit sequences go, right? There's the big movie climax, the closing theme music begins and then they splatter the biggest names of those involved across the screen in huge letters before getting to the long scroll of grips and best boys and everything.

With that said, here are the first three screens of credits after Judge Dredd literally rides off towards the horizon...

That's right; the very first names shown -- before ANY other part of the credits -- are the guys who created the character. Before Karl Urban, who I'm sure is more widely known, and before the actual name of the movie, they list John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra as the guys who created the character the movie was based on and named for. "Judge Dredd created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra" in letters as big as the biggest star of the movie.

I don't know how much money (if any) Wagner and Ezquerra are receiving for the movie, but THAT is how to properly credit a comic book creator when their characters are turned into major motion pictures! I would've been hooting and hollering in the theater if I'd have seen Jack Kirby's name like that in Avengers!

You know, credit sequences are pretty much the last thing to get put into the final edit of a film. There's still plenty of time to get Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in there for Man of Steel and Kirby, Stan Lee, Don Heck & Larry Lieber in for Iron Man 3. C'mon, movie prodcuers, don't be dicks about this!

Related Items business other media