After years of quietly bubbling away in the background, Duncan Jones (Moon, Source Code) has finally given us our first proper look at ‘Rogue Trooper’, his long-gestating adaptation of the classic ‘2000 AD’ comic.
The first teaser trailer for the upcoming animated film has now been released, alongside four new stills, as part of a Deadline interview with Jones. And while it is only a tease, it is enough to confirm this is shaping up to be something a bit more distinctive than your average comic book adaptation.
That is probably fitting for ‘Rogue Trooper’, because this has never exactly been your standard sci-fi setup.
Based on the classic comic series created by Gerry Finley-Day and Dave Gibbons (Watchmen), the film follows 19, a Genetic Infantryman who ends up the sole survivor of an invasion force. Determined to track down the traitor who sold out him and his comrades, Rogue heads into the wasteland accompanied by three fallen squadmates whose personalities have been stored in his gun, helmet and backpack. Which is, frankly, exactly the sort of gloriously bonkers premise that made ‘2000 AD’ such a British institution in the first place.
The film stars Aneurin Barnard (The Goldfinch, Dunkirk) as Rogue, alongside Hayley Atwell (Captain America: The First Avenger, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One), Jack Lowden (Slow Horses, Dunkirk), Daryl McCormack (Bad Sisters, Good Luck To You, Leo Grande) and Reece Shearsmith (Inside No. 9, Saltburn).
The wider ensemble is also ridiculously strong, with Jemaine Clement (Avatar: The Way of Water), Matt Berry (What We Do in the Shadows), Diane Morgan (Cunk on Earth), Alice Lowe (Black Mirror), Asa Butterfield (Sex Education, Hugo) and Sean Bean (Game of Thrones, The Lord of the Rings) all on board. And yes, this really does look like one of those casts where half the fun will be spotting who turns up and what strange bit of the world they are voicing.
What makes this especially interesting is that Jones and producer Stuart Fenegan (Moon, Warcraft) are clearly not aiming for a slick, generic CG look. In the Deadline interview, Jones talks about wanting the film to feel like a comic book movie in the most literal sense, with the team chasing something closer to the texture and spirit of the original artwork. That includes inspiration from Rogue Trooper: War Machine and a painterly, almost watercolour-like finish.
That choice feels smart. One of the biggest risks with a film like this is that it ends up looking like an extended video game cutscene. But avoiding that seems to have been a major part of the plan. Jones and Fenegan said straight motion capture was never going to deliver the right look, so the team pushed much further into hand animation, giving the film a more stylised, comic-book feel instead of that awkward, almost-real digital sheen.
It also sounds like Jones has approached the whole thing with a very deliberate sense of Britishness. That makes sense for a property like ‘Rogue Trooper’, which comes out of the same gloriously strange, satirical, punky comic tradition that gave us ‘Judge Dredd’. In the Deadline piece, Jones talks about wanting to lean into that spirit and give the film a distinctly British flavour, both in the casting and in the tone.
And that may be the most exciting part of this. There is a real sense that ‘Rogue Trooper’ is not just trying to revive one old comic strip, but to prove that weird, ambitious British sci-fi can still be made at scale without sanding off all the odd edges that made people love it in the first place.
There is still no confirmed release date for ‘Rogue Trooper’ yet, but after such a long development road, this is the clearest sign yet that the film is finally nearing the finish line. And from this first look, it seems Jones may have made exactly the kind of adaptation this material needs: big, strange, visually distinctive, and proudly rooted in the wonderfully peculiar world of ‘2000 AD’.
You can find more about the film at roguetrooper.com
Login to Geektown